News Media in New Mexico to be applauded

Kudos are in order for the media covering PBS station KNME’s ill-advised decision this week to ban Unlocking the Mystery of Life from their airwaves. First on Wednesday, Albuquerque’s ABC affiliate KOB aired a story that correctly reported this censorship of science. Their coverage was very good, although they did mistakenly identify Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture as the funder of the film, which is not true. The film was produced by Illustra Media and funded by a group of foundations and organizations. CSC Fellows were prominently featured in the film and CSC Director Steve Meyer worked closely with Illustra in the scripting of the film, but CSC did not fund the film. Still KOB’s coverage was balanced, and Read More ›

Albuquerque Eyewitness News Coverage of PBS Censorship Issue

Channel 4 Eyewitness News in Albuquerque, New Mexico is the latest media outlet to pick up on KNME’s decision to ban Unlocking the Mystery of Life that we first reported earlier this week. They have a video clip of their live coverage of the story on Wed. night’s 10pm news on their website www.kobtv.com. It is refreshing to see a major, if local, media outlet actually getting the story right, and focusing on the irrational decision to try and censor a science debate. The even give intelligent design its due as a scientific theory. There is likely to be a media storm tomorrow when the story breaks in Albuquerque’s print world. It will be interesting to see if reporters at Read More ›

AP Reporter Misses Some Small Facts, Misconstrues A Big Theory

When a news reporter doesn’t bother to accurately and fairly report the small issues, is it any wonder when they fail to accurately and fairly report the big issues? Take the recent, un-credited article by an AP reporter entitled “Lawmakers draft bills to address debate over evolution,” concerning two legislative proposals in the state of Montana concerning the teaching of evolutionary theory in their public schools. AP REPORTER’S PROBLEMS WITH THE FACTS ON DARBY The AP reporter discusses two legislators from Big Sky Country who are considering two very different legislative approaches to the issue. According to the AP reporter, these respective proposals were “driven by curriculum changes in Darby schools earlier this year that mandates the discussion of ‘intelligent Read More ›

PBS station gives excuses for censoring UMOL

World Net Daily has published the first article that has appeared in response to Discovery’s press release yesterday about PBS station KNME banning Unlocking the Mystery of Life (UMOL). The station now claims in a World Net Daily article that this was all just a scheduling mistake, which is laughable whenyou realize that they’ve been considering running this film since last spring. You can see for yourself the ad that KNME itself designed and arranged to put in newspapers — then cancelled on Monday. You can also see the TV guide listings. Obviously, this program had been in process for some time (and they were well down the road of advertising and publicizing the show. While we’ve yet to speak Read More ›

The Right IDEA: Restoring Rationality in the Debate Over Darwin’s Theory

Casey Luskin, the Co-President of Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA), has posted an article entitled, “A Holiday Truce: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out.” This important and carefully written article contains an interview with a Holocaust survivor and discusses the abuse of human atrocities in the current controversy surrounding neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. As Luskin points out in his commentary, some of the more extreme hyper-Darwinists have resorted to equating skepticism of some of the more far-reaching claims of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory with denial of the Holocaust. The low-ball tactic of using genocide to score debating points was brought home to me late last month, when Washington State ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan responded to my presentation on the teaching of Read More ›