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WaPo's Anti-Will Uprising

Is there an anti-George-Will critical mass building at the Washington Post?

Just in the last few days, we've seen three separate efforts, from three separate sections of the paper, to push back against the bow-tied columnist's well-chronicled deceptions on global warming.

* As we noted yesterday, a Post news story about the alarming reduction of Arctic ice levels characterized the news as contradicting "data cited in widely circulated reports by ... Will."

* Also yesterday morning, Andrew Freeman, a writer with the Post's weather blog (of all places) posted a long dissection of Will's various distortions, entitled "Will Misleads Readers on Climate Science - Again." Freeman concluded: "George Will's recent columns demonstrate a very troubling pattern of misrepresentation of climate science."

* And check out this cartoon by the Post's Tom Toles, published last Friday, which depicts Will thinking: "I need an idea on how to follow up on my irresponsible global warming column," before getting the idea for a "light bulb column." (Last week Will wrote a column about the shortcomings of energy-saving light-bulbs. Seriously.)

That's three examples. And as we all know, three makes a trend.

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that there are people at the Post who want to make sure that it remains a source of reliable information about crucial topics in the news. It's just too bad that -- outside of Toles -- the uprising doesn't seem to have spread to Fred Hiatt's op-ed page, which continues to give no indication it has any problem at all with Will's writing.


6 Comments

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user-pic

Actually, there have been rebuttals of Will on the WaPo's Op Ed pages. Main problem being that Hiatt published them on a Saturday.

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, had an op ed rebuttal of Will published on March 21st:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR2009032002660.html

And that same day Michel Jarraud, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, had a letter to the editor published:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR2009032003191.html

user-pic

If George Will was not such a pompous ass he'd be so embarrassed by these three sources in his own paper contradicting him he'd give up writing on the environment.

user-pic

Sigh, how often do we have to tell you people: there's a firewall between News and Editorial at the Post that prevents folks like Hiatt and Will from reading anything in the rest of the paper.

user-pic

I suspect something is blocking their access to actual facts, instead of just right wing talking points, and it's a firewall between the news and editorial pages of the Post.

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I guess they haven't figured out that while it would be a bad thing for writers of the news reports to be influenced by the content of the OpEd page, the reverse doesn't apply -- it really is OK for editorial writers to be influenced by actual facts.

user-pic

Getting rid of G. Will is not enough for the WaPo.

Fred Hiatt has to go.
~

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