diff --git a/weewx/formatter.py b/weewx/formatter.py
index 16bf06a4..c0542a7e 100644
--- a/weewx/formatter.py
+++ b/weewx/formatter.py
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ class ModelView(object):
         
         # This will raise an AttributeError exception if the model
         # does not support the attribute 'attr':
-        v = self.model.__getattribute__(attr)
+        v = self.model.__getattr__(attr)
 
         # If we made it this far, the model does have attribute 'attr'.
         # Is it a scalar?