George Will Fails to Disclose Financial Ties to Polluter Front Groups

Why is George Will so aggressively anti-climate science? A new report makes his financial incentives more clear.

Media Matters reports that not only has Will been drawing a salary from his role on the board of the extremist-conservative Bradley Foundation, he's been writing about the front groups they fund without disclosing it in his Washington Post columns:

Media Matters reviewed Will's columns from mid-2008 to the present and found at least a dozen instances in which he has promoted conservative groups that have received money from the Bradley Foundation without disclosing his connection to the foundation. Those groups include the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society, and National Affairs quarterly.

SourceWatch has a full rundown of the Bradley Foundation's activities, funding everything from climate science denial to attacks on minorities as genetically unworthy of any public assistance. Just really the worst of the worst stuff. And as the Media Matters report details, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is completely indifferent to Will's lack of disclosure.

Wash. Post Maintains Code of Silence on Bogus Will Column

Talking Points Memo has been trying to get to the bottom of how George Will's Saturday column made it to print with so much misinformation about climate change. So far, the Washington Post seems to be going into cover-up mode:

[H]ere's what happened when we tried to talk about all this yesterday morning with Will and [editorial page editor Fred] Hiatt:

Will's assistant told us that Will might get back to us later in the day to talk about the column. And Hiatt said he was too busy to talk about it just then, but that he'd try to respond to emailed questions. So we emailed him yesterday's post, with several questions about the editing process, then followed up with another email late yesterday afternoon.

But still nothing from either of them, over twenty-four hours after the first contact was made. Nor has the online version of Will's column been updated, even to reflect the fact that the ACRC has utterly disavowed the claim Will attributes to it.

If the target of a news story stonewalled a Post reporter to this extent, how much would Post editors be flipping out? You can't help but wonder.

Cross-posted from ArticleXI.com