Empty Bleachers: Flight of the UFOs

In February of this year multiple UFOs were taken out of the sky by the US military. Officials later claimed that they were research balloons and not sophisticated craft (without providing visual evidence). How did the media react to balloon-ageddon? With hilarity, hyperbole, and hysteria.

For starters, most outlets ditched the sanitized “UAP” moniker. After years of aggressively rebranding UFOs as UAPs, the mainstream media pulled the rug out from under their audiences with breathless reporting about the rash of “UFOs” drifting overhead. Adding to the confusion, President Biden called them “Unmanned Aerial Objects.”

Ever the alarmists, TMZ blared their warning about the puzzling nature of the octagon-shaped object spotted over Michigan:

Meanwhile, many articles were eager to promote the events as a series of “shoot-downs.” As if the aerial pursuits resulted in dogfights straight out of the movie Independence Day:

The New York Times loves to add excessive punctuation because they’re pretentious, so their U.F.O. coverage is dotted with extraneous, unsightly periods:

Their headline also reads like the recap of a high-school basketball game: “Did you catch the Patriots vs. the ETs the other night? They absolutely destroyed them! The Aliens really need to step up their defense if they want to turn their season around.”

The NY Mag ratcheted up the rhetoric, suggesting that a battle was inevitable:

While Newsweek ran with the fear-mongering headline that hinted at an impending ground invasion:

Defense News alluded to a potential reason for the brouhaha—namely, money. They explain how:

And the military knows that the best way to plug holes in our defenses is with wads of cash.

The Wall Street Journal primed people for more pointless oversight as the government stands-up yet another UFO group:

Business Insider pointed out that the kerfuffle was good for the markets:

The Atlantic took a different tack, wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over “America’s Troubling UFO Obsession” and the impact that these objects might have on the feeble-minded simpletons who believe in flying saucers (note, they don’t call it a “UAP Obsession”). The article begs the media to stop feeding the bears before we lose a generation to:

The author is wary of people who “obsess over the possibility of aliens.” They warn that “intense interest has downsides” before promptly associating UFOs with “far- right” conspiracies. They also predict that the forthcoming NASA UFO report “is bound to create just as much hype as the defense reports that have been released in the past few years”—which is to say little to none.

The Observer is a zine that covers topics of high strangeness. Click the image to request a free physical subscription.

Issue #13