FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
George Will, defending Arizona’s draconian new immigration law, concludes his column (Washington Post, 4/28/10) with this today: Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with […]
In his Washington Post column today (2/25/10), George Will writes in defense of the filibuster, arguing that Democrats’ talk of using budget reconciliation rules to pass ahealthcare bill demonstrates their contempt for the Constitution. He has been perfectly consistent on the question of minority rule–it depends on who the minority is.Back when Republicans filibustered a […]
A New York Times piece seemed designed to bolster one of the key messages from the climate deniers.
The Washington Post had another “Topic A” feature on August 31, headlined “Is the War in Afghanistan Worth Fighting?” A crucial debate, to be sure; the Post found one person (Andrew Bacevich) to argue that it is not, which is probably a position close to the majority view of the American public. That position is […]
The school voucher program in Washington, D.C., has been the subject of serious research, with opponents and supporters of vouchers using at as a test for whether the idea works in practice. Conservativestend toinsist that it’s been a success, though the studies of the program don’t seem to bear that out. Washington Post columnist George […]
Is it possible for the Washington Post to be embarrassed by George Will? After a series of erroneous claims in a column about climate change, Will is at it again today (4/2/09), laughing off the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs as a poor fix for a nonexistent problem: Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, […]
“I think the best journalism in America is business journalism precisely because they deal with real metrics. You can actually–they know things.” –George Will, ABC‘s This Week, 3/15/09 It’s possible that Will actually believes this. Read Dean Starkman’s piece in Mother Jones, “How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It?,” for another take. Or this piece […]
Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias (2/25/09) hits the Washington Post for “standing behind the claim that up is down if George Will says that is”–and then spreads some of the blame around: Meanwhile, one of the Post‘s main competitors in the world of papers with potential to attract a national audience is the New York […]
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 […]
George Will’s history of misquoting data to distort the climate change debate goes back nearly two decades—that we know of. As Extra! reported in 2003, in 1992 Will trashed Al Gore (Washington Post, 9/3/92) for being “cavalier with the truth” in his “wastebasket worthy” book Earth in the Balance. More from Extra!: Will confronted Gore […]
In a blog post about how it must have been “So Much Nicer to Be George Will Before the Internet” (2/17/09), A Tiny Revolution‘s Jonathan Schwarz looks back over how “on Sunday George Will made things up so he can claim global warming isn’t happening” to “a funny story of Noam Chomsky’s from the book […]
In the wake of a George Will column (Washington Post, 2/15/08) attempting to refute the reality of climate change with a string of inaccurate claims, FAIR has an action alert calling on media activists to write to the Washington Post asking them to retract the falsehoods and explain their fact-checking procedures for columnists. You can […]
Washington Post columnist George Will is among the most widely syndicated in the newspaper business—which means that his recent error-filled column about climate change will misinform the readers of hundreds of papers across the country. Will made several specious claims in his February 15 column in an attempt to argue that climate change is not […]
On Monday (1/19/09), Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz took a look at the health of Time and Newsweek, and almost immediately rendered a political judgment: The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal. They are pursuing a more […]
The prevailing body of scientific evidence for climate change more or less holds sway in news reports, but opinion journalism—where the policy agenda is defined and debated—is dominated by those who question or reject that evidence.
George F. Will, columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, devoted his column on March 4, 2003 to the thoughts of press baron Conrad Black. After spending two paragraphs describing complaints about George W. Bush’s preparations for the invasion of Iraq, Will wrote: “Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a British citizen […]
The superstar columnist George Will has an impressive vocabulary. Too bad it doesn’t include the words “I’m sorry.” Last year, Will led the media charge when a member of Congress dared to say that George W. Bush would try to deceive the public about Iraq. By now, of course, strong evidence has piled up that […]
When Republican senators filibustered President Clinton’s economic stimulus bill in 1993, columnist George Will vigorously defended the Senate rule that requires the votes of at least 60 senators, a so-called supermajority, to impose an end to debate. In a column headlined “The Framers’ Intent” (Washington Post, 4/25/93), Will praised “the right of a minority to […]
A skeleton is rattling in George Will’s closet. But it’s difficult to hear above the steady applause from his elite boosters inside the media business. Widely viewed as one of the nation’s most influential journalists, Will churns out syndicated columns that appear in hundreds of daily papers. He also writes for Newsweek. And he’s a […]
