The Cobb County school board’s foray into how the origin of man should be taught in classrooms is itself an evolutionary exercise into news coverage of a “controversy.”
Editorial boards have weighed in for and against the school system’s recently adopted policy to allow alternatives to evolution to be discussed. Columnists have opined. Dozens of letters to the editor have been printed making the case for one side and questioning the motives of those on the other side.
And, I suspect, hardly anyone’s opinion has changed. Still, several themes emerged that are worth discussing:
Labels: I’m intrigued about how important words become in such controversies; how each side wishes to control the negative or positive perceptions associated with the words used to describe its position.
Early on in this controversy, the anti-evolutionists were always quick to talk about the “theory of evolution,” as if 150 years of scientific probing and study of Charles Darwin’s observations have led the scientific community into accepting there is major disagreement on this particular theory.
An interesting twist on this turned up late in the Cobb debate, when proponents of the Cobb policy started referring to the evolutionary science as “Darwinism.” That made for a nice antidote to biblical “creationism,” which is what opponents of the Cobb policy said the debate was really all about.
But no, proponents said. It wasn’t creationism at all. It is “intelligent design,” a relatively new name for a theory that is based on the belief that an omniscient force was behind a complex chain of natural events that led to the existence of humankind.
As some interest groups have learned so well over the years, control the dialogue and you can shape the debate.
Leadership: Speaking of shaping the debate, some important people stayed on the sidelines of this one. Of all the voices heard shouting about whether this move was good or bad, that steely silence you may have detected was the seven members of the Cobb County Board of Education and the county’s superintendent of schools. Can’t talk about it, they said on advice of their legal counsel.
Save for a few statements about how they worried that many people were misinterpreting their motives, they refused interviews or questions and answers from the public about the whole controversy.
No word either from the governor, or the state superintendent of schools or other candidtates for public office who often tout education as one of the state’s highest priorities.
Back in Cobb again: Predictably, the national media picked up on the evolution story and ran with it. And like other run-ins with the national media — the Ten Commandments issue on the courthouse wall in the ’80s and the notorious “gay lifestyle” resolution in the ’90s — the county took its share of abuse for the evolution policy in major newspapers around the country, as well as on TV talk fests.
Interestingly, virtually all of the national outlets described Cobb as a “conservative Republican stronghold.” Many called it “affluent.” Several said it was “predominantly white,” although what race, income and party membership had to do with this issue was not clear. In fact, it was probably irrelevant.
At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we worked hard in our news coverage to navigate the obvious biases of the participants as well as to explain what the proposed policy said and what it might mean inside Cobb County classrooms. We didn’t let one side or the other direct the terms of the coverage.
“Controversy” is an overused word in journalism, although in this case it was exactly that. Whenever it turns up in public policy issues our goal should be to generate light, not just heat — even if there’s probably little chance that opinions may be changed.
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Contact Mike King by e-mail at insideajc@ajc.com, by phone at 404-526-5819, by fax at 404-526-5611 or by writing P.O. Box 4689, Atlanta, GA 30302.
