PressEthic

That moment, billions of years ago, a single event seems to have brought the universe into existence. Scientifically, this seems to be shored up year after year. A single event. A single explosion. Perhaps, a single word.

National Public Radio carried the story on two separate news magazine programs and in each gave credence to the Big Bang as a defacto event. Perhaps it was. I happen to think, rather unscientifically, that it makes sense. I also happen to think that particular event exploded into reality with the utterance of the spoken word. I further believe that millions of Americans, millions more throughout the world, agree with me. Nary a word in the press, that I could see, giving credence to that.

If providing point and counter-point is the rubric by which journalists strive to provide the whole picture, I wonder what the sentiment must be where many did not even consider providing an alternate perspective on this discovery. Perhaps because, to some in the media, there is no contrary view? Or, there is no contrary view that could be taken seriously?

An article in the Chicago Tribune states that

Many consider their accomplishment the most important development in the field of cosmology, cementing the Big Bang theory as the best explanation for how the universe began, showing how stars and galaxies formed and providing scientists with a marvelous time machine for exploring the past and future of the cosmos.

The Los Angeles Times began their piece with this:

Two astrophysicists from Berkeley and NASA won the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their discovery of the strongest evidence to date that the universe began with a big bang, a feat the Nobel committee said "marked the inception of cosmology as a precise science."

And, not to leave out the east coast, the New York Times asserts that

a result was a resounding confirmation of a universe born in a terrific explosion of space and time 14 billion years ago and in which the ordinary matter that makes up stars and people is overwhelmed by some mysterious “dark matter.”

Nothing there about competing ideologies, or, complementary ones either. Perhaps it was just an oversight.