GOD AND DARWIN: THE YORK DAILY RECORD AND THE

INTELLIGENT DESIGN TRIAL

Carla Barbush, Chelsea Parks, & Alondra Thomas

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

DOVER, PENNSYLVANIA

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html

KITZMILLER V. DOVER AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT

Head Bonsell moved to change the ninth grade biology curriculum slightly—adding the sentence: “Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution, including, but not limited to, intelligent design.”

December 14, 2004, 11 Dover parents and the ACLU filed a lawsuit to fight the curriculum change.

Defense attorney Patrick Gillen’s counterargument that the board was only trying to “advance science, not religion.”

Made national news

KITZMILLER V. DOVER AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT

Seeking a legal way to teach alternative theories that accommodated their religious beliefs

Bill Buckingham headed the curriculum committee. Wouldn’t approve the standard biology

textbook proposed by the district’s science teachers; it was “laced with Darwinism”

KITZMILLER V. DOVER AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT

“Two thousand years ago, someone died on the cross. Won’t somebody stand up for him?” – Buckingham

“Ideology should not trump science in the context of educating our children.”- John Kerry, 2004 Democratic presidential candidate

DARWINISM

Proposed that in competition for scarce resources, species with features better suited to their environment flourished and reproduced, passing on their advantages characteristics to their offspring, while species without such advantages eventually died out.

1859: “On the Origin of the Species” Concluded: “Species have been modified during a long

course of descent, chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favorable variations.”

Challenged the Bible’s story of life’s origins as laid out in the book of Genesis

INTELLIGENT DESIGN (ID)

States certain features of life on earth—such as the eye and the immune system—were so complex that they could not have emerged through a series of successive mutations alone.

The idea that all life was created by a divine being

“ID folks are appealing to a public that we know has a relatively low level of scientific literacy.”

ID theorists seemed unable to explain how ID worked

SCIENTIFIC THEORY

The scientific term with the greatest difference in usage between the public and scientists is the term “theory,” which means “guess” or “hunch” to members of the public, and something far more important to scientists. In science, a theory is a logical construct of facts, laws, and tested hypotheses that explain a natural phenomenon. The proper synonym for theory— used in the scientific sense—therefore is “explanation,” rather than “guess.” Because evolution is a well‐established scientific theory—in the sense of an explanation—it is no more a guess than the theory of gravitation or the theory of the atom.

FIRST AMENDMENT

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Dover parents and the ACLU filed a lawsuit to fight the curriculum change. They sought to prove that ID was an attempt to introduce religion into science classrooms, and was therefore a violation of the First Amendment establishment clause.

LAURI LEBO

Chief education reporter for the York Daily Record

At the time of the trial, she had 15 years of journalistic experience

Struggled with how to cover the trial

“I just remember thinking this is not a fair story, [because] it’s perfectly balanced,”

Educated herself thoroughly because she was never a science writer

Accepted the basic premise of evolution

Was it best to frame it as a political story, a science story, or a courthouse story --- and what did the answer say about how she should write it?

LAURI LEBO

“You do want to be fair. You don’t want to say that somebody has a lock on truth… At first, you keep giving everybody the benefit of the doubt… If you don’t know your subject, it’s scary… You don’t want to get stuff wrong. So you do play it cautious and let them do most of the talking.

If religious readers perceived her story as biased in favor of evolution regardless of the evidence she presented in its favor– she risked alienating a large section of Daily Record’s readership.

JUDGEMENT

ID is poorly disguised creationismRuled in favor of the Kitzmiller

PROFESSIONAL RAMIFICATIONS

Declaring that scientific data firmly supported a given conclusion, journalists risked implicitly aligning themselves with a political party.

Editors urged her to find holes in the evolution theory

Worst case scenario: be taken off the case

Misleading to present balanced picture of a debate viewed lopsided

POTTER BOX: FACTS

Dover, PA

Intelligent Design v. Evolution

Lauri Lebo covering the education/Chief Education Reporter

Editors felt she should provide a more balanced report

School Board head, Alan Bonsell, a fundamentalist Christian

Seeking a legal way to teach alternative theories that accommodated religious beliefs

POTTER BOX: VALUES

Fairness/Balance

Accuracy

POTTER BOX: PRINCIPLES

Deontology- It is the reporter’s duty to provide a fair and accurate representation of the story

Justice Theory- If it’s deemed that Intelligent Design and Darwinism hold equal value in education, they should be covered the same way. However, they are not, so should they still be covered?

Relativism- Different rules apply in different places. Dover School District is a particularly rural and devote community

POTTER BOX: LOYALTIES

Employer- Editors wanted Lebo to be more balanced in her reporting. Wanted her to present holes in Evolutionary Theory

Readers- Giving too much attention to evolution may alienate the Daily Record’s large religious readership

Education- Intelligent Design is not science

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Associated Press. (2005). Judge rules against ‘intelligent design’. Msnbc.com. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10545387/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Gilsinan, Katleen. (2009). God and Darwin: The York Daily Record and the Intelligent Design Trial. The Journalism School Knight Case Studies Initiative, 29.

http://laurilebo.com/dp/ http://logicalscience.blogspot.com/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html http://www.wpclipart.com/world_history/ape_man_evolution.jpg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WRzm1T99BE