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Mainstream media in the United States overwhelmingly ignored UFO reports in 2008, a writer has charged. Even worse, the media --often snobbish-- also deliberately ignores confusing and contradictory reports from officials, said Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter Billy Cox.
2008 started out as just another mediocre year for the mainstream media’s ineptitude with UFO issues. But boy, did that ever change.
It began reliably enough early last January, when Editor & Publisher, the exhausted industry watchdog monitoring the extinction of newspapers and their advertising revenues, found time to chide The Wall Street Journal for wasting 1A real estate on UFOs....
And as the months went by, UFOs continued to provide the media intelligentsia with easy rhetorical devices in which to gauge the stupidity of the American people.....
Until the drama over Stephenville, Tex., shook down. And as a result of the MSM’s evaporation in the aftermath of this still-unresolved national security fiasco, De Void has proclaimed 2008 as The Media’s Worst UFO Year Ever.To be sure, there was an initial stampede to the Stephenville region shortly after Empire-Tribune reporter Angelia Joiner’s accounting of the Jan. 8 UFO incident made the wires. TV crews came from as far away as Japan to get the story, and why not?
Cox lambasted the media's failure to hammer changing reports that U.S. fighter jets were scrambled in response to the Stephenville sighting. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reports filed by Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) investigations gained official data that indicated the reported UFO may have been headed for President George W. Bush's Crawford ranch.
He also took on internet rumors that CNN's Miles O'Brien was fired--along with others--shortly after he prepared a UFO series:
Finally, in November, during the last ratings period of 2008, CNN’s Miles O’Brien filed a week-long UFO series (pre-empted by the terror attacks in Mumbai) without mentioning the Stephenville case once. Internet cassandras charge O’Brien was terminated immediately thereafter because he dared to venture into The Great Taboo. CNN said it canned O’Brien and its entire science staff as a cost-cutting measure, and there’s no reason to doubt that. No sinister government agency could've possibly been threatened by O’Brien’s UFO reporting.
But all of 2008's UFO activity and changing government stories, Cox declared, created a monumental "yawn" from mainstream media. His article is a good read.
I first wrote about UFOs in the '70's, for mainstream media. And, I've read the entire Condon Project Blue Book. I'm not sure that UFOs, as far as the media goes, are a hidden topic. Then again, I might be wrong, and Cox might be right.
Do you agree with Cox? Does the media ignore UFO reports and later follow-ups? Is there a "Great Taboo" about UFOs, as Cox charges? You tell me!
For background, here's a Fox News report on the Stephenville lights and the scrambling of F-16 jets.
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