The Washington Post opinion page is trying to become as fact free as the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Actually the more you repeat a lie the harder it is to refute. The Washington Post knows that if it repeats the Republican falsehoods long enough people will think Obama want's socialized "single payer" medicine. Oh, did I confuse socialized medicine with single payer? So much the better from the WashPo's point of view.

The VA system is socialized government run medicine. I'd settle for that. Too bad Obama and the republicans are owned corporate america.

It's unclear why factual errors keep appearing in WaPo opinion pieces

How about they just lie?

When a birth certificate is just a matter of opinion ...

I warned earlier, that shysters would try to trick the public by confusing "owning healthcare" with "providing insurance." What MSM does now is so outrageous, we can't believe in mere carelessness anymore. The WaPo needs to be hit hard, with exposure on Maddow, Olberman, people calling in, etc. Call the Editor, call Feldstein, find out his ties etc. This is an outrage.

Don't cite or read the Post. Just drop it. I never read it. Oh, and if you know Ezra Klein, Steve, tell him he needs to find another employer for his own good.

If you haven't noticed, the WaPo editorial page has somewhat less than no interest in actually informing its readers.

Fred Hiatt has noted that facts have a strong liberal bias. Thus, in his mind, the only possible way to achieve balance is to bring in a barge-load of conservative pundits and columnists--and let them just make shit up.

Steve Benen wrote: "I naively expected the Post to run a correction ... This seems to have come up quite a bit lately, most notably with a couple of George Will columns on environmental policy. It's unclear why factual errors keep appearing in WaPo opinion pieces, what kind of fact-checking process they're subjected to, and why the paper seems so reluctant to set the record straight."

You are indeed naive if you think the blatant lies of George Will and Martin Feldstein are "factual errors" that the Post is publishing due to some lapse in the "fact-checking process".

In Will's case, his blatant lies about the science of climate change have been repeatedly, thoroughly exposed and debunked -- including by the Post's own reporters -- but the Post continues to publish column after column in which Will repeats the very same lies.

It's not "unclear" why the Post is publishing deliberate falsehoods. It is very clear, except to the willfully oblivious, that the editorial board of the Post has decided that it is in their financial interest for the Post editorial page to join the Wall Street Journal op-ed section as an aggressive purveyor of corporate-sponsored deceit.

Nor is it accurate to say that the Post is "reluctant to set the record straight". Fred Hiatt has not only NOT "set the record straight" about the deliberate, repeated lies of George Will -- he has publicly proclaimed that Will's lies are "an important contribution to the debate".

I have no doubt that Hiatt will just as strongly defend Feldstein's deliberate lies. That's what he is paid the big bucks to do.

Fred Hiatt, George Will and Martin Feldstein lie -- for money.

It's really as simple as that.

It's unclear why factual errors keep appearing in WaPo opinion pieces, what kind of fact-checking process they're subjected to, and why the paper seems so reluctant to set the record straight.

No it's not. Fred Hiatt's op-ed page specializes in mainstreaming copratist and right wing lies, just like the WSJ. It's why Froomkin had to go. And it's why documented liars like Feldstein, Will and Kristol (and idiots like Cohen) continue to spread misinformation. The question is whether the WaPo can continue to survive this kind of thing. Afterall, the WSJ's readers are happy to read corporate propaganda passed off as "serious thought." I doubt the majority of WaPo readers appreciate being lied to, especially in such a ham-handed way.

BTW Steve B, you or someone reading provide phone numbers and email and we need to call. Maybe if enough people blast at them it will have some effect, or at least release our own frustrations.

Yesterday we were talking about Richard Cohen and his regular column in the Post. Today it's Martin Feldstein and a guest op-ed. The point remains the same: the Post editorial and op-ed pages are worth very little.

I know I am supposed to just jerk my knee when Steve writes a post, but taking a look at the broader perspective I have to wonder if "star" driven journalism isn't part of the problem When George Will just makes stuff about the environment, Lou Dobbs embraces birther mania, or Feldstein simply makes stuff up about health care, I wonder if there is an editor with enough guts to tell their high paid media stars that they are factually wrong.

It could be that we are dealing with the same problem people trying to manage sports stars sometimes face. They simply lack the clout/guts needed to tell a "star" he is wrong.

Nah, they are all just a bunch of corporate shills.

It's unclear why factual errors keep appearing in WaPo opinion pieces, what kind of fact-checking process they're subjected to, and why the paper seems so reluctant to set the record straight.

I disagree. If the paper was more interested in its credibility as opposed to pushing certain interests' propaganda, there would be no such questions. Therefore...

While I like Dionne and Robinson and a few others from WaPo, the newpaper's mistakes have just been too egregious for me to go there anymore: I haven't looked at the site for some 6 weeks now and I don't plan to go back. WaPo used to give the NYTimes a run for its money: no more.

The Washington Post is now a news blog, with unmoderated comment threads disguised as opinion columns.

The kind of trash Feldstein put up is a perfect hand up for Republican crank pols, who can say "even the liberal Washington Post ..."

Hypothesis:
It is the policy of the WaPo to deliberately NOT check facts in any op ed column.
Test:
Hire a liberal columnist to write up an op ed column heavily biased to the progressive viewpoint, including some outright made-up "facts" as justification. See if the WaPo publishes a correction or not.
Risk:
The particular liberal columnist gets caught lying and the Media makes a huge xxx-storm over it.

So it was the Washington Post Sarah Palin was referring to when she advised the press to stop making things up. Right? Right?

Do the WPo editors actually read the articles they publish before publishing them??

This is getting to be a reputation for the WP, that they knowingly print lies and misinformation and then refuse to print a correction unless being pressured by the groups whose intelligence they insult.

This is supposed to be a professor...an educator?? Please, he can't really be that stupid. Even uneducated people know that 'single payer' is not "socialized medicine". What has happened to the WaPo...they are losing their integrity as well as their credibility. What a shame...what a loss.

Here's another example. Less than two weeks ago I contacted the Post ombudsman to complain about the fact-free hit piece Michael Gerson wrote about Justice Ginsburg's position on abortion. The ombudsman said he doesn't handle the opinion page and suggested I contact Gerson directly. When I said that it made little sense to contact a purveyor of misinformation about said distortion, and asked whether the Post felt it had any oversight duty for its own pages, he suggested I contact Fred Hiatt. I did, and to date have not heard back.

I think the real problem lies with Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth. She should slap Fred Hiatt upside the head and fire the sucker. After decades of Class-A publishers, the bloodline has run as thin as water.

It's unclear why factual errors keep appearing in WaPo opinion pieces, what kind of fact-checking process they're subjected to, and why the paper seems so reluctant to set the record straight.
========================
1. The Posties do it this way because they like it this way.
2. Why would you need a fact-checking process?
3. See #1 above.

Glad we've got that straight.

Contact the Washington Post's ombudsman at ombudsman@washpost.com . The more complaints he gets the better.

I cannot believe this is true!