PressEthic

An ethical columnist should strive for intellectual honesty.

That doesn't mean every column is a paragon of logical consistency, or that one column never contradicts another -- everyone makes mistakes, changes positions and unconsciously asserts logically inconsistent beliefs, and those of us who face regular deadlines each week inevitably do so more than most.

Even so, some columnists employ logic so faulty with such regularity that even a charitable critic begins to wonder whether they're as intellectually honest as they ought to be.

I've reached that point with Ruben Navarrette, a syndicated columnist for the San Diego Union Tribune who writes more on immigration politics and policy than anything else. As America's go-to columnist on that topic, his work regularly appears in major newspapers other than his own. When I began as an immigration columnist and blogger I dutifully linked his columns because he seemed like a prominent, reasonable and well-informed voice in the immigration debate.

More recently, however, I've found myself linking his columns because the logic he employs is so laughably faulty. I've felt compelled to offer full Fiskings as often as not (that's blogger speak for a line by line refutation). Lest you think I exaggerate, check up on me here, or here, or here, or here.

These four examples demonstrate a trend that extends to countless other columns, many of which I've criticized in part. I enjoy substantive policy discussion whether or not I agree with the positions that another writer takes, but I'm stunned and disappointed when a writer given prime opinion real estate so frequently offers columns that are so largely substanceless and poorly conceived, or who so often conjures and decimates armies of straw men to make his points.