Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Aug. 25 WorldNetDaily article on D. James Kennedy's upcoming video linking Darwin to Hitler leads with Jack Abramoff-scandal-linked Rabbi Daniel Lapin's defense of the video, once again burying the real news involving Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and his links with the video. WND also misses out on conflicting statements made by Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries about Collins.
It's not until the 14th paragraph of the article that WND gets around to addressing the Collins issue, repeating a statement from Coral Ridge claiming that, contradicting Francis' claim that he was deceived about his appearance in the video, "A producer told Dr. Collins in person before the interview began that he was being interviewed for a program that would address the adverse social consequences of Darwin," and that "he was asked specifically, during the interview, about the Darwin-Hitler connection and responded on tape that he did not agree with that view." Nevertheless, Coral Ridge has agreed to leave Francis' name off promotions and remove him from future airings of the video.
This, however, is a somewhat contradictory stance from the one taken in an Aug. 24 Baptist Press article by Jerry Newcombe, co-producer of the program:
"We interviewed a number of scientists for the science section [of the program]," Newcombe said. "We didn't interview Dr. Collins ... about Hitler. In hindsight, we would not have put Dr. Collins in the program. But he understood it was Coral Ridge Ministries. He understood we were doing a special about Darwinism.... We're sorry we had this misunderstanding and we wish him well."
Newcombe seems to be the one who's being the most straightforward here; the Coral Ridge statement is defensive and couched in vagaries, such as the reference to "a program that would address the adverse social consequences of Darwin," which indicates that they were hiding the program's specific thesis from Collins. Coral Ridge did rather quickly acquiesce to Collins' demand to be disassociated from the video, which appears to be something of an admission nof guilt.
That's how biased WND is: Promoting right-wing Christian views is more important than reporting the news -- and Coral Ridge's deception of Collins is the real news here.
