George Will: wrong again
George Will's ANWR column (the one I dissected here and here) apparently contains yet another falsehood. Will made this claim:
Drilling is underway 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.
This McClatchy news article (h/t: Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy) shows that Will's claim is false:
"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. [...] China's Sinopec oil company does have an agreement with the Cuban government, but it's to develop onshore resources west of Havana, Pinon said. The Chinese have done some seismic testing, he said, but no drilling, and nothing offshore.
The interesting aspect of this is not the number of times George Will can be wrong in a single column, but in how quickly his falsehood spread through the Right's media echo chamber. Everyone from Dick Cheney to John Boehner (R-OH) to Investor's Business Daily to George Radanovich (R-CA) has cited Will's claim without ever bothering to ascertain that drilling was actually being done.
This is the sort of episode--one of many, unfortunately--that justifies an attitude of extreme skepticism toward the corporate media's op-ed writers.
update (6/17 @ 3:40pm):
Will issued a correction for this error, but did not address any of the other errors.