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TechnoratiChallenging George Will's Reign of Error
After eight years of George W. Bush's rule, popular disapproval of policies that had come to be regarded as grave mistakes--from the invasion of Iraq to the response to the economic crisis--drove the Republicans from power.
Unfortunately, the media system has no such built-in check on powerful pundits, as the unchallenged reign of another George W. with a long record of mistakes can attest.
The ongoing controversy over a recent error-plagued climate change column penned by George Will--a Washington Post syndicated columnist whose record of error spans decades--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."
In the wake of widespread refutations on blogs, and action alerts by FAIR and Media Matters, the Washington Post received floods of emails complaining about the inaccuracies in Will's column, and the Post's ombud Andy Alexander soon issued a response to a blogger at Think Progress.
Claiming that Will's column had been subject to multiple fact-checks, Alexander addressed only critics' concern about Will's misrepresentation of the University of Illinois's sea ice research, defending Will by citing a University of Illinois statement that, in fact, actually refuted Will's claim.
Given that the position of ombud (a person responsible for responding to reader complaints and upholding accuracy at a media outlet) is the closest thing to a system of accountability that exists at newspapers, the Post ombud's response aptly illustrated the bankruptcy of what passes for accountability at a leading newspaper.
Unfortunately, the erroneous climate change column is not a blip on Will's record. On the issue of climate change alone, FAIR's magazine Extra! documents that Will's history of misquoting data to distort the debate goes back nearly two decades. As FAIR's senior analyst Steve Rendall recently noted on the FAIR Blog, in 1992, Will so grossly misrepresented a Gallup poll on scientists' views on climate change that Gallup took the rare step of issuing a written correction to Will's column. A decade before that, Will made such a glaring factual error in a column published in Newsweek that the magazine took the unusual step of agreeing to publish a letter by Noam Chomsky (Will managed to block the letter's publication by throwing a temper tantrum.)
And yet this serial distorter of the facts continues to published by more newspapers than any other columnist. In addition to the Post, 367 newspapers publish his column. Why? This is a question newspaper editors should have to answer.
As blogger Jonathan Schwarz recently pointed out, the internet has profoundly changed the landscape of pundit impunity since Will's 1982 temper tantrum. The Washington Post ombud's role in protecting Will's work from the facts may be highly reminiscent of Newsweek's decision to spike Chomsky's letter. However, with 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. Yesterday, the presidents of leading environmental groups joined Media Matters in issuing a letter to the newspaper, and FAIR issued a new call for its supporters to contact the Post's ombud (ombudsman@washpost.com)
And given 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.
Given the abundance of online media activism resources, it is not hard to take action to push for greater accountability in one's local newspaper. (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 FAIR's media activism kit.)
Given that the corporate media have granted Will impunity for decades now, this accountability is long overdue.
43 Comments so far
Show AllI live in the Midwest, considered a moderate Republican part of the country, near a well-respected liberal arts college regarded as bedrock Republican thought. This college has a highly regarded speaker series that in the past decade has hosted such prominent national commentators, journalists, scholars and pundits as David Broder, Fareed Zakaria, Eleanor Clift, Jon Meacham, Mara Liason, Ellis Close, Terry Gross, Michael Beschloss, Frank DeFord, and I could go on and on and on.
I have it directly from the former director of the series, whom I've known for many years and trust implicity, that they tried for many years to book George Willl, but that his fee was, and presumably still is, astronomical. That says volumes to me about the man. I do read his columns regularly in both The Washington Post and in Newsweek. But even before learning the above fact several years ago, I've always believed Will to be a man who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
Unfortunately, George Will, is committed to serving a life sentence fixed within his prison of delusion, sadly, this is the nature of conservatism, and what's worse, he spends most of his working hours attempting to restrict all his listeners to his reality.
Poor George, if only the world were still flat, and our solar system revolved around him.
George Will is a good example of how a well educated person can still be stupid.
He illustrates the difference between education and wisdom.
As a counter example, its become accepted in American circles to make fun of the 'hippies', those counter-culture wierdo's that promoted a sustainable lifestyle, peace, pot, vegetarianism, sharing and community, and an appreciation for nature. For 30 years, the business of American has been business, and these relics were denigrated by George Will and others as hopelessly clueless. And clueless they often were. But they were wise. They remained in touch with what it meant to be genuinely human (kinda like the Shakers), and are rewarded now to see that EVERYTHING (well, almost everything) they advocated has been rediscovered as essential to our future. Being clever is only a temporary substitute for being wise. George Will illustrates this quite well.
This is standard operating procedure for old George of the Jungle. A recent article by Mr. Will in the Wash Post suggested that campaign finance reform was a violation of the freedom of speech spelled out in the Constitution - his logic built off of a warped analysis of the 17th amendment relating to the election of Senators versus appointment by sitting governors. Tragically, some fish take the bait. See Global Investment Watch's analysis of Will's comments on Sunday: http://globalinvestmentwatch.com/2009/02/23/george-will-and-the-collapse-of-reason/
Georgie "Bird Lips" Will cannot tell a lie?
....NOT!!!
(LOL)
jeffj
Will is restating the common deception that the planet is cooling since 1998. This has been reported so many times by denialists in their politically motivated attempts to sway public opinion against "radical environmetalists" (a term bandied about on talk radio and in right wing think tank op-ed pieces which smugly avoid the rigors of peer review that it has become gospel).The right long ago realized that Joseh Goebbels was on to somthing when he proclaimed that a lie repeated often enough will become a bedrock truth that can be used to shape public opinion (Obama is a socialist, Obama is a Muslim etc.).The origins of the current climate is cooling drivel is the simple minded and disingenuous contention that since 1998 was the warmest year on record, and all subsequent years were slightly cooler, the earth must be in a cooling phase. As with any good lie there is a tendril of truth propping it up. However, what is not mentioned is that every year since 1998 has been among the warmest on record. So greenhouse warming continues, the evidence accumulates, climatologists are speaking out because the worst IPCC scenarios are proving to be too conservative and lunatics with no knowledge or ability to engage in a critical analysis of the severity of the problem are given platforms to preach their faith based stupidity in op-ed pages and television and radio "news" programs. Will's arrogance is antithetical to reasoned self-criticism. He is merely one more of a legion of "pundits" proudly putting their ignorance on public display. Sadly, there is no scrutiny of his fatuous pronouncements and he continues to have liscense to disseminate nonsense. The peril is that because so many are disseminating this very same message the public will not recognize climate change as the most immediate and serious problem we have faced as a species. Like lemmings, we will be led over the precipice by George and Rush, and Sean and thousands of others. Hubris will not be the cause of our extinction, but rather mediocrity. Will is another extremist Christian soldier, with no scientific credentials, who vents his verbal flatulence, another greenhouse gas, from his nether orifice without deigning to trouble himself with mere facts.As Aldous Huxley said, " Facts do not cease to exist by ignoring them." If the implications of the prevailing ingnorance on both sides of the political spectrum were not so dire, this anti-science gelatin, so culturally pervasive, would be laughable.
Sioux Rose
JEFF J: An excellent post!
I applaud your position but would ask you to consider the use of paragraphs to make reading your worthy efforts a bit easier.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
This people are just like the old communist marxists who went to their graves repeating the same stale party lines; ideologues to the end. They cannot be reformed, only silenced, wither by calling them out with truth telling, or just turning a deaf ear to their prattle.
Thanks for running a piece from FAIR. Their weekly radio show (free download) is quite good. I've been a member for 20 years.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=5
Lately I've converted to Alex Jones' radio show at http://www.infowars.com/ (free stream, higher quality downloads for members) -- which I find much more biting and holistic in its approach as a critique of the EVIL SYSTEM of control and lobotomization we're being flayed by.
George Will is a total establishment poser/shill. I despise his bow tie, nerdy glasses, air of refinement, and arrogance. I went to Princeton, too. It doesn't mean you've got to be a fascist jackass -- but I guess that is what the pedigree boils down to these days.
If George Will actually believes his own rhetoric, then he is an educated idiot; otherwise, he is one of the many hypocritical, journalists that have sold out America for access,prestige and $. George uses obfuscation; fancy rhetoric; a large vocabulary; and specious and subtle reasoning to lie, under the guise of being a "conservative". He is nothing but another quisling for the whore MSM!
racom40
Gasbag Will was threatened when the NYT hired gasbag kristol, now we are exposed to a competetion between two morons running for 'dummie of the decade'. I question why anyone reads either of them.
Why should willful misrepresentation of facts and deliberate misleading in a matter of such grave significance as climate change be any less of a crime than, say, "holocaust denial"? A fact that is not much known is that scientists, for fear of being labeled alarmist and with an instinctive concern for safeguarding their credibility, have, more often than not, actually presented only conservative projections that turn out to be underestimates of the threat of climate change. It's time to put a stop to such moronic pronouncements as George Will's, and find ways to ostracize such 'pundits' - time to call their bluff in a public manner!
The way to ostracise people such as Will, is to simply put them out of jobs. Will's industry is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
I think its good that Will is still publishing. The damage he has done has already been done, he can do little more damage, as just about everything he ever pundited is seen increasingly, by the evidence itself, to have been astonishingly wrong. His still publishing serves as a reminder to Americans that people like Will 'happened'. And that will make them think about WHY it happened. And that is something we ALL need to think about, for the good of the country.
People such as Will, unfortunately and bizarrely, do matter. Although one would think that after having been so wrong about so much for so long and so confidently they would have insufficient credibility to be asked the time of day, there are many people who confuse articulateness with insight and confidence with competence and continue read, watch or listen to Will, Limbaugh, Coulter, the Wall Street Journal, Fox and--more alarmingly--very often the NY Times, Washington Post and NPR.
The NYT is going bankrupt. They are dying. Leave them.
Who the heck is george Will and who the heck cares?
will, hoagland, ignatius, and, by far worst of all, the totally bat-shite insane charles "hammer of the krauts" krauthammer. all on WaPo. for balance, the neo-con editor in chief of the oped page, fred hiatt. for "liberal" balance, the utterly spineless, dull, centrist david broder. the editorials of wapo are slightly more sophisticated rupert murdock clones (except they are, of course, more or less "pro gay" and "pro choice").
so much for that "liberal media".......
Agreed. It's definitely NOT a 'liberal media'.
But Will isn't just a known 'right winger' - hey, everyone has a right to his political views, no matter how fossilized.
What gets me is that George Will a well known serial liar. Can't 'the right' find anyone half-way honest to champion them?
Apparently not.
We know that corporations bankroll the mainstream media.Industry advertisers ultimately decide political content newspapers, television and radio. Journalistic integrity takes a back seat to the bottom line every time. The lion's share of corporations are polluters. Therefore, mainstream media will continue to misrepresent (and under-report)global warming research, and will continue to bankroll right wing lackeys like George Will.
And Cal Thomas for how many years?
Post's ombud Andy Alexander probably made a phone call like this to Karl Rove the night before:
AA: What do I do? They caught Will in three obvious lies. It's all over the internet!
KR: Do...You don't do anything. You admit nothing. You hear me? You've been placed in this job to keep your mouth shut.
AA: But what do I say when they show the public the evidence that Will lied?
KR: You respond to only one of the three points. Pull up some other section of the Illinois report and claim that it actually supports Will. People have a ten second attention span. Nobody will be able to follow along. They'll forget the whole episode in a week. I've got congress crawling up my a**. I don't have time to teach you Propaganda 101 you dumb f*ck...
...and then there was just a dial tone.
Sioux Rose
CYGNUS: Absolutely right-on. If honor were a being, no one in Rove's circle would be able to see or perceive its presence in a room.
George Will is a pedantic, elitist, know-it-all (except he doesn't). That the Washington Post has kept him employed so long bespeaks the Post's rag status more than anything else.
Oh, also, many people believe George Will. That bespeaks their status too...which I'll leave to your imagination.
Will's continuing presence on ABC's "This Week" is one reason I cannot respect George Stephanopoulos. Last night, Will called the Dow Jones Industrial Average "an objective measure" of the economy! Good (bleeping) grief!
Pssssst...George Will is Tucker Carlson's biological father, pass it on.
George Will is just another rightwinger like the rest. What else did you expect?
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Amazing how difficult it is to find a right-wing pundit today who isn't a certified loon! Don't you sometimes wonder how we look to those in other countries who see our media? Do they get that a lot of us find these guys just as nutso as (presumably) they do?
George Will is off his rocker. Today he has a column about food being the new sex--or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it was off the wall.
I remember when he was gaga about the movie "Flashdance." Actually, that kind of column is not a problem. Those in which he doesn't know what he is talking about are.
"Those in which he doesn't know what he is talking about are."
Which are the great majority of his columns. Far too many trees are wasted on him.
I think that the death of the free press, or more accurately ,the propagandizing of our news media, is the greatest existing threat to our democracy. The fact that the internet quickly and decisively refutes the probably intentional errors of Will is a good thing, but far too many people,folks in the middle and especially those on the right, will never read those refutations.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Because the Internet IS one of the only places where the media can be challenged, there will come a day in the not too distant future, for National Security Reasons, the Internet will have to be shut down, or at least severely restricted.
Just like after Cheney and crew lusted for a new Pearl Harbor, there will be another false flag event that will necessitate such an action. Say goodbye to CD and the like.
Freedom is a dangerous thing to those in power.
bystander, yes, that's a scary possibility. Citizens need to be watchful and guard against any such move under any guise that would restrict freedom on the internet.
Amazing how many newspapers are being shut down, even though they are profitable enterprises.
No, they aren't profitable enterprises. They are going bankrupt left right and center.
And one big reason is because of crap writers such as George Will.
There have been a couple of bankruptcies recently, and more are likley to come, but contrary to popular misconception, the main problem has been declining levels of profitability due to lower ad revenues, and the failure to meet Wall Street expectations. Please see http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-despite-the-decline-newspapers-are-still-profitable/.
Far from recently actually. Newspapers have been struggling for almost a decade, more in certain cases. Consolidations are one result of said struggle.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
"There have been a couple of bankruptcies recently, and more are likley to come,"
"the main problem has been declining levels of profitability due to lower ad revenues"
You make the case against newspapers better than I do.
the propagandizing of our news media, is the greatest existing threat to our democracy.
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Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period.
hard to look at the big picture sometimes, but my experience is that in times of controversy, truth eventually becomes true (world is not flat) and then what wasn't truth is forgotton. in this case though even the truth wil be forgotton if the earth becomes un-inhabitable...