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

12/14/08

by Denyse O'Leary 07:40:21 pm, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 395 words

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

When assessing media coverage of the intelligent design controversy, the first thing you should do is forget what defenders of legacy mainstream media say about their media.

You've already heard it all anyway: "We're objective." "We're not biased." "We only report the facts." Et cetera.

Not only isn't that true, but it couldn't possibly be true, as I will explain below. And it wouldn't be a good thing if it were true.

Modern media grew up self-consciously aware of their key role in promoting materialist ideas. You know the sort of thing: "Science has shown/research has demonstrated/studies have shown" .. what? The Big Bazooms theory of human evolution? The fact that it is completely ridiculous would make no impact on them.

Due to the rise of citizen-directed, Internet-based, new media, they currently face a crisis of sinking readership and advertising revenues.

They may respond by trying to keep control over who defines what is news and who reports it. In that case, citizen-directed media - the sort that most of the intelligent design community uses now - might have to fight for their existence.

Having given some thought to these matters, I offer some reflections and recommendations:

Part: 1: Here is what happened up to about 2000: Believing that materialism is the truth, many journalists assume that their role is to promote materialism at the expense of traditional, spiritually oriented ideas about human nature.

Part 2: Now, what changed after 2000? New findings that don't support materialism became common, and so did new media that bypass old media. Old media contemplate restrictions on new media.

Part 3: What forms could restrictions on new media take? (Basically, any form that could possibly slow them down, but some are discussed here.)

Part 4: Recommendations for the next decade. For example, "Start new media now, before you need a licence. (When new laws are introduced, people who are already key players on the scene are usually "grandfathered.")"

Next: Part 1: Here is what happened up to about 2000:

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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Evolution has become a favorite topic of the news media recently, but for some reason, they never seem to get the story straight. The staff at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture started this Blog to set the record straight and make sure you knew "the rest of the story".
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We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
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Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.

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Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.
Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
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