ID Advocates Turning the Media Off-Target

[Comments]

There was an article by Bill Toland in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that was published last weekend about “intelligent design” and the situation in Dover. I had the privilege of being interviewed by Toland and quoted a couple of times in the article.

Journalists are people who know a lot about communicating briefly with other people, and usually have no very detailed knowledge of specific topics. So they do research, and interview people, in order to get a fix on just what the story might be. Sometimes this works very well, and sometimes not so well. Errors of fact may be made. Quotes may not be exact. And, sometimes, journalists don’t treat every possible viewpoint as being of equal value.

The Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture has long had a standard method of response when “intelligent design” is mentioned in prominent news articles: the press release. The formula is simple: refer to opinions and reports as “objective” if they credulously take the DI CRSC’s line, and denounce reports as “biased” if they allow even a hint of criticism or skepticism to be reported. They’ve recently discovered blogging. So now there is a blog at http://www.evolutionnews.org where DI staffers let the press know in the bluntest terms possible just how they feel about recent coverage. (I’m not going to complain about the domain name. Fair’s fair, and we’ve picked up http://www.evolutionnews.net and pointed it where it can do the most good.) Blogging is different from doing press releases. For one thing, it is a lot cheaper. This means that, if you have the time, you can do a lot more kvetching than through press releases. And apparently DI staffers have the time. Robert Crowther of the DI has a post up to take Bill Toland to task for his article…

What is interesting is that for a group complaining about inaccuracy in the media, the Discovery Institute shows a curious bias in their complaints. There were a number of inaccuracies in the original article (go to the page and note the corrections at the bottom) which the Discovery Institute passes over in silence, and various things accurately reported by Toland that the Discovery Institute tries to spin its way. This particular spin job is the work of Robert Crowther, an employee of the Discovery Institute, posting on a blog whose domain is owned by the Discovery Institute and which is hosted by the Discovery Institute, and yet the disclaimer at the bottom says the Discovery Institute is not responsible for the content of blog posts. It seems they were prescient in this case, as there is much to disclaim.