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"It's only propaganda if she knows it is false." Is that necessarily true if the sources for the information do know it is false?

I wonder at her incompetence in using information from Behe and Dembski without researching the material farther than secondary sources. Accepting information from Behe and Dembski about their own work is one thing, blindly accepting their word on scientific work is another. (This statement does of course imply that Behe's and Dembski's work is *not* scientific :-))

Recall that Ann's whole *purpose* was to attack evolution, and not to "dig to the bottom of things". So she was already limiting her pool of sources right at that point. Apparently (I've never read any ID/creation sci since junior high or high school...) Behe and Dembski are "the leading lights" in this area, so naturally she'd go to them. And to someone with no personal grounding in science, what they say would sound quite impressive.

Secondly, once you *generally* trust someone, you are much less likely to perform due diligence regarding their other claims.

Recall again that when your profession is political polemics, or opinion, the *level* and *degree* of fact-checking is of a completely different type than that found in science. In politics, it only has to be "defensible"-- i.e., yes, person X really spoke quote Y, here's the Fox News videotape. But in science one has to verify the accuracy and, well..."veridical" or "veriferous" nature of the contents of the quote, not merely its existence. Ann apparently wasn't used to having to do this.

Cheers!

Accepting information from Behe and Dembski about their own work is one thing, blindly accepting their word on scientific work is another. (This statement does of course imply that Behe's and Dembski's work is *not* scientific :-))

. . . because ultimately people who don't spend years studying a discipline will "blindly" (at least by your lights) accept someone's word on scientific work. And by your lights, blindly accepting your word on scientific work is OK. Naturally enough.
The problem boils down to the conundrum I addressed in the initial post. It is demonstrated to my complete satisfaction that "objective" journalism is in fact sophistry. People who own presses, and broadcast licenses, use them for fun and profit - and do so by operating on the P.T. Barnum principle that there is a sucker born every minute.
That's painfully obvious in the "TANG memo" case, in which Dan Rather brought forth as a smoking gun crude forgeries purporting to be TANG documents dating back to 1972 but containing anachronisms in textual content and in the technology by which they patently were created. Anyone who ever worked in an office in the 1970s can see the technological anachronisms when they are pointed out, if not before.
But when called on the patent forgery involved, Rather and CBS "doubled down" by sticking with the story. If you reflect on the question, "Why would they go with such an obviously fake story, and why would they stand by it when called out?" there is one answer that suggests itself. First, they knew that no other organ of "objective journalism" would go after them no matter how flimsy their story was, and second, they took for granted that the public consists almost exclusively of suckers who even if individually suspicious could not coalesce into a critical mass which would not accept the con.
Journalism used to get by with that sort of stuff all the time. Alar scare, silicone implant scare, whatever. Things that tear down the reputation of anyone who earns their reputation by actually doing things. If you actually accomplish things - whether it be growing food or policing your neighborhood or in the military - your reputation is the natural prey of those whose reputation is made exclusively by making others look bad. Given the slightest excuse they will second-guess you mercilessly.
Truth has nothing to do with it. The case of Joe McCarthy is instructive. As someone at the time wrote, people from one end of the country to the other were shouting, "I am being cowed. I am afraid to speak out!" And all over the country reporters responded, "Look, he is being cowed! He is afraid to speak out!" It is a case of the medium denying the message. "Everyone knows" that newspapers were being intimidated - yet every actual newspaper would, if somehow haled into court on the matter, be able to prove conclusively that in fact they had not been intimidated.
So what Ann Coulter has been doing, with Slander, Treason, and Godless, has simply been to point out where the emperor journalism has no clothes.
Maybe Coulter is wrong on this issue - but if "objective" journalism happens to be right about it, it is the merest of accidents. A case of a stopped clock happening to be right for a moment, twice a day. Because "objective" journalism has motive to promote evolution simply because it tears at the reputations of people who oppose cynicism. And although you may well believe yourself to be smarter than me (and that isn't impossible), I credit journalism with cunning but not with the ability to understand science better than I do. They make far too many elementary mistakes for that.