The George Will Scandal and the Decline of Great American Newspapers
I’ve heard a number of MSMers suggest to me in recent days that maybe bloggers should stop complaining about how The Washington Post publishes non-true statements about climate change as fact in its pages, and then has its editors and ombudsman claim that these false statements are true, because said complaining is contributing to the deplorable crisis in American newspapering. This strikes me as badly wrong. Clearly, the main cause of the crisis is structural/technological shifts in the media and economic landscape. But a small number of news organizations are actually well-positioned, in principle, to benefit over the long run from these changes. Papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have strong brands and the possibility of becoming national news organizations that partially fill the space left empty by the receding metro dailies in Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and elsewhere. But The Washington Post, by standing behind the claim that up is down if George Will says that is is, is pissing that brand away. Rather than complaining to me, people who work at, or care about, The Washington Post need to complain to Fred Hiatt and ensure that something gets done.
Meanwhile, one of the Post’s main competitors in the world of papers with potential to attract a national audience is The New York Times. So faced with a humiliating abrogation of basic responsibilities by its competitor, does the Times take the opportunity to pour some salt in the wounds? No! Instead, out comes Andrew Revkin with a false equivalence article painting Will with the same brush as Al Gore. Will’s sin is to say that the world is not getting warmer when, in fact, it is. Gore’s sin was to say that warming is happening (it is) and to illustrate the problems with this trend by referring to a chart that Revkin deems unduly alarmist but that Gore found in The New York Times. Hm.
Most of the newspapers in the United States don’t seem to me to have any real future. And this is going to pose some real problems. In particular, I’m not sure where intensive coverage of state and local government is going to come from in the brave new world and as Paul Starr points out that probably means more corruption. But interested consumers of national and international news will, I think, be extremely well-served. There will be a proliferation of niche media, and there will also be a handful of global English-language news media brands offering video, test, and audio coverage. I think it’s clear that one of them will be the BBC and that one of them will be based on Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. It strikes me as very plausible that another could be based on the Times and plausible, though somewhat less likely, that one could be based on the Post. But to reach that promised land you need to take care of these brands not flush them down the toilet to avoid angering conservatives or in pursuit of a cute conceit.
54 Responses to “The George Will Scandal and the Decline of Great American Newspapers”
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February 25th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
it is stunning the extent to which people in the field of journalism think they should be immune to criticism.
let me say, btw, that i’d appreciate it if matthew would name names, since any MSMer pushing this brand of twaddle should be ignored henceforth.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
glad you’re staying on this. I find it a bit odd myself that people are telling you to stop instead of taking their complaints to the Post. but this is kind of new for America, you know? insisting that things actually be correct and truthful. we all like to think that “that’s how things are in America” but its not and never really has been. there are just vastly more eyes on what’s going on than there has ever been before.
Will’s column is hardly the first, anywhere near the first, instance of either the Post or the Times claiming up is down and standing by it til the end. are you kidding? I mean, seriously! this is hardly the first or most egregious instance, but its the most blatant and easily disproven, since the very org. he cites claims he is all kinds of wrong in his interpretation. will this change anything or get us, the consumers, better standards? probably not.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Cue global warming denialists!!!! (!) I’m surprised at the tenacity of said denialists on this blog in particular; why do they insist on hanging out here?
February 25th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Good post Matt. I look at it similarly to the decline of the auto industry. While part of their challenges could be called structural, the main problem with both industries are the quality of their products.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
The flase equivalence in the Rivkin article is strange. Will gets a factual claim backwards, something is decreasing when it is actually increasing. Both Gore and and Obama are criticized for saying something is true based on scientific opinion that it is probably true. It is hard to see how that is comparable.
However Yglesias’ way of putting it is rather misleading. The criticism of Gore is not for citing the information in the graph, which is about the incidence of certain weather phenomena, but for overstating the evidence for the link between those phenomena and global warming. If one reads the op-ed article in the Times (which does not appear to be by someone with any particular expertise on the subject) what it says is that scientists think it is more likely than not that there is a link.
Gore’s speech claims that there is a link. He cannot justify that level of certainty based on the Times opinion piece. That would be rather Bushish of him to turn “more likely than not” into “is the case”.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
The Post et al can characterize this as a ‘dispute with bloggers’ all they want, but there are these creatures called “readers” that they should be concerned with, too.
Every time they pull something like this, it gets a little easier to stay away from washingtonpost.com entirely.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
The MSM tries to sell a lemon and, instead of apologizing, has the nads to gripe about getting busted?
If there is a crisis at the papers of record, its self inflicted, and compounded by abject stupidity.
Tell your dumb ass colleagues to lose your email address.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Basically a correct analysis, except that more and more organizations like google will become vast data bases of information and its distribution; the successful media companies, like the NBC merger with Microsoft, will be the ones that work into this framework.
Hilarious about Fred Hiatt and the WaPo. Hiatt and his boss are doing the best to turn the WaPo, a la Murdoch, into a Scoop Jacksonian ‘democrat’ version of what happened to the Times of London: plumpes nationalism. Complaining to him is like is like lobbying the Republican congressional leadership on the virtues of Keynes….
February 25th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Both TV and print journalism as it has been popularly known can be seen as temporary aberrations. In recent history they were the tail on the dog of the television and newspaper business. People do not pay for balanced dry exposition and factual recount of current events.
Ruining the brand occurred in any significant marketing way when the local papers lost their monopoly on classified ads and other local advertising. They never really leveraged their brand for any other money making purpose.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Who the hell cares what the dorks in the MSM are up to? As the Iraq invasion and the economic goatfuck illustrate, the MSM can’t be counted on to tell the real story. But who cares? Seek out the info on the Internet. Screw the MSM.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Most of the newspapers in the United States don’t seem to me to have any real future. And this is going to pose some real problems. In particular, I’m not sure where intensive coverage of state and local government is going to come from in the brave new world…
I’m not sure there will be a problem at all. There’s no reason to think that small, local papers are in as much trouble as major-city-with-pretentions-to-nationwide papers like the NYT and WaPo, except for the nearly banal observation that big organizations have advantages that little ones don’t.
Despite them both being called newspapers and getting most of their revenue from advertising, the WaPo almost isn’t in the same industry as the twice-weekly newspaper I used to work for in Vermont. The Express (I’d refer to the Washington Post itself, but it’s the Express of which I have a paper copy handy) has exactly one reference to local news on today’s front page out of nine elements, and even that one reference is just a teaser for a story on page nine. There’s nothing until that. Further in there’s more local stuff like weekend events and the opinion section often has local issues, and the WaPo itself probably gives more space to local news, but the overall trend is overwhelming.
At some newspapers, that balance of coverage is reversed. Even as cable TV and online media undercut newspaper at their own game, there’s still demand for local news – school board budgets, new businesses being planned, the zoning policies you’re always talking about – and there probably always will be, until people start liveblogging meetings about drainage problems at 7 p.m. on weekday nights for the fun of it. So, sure, the industry itself will look very different in 20 years in unpredictable ways, and existing institutions will crumble if their management doesn’t smarten up, but barring the singularity or a zombie apocalypse there will still be people making careers of summarizing and explaining for publication what’s going on in their government and communities.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Really? I live in an obscure Brooklyn neighborhood (Sunset Park) and I’m currently subscribed to three blogs which cover goings-on in my neighborhood (important meetings, zoning issues, robberies, etc) and 5 Brooklyn-general blogs. Now, obviously I’m not getting any in-depth coverage. But to be honest I know much more about what’s happening in my neighborhood than I would have if I lived here 5 years ago.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
If I recall, Billmon, whoever he is, blogged loudly on Whiskeybar.com, about the looming demise of newspapers way, way back when.
Billmon also blogged loudly, years ago, about the looming financial catastrophe.
Billmon! Come back!
February 25th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
And it might look like my comment contradicts Doug’s (”People do not pay for balanced dry exposition and factual recount of current events.”), but they aren’t really incompatible. People actually do want reasonably reliable access to local news, at least sometimes. Whether or not it’s phrased as balanced dry exposition is just a matter of adding flavor.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
No whiskey, but Billmon is kinda, sorta back.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
“It’s hilarious to see the paranoid mind in action: They’re all out to conceal the truth! George Will, the ombudsman and other muckety mucks at the Washington Post, the New York Times, scientists like Roger Pielke, EVERYBODY!”
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Of course, someone like yourself would presumably think the overwhelming majority of scientists studying the subject are concealing the truth. So, on one side we have conservatives who get paid a lot of money to write op-eds in major newspapers and the people supposed to fact-check them that really don’t bother to, and on the other side we have mountains of data, evidence, and science. I think it’s clear which side might not be all that honest, but to each his own.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Revkin’s article:
Your interpretation of Revkin’s article:
Who’s being dishonest here?
February 25th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Re Wash Post and NY Times, Burn them to the fucking ground and piss on the ashes. Their two-faced whoring and deceit, in my opinion, is destroying this country.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Funny, I just wrote this blog post:
February 25th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I meant to say “funny,” because after writing it I just flipped over to Yglesias and saw that he had written something about the same thing just a few minutes before me…
February 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Will is a WaPo blowhard of epic proportion. I’m sure he’s not lonely there. But he’s charming, boyish-looking and writes about baseball. Kind of reminds me of David Brooks. Weasily Dave’s not lonely either. Don’t get me started.
Will’s crap on global warming is a steaming pile of arrogant prevarication. But Gore has been so vilified by such a broad swath of our mainstream political spectrum that even the Nobel didn’t salvage his reputation in our popular culture. The guy has a bullseye painted on his back. So there’s no one with both the scientific knowledge and the broad name recognition to call Will out in public.
For that comeuppance you have to watch Will debate economics with Krugman on the Sunday talking head shows. Priceless. You can see the wheels turning and the smoke coming out of his ears as he tries to think of something innocuous to say.
BTW, Brad DeLong has been keeping the NYT and WaPo deathwatch clock for some time now. They occasionally publish some interesting news, but their editorial writers, with a few exceptions that prove the rule, are pathetic. They’re only useful as examples of self-evident, self-interested self-parody. USA Today anyone?
February 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Well [pause] Al Gore is fat and George Will likes baseball. Is there anything further to say?
WaPo is slipping into unserious status, if they’ve not already arrived. Their ed page lineup is an embarassment and a carbuncle on the rest of the paper. But I suppose they fixed things snagging Kristol, didn’t they?
February 25th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I’m sorry that Matt’s lumped too issues together, the handling of the climate issue and the fate of newspapers, the latter including what they may or may not contribute. On the latter, I sure don’t share his optimism. If he thinks the two papers of record poorly served public interest, think what ordinary citizens get otherwise, whether from TV (dominated by “balance” and wingnut talking heads) and the Internet (where everyone gets to chose to listen to what they already agree with). I’d say The Times has had more articles critical of, say, the Bush EPA and more favorable recently to Obama’s than you’ll find on CNN or Fox TV.
On the former, though, I wish besides lambasting Revkin’s article, Matt had mentioned how he defended it on his blog. He said he wished, in a longer article, he could have gone beyond “balance” by explaining the differing credentials of Gore and Will. But then, he added, the article isn’t about people but science, and the real point is that science forbids exaggeration by one and all, as well as makes exaggeration a poor driver of policy.
What a lame excuse. Of course science rather than people was the issue, and that’s exactly what Revkin got so horribly wrong and misleading about.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
This is written by somebody who thinks there is a conspiracy among climatologists, public officials, and the media to exaggerate global warming.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Will’s sin is to say that the world is not getting warmer when, in fact, it is.
Will did not say that the world is not getting warmer. You’re lying about what Will said.
Gore’s sin was to say that warming is happening (it is) and to illustrate the problems with this trend by referring to a chart that Revkin deems unduly alarmist but that Gore found in The New York Times. Hm.
No, Gore’s sin was to misrepresent the scientific evidence.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Matt,
I think you’re missing the point of the Revkin article. Revkin is actually incredibly knowledgeable on this stuff and fairly active in promoting global warming consciousness. He speaks at conferences and writes about complex climate science all the time. The article was about the way climate science gets adopted into political discussions and how, regardless of the merits of one argument over another, there is a predictable dialectic working in the broader political culture, which ultimately isn’t helpful to Gore or anyone else who cares about getting the truth out. Gore *does* approach this issue in a predictable way and i think Revkin’s article has point that his rhetorical methods play into the hands of the global warming denialists.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
It’s not only the science that’s being misrepresented by global warming alarmists like Gore, but the likely costs of reducing carbon emissions. In another piece yesterday, the New York Times draws attention to the State of California’s unrealistically low estimates of the likely economic costs of its climate change law:
February 25th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
For god’s sakes, Matt, grow a sense of humour.
No wonder liberals are so humourless. You have taken the dour-and-humourless mantle from the militant feminists.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
The newspapers and MS television news are victims of their own budget cuts. A decent reporter could find a way to explain and give background on issues without getting into polemic, if they got paid to do it. Will and others can get away with these falsehoods so easily because there’s so little factual content in newspapers and so little enlightening information. It wouldn’t take a great journalist to explain the difference between weather and climate to a twelve year old, but the MSM has been devoted to making money according to business models, not providing news according to standards of good journalism. If they tried the latter, they might suddenly find sales going up. Or maybe not. Who knows? Seems it’s worth a shot before the swan song.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
How often do major newspapers print untrue statements about topics like IQ, race, crime, education, etc.?
Dozens of times per week?
February 25th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I would not be sorry to see print newspapers vanish if they took Will, Krauthammer, Barnes, and Kristol with them. Thes are people I seldom read but frequently read about. By providing them with a platform for half-truths and outright untruths, WaPo has outlived its service to the community. My television stations have excellent local coverage: the newspapers won’t be missed.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
My television stations have excellent local coverage
Really? Where is that? Local television news is famously awful. “If it bleeds, it leads.” And lots of local fluff and trivia. Their idea of hard-hitting investigative journalism is reporting the number of health code violations at local restaurants.
February 25th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Attached is a link to an article by Chris Mooney who, unlike Mr. Al and Mr. Jt is actually knowledgeable about the subject of global warming. However, his take on the impending demise of newspapers and its effect on the reading public is rather more pessimistic then is Mr. Yglesias. As he points out, only major newspapers can carry out in depth investigations on major issues (e.g. the WaPo article on the Chandra Levy case got the FBI and the DC Police Department off their duffies).
http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/02/the-george-will-scandal/
February 25th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
only major newspapers can carry out in depth investigations on major issues (e.g. the WaPo article on the Chandra Levy case got the FBI and the DC Police Department off their duffies).
If that’s what the WaPo considers a major issue worthy of a 10-part series in 2009, burn it.
Burn it to the ground.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Matt, you write people who work at, or care about, The Washington Post need to complain to Fred Hiatt and ensure that something gets done without any apparent irony. If I may paraphrase Louis Menand (describing Dinesh D’Souza many years ago), given how much Hiatt has done to poison the wells of public discourse, can you possibyl be serious in suggesting that I’m now supposed to regard him as the water commissioner?
February 25th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Also Gore is not a Columnist for the Washingtonpost. He didn’t have editors who were supposed to keep him honest. Some people say that means he has less credibility, but that depends in part on editors actually doing something. IF somebody says something that isn’t true other people should call them on it its really that simple.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Re theo
I think that Dr. and Ms. Levy would take issue with Mr. theo.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
So much of “news content” is utter garbage, e.g. the totally offensive and un-funny NY Post cartoon about the chimpanzee. Quite a bit of “news content” is flat-out distortion, e.g. what you see in many newspapers whenever Israel is in the news. And a lot of TV news is “pundits” screaming at one another. Apart from the merits of the content, why would anyone PAY MONEY to consume such silly, worthless “news content”? Of course, it’s free and sometimes fun to surf the Net and read various web sites. But when one starts thinking of “news as a business”, I don’t see much of a future, unless journalistic standards and quality increase significantly.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
They’ll be assimilated by CNN, etc.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
What “intensive coverage”?
I’ve lived in LA, GA, HI, and VA, and I have yet to see any of that intensive coverage of state and local government. The lack of such is why, for so long, the corporations preferred to deal with state govts, where they escaped much scrutiny, rather than Congress or the federal bureaucracy, which did tend to receive media scrutiny. The change I perceive as most important over the past 20 years is that media coverage at the federal level has descended to the level it always was locally — fawning, cheer-leading stenographers to the powerful.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:51 am
I’m old enough to remember George Will’s categorical statement, in a discussion of the film “China Syndrome” that nuclear accidents were utterly impossible here. This was just before Three Mile Island.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I wouldn’t dream of buying stock in the Washington Post. They clearly view their central mission as pushing their particular center-right ideology, regardless of the consequences to the future of the paper.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Generals, scientists, political leaders from nations where global climate change is already a human, not to mention, economic game changer; news stories almost daily reporting on some new climate phenomenon–these are elephants in the room.
Will, to cut him some slack, probably does want us to look at the issue with a less chicken little perspective. However, as the old saying goes, even paranoids have their enemies; Al Gore–love him or hate him–will be vindicated; and conservtive denialists will not have the benefit to say as they have so often in the last eight years who could have imagined (a terrorist attack, the levies would collapse, our economic system would melt down).
At this point conservatives would be far better off and the world as well if we acknowledged a real problem and without succumbing to abject horror begin to do something about it. Conservatism today promotes doing nothing. Perhaps doiing nothing, if that’s what we were actually doing, would be a good thing. However, we are in fact doing the wrong things, and need to make some corrections. To folks who say going off half crazed is no way to deal with our problems, I would simply say pretending they don’t exist and aaying so to everyone is a bit like John McCain telling Americans that our economy was doing fine.
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