{"id":1269,"date":"2011-03-14T23:33:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T03:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2011-03-17T17:20:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T21:20:06","slug":"fox-channel-news-story-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1269","title":{"rendered":"Fox channel news story & poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

The central Florida Fox affiliate, Channel 35 WOFL, ran a story tonight at 10 and 11 about Sen. Wise’s antievolution bill<\/a>. The story itself was OK. The person interviewed in favor of the bill, Jim Stemberger, claimed religion has no part in any of this, and said that all they want is a critical analysis of evolution in the schools. What, exactly, this critical analysis will consist of no one will say. I did a fairly long interview with the reporter and covered a lot of ground, but only a short clip or two were used, which is to be expected in TV news. I was fine with what made it into the story: I said the bill is an embarrassment to the state and that the details concerning what “critical analysis” will consist of are missing. The reporter also used a bit of information from our news release.<\/p>\n

So, the story was OK, but the promotion was horrible. It was teased as “evolution vs. creationism” and other sensational language. The worst part was an online poll the station had on their website. It started off asking the question “Do you believe evolution should be taught as a theory instead of accepted fact? Yes or No.” The question makes no sense. Evolution is a fact and a scientific theory. Of course, what happened there is that the person who created the poll confused the common use of the word theory — meaning essentially a guess — with the scientific use of the word — meaning a well-supported and tested explanation for a set of facts. (See the article Evolution as Fact and Theory<\/a> by Stephen Jay Gould. Also, our media fact sheet<\/a>-pdf about this subject from 2008 is still relevant today.) Nonetheless, the poll easily swung the sensible direction, with 90% of voters saying no. In other words, the vast majority of voters were saying that evolution should be taught as fact and not a “guess-theory”. But then a little while later, the station changed the question to say: “Do you believe evolution should be taught as a theory? Yes or No.” And they didn’t reset the poll, instead keeping the results with 90% voting no, thus completely changing the meaning and the results of the poll now that the “instead of accepted fact” part was edited out! This is the steep uphill climb we face, folks. The news media is constantly reinforcing the misinformation out there.<\/p>\n

Link to the story<\/a> (but I don’t know how long the story will be available).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The central Florida Fox affiliate, Channel 35 WOFL, ran a story tonight at 10 and 11 about Sen. Wise’s antievolution bill. The story itself was OK. The person interviewed in favor of the bill, Jim Stemberger, claimed religion has no … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-kt","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1268,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1268","url_meta":{"origin":1269,"position":0},"title":"More antievolution bill news coverage","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The St. Petersburg Times education blog The Gradebook ran our recent news release. Also, I was interviewed by the Central Florida Fox affiliate, Channel 35, about this bill. The story will run tonight at 10 and 11. John Stemberger was interviewed in favor of the bill. If you watch, let\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1292,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1292","url_meta":{"origin":1269,"position":1},"title":"Evolution newspaper story a confusing mess","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm feeling mighty confused by an article that recently appeared in Hernando Today (a Tampa Tribune paper): Educators: Bill that criticizes evolution won't hurt students. Read the following excerpt and ponder what is being stated for a moment: Dr. Stacey Thomson, chairwoman of the science department at Pasco-Hernando Community College,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":975,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=975","url_meta":{"origin":1269,"position":2},"title":"A bit of confusion, but all is good","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There was a flurry of activity yesterday started by the initial confusion of a Tampa Tribune reporter, but the end result is actually good news. First, I sent out a news release early yesterday morning announcing that the Florida Academy of Sciences issued a statement condemning Florida senate bill 2396.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"ID Creationism\" bills '09"","block_context":{"text":"\"ID Creationism\" bills '09","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=27"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":567,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=567","url_meta":{"origin":1269,"position":3},"title":"Early news reports","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Accounts of the House vote are already hitting the news: Palm Beach Post: Florida House approves evolution bill Gov. Charlie Crist dropped in on the House press gallery during the two-hour debate this morning and showed little enthusiasm for the bill, which opponents argue would open a backdoor for creationism\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08"","block_context":{"text":"\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1299,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1299","url_meta":{"origin":1269,"position":4},"title":"Another paper opposes “theory of whatever” bill","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Today has published an editorial opposing Sen. Wise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153non-evolution\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153theory of whatever\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bill: There he goes again. Sen. Wise used identical language in a previous bill that failed to become law. It's almost pitiful, that this is what the deniers of evolution are reduced to. In this country, lawmakers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1266,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1266","url_meta":{"origin":1269,"position":5},"title":"Senator Wise and the “non-evolution” “theory of whatever”","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Tampa Tribune reporter Elaine Silvestrini finally got someone to speak on behalf of the new antievolution bill filed in the state senate (SB 1854): Senator Stephen Wise himself (Story: Legislator's challenge to evolution has some alarmed). Senator Wise doesn't say much of substance other than to sing the same old\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}