Saturday, December 20, 2008

Pod people and the mainstream press: "unanswered questions remain"


Robert Shaeffer in the Jan-Feb 2009 issue of Skeptical Inquirer provides a historical summary of the last 61 years of UFO lore, UFOlogy 2009: A Six-Decade Perspective. He describes the changing styles in UFO publicity, from "flying saucers", films and photographs to testimony of alien abductions. He points out that, in contrast to earlier decades:

It has now been over twenty years since a UFO book has become a bestseller and generated nationwide interest and controversy; the last two were Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987) and Transformation (1988). Today, first and foremost, the entertainment media play a major role in keeping UFOs alive, as well as radio and TV talk shows. News programs play only a very minor role. In the 1990s, cable-TV stations began producing entertainment programs based on popular UFO claims and themes, such as Roswell, the Alien Autopsy, and UFO abductions. In 2002, the Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) channel presented Steven Spielberg's Taken, a twenty-hour miniseries based on alleged UFO abductions. Soon there were many other entertainment programs featuring UFO themes, which even though presented as fiction many take to be "based on fact." Entertainment shows were soon bolstered by pro-UFO documentaries in which the skeptical view is given little or no voice and then by UFO "reality shows," such as The History Channel's UFO Hunters [2008] ... In that show, several "UFO experts" (all of whom are favorable to the pro-UFO position) investigate UFO claims and invariably find tantalizing evidence yet never any real proof.

Talk shows on radio and TV also reach millions of people with their sensational claims and uncritical analyses. Since the 1980s, the syndicated late-night, call-in radio show Coast To Coast AM has reached millions - now on over 500 stations as well as on XM satellite radio. Originally hosted by Art Bell, and now by George Noory, the show offers a dazzling array of wild tales about not only UFOs but cryptozoology, parapsychology, and conspiracies of every sort. Callers often relate their own allegedly paranormal experiences, and it seems that no claim is too bizarre to be given a respectful hearing. [my emphasis]
While he notes that it's not primarily news programs that are pimping UFO stories, the increased blurring of "news" and "entertainment" by the corporations that dominate both the news and entertainment businesses in America means that programs that viewers take as journalism push the stories. Shaeffer refers to a couple of notable examples:

Even some of the biggest names in the broadcast industry have uncritically promoted UFO claims in an attempt to boost ratings. During the summer of 2008, Larry King Live on CNN ran a series of poorly balanced programs about UFOs that displayed shockingly low standards of critical thinking for a major journalist. In February 2005, ABC-TV ran in prime time a two-hour show, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing." The late journalist, a former news anchorman for ABC News, said, "I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible. After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators, and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered - and a great deal not fully explained." In spite of all the reporting and investigative resources that must have been available to Jennings, the program contained nothing significant that had not already been reported before, and was just a re-hash on primetime network TV of existing UFO claims and interviews with mostly pro-UFOlogists. [my emphasis]
And this is the same standard of journalism our major news orgs now apply to news of public affairs, as well.

I was struck by that phrase, "questions that have not been completely answered". That's a favorite of our sad excuse for a press corps when they're trying to pump up a pseudo-scandal. We've heard similar phrases a lot over the last couple of weeks as the pundits speculated wildly and fact-freely about Obama's (non-)involvement in the corrupt dealings of Rod Blagojevich.

Yes, our press reports on matters of major public concern with UFO-nut-level journalism. That's no small part of the story of the last eight years. And the bad news is ... they continue to get worse!

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2 comments:

Serving Patriot said...

And the bad news is ... they continue to get worse!

Indeed! And what can explain it? Perhaps the Washington Post mistakenly exposed too much in today's Style section puff piece -

The Greenroom: Before the Cameras Roll and the Spin Begins, the Beltway Fast Lane Slows Down For a Pit Stop on Common Ground

- a missive filled with such luscious goodies as this:

* Here in the Washington greenrooms of networks like CNN and Fox, ABC and NBC, unfiltered proximity affords priceless opportunities to exchange business cards, hatch unlikely partnerships, collect some intel, spark romances.

* These across-the-aisle, greenroom friendships can become lucrative propositions.

* By 8:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday, the crew at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant, the Source, has laid out smoked salmon and capers, bagels, bacon, hash browns and quiches in the greenroom at ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos."

* the columnist George F. Will is sitting in his private version of a backstage greenroom -- you can't miss it, the sign at the door reads "GFW." He gets a special room because he's a regular on the show and because, well, he's George Will.

Today's punditry and chattering class - nothing more than used car salesmen and useful idiots. All making a buck (they aren't in those green rooms for free my friend!) to be exactly what they are - a waste of time but "intellectual" entertainment for the drones.

Pod people indeed.

SP

Bruce Miller said...

Interesting example!

It was different in the early years of television journalism. People like William Murrow and Walter Cronkite came to electronic journalism after practicing the written kind for years.

And many journalists up until fairly recently were working-class men and women who hadn't gone to college, in most cases. Today's celebrity punditry is really more entertainment - and not very good entertainment, at that.