UFOs and the Main Stream Media

The Main Stream Media (hereafter MSM) has, in the last few weeks reported on a couple of UFO related stories that could have had some significance if any of the alleged reporters had ever had an original thought. The clues were there, if they could think beyond the next martini... though I suppose their battle cry, “Fake it until you make it,” tells us something about them.

First there was the big hoopla over an FBI document that suggested there had been a UFO crash. But there were no names attached as the source and the information seemed to be that from the Aztec, New Mexico hoax of 1948. All of the information had appeared in magazines and books in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Without any names, vague locations, and general information, there wasn’t much to do with it.

What the MSM missed, was the fact that the document existed at all. Why would an FBI agent submit something like this? Obviously because he had orders to do so. No, not him specifically, but FBI agents in general. They were to be on the lookout for UFO related information.

We could go back to the July, 1947, when the then Army Air Forces requested FBI assistance in UFO investigations. J. Edgar Hoover, the then director, said that he would do it, but they had to be let in on all UFO information. Hoover mentioned “discs recovered” in his response, in this case a hoax from Shreveport, but the point is the FBI was interested in UFOs. The document in question showed that several years later, the FBI was still gathering UFO information regardless of the source or reliability.

If the situation had changed in those years from Hoover’s order... if the situation was such that the Air Force knew that there were no flying saucers, wouldn’t they have told the FBI? And then, wouldn’t the FBI stopped gathering UFO information, especially when that information was on the lunatic fringe side?

So, the reporters just told us that the document was out there, though we had known that for more than two decades. They didn’t bother to check around. They didn’t bother to see if there was anything important in the document. They just wrote their stories, their superficial stories, and ran off to the next one. They simply didn’t understand.

And then, second, we have to put up with the latest nonsense about Roswell, from a MSM reporter whole knows nothing about the case, has little clue about Area 51 and apparently knows next to nothing about aviation history. Hell, she doesn’t even know that Area 51 didn’t exist in 1951 and that it wasn’t named that because of alien bodies brought there in 1951.

Here’s the point. The MSM rejects the idea of alien spacecraft, looking down their noses at those of us who believe the evidence for visitation is persuasive. They are uninterested in looking at the evidence, but they do know that UFO stories and documentaries are good for ratings. So, while they’ll make fun of UFO reports and UFO sighters, they will also be sure to devote time to them to boost their ratings.

In fact, I just heard someone on television make the crack that those who see UFOs live in the rural south and don’t have a full set of teeth. Of course the MSM doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, that the best sightings come from those with college degrees and who had an opportunity to observe the UFO for a minute or more. It’s just easier to continue with the stereotype because to do otherwise would require some research.

For more than twenty years I have been publishing books about UFOs and UFO sightings. They range from The UFO Casebook which looked at a history of UFO reports with some commentary about those sightings to the highly skeptical The Abduction Enigma which suggested that alien abduction has a terrestrial explanation.

Of course The Abduction Enigma was overlooked by the MSM, though it would have reinforced their belief structure. They were more interested in a book published a decade later that reached the same basic conclusions that we did with The Abduction Enigma. We even had some of the academic credentials that the MSM like, but they ignored our book. The preferred the derivative book that came out later that gave no credit to the work we had done.

The real question here is if the MSM can’t be bothered with learning about a topic before they report on it, if they can’t be bothered with understanding what is happening, why should we accept anything they have to say about... well, anything?

Sure, you can say that reporting on UFOs is not up there with combat reporting, or election reporting, and those in the MSM take that seriously.

I say, “Oh really?”

Two examples.

While in Iraq, I happened to see Ted Koppel reporting on the conditions of the schools in Baghdad. He was at a school where he had found an open sewer just inside the school grounds. He was reporting on how horrible the conditions were.

My response? We had repaired, updated, and donated books, supplies and even computers to some 2500 schools in Iraq and he found the one we hadn’t gotten to yet. He made no mention of all that good work done by American soldiers.

Second, as I was working on a paper in a master’s program, I was reviewing the TET Offensive of 1968. Never mind that the reporters were caught off guard, though the military wasn’t... just look at how many high-ranking officers and political leaders predicted the offensive in the months before (even the ARVN First Division recalled its soldiers 48 hours before the launch of TET). Never mind that the reporters all reported from the Colon section of Saigon where there was great damage (for historic and racial reasons) but not from much of the rest of the city which was not on fire (flames and burning buildings look much better on the news than a downtown street with no damage).

What I learned was that many of the political leaders were not listening to the generals who were in Vietnam... they were taking their opinions from the reporters whose agenda was to look brave and to present their personal yet uninformed views of the situation. The question would be, “Just where did they get their military training, and how is it that they couldn’t understand the situation as it was rather than reporting on what they thought it was?”

So, they don’t get it when it comes to UFOs and in the greater scheme of things, that’s not as important as so much of the other things they don’t get. They just quote one another and worry about filling their time on the air rather than understanding what is really going on.

It is time that we stopped listening to them, their “informed” sources, and realize they just don’t have any inside track, inside knowledge, or even a realistic comprehension of the world around them. They are there to promote themselves, get into the big time, and make the big bucks. They often just don’t care about the truth.

How do I know? Nearly twenty years ago, just before an interview with a reporter for a major daily newspaper, I said that we could prove much of what we said about UFOs. The intern (no they wouldn’t waste the talent of a real reporter on this) said that the editors didn’t care. They knew there were no UFOs.

Just how do you fight that?