Basically, I was told that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George Will's column was checked by people he personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors.I've done some work for newspapers, and, if I may say, am somewhat familiar with how they work. Magazines (like this one) generally employ fact-checkers, whose entire job involves verifying the veracity of every sentence in a story. Like all writers here at the Atlantic, when I file an article it's annotated with references to every fact in the story. A checker than verifies those facts by checking documents, calling sources, checking notes, watching video etc. The process still isn't perfect and sometimes we fuck up.
But it's important to understand that newspapers, in general, don't have people who "check facts to the fullest extent possible." The fact-checking generally falls on the writer, and when there's an error (unless an editor inserted the error) he takes the heat for it. This is the whole reason why a Jayson Blair could exist--for the most part newspaper editors go on faith. Editors and copy-editors do look out for things that don't "smell" right or raise a red flag. But they don't really fact-check stories.
I've written for New York Times in the past four years, and twice for the Washington Post's Sunday op-ed section, within the past year. I mean no disrespect here, but I wasn't fact-checked on any of those stories. Indeed, I actually made an error in one, which had to be corrected. It may be that the Post is more likely to fact-check a writer, like George Will, who's written for them for years and whom they presumably trust, then they are a college drop-out who's had four journalism jobs in ten years, and lost three of them. But somehow, I doubt it.
I can't speak for who Will employs to fact-check his work. Nor can I, ultimately, speak for the Post's process. But let's just say if I were a newspaper editor, and you told me this story, I'd flag it. It just doesn't "smell" right.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
"He's a fact checker for the Times. It sounds so responsible."
In the era of "fair and balanced," newspapers bend over backwards to accomodate differing points of view from their columnists. However, many columnists have very little understanding of scientific methodology. Thus, where scientific issues are politicized--evolution and global climate change come to mind--political columnists are cut a great deal of slack as if scientific finding was as open to interpretation as fiscal or foreign policy. And even there, while one would think that evidence based, fallacy free, critical thinking standards, the closest lens that social scientists have to the scientific methodology, would be a measure of the journalist's integrity, opinion, often times cooking the books in the process, rather than informed opinion holds sway.
Here in the California bay area, conservative columnist Debra Saunders has repeatedly iterated falsehoods, half truths, spun out of context understandings of the global climate issue, and she has never been called to task by the editorial board of the otherwise predominantly liberal San Francisco Chronicle. It's not that science is hard and fast, and indeed scientific finding should be looked at with scrutiny. However, given the mountains of evidence that like dna, which is a discovery of evolution science and an agreed upon reality of our world, effects of global climate change already occurring are part of our everday world reportage, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that identity politics, not actual scientific findings, colors this issue.
For some reason, conservatives--perhaps viscerally because they are embarrased that that pompous Al Gore got there decades before them, but more likely because acknowlegment would require both government regulation and a new way of doing business--seem to have a continuing investment in denial on this issue and will do anything including spin facts out of context or lie (a government policy under our previous President) to keep the truth from being acknowledged.
What was the name of the Atlantic fact checker that let that unsourcable 12 billion dollar industry crap into Douchat's porn=adultery rant?
Actually, I doubt that the Post (or any other newspaper) fact-checks op-ed contributors, particularly contributors like Will who have syndicated columns. That means he's his own business, and it's his job to do the fact-checking work. And this also explains why so much BS gets published in op-ed pieces. Rich Lowry, who's column is occasionally runs in my local daily constantly makes these kinds of mistakes without the brohaha.
We are raising the bar on the standards for op-ed writers and syndicated columnists. That's a very good thing.
George F. Will gives be-bowtied pseudo-intellectuals a bad name. Plus he knows fuck-all about The National Pastime.
So basically, you're saying that the ombudsman needs an ombudsman.
Who will ombuds the ombudsman? Somehow I see that movie taking even longer to be released.
What really bothers me about this is the refusal of the Washington Post to so much as note the very existence of this controversy in its pages or on its website. And not so much in and of itself, but as a symptom of the newspaper's insularity.
Many interesting discussions are taking place out here in the blogosphere, and in other nonstandard media.
For instance, people who read lefty blogs know that there isn't a "Social Security and Medicare" problem, in several dimensions: first, because Social Security's basically sound, and second, because Medicare's problems are almost completely due to the continuing rise in health costs, public and private. But neither of these facts leaks into the conversation in the Washington Post's pages. (OK, they did just this morning, when the WaPo let Bob Kuttner write an op-ed. But that's a rare exception.)
Nor can I recollect a non-dismissive mention in the WaPo of the universal healthcare systems of other nations, which Ezra Klein has written extensively about in his blog and in the pages of The American Prospect.
Given our looming problem with climate change, you'd think a major newspaper like the Washington Post would be interested in a serious discussion of how we maintain our current lifestyle while cutting back on our energy consumption. The Washington Monthly just had such an article (which got decent play in the blogosphere) about how a lot of goods today get shipped by trucks on highways because the freight rail system in the U.S. is in such lousy shape. Freight rail is incredibly efficient, because steel wheels on steel rails have very little friction, compared to rubber tires on asphalt roads. A better freight rail system could reduce energy consumption by a huge amount, and reduce highway congestion and wear and tear on the roads to boot. But there's been no discussion of this story in the Post.
And that's just a sampler. There are tons of instances like this, where I know about important stuff germane to national policy that the Washington Post's readers don't, because I read blogs. This isn't to say, "Yay, blogs!" because the conversation's wider than that: small policy magazines and numerous other sources are essential parts of this discussion as well.
The point is that there's a large and important conversation going on that Washington Post readers should be aware of, but they will continue to be in the dark about, because of the paper's insularity. And that's a genuinely bad thing.
It's just weasel wording on the ombudsman's part. Andy Alexander is well aware the piece wasn't fact checked. But he's prepared to argue that it was checked "to the fullest extent possible" given the various constraints of newspaper publishing.
In other words, Alexander knows that all the people he lists who "checked the column" are not engaged in anything like fact checking (copy editors!); at most, they looked at the piece for obvious errors and signed off. He's just waiting for the next round to put on a reasonable face and say that's all they could do.
I imagine the real story goes something like this:
-Will writes the article and gives it to his employees.
-Employees read it, look up the articles and either don't bother to read them closely or just decide that it's close enough and they're not going to challenge the great man.
-Various editors at the Post read it, note that it is imbued with George Will's inimitable smugness, glance at the Arctic Climate Center's page and see that there are numbers there that appear similar to Will's and print it.
-Lefty bloggers complain to ombudsman who contacts Will and is met a torrent of smug non-apologie
-Ombudsman, cowed by the Smug One's celebrity and firm belief in his own correctness, responds to lefty bloggers with an equivocating, vague non-correction that attempts to spread some of the blame to his own newspaper in order to avoid the glare of George Will's permanently arched eyebrow.
You should really consider a full-time grammar-checker for your posts. Your facts seem ok though.
given the mountains of evidence that like dna, which is a discovery of evolution science and an agreed upon reality of our world,
Tsk, tsk, tsk. My dear fellow! What shall I do with you?
This is all belief, so that we can continue on with the privileges and power we have now.
Do you think that we did not know in Lincoln's time, that the negro was human? Do you think we did not know that we were living off the sweat of the negro? We, the thinking few, the leaders, knew that. We, the leaders knew that out way of life would be toast, if the negro was considered human. Would you give up everything you own for some abstract philosophy that benefits not you, your kith and kin, and send yourself to ruin so that some who you know not and does not keep sides with you benefit?
So get real, sir. Some of us know, and we pretend not to know. We create this new faith, so that those who don't want to know, have something to believe in.
Together we will work it out. We both are in this together. We give you the faith, we give you justification, so that you, the weak, don't have to deal with the corrosive bite of self-delusion and hypocrisy.
We can deal with the double life. That's why we lead. We write op-eds. We create the faith. All you need to do is believe.
I agree with Citizen E but I think the reason Will et al can get away with it is because climate science is very much like the science of economics. There is so much uncertainty that you can pretty much get away with saying anything you want. How often are corrections posted from columnists who misrepresent the economic impact of something?
"There is so much uncertainty that you can pretty much get away with saying anything you want."
In this case, Party A said something, and Party B said that Party A said something that *they did not say*. Note that the truth/falsehood, verfiability or other factors of what Party A said aren't in question.