The Press, Viewpoint Discrimination and Free Speech

A free and independent press? Not quite. Our national media do not always operate at arms-length from state-backed science, as the California Science Center (CSC) affair has demonstrated. 

As you probably know by now, in 2009 the state-run CSC cancelled a contract with the American Freedom Alliance (AFA) to screen a pro-ID documentary, Darwin's Dilemma, triggering a lawsuit over unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That lawsuit was recently settled. By the terms of the settlement agreement, the Science Center paid $110,000 and again opened its doors to the film, an invitation that was acknowledged by AFA as an apology and then respectfully declined for pragmatic reasons. 

True, the Science Center did not explicitly admit in the agreement that it engaged in viewpoint discrimination, but the large payout and invitation may be taken as an implicit admission that its defense regarding the viewpoint discrimination claim was weak, and that a public trial should therefore be avoided. Indeed, the Science Center was wise to settle. Otherwise the world and a jury would have seen emails that pointed plainly to viewpoint as the basis for cancelling the event. On that, as one Science Center vice president aptly summarized, "[AFA's] topic of Darwinism and the nature of their controversial approach is likely not a good fit with a science center," for "the main problem is that [AFA] is an anti-Darwin/Creationist group."

Read the rest of "Darwingate: What You Get When the Los Angeles Times 'Covers' a Cover-Up" here.