Intelligent design and the old media - a tour of the old media attic

Last night, the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. offered a panel discussion on the theme of the book, edited by an old friend Paul Marshall, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.

In the book, which covers a wide range of issues, one of the listed author contributors, Roberta Green Ahmanson, talks about what happens when journalists morph into censors of the news that involves the intelligent design controversy:

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet argued that intelligent design did not deserve to be covered at all. Their concern was not whether any reporters had implied that intelligent-design arguments were true; rather, he argued that some journalists had actually reported what the arguments were. Mooney and Nisbet insisted that such arguments were really religious arguments and were, therefore, not only nonscientific, but could not be counted as arguments at all. They concluded that intelligent design is "a sophisticated religious challenge to an overwhelming scientific consensus." Therefore, "journalistic coverage that helps fan the flames of a nonexistent scientific controversy (and misrepresents what's actually known) simply isn't appropriate."(p.168)

In their view, journalists are not to report what is happening but only what they have decided it is "appropriate"for their readers and listeners to know.

Wow. Why move to a surviving communist regime when you can have the same censorship services at home in the West ...

See also:

Popular media and the intelligent design controversy: When reporters write what they "know"

Religion and the media: Why it doesn't pay to be just plain vindictive

The intelligent design community and the media revolution - an old hack's thoughts