Even Cornelia Dean’s Friends Are Concerned
As Rob Crowther noted earlier, NYT’s Cornelia Dean has been doing a shoddy job reporting on intelligent design and evolution. In fact, even her allies are beginning to take notice.
On Thursday the local (and vehemently anti-ID) weekly had a note on its blog to Cornelia Dean. While they agreed with her biased reporting, even they are getting tired of her knee-jerk parroting:
Cornelia Dean! It’s good to be emphatic, but you start to sound like a robot—one of those Darwin-believin’ automatons whom the Discovery Institute takes great pleasure in deriding.
While it’s true that Dean is an easy target, it’s worth noting here that such staunch supporters of Darwinism are worried that Dean is actually hurting their cause. If readers start to suspect unfair and biased reporting with her heavy-handed tone, they may question her premises, and that’s a reaction that Darwinists simply can’t afford.
Of course, there are those who lavish praise on Dean for being “one of [NYT’s] best science people” and not using “the usual dreadful ‘he said, she said’ nonsense that passes for balance…” Who else would congratulate a reporter for being so ideologically committed to Darwin that she doesn’t actually allow her subjects to speak for themselves? PZ Myers, who has finally proven himself less reasonable than The Stranger.