skippy the bush kangaroo

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

global warming causes national paper to eat self

as if losing maple syrup wasn't bad enough (see cookie jill's post below), the arctic ice shelf is disappearing @ a much faster rate than first thought. but the big media surprise is, that it's the washington post which is pointing it out:
the satellite data released by nasa and the national snow and ice data center show that the maximum extent of the 2008-2009 winter sea ice cover was the fifth-lowest since researchers began collecting such information 30 years ago. the past six years have produced the six lowest maximums in that record, and the new data show that the percentage of older, thicker and more persistent ice shrank to its lowest level ever, at just 9.8 percent of the winter ice cover.

"we're seeing an ice cover that's younger and that's thinner as we head into summer," walt meier, a scientist at the national snow and ice data center, said in a telephone news conference. "it's been a pretty sharp decline."

but the news doesn't stop there. post writers juliet eilperin and mary beth sheridan go on to give george will, the post's own global warming denial apologist, a very public smack down:
the new evidence -- including satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice cover in the arctic in 2005 and 2006 was nine feet thick, a significant decline from the 1980s -- contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by washington post columnist george f. will that sea ice in the arctic has not significantly declined since 1979.

dave roberts @ grist points out how astounding it is to see one dept. of a national paper rebuke another:
i can’t think of another instance when a news story at a newspaper explicitly called out an op-ed writer in the same paper for lying, by name. it’s pretty extraordinary. i can only imagine that something like this got passed up the editorial food chain, from science editor nils bruzelius to national news editor kevin merida, and perhaps beyond. (the post will not talk on record about their editorial process; they “stand behind their reporting” and so forth.) [update: after i put this post up, science editor nils bruzelius gave me a call and was quite collegial and open about the story. it was actually him who had the idea to reference will, since the, ahem, “data” will had distributed got so much publicity and was on people’s minds. he said he and the reporters agreed, it was a routine news judgment, nothing about it struck him as unusual, and as far as he knows no one above him questioned or was even aware of it. i don’t know how much of that is feingned innocence—i’ve certainly never heard of a similar case—but it seems there was no big process inside wapo behind this. cheers to bruzelius for the transparency.]

hard to read it as anything but a rebuke from the news team to post editor fred hiatt and his editorial page’s “multi-layer editing process,” which allowed will to lie and mislead on climate change three times just in the last few months, even after being corrected, publicly, by multiple sources.

and our buddy steve benen @ the washmonthly adds:
but it gets better. let's not forget that the washington post's andrew freeman also fact-checked will's work on climate change and found the columnist to be wrong, and the washington post also recently published a piece from chris mooney scrutinizing will's analysis and mooney, too, concluded that will was wrong.

it's safe to assume will is furious to be exposed this way, but more to the point, it seems the post is well aware that one of its highest-profile voices has published several columns with demonstrably false claims. why, i wonder, hasn't the paper run any will-related corrections?

for that matter, perhaps now would be a good time to start giving will's work added scrutiny before it's published?

or hopefully they'll just let him go hang w/bill kristol as a permanent position.

(thanks & a tip o' the kangaroo tail to memeorandum for the links!)
posted by skippy at 8:15 PM |

5 Comments:

0mg...ROTFLMAO.... thats funny... :)
commented by Blogger Essaress ; Prior of the F.C.F.J., (C), 10:14 PM PDT  
My personal opinion on GFWill is that these actual news stories were published instead of a correction. It was deliberate. They editorial board didn't want to look bad themselves for letting Will's columns into the paper in the first place. Publishing a retraction or correction would have made them look just as bad as Will and by doing actual factual stories - they not only rebuked Will, but presented the correct evidence to rebut his fantasies.

And they were hoping no one would notice how stupid the editorial board is. Unfortunately for them, we noticed. And the paper's actual reporters did as well and called him out on it. Yay!
commented by Blogger lokywoky, 2:02 PM PDT  
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commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 5:21 PM PDT  

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