by Damozel | After one erroneous outburst in The Washington Post against "Dark Green Doomsayers", George Will has written yet another column. In case you were wondering, there's still no correction in sight.
I didn't bother about Will's initial global warming denial column, mostly for the reasons which emptywheel cites for staying out of the initial controversy: "There was not much way I could improve on ThinkProgress' and Media Matters' multi-part response to Will." But the response to the response interests me strangely.
Isabel Macdonald at HuffPost observes: "The ongoing controversy...offers a good case study in the impunity of the punditocracy."
As bloggers, media activists and environmentalists were quick to point out, Will made three significant errors in his climate change column, which was published in the Post (2/15/09) and scores of daily newspapers nationwide last week. First, he misrepresented scientific research from the 1970s, claiming that global cooling was then the prevailing concern. Second, he claimed the University of Illinois had found global sea ice was increasing, when in fact the school's researchers found the opposite. Finally, he claimed that U.N. climate researchers have found "no recorded global warming for more than a decade." (Huff Post)
George Will's second column (answering criticisms of the first) was -- in the words of dday -- "a pissy rant standing by the substance of his global warming denialist column of the week prior. In doing so he defends the substance of a data point he included about sea ice levels in Antarctica, despite the climate research center where Will got the data has publicly disavowed it."
Respecting Will's response, Climate Progress says:
As readers know, the first column contained multiple falsehoods that were challenged point by point here, elsewhere, and even in a joint letter to the Post from several leading environmentalists.
And the second column was egregiously allowed to reassert that all of those other falsehoods were “factual assertions,” plus make some new falsehoods, as I detailed at length here: In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones.
Oh, and Professor Robert Brulle, professor of sociology at Drexel University, writes for The Wonk Room:
In the decades since, of course, scientists have come to the consensus that our continued burning of fossil fuels are tied to the warming of the planet. It is not the New York Times that is dishonest in its coverage, it is George F. Will.
Meanwhile, Fred Hiatt published a "defense" of Will's right to present as facts opinions based on incorrect data.
The great Eric Boehlert of Media Matters thereupon administered to Hiatt a righteous drubbing:
Journalism is not complicated. Honest. But sometimes people practicing it pretend that it is. They pretend that it's very complicated and that every fact has nine different sides and it's impossible--impossible--to figure out what the truth really is. And because it's impossible, who's to say who's right and who's wrong. Who's to say what's correct and what's incorrect. It's all open for debate.
The Post's Fred Hiatt, busy contorting himself into a pretzel, is playing that (dumb) game with regards to George Will, the increasingly heavy anchor that the columnist has become around the daily's neck.
Will and the Post refuse to apologize, or in newspaper terms they refuse to issue a correction, despite the fact that Will's now infamous column last week was built around falsehoods
about global warming. But rather than trying to figure out how to fix
the problem, Hiatt and Will have apparently been brainstorming on how not to accept responsibility.
I have two favorite parts. The first was Hiatt's insistence that Will has every right to draw inference--to make claims of fact in his column--based on data that most scientists reject. Good Lord, what is Will not allowed to do in a Post column? And does the Op-Ed page maintain any guidelines?
And second, I chuckled when Hiatt insisted that if people disagree with Will's published falsehoods, they shouldn't try to pressure the paper to publish corrections, they should, y'know, "debate him." Right, because Will and Post editors have been so open and willing to address--to debate--the controversy.
But it isn't just Hiatt's response that has left many of us bug-eyed with wonder. There's also the very strange response of WaPo's brand new "ombudsman," writing his first official column.
Andrew Alexander defends the fact-checking process, with many "wry" cracks at the unseemly outrage of those who responded to Will's misstatements, including environmental experts.
Let's cut to the chase, courtesy of Isabel Macdonald:
Climate Change points out the effect of Alexander's reduction of many criticisms to one:
Brad DeLong comments on the manner in which Alexander passive-aggressives his way through his response.
Alexander writes a painfully passive-voiced column about how it would have been better "if Post editors, and the new ombudsman, had more quickly addressed the claims of falsehoods" in George Will's climate change columns. But he reaches self parody: in the column he does not address, and he still has not addressed, the claims of falsehoods in George Will's climate change columns....
Alexander's lead:
George Will's Column on Global Warming: Opinion columnists are free to choose whatever facts bolster their arguments. But they aren't free to distort them. The question of whether that happened is at the core of an uproar over a recent George F. Will column and The Post's fact-checking process. Will's Feb. 15 column, headlined "Dark Green Doomsayers," ridiculed "eco-pessimists" and cited a string of "predicted planetary calamities" that Will said have never come to pass. A key paragraph, aimed at those who believe in man-made global warming, asserted: "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979." The column triggered e-mails to The Post from hundreds of angry environmental activists and a few scientists, many asserting that the center had said exactly the opposite.... The ruckus grew when I e-mailed readers who had inquired about the editing process for Will's column. My comments accurately conveyed what I had been told by editorial page editor Fred Hiatt -- that multiple editors had checked Will's sources, including the reference to the Arctic Climate Research Center. Although I didn't render a judgment, my response was understandably seen as an institutional defense...
No judgments at all. And a lot of passive verbs eliminating agency, and a lot of statements not about how things are bu thow they are seen.: "asserting that the center had said exactly the opposite," "what I had been told by... Fred Hiatt," "my response was understandably seen."...
Alexander ends his March 1 column with the standard plague-on-both-your-houses:
There is a disturbing if-you-don't-agree-with-me-you're-an-idiot tone to much of the global warming debate. Thoughtful discourse is noticeably absent in the current dispute. But that's where The Post could have helped, and can in the future. On its news pages, it can recommit to reporting on climate change that is authoritative and deep. On the editorial pages, it can present a mix of respected and informed viewpoints. And online, it can encourage dialogue that is robust, even if it becomes bellicose.
Regarding this last thrust of Alexander's needle, Climate Change ripostes:
At HuffPost, Macdonald finds it curious that WaPo hasn't yet cottoned on to the fact that the age of pundit impunity is long over.
As blogger Jonathan Schwarz recently pointed out, the internet has profoundly changed the landscape of pundit impunity...[W]ith the proliferation of blogs devoted to correcting the media record, and the advent of online media activism campaigns that can in a matter of hours generate thousands of reader complaints to editors, concerned members of the public have more tools than ever before to publicly debunk media errors and to push for greater accountability.
In this context, the Post ombud's inadequate response simply added fuel to the campaigns challenging the Post on Will's climate distortions.
Andrew Sullivan remarks: "Memo to WaPo: your days of thinking like this are over. If you don't want to go the way of the Rocky Mountain News, wake up and smell the competition."
Want to join the call for accountability?
[G]iven that it is not just the Post but some 368 newspapers nationwide that carry Will's column, the challenge of holding Will accountable is one in which people across the nation have to play a vital role in writing to any newspapers in their own local communities that published Will's error-plagued climate change column....
Media Matters has a useful application on its website that allows users to easily find out if George Will's column is carried in their local newspaper, and tips on writing letters to the editor can be found in the FAIR's media activism kit.
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