Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
January
2, 2004
George Will's Ethics
None
of Our Business?
By NORMAN SOLOMON
We can argue about George Will's political views.
But there's no need to debate his professional ethics.
Late December brought to light a pair
of self-inflicted wounds to the famous columnist's ethical pretensions.
He broke an elementary rule of journalism -- and then, when the
New York Times called him on it, proclaimed the transgression
to be no one's business but his own.
It turns out that George Will was among
a number of prominent individuals to receive $25,000 per day
of conversation on a board of advisers for Hollinger International,
a newspaper firm controlled by magnate Conrad Black. Although
Will has often scorned the convenient forgetfulness of others,
the Times reported that "Mr. Will could not recall how many
meetings he attended." But an aide confirmed the annual
$25,000 fee.
Even for a wealthy commentator, that's
a hefty paycheck for one day of talk. But it didn't stop Will
from lavishing praise on Black in print -- without a word about
their financial tie.
In early March, Will wrote a syndicated
piece that blasted critics of President Bush's plans to launch
an all-out war on Iraq. Several paragraphs of the column featured
quotations from a speech by Black. The laudatory treatment began
high in the column as Will referred to some criticisms of Bush
policies and then wrote: "Into this welter of foolishness
has waded Conrad Black."
The column did not contain the slightest
hint that this wonderful foe of "foolishness" had provided
checks to fatten the columnist's assets at $25,000 a pop.
But Will claimed in a December interview
that nothing was amiss. "Asked in the interview if he should
have told his  readers
of the payments he had received from Hollinger," a New York
Times article reported on Dec. 22, "Mr. Will said he saw
no reason to do so."
The Times quoted Will as saying: "My
business is my business. Got it?"
Yeah. We get it, George. The only question
is whether the editors who keep printing your stuff will get
it, too.
After three decades as a superstar pundit,
Will continues to flourish. Several hundred newspapers publish
his syndicated column, Newsweek prints two-dozen essays per year,
and he appears each Sunday on ABC's "This Week" television
show.
The syndicate with a very big stake in
George Will cannot be indifferent to the latest flap, but there's
obvious reticence to singe the right-winged golden goose. The
man who's the Washington Post Writers Group editorial director
and general manager, Alan Shearer, said: "I think I would
have liked to have known."
A week later, via a letter in the New
York Times, a more forthright response came from Gilbert Cranberg,
former chairman of the professional standards committee of the
National Conference of Editorial Writers: "When a syndicated
journalist writes favorably about a benefactor, that is very
much the business of Mr. Will's editors and readers."
Cranberg quoted from the National Conference
of Editorial Writers code of ethics, which includes provisions
that "the writer should be constantly alert to conflicts
of interest, real or apparent" -- including "those
that may arise from financial holdings" and "secondary
employment." Noting that "timely public disclosure
can minimize suspicion," the code adds: "Editors should
seek to hold syndicates to these standards."
But will they? George Will is a syndicated
powerhouse. And he has gotten away with hiding other big conflicts
of interest over the last quarter-century.
In October 1980, Will appeared on the
ABC television program "Nightline" to praise Ronald
Reagan's "thoroughbred performance" in a debate with
incumbent President Jimmy Carter. But Will did not disclose to
viewers that he'd helped coach Reagan for the debate -- and,
in the process, had read Carter briefing materials stolen from
the White House.
When, much later, Will's "debategate"
duplicity came to light, his media colleagues let him off with
a polite scolding. The incident faded from media memory. Thus,
in autumn 1992, when Will reminisced on ABC's "This Week"
about the 1980 Carter-Reagan debate, he didn't mention his own
devious role, and none of his journalistic buddies in the studio
were impolite enough to say anything about it.
Will has also played fast and loose with
ethics in the midst of other contests for the presidency. At
the media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate), senior analyst
Steve Rendall pointed out: "During the 1996 campaign, Will
caught some criticism for commenting on the presidential race
while his second wife, Mari Maseng Will, was a senior staffer
for the Dole presidential campaign. Defending a Dole speech on
ABC News (1/28/96), Will, according to Washingtonian magazine
(3/96), 'failed to mention ... that his wife not only counseled
Dole to give the speech but also helped write it.'"
In 2000, Will "suffered another
ethical lapse," Rendall recounts in Extra!, FAIR's magazine.
The renowned columnist "met with George W. Bush just before
the Republican candidate was to appear on ABC's 'This Week.'
Later, in a column (3/4/01), Will admitted that he'd met with
Bush to preview questions, not wanting to 'ambush him with unfamiliar
material.' In the meeting, Will provided Bush with a 3-by-5 card
containing a crucial question he would later ask the candidate
on the air."
George Will has long been fond of denouncing
moral deficiencies. Typical was this fulmination in a March 1994
column: "Taught that their sincerity legitimized their intentions,
the children of the 1960s grew up convinced they could not do
wrong. Hence the Clinton administration's genuine bewilderment
when accused of ethical lapses."
In what can be understood as a case of
psychological projection, Will derisively added: "It is
a theoretical impossibility for people in 'the party of compassion'
to behave badly because good behavior is whatever they do."
During the past three decades, Will --
who chose to become a syndicated Washington Post columnist in
the early 1970s rather than continue as a speech writer for Sen.
Jesse Helms -- has been fond of commenting on the moral failures
of black people while depicting programs for equity as ripoff
artistry. In February 1991, for instance, he wrote: "The
rickety structure of affirmative action, quotas and the rest
of the racial spoils system depends on victimology -- winning
for certain groups the lucrative status of victim."
In subsequent years, not satisfied with
his own very lucrative status, Will made a quiet pact with corporate
wheeler-dealer Conrad Black. When exposed, Will compounded his
malfeasance by declaring that it was only "my business."
Words that George Will wrote 10 years
ago now aptly describe his own stance: "It is a theoretical
impossibility" that he behaved badly. "Good behavior"
is whatever he does.
Nice work if he can get it. And he can.
Got it?
Norman Solomon
is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in
San Francisco. He is co-author of Target
Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. (Context Books,
2003).
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|