The Washington Post editors are, in essence, going silent when it comes to George Will’s use of their pages for disinformation on global warming issues. And, from that silence, the Post’s Ombudsman emerged to embrace the Will-ful deceit. And, for whatever reason, unlike the myriad other times that Washington Post opinion pages have been handed over to truthiness from global warming deniers, skeptics, and delayers, this occasion is seeing a bit of a blogosphere wide expression of outrage.
GESN! has an impressive list of fact finders who debunk all of Will's truthiness. But it's more than just Will's truthiness. WaPo has a long history of fact-light reporting when it comes to the environment, as A Siegel documents:
- WashPost complicit in disinformation of explicit collaboration?, 15 Feb 09
- Washington Post global warming reporting fair and balanced, 27 Jun 08
- Fair and Balance strikes WashPost global warming reporting again , 26 June 08
- Will-fully ignorant, 3 June 06
- Truthi-Samuelson strikes again, 30 Apr 08
- Truthiness strikes the Post again, revisited, 15 Oct 07
- Truthiness strikes the Post again, 14 Oct 07
- J’accuse! Robert J Samuelson. J’accuse!, 15 Aug 07
- Krauthammer’s fact-free foray into energy issues, 1 July 07
- Washington Post’s schizophrenic approach to global warming, 4 Feb 07
- J’accuse! Distorting reality in global warmings’ real inconvenient truth, 5 July 06
In short, the problem is not just the Post’s relationship with George Will, but the Post’s utter failure to hold their columnists to any reasonable standard in terms of evidence when it comes to climate change and energy pieces.
