Ombudsman Alexander faults Wash. Post editors, Will in global warming column controversy
February 27, 2009 9:53 pm ET by Media Matters staff
From Alexander's column, which will appear in the March 1 edition of the Post:
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 and prompted an orchestrated e-mail campaign in which thousands demanded that The Post correct Will's "falsehoods." Like they say when the pro football rookie gets clobbered: "Welcome to the NFL."
[...]
As the debate continues, questions linger about The Post's editing process. And there are separate questions about how The Post reacted once readers began questioning the accuracy of Will's column.
First, the editing process. My inquiry shows that there was fact-checking at multiple levels.
[...]
The editors who checked the Arctic Research Climate Center Web site believe it did not, on balance, run counter to Will's assertion that global sea ice levels "now equal those of 1979." I reviewed the same Web citation and reached a different conclusion.
It said that while global sea ice areas are "near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979," sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere is "almost one million sq. km below" the levels of late 1979. That's roughly the size of Texas and California combined. In my mind, it should have triggered a call for clarification to the center.
Previously:
- Lashing out at critics, George Will spreads more falsehoods in new global warming column
- County Fair: Environmental groups, Media Matters team-up calling on WaPo ombudsman for George Will correction
- In reported response to Will controversy, Wash. Post ombudsman compounds global warming misinformation
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This is not an article of faith, like religion -- it doesn't matter what Will or the editors "believe." What matters is what can be KNOWN. In this case, the data on the ARCC says the exact opposite of what Will claims they say. It's bad enough that Will is wrong on the question of climate change, which is bad enough, but he's lying about the ARCC, which is far worse.
Imagine that the Sky Research Institute publishes a report that says "based on the data we collected, we conclude that the sky is blue."
George Will then writes a column in which he not only claims
the sky is green, but that the SRI backs him up on this point.
Then, when alert readers and media critics point out Will's inexactitude, his editors say they "believe" that the SRI's report DOES say that the sky is green. Or maybe as a dodge (that they actually tried), the editors say that it's impossible to know what color the sky is, so we need to listen to both the blue sky "believers" and the green sky advocates.
There are such things as facts, and they can be known -- they don't have to be "believed" like a religious tenet.
What the media gets away with in terms of boosting Republicans and undermining Democrats ought to make them ashamed and should put to rest the myth of "liberal bias" in the media.
Very well said 1st Republic...
I will give the Ombudsman credit for responding--though it seemed to take quite a long time.
The problem here--and it's a huge problem--is that apparently others fact checked this George Will crap column and concluded that is was ON BALANCE, OK.
This just leaps out at everyone and says: We're gonna let just about any conservative crap run right on through. Sadly, The WAPO has disgraced itself here to a very high degree. This once great newspaper simply doesn't have the stomach for real journalism anymore.
People who remember the Post actively campaigning against Gore no longer have "questions" about "the Post's editing process".
I gave up on the Post last year when it was clear they were engaged in a full frontal assault on the Hillary Clinton campaign. Clearly, the board of directors at that once-proud rag thought that Hillary was the greatest threat to continued GOP domination in Washington DC and therefore had to be destroyed.
They lost anyway, and now the Post has launched Plan B-- give credence to every right-wing idiot who wants to undermine the Obama Administration. The Post will have to do it without my money.
"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."
Maybe I should just be happy that he even issued something that resembled an admission of wrongdoing, but I'm not happy about this opening. He lumps everybody who was upset about George Will making up a bunch of crap into "environmental activists", which of course, is a euphemism for "drug-crazed hippies". I'm no activist, I just think people should tell the goddamn truth.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Greenpeace and Sierra Club are not ecoterrorist organizations. They have both strongly condemned violence and destruction as a means of environmental protest.
"Mr. Will... has the guts to speak out against environmental 'terrorism'."
Will's February 15th column made absolutely no mention or allusion to ecoterrorism or the organizations that commit violent or destructive acts in protest of evironmental destruction.
If you had any clue as to who commits ecoterrorism, and if it appeared you had made any effort to read Will's column, you might have been able make your point without looking so foolish and aloof to the issue at hand.
You ignore science and claim it's a hoax. You're equating Greenpeace and the Sierra Club with ecoterrorism. Your SN is that of a mass murderer.
What possible reason do we have to think that you are a rational human being?