Month: August 2005
Alas, More Shrill Polemics
The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) this weekend ran three pieces about the evolution debate, one by CSC senior fellow Jonathan Witt contesting the idea that evolution is incontestable on any grounds, and two pieces of shrill polemics: One by UW biologist Peter Ward stating that Darwinian evolution is a fact (and resorts to name calling to prove it), and an opinion piece by Peter Slevin from the Washington Post that has been masquerading in papers around the country as an objective news story for several months now (nothing like new news to keep your publication fresh and your readers up to date).
Reuters’ Reporting on Kansas: Science Fiction
Yesterday, I blogged about Reuters’ inaccurate news report earlier this week, which wrongly claimed that the new Kansas science standards would remove evolution as part of the standard core curriculum in Kansas. That was before I read the revised and expanded version of Reuters’ report. Someone has now rewritten the original story. But instead of making it better, the writer has veered off into the realm of fabrication. Reuters’ revised report claims that Kansas is actually trying to include intelligent design in its science standards, as well as asserting as fact that intelligent design is “a form of creationism”:
What Nightline Didn’t Show Viewers: The Unedited Nightline Interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer
Last night’s Nightline segment on intelligent design fulfilled the promise of its inane preview article. Rather than cover the substance of the intellectual debate over design, all Nightline could do was act as the mouthpiece for ID-bashers like Barbara Forrest. Nightline asserted that the debate over intelligent design is about politics and PR, but that is only because Nightline didn’t want to cover anything else. Nightline’s producers clearly had a predetermined agenda going into their story, and they stuck to it. We audiotaped Nightline’s interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer at Discovery Institute’s office, and we’ve prepared a verbatim transcript, available here. If you want learn what Nightline refused to show its viewers, I encourage you to read it. I think Read More ›
Reuters Makes Glaring Error of Fact in Kansas Science Standards Story
Just when I think the major media are beginning to become a little more accurate in reporting on the evolution issue, something happens to bring me back to reality. Yesterday the international newswire Reuters sent out a story making the following preposterous claim: The new science standards would… eliminate core evolution theory as required curriculum. This claim is absolutely false. The draft science standards endorsed by the Kansas Board of Education continue to include evolution as part of the standard required curriculum. Indeed, the proposed benchmark on evolution is all but identical to the one in the current Kansas Science Standards. See for yourself:
CNN Sends Fabricator of Texas Textbook Story to Kansas; Nixes Debate between Meyer and Miller
CNN Reporter Ed Lavendera, who two years ago fabricated part of his story about the Texas textbook battle, has now been sent to Kansas to report on the controversy there. Not surprisingly, Ed gets the basic facts about Kansas wrong as well. He even recycles an old clip from his previous story while creating impression that it came from Kansas!