Hiatt defends Post's 'fact-free' zone from Post

 After a slew of criticism from Hiatt's co-workers at the Post for a lack of standards, Fred Hiatt is continuing to defend the editorial process he has set up to launder facts for his conservative columnists.

When asked about criticism from the Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson and others, Hiatt responded:

Fred Hiatt: [We] don't have lax standards for accuracy. [Will] addressed the factual challenges to his column in detail in a later column. In general we do careful fact checking. What people have mostly objected to is not that his data are wrong but that he draws wrong inferences. I would think folks would be eager to engage in the debate, given how sure they are of their case, rather than trying to shut him down.

Of course, engaging in debate is precisely how unsupported views like George Will's are lent credibility, despite the absence of scientific basis. At some point, a columnist is wrong, and if Will's "inference" is that the scientists who collected the data he cites to support his argument  are wrong when they say he has distorted their findings, well, then, corrections are meaningless -- which is probably why Hiatt has issued a grand total of two corrections for Will during his tenure, one of which cited an "editorial" error (his own multi-layered, fact-checking process).

Will isn't corrected because that's the system Hiatt has intentionally set up. Conservative voices like Will are meant to "balance out" reality-based reporting, and provide a conduit for talk-radio nonsense to be mainstreamed by cloaking itself with the Post's reputation for journalism -- a reputation Hiatt is sacrificing by allowing it to be exploited this way. Once he imposes standards, the alternative-reality columnists like Will have constructed for their foot-soldiers is no longer possible.

More on this story from A. Seigel, the Wonk Room, Things Break, Carl Zimmer and Zachary Roth.