I think the "tantrum" is the most likely reason.

Personally I would be happy with the editorial pages going the way of the dodo. Talk about a waste of 2 pages (at least in the WaPo) of newsprint.

The Post doesn't make mistakes. Reality does.

The Post has an ombudsman to remind you that the Post does not make mistakes.

No matter what you think of the Post, they can cheerfully remind you that the Washington Times is worse.

Apparently the NYT and WSJ don't circulate in Metro DC.

There are a few possibilities:

4.) For political and ideological reasons, the Post's Opinion Page editor, Fred Hiatt, wants readers to be misinformed on this issue.

It's a combination of 1. and 2.

"Any other possibilities here?"

Gee, I dunno....

How about:

The Washington Post, like almost every mass-market "news" outlet, is fulfilling its function as the propaganda arm for the same corporatocracy, representing the wealthiest 2% of the US population, that has been obscenely enriching itself, at the expense of everyone else in the country, and most of the world, for at least the last two decades.
As such, it is their function to keep people who actually work for a living convinced that their well-being will be best served by leaving the corporations and their ownership completely unencumbered by taxation and regulation of any kind.
Sometimes it really is as simple as it seems.

What's worse is that this is a syndicated column that appears all over the country. The correction should be published by every paper that published the column.

I think it's an equivalency issue. For the sake of "fairness," the Post feels it has to balance facts, which have a well-known liberal bias, with untrammelled and unchallenged bullshit from the right.

#1+#2=arrogance.

Any other possibilities here?

You forgot the wonderful prize behind Door #4; the Constitutional Right to Lie Through Your Teeth, as evidenced by FauxNoise and their shrill little man-cub, Mr. Bill....

I concur with joel. It intentional misleading.

I think the "tantrum" is the most likely reason.

Me too. And as we all know, the delicate sensibilities of thugs and arrogant liars must be coddled at all costs.

Classic response to cognitive dissonance. If reality doesn't cooperate with your beliefs, strengthen the social ties to your belief group.

Since facts have a well known liberal bias, to be fair to conservatives the WaPo editorial page must be maintained as a fact free zone.

Steve Benen wrote: "Any other possibilities here?"

Yes. Fred Hiatt has decided that the editorial page of The Washington Post will join the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal as an aggressive purveyor of the fossil fuel industry's lies about the reality of anthropogenic global warming.

Now that the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress are moving to take action -- however inadequate -- to reduce CO2 emissions, the fossil fuel corporations will kick their long campaign of deceit and disinformation about anthropogenic global warming into overdrive.

The Post's publication of Will's deliberate, calculated, scripted lies indicates that the Post will be an enthusiastic partner in the fossil fuel corporations' all-out propaganda war to undermine public support for reducing CO2 emissions, and thereby delay and weaken any move to limit CO2 emissions from the use of their products.

Has anyone written a letter to the editor about this? If so, have any been printed? Maybe they can be embarassed to publish a letter or 3.

If no one had yet suggested it, wouldn't it be great if someone asked Mr. Will about this on his ubiquitous Sunday TV appearances?

Something for the new Post ombudsman to hash out. The new one, unlike the previous apologist, is actually a pretty straight-up guy, or used to be. Considering how the last gig turned out (DC bureau closed after twenty years), he's probably glad he has one, which could make things complicated. We'll see. Welcome to the new job.

To be honest, the op-eds aren't expected to meet the standards of the news stories the Post runs. Will doesn't care if he's accurate or not and the Post doesn't want to be put in the position of fact-checking every op-ed they run or syndicate. I'll be surprised if they run any correction and Will certainly won't correct himself. Don't hold your breath.

Many opinion writers correct their own errors, either immediately or in a recurring mea culpa column. I have never seen Will correct an error, and he makes many. His ego, if not his contract, probably prohibits an editor from offering a correction, either. Not that Hiatt would if he could.

Hiatt is far more concerned with correctly positioning the Post in the political landscape than in any abstract and subjective notion like "truth." His own editorials are thin reeds that bend with the prevailing winds, and the guy just signed up Kristol. What more do you need to know?

Joel said what I was gonna say. They know they're wrong. They don't care that YOU know that they're wrong. They're writing this drivel for the people that want to hear it. They're no better (and no more honest) than the Weekly World News) at this point. Preaching to the choir, reality be damned.

There is one other possibility - Fred Hiatt's op-ed page is a rightwing rag that actually embraces falsehoods that tend to further its agenda.

"Any other possibilies here?"

How about The Washington Post is full of conservative CIA moles who spread right-wing propaganda and George Will is a gigantic, pretentious sphincter who should have the living shit kicked out of him to teach him a little humility?

I wouldn't rule out a review from the Post's ombudsman, but I suspect the best one can expect is for the post to run an oped that challenges and refutes Will. Most newspapers correct errors of fact in news stories. Opinion pieces, however, are seldom subject to the standards accuracy that are applied to news stories. The standard cure for an opinion piece with which one disagrees is writing a rebuttal.

In the meantime, those who keep trying to get Will to admit error will succeed only in demonstrating how impotent they are in that department.

Wapo seems to have sunk to the depths of the NY Post.

Will is an alien from the planet Qwzdfae and has them all under the control of his evil mind-control rays.

He was right ?

When William Sapphire was a columnist for the NYT he wrote endless columns full of lies, innuendo, and stuff he just made up. His primary goal was to rehabilitate Tricky Dick Nixon, but he was one of the previous generation's 'respected' propagandist for the right. The point being that the NYT didn't fact-check him either, although more recently it printed numerous corrections of falsehoods, errors and general sloppiness in columns of Will's soulmate, Bill Kristol.

WAPO has moved far to the right, and Will is a current 'respected' icon of the right, although that's something of an oxymoron. Will represents the corporate establishment, as does the WAPO, so what more needs be said? The right thinks the economy will take care of itself if we eliminate all taxes and regulation, and that are no environmental problems to be concerned about. Will spreads that message continually so he's doing his job, and as is the WAPO. It's just not the job the rest of us would like to see getting done.

My copy has the correction on it. Pencilled it in myself. Now I won't have to remember.

Why would George correct his mistakes for a chorus of insects? That's what "others" are to his enormous ego. If I wrote obvious falsehoods at my blog as often as Will does, I wouldn't have any readers in a very short time.

Those who insist on reading his crap get what they deserve. Those that are tired of reading his crap, stop reading it. He doesn't deserve the voice he has, just like Limp, Coulter, Hannity, etc. They blather for their sheeple, not you; they're not interested in reality. You should be.

In addition to the other reasons mentioned above, these people see pissing off bloggers and their readers as a benefit and acceding to any of our demands for factual accuracy as a weakness. They are absolutely livid that we call them on their ineptitude and falsehoods every day, and they believe that listening to us about anything is ceding territory they've yet to realize they've already lost.

Mike K - A light bulb salesman? really?

Sure, the Post's editorial staff is swimming in the same intellectual sewer as Will.

STEVE: I'll take what's behind door #3:

"3) the Post knows Will's wrong and wants to run a correction, but doesn't want to endure a "tantrum" from the columnist."

Will doesn't care if he's accurate or not and the Post doesn't want to be put in the position of fact-checking every op-ed they run or syndicate.

Given the vast number of conservatives they publish, I can understand their reluctance.

4. George Will threatened to cancel his Washington Post home delivery if the Post issued a correction.

5. Global warming reversed in the last five days rendering a correction moot.

Tantrum is most likely reason. WaPo is afraid that Will is going to accuse them of being...gasp!...liberal and in the tank for Obama and draw wingnut fire away from the NY Times. Pretty gutless from a "journalistic standards" POV...pretty smart from a "best way to hurt our #1 competitor" POV...

This is amazing. Someone asked about this at the WashPo's online chat thingy politics hour today. The response

Lois Romano: Columnists have lattitute in expressing opinions.

Making stuff up is 'opinion'

In this kind of piece, the citation of scientific "facts" is not an honest attempt to engage with the evidence. It's merely a rhetorical device. Even if you get Will to retract his error, he will cherry-pick something else.

Will (and probably Hiatt) don't consider a retraction necessary, because getting the facts right was never the point.

The creationists do the same thing. Sometimes you can get them to back-peddle on a specific claim, but then they move on to another. By the time you are done correcting their latest error, they've gone back to regurgitating the first one.

If every liberal in the DC area cancelled his or her subscription to the Washington Post, the stinking rag would be out of business. This should be done.

George knows that falsehoods delivered with sufficient gravitas are accepted as true.

It's a good thing we have the newspapers where the standards are so much higher than on the blogs, where you can just make stuff up if you want and don't even have to issue a correction when you're caught.... errrr.... wait....

This is amazing. Someone asked about this at the WashPo's online chat thingy politics hour today. The response

Lois Romano: Columnists have lattitute in expressing opinions.


Neat. Wonder if they have lattitude in expressing facts as well?
Wrote a letter to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat refuting his column that was published today.

link:http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090219/OPINION/902180849/1044?Title=Thursday-s-letters-to-the-editor

This is amazing. Someone asked about this at the WashPo's online chat thingy politics hour today. The response

Sadly, it isn't amazing, or at least not surprising. WaPo staffers have a long and undignified history of tone-deaf and glib responses to sharp criticism from their readers in various online chats.

What baffles me is that they still do them, given the obvious contempt inwhich they hold their readership, to say nothing of their epic fail in defending the paper's mediocrity.

And Fred Hiatt was listed as the #2 of the top 25 liberal media figures lol. What a joke that was. No Michael Moore? No Olbermann? LOL.

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