Last night’s Nightline segment on intelligent design fulfilled the promise of its inane preview article. Rather than cover the substance of the intellectual debate over design, all Nightline could do was act as the mouthpiece for ID-bashers like Barbara Forrest. Nightline asserted that the debate over intelligent design is about politics and PR, but that is only because Nightline didn’t want to cover anything else. Nightline’s producers clearly had a predetermined agenda going into their story, and they stuck to it.
We audiotaped Nightline’s interview with Dr. Stephen Meyer at Discovery Institute’s office, and we’ve prepared a verbatim transcript, available here. If you want learn what Nightline refused to show its viewers, I encourage you to read it. I think you’ll find the transcript illuminating — not only because of Dr. Meyer’s answers, but because of the predictable tone of some of the questions by Nightline’s staff. Here’s your chance to go behind-the-scenes with the gatekeepers of the national media to see how they screen out viewpoints and information that don’t fit their stereotypes.