DESIGN OF LIFE: Mark, you're line producer for the Expelled movie just now, but you're originally from journalism, right? You survived ten years in TV news. And you're also the author of Feeding the Media Beast. Can you tell me why media almost uniformly support the materialist view in this controversy? Are there pressures to do so? Punishment for not doing so?

MATHIS: The national media has a very high concentration of people who are liberal, agnostic, or atheist. That creates self-reinforcing feedback.

DOL: Self-reinforcing feedback ... you mean, they don't know many people who disagree with them? So they keep hearing that they are right all the time and they believe it. Their own opinions bouncing from wall to wall?

MATHIS: That's right. Today, we have a very large percentage of agenda journalists - so convinced they are right that they don't protect themselves against their own biases.

These agenda journalists tend to be at the top - they are outspoken, absolutely convinced, and determined to tell stories according to their own philosophy. At a lower level, you get people who are really not thinking about it. They tell their stories with a bias that they don't even realize they have.

DOL: What amazes me is the lack of curiosity. And skepticism goes completely out the window too! Science journalists don't often question utter nonsense talked on behalf of, say, evolutionary psychology. It's like they don't know how to say, "This sounds silly." They don't seem to know how to form the words. What's behind that?

MATHIS: They're in the same club. If you're a science journalist, you are a neo-Darwinist. If you're working for Science and Nature, you are a Darwinist. You can't actually BE a skeptic who is rigorously protecting yourself against your own biases. You can't do that in today's media world. You have to flow right into the stream of consciousness ....

DOL: In other words, shut up, bug off, or convert. So people sometimes convert?

MATHIS: Remember, when you're bombarded by people who have a belief system they are absolutely convinced about, you begin to question your own philosophy. You think, "I must be wrong, even if what they are saying is ridiculous." So you begin to believe it too.

DOL: Quite a few of the Christian journalists simply drift to the Christian media, thus intensifying the uniform viewpoint of the secular media.

MATHIS: Working conditions are also one of the biggest factors: It is pretty much impossible in a mainsteam media outlet to actually do the job properly. You don't have anywhere near enough time to research the topic. National TV news is the absolute worst. Even if they were trying to be objective, they don't have enough time - and throw into the mix the fact that all the people around you see the information in a certain way. Even if you look at it and want to say "I don't believe that," you don't dare go there.

There is one exception that I can think of in the national broadcast system - John Stossel. ABC doesn't know what to do with him because he's so popular. As soon as he started questioning the dogmatic view in newsrooms and stopped toeing the party line he became a pariah and still is, but he has his job because he is the most popular guy on ABC. He's actually applying journalistic skepticism.

DOL: An amazing idea!

Next: PART THREE: Real scientists never have doubts?