These are the Washington Post's own guidelines for op-eds (click to "embiggen") in their newspaper. Sadly, they are just meaningless words, as evidenced by the Post's egregious violations of its own rules on multiple occasions in recent months. In particular, I'm thinking about global warming "skeptic" (aka "denier") op-eds by George Will and Sarah Palin. These op-eds clearly violate the following Washington Post op-ed guidelines:
1. They do not offer any "freshness of perspective," but are simply the same-ol' same-'ol stale lies perpetuated by global warming deniers. The Post asks, "is it an argument we haven't heard many times before?" The answer in both Will's case (he personally has published roughly the same global warming denial op-ed multiple times) and Palin's is clearly that we've heard this drivel hundreds of times before, but of course almost never from a climate scientist.
2. The Post says, "because we realize that senators, business leaders, heads of state and the like have access to various platforms where they can express their views, we hold them to a particularly high standard when considering whether to publish them in The Post." In the case of Sarah Palin, a former vice presidential candidate, however, there were apparently no standards applied whatsoever to her op-ed, let alone "particularly high" ones.
3. The Post says that "all op-eds" are "fact checked." This one's particularly egregious, as it means effectively that the Post is assuming responsibility for any errors or outright lies that make it into their newspaper. More broadly, my question is how they can claim to fact check op eds submitted to their newspaper, but then publish op-eds filled with errors and lies (as in Will's and Palin's cases)?
So, Ombudsman Alexander, I presume you're going to be looking into this and writing a scathing internal assessment of how the Post violates its own rules for op-eds, right? I'll look forward to it in this Sunday's edition of your fine "newspaper." Thanks! :)
P.S. One rule the Post certainly did follow in the Will and Palin cases is, "You don't need to have special expertise in a topic." Neither Will nor Palin have the slightest scientific, academic, or any other qualifications to talk about global warming.
