Denyse O’Leary
5/05
The Washington Post’s mid-western bureau chief has just written me a polite letter requesting a review copy of By Design or by Chance?
(You will recall that I wrote the book, in part, to educate the media, so maybe I wasn’t entirely wasting my time …)
No matter how rotten things get, I hope people will remember:
1. Replacing one story with another DOWNstream is very difficult. The further you can get upstream, the better your chances of changing the story. That is why it is important to make friends among journalists, filmmakers, et cetera, because those people can simply go right to the head of the stream (= BEHIND the camera) and change the story by giving it a different spin, right there at the head.
2. Most journalists were raised with naturalism, and naturalism is promoted in j-schools. That is, journalists are taught to inordinately privilege the pronouncements of science organizations, irrespective of the nature of the issues. They will NOT ask the hard, rude questions, in this case. For example, if a science boffin bumphs that there is “no conflict between religion and science, rightly understood,” the journalist will NOT then go and seek information from those who would detail the abuses committed by that science organization under the cover of that infamous doctrine. It would just never OCCUR to the journalist to do it.
Nor will you ever hear, “Dr. Alberts, have you published a number of widely used textbooks, promoting the Darwinist perspective? Isn’t this a conflict of interest for you in this case?” (Unless I flag Alberts down myself, which I might at some point, he may go to his grave without ever being asked
that.)
3. Above all, never forget that the typical journalist thinks that naturalism IS true, and that therefore you are a fool, a liar, or a menace – or all three. It will take many people many years to unlearn what they know about naturalism, of which Darwin is the prophet. In the meantime, they will simply be unable to see a number of otherwise obvious propositions.
4. If I have failed to make sense to you on this, or you do not agree with me, please do not phone up your local journalist and inform him that he is an icehole. Just don’t do that, if only as a favour to me, okay? I might have to drink with the guy some time, and it’s easier to get along if my
friends haven’t been slanging him.
Cheers, Denyse
My blog:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com
Denyse Oleary
oleary@sympatico.ca
http://www.designorchance.com
