Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 12:34:01 PM
I was reading an old NYT article when I was struck by something. I know the NYT has a very strong (if unacknowledged) ideological bias, but they usually take some pains to hide it. However, looking at
this article from their science section, I was surprised by their second paragraph:
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375 million-year-old fish, a
large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought
"missing link" in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life
walking on four limbs on land.
In addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution,
the fossils are widely seen by scientists as a powerful rebuttal to
religious creationists, who hold a literal biblical view on the origins
and development of life.
That has to be the most odd second paragraph I have ever seen in a scientific article.
Yes, it does rebut creationist arguments, it also rebuts Lamarckianism, as such transitional traits are unlikely to be developed through activity. But so what? It is like writing about the big bang and writing it refutes steady state theories of the universe.
The significance is that it provides evidence of evolutionary theory, not that it rebuts all conflicting theories. Of necessity, confirming one theory refutes all theories which contradict it. However, the normal practice in almost every science article I have seen is to write what it confirms, unless the theory it refutes is the mainstream belief.
And, as far as I know, creationism is not a mainstream scientific theory. If this were to
REFUTE Darwinian theory, or were to refute, say, the theory of general relativity, then that would be significant and would merit a first or second paragraph mention. But to refute a theory not seriously entertained in biological science? Why is that worthy of mention at all, much less in paragraph 2?
The answer is simple, the NYT is an organ of the Democratic party, and, as those espousing creationism tend to hold the opposite ideological view, anything which harms them is seen as advancing the NYT agenda. It sounds crazy, but this is the paper that publish stories hampering our intelligence operations int he past, they have a very clear ideological axe to grind. So, to them, the main point of the story is not that it helps to confirm a significant scientific theory, but that it help score points against the supporters of a detested ideology.
Which once again makes me ask, why don't we just give up the pretense of disinterested journalism, and return to the very sensible position of the preceding century, when papers openly professed their ideological bias. The myth of impartial journalism has had its day, and proved a total failure, time to try something else.
POSTSCRIPT
My earlier thoughts on this topic are described in "
The Death of Impartial Media", as well as "
Some Thoughts on the Media" and "
The Press Versus The Nation". I dealt with some related media topics in "
Why Are Journalists Special?", "
The Media-Obama Suicide Pact" and "
An Adversarial Press?".
Originally, I planned to list all of my media-related posts here, but once I realized about 50% of what I write touches on the media in some way, I decided it best to just leave it at what I wrote above.