February 22, 2006

By ROSETTE ROYALE
Staff Reporter

Seattle is often called a liberal bubble. But there’s a well-funded conservative organization downtown that’s looking to give that illusory bubble a little pop! Familiarize yourself, oh ye denizens of the Emerald City, with the Discovery Institute.

Described on their website as a “non-profit educational foundation,” DI brings to its work a point of view that includes a “belief in God-given reason and the permanency of human nature.” As such, when DI identifies an educational cause that folds nicely into its mission, it swaddles the issue like a babe born of virgin birth. This practice is best exemplified in their unflagging nurturance of intelligent design. Hailed as a “theory,” ID has generated more ink over the past few years than seems possible. But why? David Domke, Associate Professor of Communications at the University of Washington, has a few ideas.

Domke is practiced at examining how messages are disseminated and their impact on the public. In his 2004 release, God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the “War on Terror,” and the Echoing Press (Pluto Press, $22.95), Domke offers a critical analysis on how Bush used his religious beliefs to create a public policy that capitalized on Americans’ fears after Sept. 11. Thus, turning an observant eye on ID seems right up his alley.

And so, on one of those all-too-brief winter moments when the clouds dissolved and the sun shone down in effulgence, Domke shed light on why mass media is a perfect landscape for a religious notion to disguise itself as scientific theory.

Real Change: How would you define “Intelligent Design?”

David Domke: The idea that some being or object created the Earth and humans, and it is responsible for our development into the kind of thinking humans that we are today.

RC: How has this idea been communicated to you, as an average reader of the media?

Domke: Well, I think primarily the way that people who are proponents of intelligent design talk about it is that it’s a counter to evolution, and that evolution is incomplete in its theory and explanation of human development. They simplify evolution as this idea that humans just descended from single-cell objects or apes. But they don’t spend a lot of time talking about the concept itself of intelligent design. Mostly, they’re talking about a critique of evolution, because that resonates with the American public. The American public poll numbers show 50-60 percent consistently don’t really buy the whole evolution argument, they don’t really think that humans are associated on a species level with other animals. They see us as distinct entities. Now, a sophisticated, smart thing people who are in favor of intelligent design have done is not build their own argument: they’ve critiqued another argument — evolution. That’s a much easier thing to do in public debate. It’s much easier to tear down somebody else’s position than to necessarily build your own position and defend it.

RC: So when people are tearing down a position, is that making a position, or is that creating the perception of making a position?

Domke: It is certainly perceived as suggesting a position, but in this case, there is no real position being articulated other than, “There must have been something else than evolution.” Thus, an intelligent creator. They’re not really defining how the intelligent creator could have come into being; they’re not articulating what scientists say you have to explain: the empirical evidence for that argument. But there is no evidence to offer, and I say that as a person of religious belief. Intelligent design claims it’s scientific. It’s not. As a religious claim, it’s fine. This is what religion is about: the belief in something you can’t see.

RC: What are your own religious views?

Domke: Well, I would claim myself as a Christian, but I would be ecumenical in my general outlook.

RC: When you hear ID proposed in the media, do you feel a connection to what ID proponents are saying?

Domke: I do. I see why it resonates, but I see this as a religious claim, not a scientific claim. I’m perfectly comfortable with those coexisting. But the problem — and courts have said this now — is when intelligent design begins to present itself as a scientific position. It is not. [Ed. note: Domke is referring to a recent Penn. court decision where a judge, finding ID was based on religion, ruled it could not be taught alongside evolutionary theory in the Dover, Penn., school system.]

RC: How does the media play into, or does the media play into, helping to get the notion of ID across to the public?

Domke: The media, actually, are perfect for intelligent design folks, because mainstream journalists aren’t scientific experts. So when somebody at Discovery Institute makes a claim about [ID] being scientific, journalists — no offense — aren’t in any position to really say true or not true— unless they get other scientists who will criticize it, and the scientists themselves are not very good at publicly speaking. So what you’ve got is the sophisticated public communication apparatus over here by intelligent design folks, who know that if they claim it’s scientific, the media can’t really challenge it. So they’re winning the framing debate because they’re using the media to their advantage. But they lose the debate whenever they move into a really knowledgeable public dimension, such as a court of law. But they will win it in a mass public setting, such as the media.

RC: How can media turn the tables on that? Is there a way?

Domke: So you ask a question about what is the role of mass media in American life. Currently, and for some decades now, media has been primarily supported by advertising: they are set up to function as media that are not really independent voices, but are set up to quote others. The media themselves really don’t attempt, except on the editorial pages, to take positions. Now, I think they implicitly do [take positions,] but they don’t attempt to do so. In that approach, they’re set up to be manipulated by other people who can use sophisticated rhetoric and know how to use the media to their advantage.

RC: In your book God Willing, you talk about how, after 9/11, George Bush got into a discourse of good and evil, peril versus security, and how that was echoed on the editorial pages. Is ID another example of how the press is echoing what’s being fed to them, even though it’s not by political leaders?

Domke: Exactly. This is a case in which conservatives, yet again, have created a moral and simple — and I don’t mean “simple” in a negative way — argument that builds upon a viewpoint that Americans generally hold, which is skepticism about evolution. It takes that position and builds it into an argument that progressives are not effectively countering or responding to, with the media all the while sitting in the middle saying, “Hey, we’re just covering this,” but they are really not just covering this. They’re giving the advantage to the conservatives to put forward this viewpoint on a consistent basis.

So who’s to blame? Is it the media, or is it progressives? Generally, I’m going to put the blame on progressives, because any thinking person understands how the mainstream media work in this country. If you want the mainstream media to work to your advantage, you have to give a message. You have to do it in simple form, you have to be moral about it, you have to be confrontational about it, and you have to speak in positive ways about the nation. This is what the media want. This is what I go around the country talking about. If progressives would simply be proactive and create those messages, instead of attempting to react, they could use the media the way conservatives do. But today in America, conservatives use the press much more effectively.

RC: Can you cite a time when conservatives began to use the media effectively to get their message across?

Domke: I would say it was particularly in the 1980s, with the Reagan administration. There are a couple things that happened in the administration as part of this process. One is that you have a sophisticated communication apparatus in the White House, with a guy from Hollywood who knew how to use the media effectively. Second, you had developments in the media environment which conservatives both created and then capitalized upon: the deregulation of the cable industry, which allowed an explosion of cable television outlets, including cable news, from which Fox was created. When conservatives helped deregulation, they created a cable news outlet which is distinctly conservative and has come to dominate the cable news environment. Third, you’ve got the rise of the Internet, another form in which messages can be echoed widely. Then you’ve got media conglomerations in which fewer and fewer wealthy rich folks—wealthy conservatives—own more and more media outlets. So you have these structural developments in the mass media that have been occurring through a set of conservative actions, but also just through market forces. In instance after instance, the conservative movement has been light-years ahead of progressives in understanding how to use these media developments to their advantage. Then there’s talk radio. Talk radio developed in the 1980s, and who’s head and shoulders above the rest? Conservatives. Twenty-seven of the top 30 talk show hosts in terms of audience in this country are conservatives. So, in all of these four media structural developments, conservatives learned, in the 80s and the 90s, to use the media to their advantage.

Progressives, meanwhile, still think that we’re back in the days of the early enlightenment, where we’re really talking about issues and having a rational debate. We’re not. It’s who can talk the loudest, and who can get the message to be amplified the most in the media. That’s what leads in American politics today. Progressives think we’re really talking about the fact that the Bush administration spied on us. No. What we’re really talking about, the Bush administration recognizes, is protecting the American public. That’s what they keep talking about over and over again. Meanwhile, progressives are over here talking about, “This is illegal, it’s unconstitutional.” That’s all facts: that’s irrelevant. Over here, you got the emotional message about protecting the public that’s getting repeated over and over again. The media amplifies it.

RC: Okaaaaay….

Domke: I know. I tend to depress progressives. [laughter]

RC: Can you change a mindset that says, “Rational debate, issues, issues, issues,” to one that says, “Emotional debate”?

Domke: I’m not necessarily wanting progressives to give up their knowledge. That knowledge is valuable. But the reality is that the American public doesn’t have the time or the inclination to pay attention to all the details of politics. What you’ve got to do, in addition to providing someone with that factual information, is present your messages in simplistic kind of forms that political scholars call “cues.” You’ve got to provide little cues to the public. You cue them so that the person who only has thirty seconds to give to a topic, like evolution or intelligent design, can pick up the arguments just like that. Progressives want to get into whether ID is science, or “Science is about this.” Well, the person is already checked out. Intelligent design folks say, “Do you believe in evolution? Do you really think we’re from monkeys? We’re not.” That’s a simple cue, right there. So what I say to the progressives is, “You have all this knowledge, but unless you simplify down to a couple of sentences, and repeat those, you’re not going to get the American public’s attention.” I’ve developed a collection of Democrats who do this. Some Democrats have never done it. Bill Clinton did it very well in certain moments of his presidency.

RC: And what would one of those moments be?

Domke: If you look at Clinton’s public approval ratings, his highest ratings in his eight years of presidency occurred during the Lewinsky scandal: there’s a thirteen-month window when his approval went from the low 60s-high 50s, into the 70 percent approval rating. People say, “How did this happen?” Through my own statistical analysis, I show how the Democrats unified, developed a moral message, were confrontational, and made people feel good about the nation because they said they were protecting the Constitution from a partisan assault. So they’ve done it then. I’ve also shown in the sixties how this worked. But we’re forty years removed from when the Democrats were in political dominance in this country. It’s not a coincidence that they had a moral message and they were united. That’s where Republicans are today.

RC: Is there anything we can do to make the debate less emotional and less irrational?

Domke: I think that the Democrats do have a real opportunity in this country right now, with ethic scandals in the Republican Party. But it’s going to take them a while to figure out some of this stuff and then to implement it.

What can the individual citizen do? Engage in the debate over what are moral values. Right now, that’s really where the debate is in this country: what does it mean to be a moral American citizen? The loudest voices out there claim that to be a moral American citizen means to be anti-abortion, anti-same-sex relationships, pro-school prayer, pro-intelligent design. These voices are very loud, and these voices are claiming the moral high ground on everything. The progressives are over here reacting, “Oh shit, I didn’t see this coming.” I think the only way that changes is if individuals, citizen by citizen, in their neighborhood, among the people who they hang out with and also who may disagree with them, enter into this debate, because I can tell you that conservatives have no problem entering into this debate. One of the things I talk to democrats about is: Look: you don’t win elections by necessarily standing up for the positions that people already agree on. You win elections by having convictions.

RC: How does this go back to intelligent design?

Domke: Well, the whole intelligent design issue is just the tip of the iceberg for about 10, 12 different issues that conservatives are dominating the discourse on. But not necessarily right on, as the judge said.

RC: Will there ever be a time, you think, when the media can fully address a large-scale, almost infinite topic such as religion?

Domke: Not in terms of that topic getting its appropriate due, no. I don’t think the media are going to change. They are commercial institutions that make a lot of money in this country. Something as complex as evolution or religion or figuring out healthcare — I think a smart, good communicator, politically savvy, can figure out the way to present these issues to the American public in simple ways that resonates with the media. So can it be done? Absolutely. And progressives refuse to do it, at their own peril.

RC: So, we have Democrats, Republicans, progressives, conservatives. We seem to have a binary thinking going on all the time. I’m interested in how to break apart the binary thinking to deal with the complex issues.

Domke: That’s part of the Western psyche, I think, the binary approach. I think a progressive who’s frustrated by the current political media structure, can nonetheless work within those structures to introduce new models of thinking about issues of race, or sexuality, or healthcare. I think they can do that. Yes, the binaries are frustrating, they ultimately constrain the discourse, our thinking. That’s the hand we’re dealt right now, and I tend to be more of a pragmatist than an idealist. But I think what we can do is still very, very powerful. The moment we begin to throw up our hands and say, “Forget it, these structures work against us and forever doom us,” then the conservatives have won.