In a variety of blogging environments, Johnny Rook has become an increasingly powerful voice in the domain of global warming moving from science to policy to, well, impressive passion about the issues and challenges we face.
What raises Johnny Rook to an even higher level, one that puts in a pantheon of heroes for me, is his personal circumstances. One might call his passion a death bed conversion as he was already ill with terminal cancer when he begin his voyage of discovery and writing on climate-change issues.
Humanity is, as the name Climaticide Chronicles makes clear, in the process of murdering the climate. Everywhere Rook — or any of us — looks, there is more and more evidence of that crime in process … So there is hope as long as people like Johnny Rook are willing to use their energy — even their last drop of energy — to tell the world what is to come on our current path and how we can stop it …
Joe followed up with a short obituary note, RIP JohnnyRook and Climaticide Chronicles, 6 March 09 “Let me just end with what Rook posted in the comments of my tribute to him, since it was once of the last things he ever wrote:
Dear Joe,
Thank you for such a touching enconmium.
Humanity is, as the name Climaticide Chronicles makes clear, in the process of murdering the climate. Everywhere Rook — or any of us — looks, there is more and more evidence of that crime in process.
But it is not too late. The murder can be stopped. I wouldn’t be blogging if didn’t know that for a fact…. I’m sure Rook feels the same way.
I am proud to say that my 19-year old son, Aleks and a friend, Andrew, did make the choice to go in my stead and are already at the in D.C. for the Powershift Action. I know this is a going to be a very exciting time for both of them, and that they will carry the battle into the future until we have succeeded.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to write, even simple comments like this, but my thoughts and sympathies are with you always.
I confess I was immediately drawn to Johnny based solely on his blog’s name. My stubborn insistence on calling climate Deniers by the ugly, but nonetheless accurate name “Deniers” seemed to match his reasons for describing what we are doing to the planet as the ugly, but nonetheless accurate “climaticide.” … You clearly wanted to call that which is ugly and horrific by it’s true name so that we could call all that which is beautiful and redeeming by their true names.
I had not been aware of the environmental/climatological work of blogger “Johnny Rook” at his blog, “Johnny Rook’s Climaticide Chronicles, until this morning, … courageous environmental crusader.
I grew up knowing that any day could end in nuclear holocaust. Yet it seems even stranger to see the certainty of climaticide marching toward us. It makes the “terrorism” and “communism” scares look like laughable threats. Then a hero comes along, that reminds us that we can act! … So does it take a dying man to teach us to live and to act to save our future?
Tim M, Heresy Snowboarding, Exceptional Climate Blogger Dying, 4 March 2009, “One of the most caring, passionate climate bloggers/environmentalists, is dying.”
Two respected writers passed away this week and left behind holes that will be challenging to fill. They presented all of us with the best of what the internet should provide. … these men had a passion for their subject, gave it a sense of importance that may have escaped the rest of us. Both had a reverence for getting the facts right and were often critical of those journalistic efforts that failed to live up to their own standard. We owe it to both to continue that tradition, to speak with passion secure in the knowledge that we too, got the facts right.
It’s no easy matter to write about the passing of someone you’ve come to know and feel is a kindred spirit, even if only via the Internet. It’s all the more difficult when that person was himself so good with words. ,,,
But Steven’s own words said it best:
I understand that such news can depress. At times it depresses me but, more than anything else, it has filled my life with meaning. I have a mission. Before I die, I want to have some sense that this beautiful planet that has provided the context for my life, will have some chance of enduring. I want to die with hope, believing that my teenage son and his children and your children and their children will live in a world that is reasonably hospitable to human beings.
I don’t know how that can happen if people will not face the reality of what is taking place in the world. So, I continue to sound the alarm, even though I know that most of what I write is discounted as alarmist or simply ignored as too uncomfortable to deal with.
Hope becomes reality through action. Obviously Steven taught his son well. Both father and son are examples for the rest of us.
I am very sad this morning, having just learned that this past Monday the Earth lost a great champion: Steven Kimball, aka JohnnyRook. After learning that he had acute myeloid leukemia some two years ago, he devoted the rest of his life to providing meticulously-documented evidence of what he called “climaticide.” I encourage people who love and are concerned about the biosphere to read and ponder the information that he spent the last of his energies on.
I was in tears earlier today, having learned via A Siegel’s diary … this morning that one of my favorite diarists, JohnnyRook, is not expected to live through the weekend. JohnnyRook has been writing about “climaticide” (his term, as reflected on his website, “The Climaticide Chronicles” at http://climaticidechronicles.org) for a while now, and I have found his articles to be well-researched, compelling, superlatively illustrated and documented… and totally scary.
To cry real tears at the thought of someone dying whom I’ve met only through his words and occasional exchanges in the comments may seem overblown to some, but oh, the grief is real. Very, very real.
JohnnyRook’s Port Townsend is a lovely town cornered on the eastern straits of Juan de Fuca, on Admiralty Inlet, and in the rain shadow of the Olympic mountains on the Olympic Peninsula.
You cannot imagine a lovelier place. It’s a corner of earth to yearn for. …
There’s magic in the summertime dusk in Port Townsend, the receding day saturated in a dusty blueish-purple-coral. At this time of day-night, the spirits return, all spirits return.
A fine place from which an ecologically-minded soul can fight to save the earth, settle and finally, rest.
Steve was one of those writers that other writers envy. His pieces were well researched, impeccably written and always shed some new light on the climate crisis. That’s because for Steve, writing about the climate crisis was a true calling. … We have lost a strong, intelligent and deeply committed voice in the fight to stop Climaticide, but we have also lost a person of true integrity, love and compassion. He will be greatly missed.
I will miss you, Johnny Rook. You were more real and alive to me than most of the people I know.
Your courage gives all of us, with our own lists of troubles, the strength to continue in this great work to save our species and the life on our planet.
Det var inte länge sedan jag lade till honom i listan, Johnny Rook´s Climaticide Chronicles, och utan att då uppmärksamma vad Climate Progress nu berättar: att Johnny Rook är svårt sjuk med en aggressiv form av leukemi. Han fortsätter, trots att det är en kamp, att skriva om klimatfrågan, men den 5 februari postade han en uppdaterad version av ett tidigare inlägg på sajten Daily Kos, där han berättar om sjukdomen. I inlägget, som har rubriken ”My doctor doesn’t think I’m going to die today”, skriver Johnny Rook starkt både om sin egen situation, och om världens.
You see, I am running out of time, but so are all of you. It will be such a shame if you do not act, because you still have a chance. Please do not let it slip away, for all your sakes and for mine.
“Johnny Rook” became a notable part of the blogosphere discussion of climate issues in recent years, attempting to raise people’s understanding of the tragic path humanity is on and seeking to spark people toward change to a sustainable path. His home blog, Climaticide Chronicles (http://climaticidechronicles.org/), has many posts and discussions worth reading, combining passion, eloquence, and knowledge, and insightful on critical issues.
This is only part of his story. Diagnosed with cancer several years ago, facing near-certain death, Steven Kimball had time for self-retrospection in the hospital. He determined to dedicate his remaining time not to self-centered activities, but to seeking to communicate on what he considered the greatest threat to the potential for his son (and others) to pursue a better life: global warming.
In his last months, one of his most treasured personal items was his 350.org pin, which prompted questions and opened the door for him to explain why this is the most important number in the world. Steven Kimball wished, deeply, to join 350.org before the US Capitol’s Power Plant on Capitol Climate Action day. Unable to do so, his son journeyed to join thousands of others in the largest civil disobedience action to date on climate actions. Literally from his death bed, Johnny Rook continued to contribute to the discussion of “Climaticide”. And, in one of his last lucid moments before his death, Johnny Rook (ne Steven Kimball) listened as his son held up a phone for his father to heard the impassioned sounds of thousands calling for action to turn the tide on Climaticide’s mounting threats.
Steven Kimball is survived by his loving wife Becci, who cared for him 24/7 for the years of his illness, enabling him to engage so passionately on climate issues, and his son Aleks, who will carry on in the fight for setting a path toward 350.
March 2nd, 2009 · Comments Off on Some columnists get it: climate realism in the OPED section
With the visibility of The Will Affair (and George Will’s serial distortions), problems with John Tierney distortions at the New York Times, Krauthammer, Samuelson, etc …, sometimes it can seem that columnists throughout the traditional media simply don’t get climate crisis reality and are unable to communicate science to a broader community. Outrage over these serial deceivers pandering falsehoods through the nation’s op-ed pages can lead to overshadowing the good work of others. Thus, taking a moment to send some praise to a climate realist columnist at The Baltimore Sun: Dan Rodricks.
10,000+ people are descending on Congress to lobby on climate change as part of Powershift 09. And, many of those will participate in what might be the largest climate change disobedience action in history: the Capitol Climate Action to seek to shut down the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant. Meanwhile, the DC area (along with much of the East Coast) is hit with a major snowstorm. The Federal Government is on a two-hour delay and schools around the area are shut down.
For those who don’t get that weather isn’t climate, a snowy day in March is not some contradiction of science on Global Warming, they are confused when mass efforts to highlight the seriousness of the climate crisis intersect with major weather events that seem (SEEM) to contradict the realities of the dangerous changes that humanity is recklessly driving. Some joke about “The Gore Effect”, suggesting that the best predictor of a DC snow storm is Al Gore being scheduled to testify before Congress. (They will, of course, forget when he is there in hotter weather if they can find a snow or ice event …) Today reinforces that shallow observation.
Without a doubt, expect “journalists” to include shallow (and snide) comments about “snow storm” in any discussions of Powershift and the Capitol Climate Action. Expect Marc Morano and the global warming denier sound machine to spread messages and one-liners making these links.
Will they emphasize that thousands were willing, even amid such lousy weather, to show up and risk arrest to highlight coal’s risks?
Will they have the sense to discuss that this is Global, not your backyard, Warming and that is why some prefer “Climate Change” to be able to better explain how the weather pattern disruption can mean more snow or rain in place A while place B is baking in severe, extended drought conditions?
As my kids gleefully play in the snow, ecstatic that school is cancelled, I wonder if any reporter will have the sense to highlight someone saying something like this:
“Yeah, ain’t it great!
Sometimes the climate crisis will bring us fun things like a snow day in March in DC, and sometimes it will bring us deathly heat waves across entire continents.
The one thing that we know we can count on if we don’t get a handle on it: it will definitely bring an unpredictability to our weather that will wreak havoc on our economy, our public health systems, and the way we live our daily lives.”
March 1st, 2009 · Comments Off on And, they sat waiting. Sadly, idling …
Powershift 09 is an empowering environment. 11,000+ dedicated (principally) young people, all working in their own ways to help carve a better future not just for themselves, but for their communities, their fellow citizens and, literally, the rest of humanity. It is hard to imagine another environment where the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is greeted by a stadium filling crowd of university students with the passion reserved for a rock band. Whose comments about the principles of science again reigning at EPA rocked the house.
Leaving Friday evening, after an invigorating evening of being among this dedicated and impassioned group, talking with a myriad of people, and hearing wonderful speeches (for some videos see here), I went directly to the Metro station there … jam packed and, well, at 10 pm transferring in the Metro can be a mess. Decision: walk a few blocks to Metro Center and eliminate that transfer.
En route, I walked past the main DC Convention Center entrance and something made me stop, and watch.
Remember. 11,000+. Streaming out of the Convention Center. The taxicabs swarmed, drivers salivating for fares. The arrived. And, they sat waiting. 11,000+ and none took the cabs. 5 minutes … 10 minutes … For 15 minutes, I remained and not a single person from the thousands opened a cab’s door.
The Metro was crowded. There were people ‘hoofing it’. Even a few bicycles at 10 pm on a February night. And, the taxis, they sat waiting. [Read more →]
This is the first (?) of a new set of discussions that focus on efforts within my own home, from the simple (leak sealing, efficient lighting) to the (often annoyingly) complex (solar hot water). Today’s discussion: heating via a wood-burning high-efficiency fireplace.
Andrew Alexander, The Washington Post‘s new Ombudsman, has really stepped into it big time with the mounting Will scandal due to his distortions, deceptions, and dishonesties when it comes to Global Warming columns. Alexander sought, it seems, to calm the raging seas by stepping up with a piece that will appear in tomorrow’ Post but has, it seems clear, simply thrown more oil on the flames. The Heat From a Global Warming Column begins:
Opinion columnists are free to choose whatever facts bolster their arguments. But they aren’t free to distort them.
The question of whether that happened is at the core of an uproar over a recent George F. Will column and The Post’s fact-checking process.
Well, the record is clear, George Will has distorted facts. Here are two from his secondcolumn:
1. Claiming that just one item from his first article was challenged. BEEP! Wrong. Not true. Whether or not he could defend his views, there were multiple items substantively challenged and George Will and The Post editors received a letter detailing three examples.
2. As a small example, Will misrepresented a 1975 New York Times article in a blatant (and, well, rude) attack on The Times’ credibility. (See material below.)
The list, as we are aware by now, goes on and on and, distressingly, on …
On Wednesday, the Times carried a “news analysis” — a story in the paper’s news section, but one that was not just reporting news — accusing Al Gore and this columnist of inaccuracies. Gore can speak for himself. So can this columnist.
And, in that outrage, Will challenges Revkin’s basic journalistic ethics and capabilities.
returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts — how does he know this? — that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just “a pause in warming.”
Yes, Andy, “how do you know this”? Is it because science and the scientific institutions that Will’s misrepresents tell you so? Hmmm … perhaps this is an issue that you should clear up as, otherwise, you stand directly accused and, for Will’s readership, convicted of creating statements out of whole cloth.
Revkin reported that “experts said” this columnist’s intervention in the climate debate was “riddled with” inaccuracies. Revkin’s supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.
According to Will, it will seem to Washington Post and syndicated publication readers that Revkin is using ‘anonymity’ to cover up an absence of actual experts who question or challenge Will’s work.
Hmmm, Andy, perhaps this is an issue that you should clear up as, otherwise, you stand directly accused and, for Will’s readership, convicted of using anonymous sources to cover up that you don’t have anyone credible willing to question George F Will’s veracity.
George Will has, in The Washington Post and to hundreds of other newspapers in The Washington Post Writers Group, accused The New York Times and Times reporter Andy Revkin of being unprofessional and, in essence, journalistic hacks. Is this an accusation that will stand unanswered?
NOTE / UPDATE: Andrew Revkin put up Experts: Big Flaw in Will’s Ice Assertions as I wrote this piece. (I checked dot Earth prior to writing, failed to check before publishing. Mea culpa.) In this, Revkin names quite a few names. Interestingly, Revkin limits himself solely to ice extent issues and does not address the myriad of other false and/or disingenuous comments in Will’s writing. Even so, I’d say score one for Andy Revkin. Question, of course, is whether Will and Hiatt will notice anything that doesn’t appear in actual newsprint.
The reality of the web: anyone with access to a computer and a web link can become a near universally available resource. In many, even most, cases that click can end up being a waste of ones time. And, sometimes that click can end up eating up a tremendous amount of one’s time due to the strength and value of the discoveries that that click brings.
This is a challenge and a benefit of the web, but that benefit opens new horizons, creates new communities, and helps friendships / acquaintances that might (no, would) not have occurred otherwise.
For me, one of those clicks ended up with Johnny Rook’s Climaticide. In a variety of blogging environments, Johnny Rook has become an increasingly powerful voice in the domain of global warming moving from science to policy to, well, impressive passion about the issues and challenges we face.
What raises Johnny Rook to an even higher level, one that puts in a pantheon of heroes for me, is his personal circumstances. One might call his passion a death bed conversion as he was already ill with terminal cancer when he begin his voyage of discovery and writing on climate-change issues.
Before I came down with [my illness] I’d never been in a hospital except to visit ill family members and friends. I spent hours in the gym working out, went on long hikes in the mountains and desert, bicycled and kayaked and ate a mostly organic, vegetarian diet. To say that I was surprised to discover that I had cancer would be the grossest of understatements.
My initial response to learning that my life was likely to be shorter than I had expected was, not surprisingly, rather selfish. I thought about the time that I would lose with my family and friends, of the traveling that I would not get to do, of the books that I would not get to read.
But something else happened too: the world became more poignant to me. I’d always thought of myself as a caring, empathetic, compassionate person, but now I found suffering, cruelty, and abuse to be intolerable regardless of the form it took. Debeaked hens crammed into tiny cages and stacked in factory-farm warehouses, infants shaken to death by their parents because they wouldn’t stop crying, genocide in Darfur, my countrymen in Appalachia and on the Gulf Coast treated as if they lived in a Third World Country, Iraqis bombed by us and by Al Qaeda… It was all too much. I was feeling the world’s pain.
And I realized, pardon my presumption here, that I didn’t want to die with the world in such terrible shape, which, finally, brings me to global warming. Of all the insanities that bedevil human beings on this planet none is greater than global warming. Only all out nuclear war poses as grave a danger to the planet and human civilization. Ironically, the former, if we fail to check it, may lead to the latter–a two-for-one sale at the Armageddon store, if you like.
I’m not confident that we are going to survive this. I’m positive that we won’t survive unscathed because the harm has already begun and we still haven’t done anything to reduce CO2 emissions. And here’s the question that keeps haunting me: If we won’t stop genocide in Darfur or provide universal health coverage in the United States, two horrible but much simpler cruelties, why should any one think that we will deal adequately with global warming?
I hear from mutual friends that Johnny Rook’s doctor might not think this today … that he might not survive the weekend.
Johnny Rook had wanted to be in Washington, DC, for Powershift 2009, to see the power of 10,000+ young people impassioned about helping bring about change in American (and global) policies on Global Warming. He has been thrilled to see that there is political change, that the Obama Administration is filling with people filled with understanding of global warming science and the need to act seriously even as he has serious concerns that President Obama will not (be able to) do enough to turn the tide on Global Warming’s rising seas. And, Johnny Rook had hoped to go to the Capitol Climate Action, to participate in a mass civil disobedience to end Congress’ use of coal to power itself. (Johnny, take a small solace, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi ordered yesterday that the plant be shifted to natural gas ASAP.) Johnny Rook will not be there … while it is going on, rather than being buoyed by the passion of 10,000 around him, he might quite literally be on his dying bed. His teenage son will be in Washington, DC, in honor of his father who asked him to go, losing the opportunity for any last precious minutes with him but strengthened by knowing his son cares about humanity’s future as well.
Johnny Rook has become my friend and an inspiration. We will never meet in person but we have met through the web. He is a person well worth knowing. To honor him, to honor his passion, to honor his commitment, take a few moments to click to Climaticide Chronicles … Perhaps to begin with his first post at this site that he started just last June: Why call it climaticide? The power of calling things by their true names.
I use the term Climaticide because it is the true name of the crisis that threatens us. As the poet Thich Nhat Hanh has shown, calling things by their true names makes us aware of their complexity and wary of simplistic solutions.
NOTE: Johnny Rook: Apologies if this embarrasses you my friend. I much prefer, even at this last moment, to write a homage rather than obituary. And, as you wish, I would much prefer the honor of be able to use your real name rather than pseudonym.
February 26th, 2009 · Comments Off on Will directly lies … again … and again … and again …
There are much more enjoyable things to spend one’s time on and one’s blogging efforts than having to fact check George F Will because Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post is clearly unwilling to do so.
In tomorrow’s, yet-to-be-published OPED, George Will steps up with blustery outrage that his (dis)honor has been stained. Amid his disingenous truthiness, two things jump out.
1. Like Andy Revkin, George Will places himself as an equivalent, it seems, of Vice President Al Gore. The Nobel Prize committee and 100s of millions would beg to differ with this.
2. More bluntly, Will made this statement in reacting to Andy Revkin’s New York Times Article:
As for the anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged.
This is simply and utterly false. Here at GESN, for example, there is Will-full deceit: three blunt examples. That piece provides detailed discussion of three “inaccuracies” (how about, lies and dishonesties) in Will’s column. There were others, but that piece challenges three … and GESN is not alone in challenging Will’s inaccuracies. It really doesn’t matter whether those challenges were correct (they were, by the way), but there is a simple fact here: more than one of “the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies” have been challenged.
Will’s new column is deceit and deception laden. Above, however, is one quite clear example of a direct falsehood that is easily proved wrong, that any fact checker worth their salary could have found out in minutes was false, and is something that Fred Hiatt almost certainly was aware was false based on his receiving a letter that challenged Will’s column on three separate issues.
The Washington Post and The Washington Post Writers Group are, by defending Will rather than correcting him (or providing rebuttal space to experts with every Will piece they publish), are digging a very deep hole for their credibility. Beware Fred, at some point the hole will be too deep to climb out of.
PS Fred: It probably isn’t good form to call another newspaper prostitutes. From George’s column:
Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today’s war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject — meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.
Meretricious comes from the latin mertrix or prostitute. The word means “of or relating to a prostitute; having the nature of prostitution”. Fred, did you mean to allow George to call The Gray Lady a prostitute?
(Note, by the way, that was first definition. Second definition is “tawdrily and falsely attractive”. Not a highly complimentary description either.)
Update: Media Matters directly addresses Hiatt challenge to “debate” George Will and the issue of the very conservative (and often global warming skeptic) bias of The Post’s opinion section in RE: Fred Hiatt.
Now, who is in charge of the Post’s op-ed page? Fred Hiatt. If Fred Hiatt wants to pretend that critics of Will’s falsehoods are welcome to debate Will, Fred Hiatt can start by regularly running op-eds by (more honest) liberal equivalents of Will, Krauthammer and Gerson. And no, Richard Cohen does not count.
According to Zachary Roth, George Will and The Washington Post Writers’ Group are doubling up when it comes to disinformation and truthiness when it comes to Global Warming issues. Roth got an early look at tomorrow’s (late tonight’s) Will column. [Now published.]
We thought we were done with the topic of George Will and climate change. But now we’ve gotten an advanced look at Will’s latest column, set to run tomorrow in the Washington Post and in syndication. And it amounts to a stubborn defense of the amazing global warming denialist column he published earlier this month, that was ripped apart by just about everyone and their mother
Evidently thin-skinned Will couldn’t take the mild rebuke he received in Andy Revkin’s indefensible equating of Al Gore’s pulling one slide, of 400, from his presentation due to disagreements about how to present information (material he got, by the way, from The New York Times), to George Will’s blatant (and serial) distortion and, well, blatantly dishonest opinion piece.
According to Roth, Will
1. “Suggests that Revkin is guilty of sloppy journalism, noting that the Times writer doesn’t name the experts who judged the February 15 column inaccurate”. In this case, it would seem that George is lucky since that would be a long, long list of people who have examined that monstrocity and called it lacking. (And, well, Revkin’s online version does have multiple links debunking Will’s fraudelent claims.)
2. Will stands by the substance of the February 15 column.” Wow … want to talk about arrogant disregard for any standard of evidence. “maintaining, in the case of the key factual dispute, that he had accurately reported the findings of a respected climate research center on the question of sea-ice levels.” The point here to emphasize is that there is not one fact, not one statement in dispute. This is not a ‘he says, she says’ moment about which month we’re citing, but Will’s column was serial truthiness, filled with misrepresentations and outright dishonesties. Will should not be able to redefine the discussion to a particular data point.
It is hard to see how anyone who is honest about “fact-checking” and editorial integrity could allow another piece of Will-ful disdain for the turth to be published on their pages.
Hmmm … what does this say about The Washington Post and The Washington Post Writer’s Group?
Update 2: Columbia Journalism Review published The George Will Affair at 7:24 this evening. Amazingly, Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt stands up and defends Will, arguing that this is about opinion — utterly ignoring Will’s willful disdain for facts and rejection of scientific work. Hiatt misrepresents this as an issue of differing opinion, rather than Will’s distorting information to misrepresent facts. And, then a moment of utter arrogance:
It may well be that he is drawing inferences from data that most scientists reject — so, you know, fine, I welcome anyone to make that point. But don’t make it by suggesting that George Will shouldn’t be allowed to make the contrary point. Debate him.”
“Debate him.” Where, Fred, where? Have you given Washington Post opinion page space to any of those who have shredded WIll’s truthiness? Have you distributed such commentaries to the 450 newspapers The Washington Post Writers’ Group has Will syndicated to? Again, Fred, people are entitled to their opinions, not their own facts.
this controversy is not about “inferences” by Will with which others “disagree.” It is about Will spreading falsehoods. And it is about The Washington Post standing by those falsehoods – a rather large gamble for a newspaper that cannot afford to lose readers or credibility.
This is Alice in Wonderland journalism. It is the paper’s stated policy that the Post feels free to reinterpret whatever anybody says to fit whatever storyline they are pushing. This suggests the Post has advanced far from the Janet Cooke days.
The Washington Post is setting itself up, quite firmly, for case studies in journalism ethics or, well, the lack of it.
overnight to providing comments on national energy policy drafts to opening discussions as to