We are calling on Time magazine to retract a blatantly wrong statement on its website about my Tuesday debate with Bill Nye “the Science Guy.” It was written by a reporter who wasn’t even present at the debate, as I have been informed by our publicist! (Maybe by the time you will have read this blog post, the correction will have already been made.)
In an article on the Time magazine website, the author gave a countdown of events related to the debate and stated, “The cameras pan to an all-white audience.”
Well, I was at the front of the auditorium, of course, and observed from right there that the claim was absolutely false. And let me have a person speak to this, who wrote in the comments section at the bottom of this Time article:
All-white audience? In the second row there was a distinguished-looking man with very dark skin, and in the third row was another African-American man. I didn't have to look any further than the first three rows to know that the Time reporter was dead wrong. See for yourself at a recording of the debate, found at www.debatelive.org . Makes me wonder if I can really trust this writer and her observational skills. I wonder, too, if Time.com will now place a "sic" next to the obviously wrong claim. So, editor, will you please?Later in the Time magazine article, the author stated, “The camera finally finds the first African American face in the audience,” which contradicts the previous statement of an “all-white audience.”
So what kind of agenda did this writer have in writing such a wrong thing? Was she trying to imply that we were somehow able to stop people with dark skin from attending the debate? She is probably not even aware that just a few yards from the debate hall is a major exhibit inside our Creation Museum where we present the biblical message that, biologically and biblically, there is only one race. We also explain in our anti-racism exhibit that each person has the same main basic pigment in their skin—just different amounts of it, and thus there are different shades of brown skin. By the way, I am the coauthor of the book One Race One Blood, and the coauthor of this book on racial reconciliation was the man mentioned above as sitting in row two during the debate, Dr. Charles Ware.
Yes, Time magazine needs to own up to this mistake and correct it.
I suggest you contact the magazine editor and/or post comments at the end of the article, offering a firm (yet polite) challenge to correct this error. Here is a link to the article.
Now, ABC TV had a very good news item last night about our debate on its national news program, World News with Diane Sawyer. Watch it here (there may be a commercial to watch first) and see how a different reporter managed to fairly cover the debate. You can also watch a similar segment in last night’s Nightline program.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.