Reporting on 'The UFO Report'
The days following the June 25th release of the much-hyped ‘UFO Report’ by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) felt like a post-Christmas letdown. After months of guesswork, predictions and childlike anticipation, the big day delivered like a pair of gift-wrapped socks. While the nine-pager was short on “spicy” details, indications are that further information from additional governmental agencies is on the way.
The media’s coverage of ‘The Report’ was predictable. Journalists who hadn’t seriously written about the UFO phenomenon in decades rushed to find novel ways to adorn their articles with worn-out X-Files truisms.
For instance, The New York Times stated that “The Truth Has Not Always Been Out There;” which prompted Science Friday to wonder, “Is The Truth About UFOs Out There?” Don't worry, claimed an editorial from The Dallas Morning Sun, because “Yes, the truth is still out there and may be out there for a long time to come.” Meanwhile, Vox, the snarky devil’s advocate of the bunch, seemed to deny everything (see what we did there?) with the headline, “What if the truth isn't out there?”
We could go on.
Despite the media’s treatment of the topic, there’s an abundance of data suggesting the presence of strange objects in our skies (and seas). UFOs have a rich history full of news-worthy eyewitness accounts, military testimonies and piles of visual evidence—most of which weren’t discussed. Instead, a litany of recognizable cases and anecdotes were routinely paraded across the mainstream news outlets.
Absent was the hard-hitting journalism that observers hoped to see from an invigorated press corps that should be hungry to sink their teeth into a new twist on an enigmatic subject—especially after more than a year of repackaging COVID-19 updates.
Besides a string of tired interviews with the usual suspects (Sen. Marco Rubio, Luis Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Navy pilots, etc.), and a couple of limp questions tossed out at end-of-week White House press briefings, the government’s supposed ‘Fourth Estate’ was a no-show. Their boilerplate stories were constructed from a shared playbook and followed a similar, disappointing format:
1. Lead with the numbers: 143 out of the 144 incidents cited in ‘The Report’ were unexplained. With no proof that they were extra- terrestrial, insinuate that they might be from aliens since ‘The Report’ didn’t say they weren’t.
2. Remind everyone that The New York Times published a 2017 article about a secret government group investigating UFOs.
3. Tell readers the modern UFO phenomenon started in 1947 and cite Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, or both (but don’t elaborate on why ‘The Report’ only includes encounters from 2004 forward).
4. Compare and contrast the findings of the 2021 Report to historical precedents like ‘Project Blue Book’ or ‘Condon Committee’ and explain how this time around, the outcomes will be different—or exactly the same. Take your pick.
*Bonus points if the article connects ‘The Report’ to coronavirus: “What do UFOs and the Delta variant have in common?”
**Double bonus points if coronavirus and an X-Files slogan both make an appearance: “From UFOs to COVID conspiracy theories, we all struggle with the truth out there”
Even though the mainstream gave a lackluster performance, some researchers were able to ascertain valuable details about ‘The Report’ by politely asking the DNI’s office. In July, The Black Vault published a statement from a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence that confirmed the classified version of ‘The Report’ is 17 pages in length—almost double the count of the public copy—but still too slim to hold the wealth of photos and technical data that likely exist alongside the 143 unexplained cases.
Since the release of ‘The Report,’ there’s been a noticeable decline in the volume of UFO-related articles pumping out of the conventional media. If Google Trends is to be believed, there has also been a marked drop-off in interest by the web-browsing public. After reaching a peak in May/June of this year, searches for “UFO” or “UAP” (the government's stodgy term) have steadily dropped to their pre-2020 levels.
This is a shame.
The ebb and flow of “UFO Mania” is to be expected, but let’s hope that those responsible for the analysis and identification of these unknown objects have a longer attention span than the general public or popular press.
