Post by swamprat on Aug 15, 2018 15:52:12 GMT -6
A struggle for coherence
By Billy Cox Wednesday, Aug 15, 2018
What in the world is going on at the New York Times? Did you happen to catch its latest pass at UFOs? They’ve shrunk from breaking the biggest related story in memory back in December to dribbling out the sort of featherweight beginners blog fare that appeared on Aug. 3. How does this happen? Who’s running the show?
All appearances aside, De Void really doesn’t like to rant. It’s usually juvenile and rarely cathartic. Plus it never changes anything. But this, this, this thing that ran in the Times two weeks ago belongs in a truly special category of regression, like four-legged tadpoles deciding they’d rather revert to gills than take their chances on lungs and land. Normally you see formula writing of this caliber farmed out to Newsweek interns, or maybe to poor overworked Wiki-trolling legacy-media newbies pressured to generate quick traffic in off-peak hours.
Eight months ago, the Times startled the world by exposing the Pentagon’s $22M UFO research initiative, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. But despite intense reader interest in the 2004 Nimitz incident, in which at least one UFO was videotaped by a Top Gun F-18 pilot who was thoroughly outmaneuvered, the Times hasn’t done a lick of followup.
But suddenly, on Aug. 3, from out of nowhere, without any news peg whatsoever, with no anniversary date that ends in a 0 or a 5, or any additional eyewitnesses or supporting documentation, the Times decided to dust off a moldy oldie from 1952. It’s one of the most famous cases, involving UFOs that buzzed the nation’s capital on consecutive weekends in July that year. Perhaps feeling the need to justify recapping this old story, reporter Laura M. Holson tossed in a few quasi-newsy cultural references in the third graph, e.g., Gillian “X-Files” Anderson’s upcoming role in a UFO movie next month, and a planned reboot of the “Men In Black” franchise.
The only new voice Holson brings to light is the 68-year-old daughter of a commercial pilot who saw UFOs during one of those summer night incursions in ‘52. Too young to remember the event, Faith McClory tells the Times “My sister has memories of men (reporters) coming to our home. People were enthralled with the flying saucers.”
Her sister. Fascinating. Do go on.
“It should be noted,” the Times tells readers, “that the term U.F.O., as used by the government, does not mean extraterrestrials from outer space. It means any object in the sky that has not been identified.” Whoa, wait, what? It doesn’t mean Martians? Since, like, when? “When asked recently about the 1952 Washington sightings, Ann Stefanek, chief of media operations for the Air Force, wrote in an email that” – now this should be interesting, a PIO who probably wasn’t even born in 1952, I wonder what she’ll say – “the objects had posed no threat to national security.
OK, yo, hold up. What’s with the periods between U.F.O.? Is this another formalistic brand quirk like using a proper salutation before each and every surname reference, no matter how undeserving or grotesque? Before boiling Mr. Doe’s flayed skull in acid, Mr. Dahmer cued up Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” and contemplated refreshing his spice rack. Does anyone else but the Times put periods between UFO? It’s distracting. It’s so distracting I haven’t finished my rant yet. Back to it:
“The events in Washington were not the first unexplained encounter report. Debris from what observers called a ‘flying disc’ had been spotted in Roswell, N.M., five years earlier, which Army officials said was from a ‘weather balloon.’” Wow! Interesting! I wonder if anybody claimed to have picked up any of that Roswell stuff. Hm. “By 1952, though, a number of sightings of U.F.O.s were being reported across the country and the nation was on edge.”
OK, look, I can’t hang with this anymore. The thing ends with how the USAF’s official explanation of the July ’52 phenomena was temperature inversions, a hand-rinse that’s only been out there for 66 years. And this article – “A Radar Blip, a Flash of Light: How U.F.O.s ‘Exploded’ Into Public View” – ran under the Times’ heading “Science.” Even as the Times continues to ignore the continuing expansion of the story it set into motion.
The Times’ reluctance to revisit its game-changing coup got even weirder yesterday with its publication of yet another “U.F.O.” story, dateline Los Angeles, titled “They’ve ‘Seen Things.’” It’s about a guy named Robert Bingham who has attracted a considerable following for his alleged ability to “summon” UFOs into view. Not insignificantly, this piece actually references its own reporting into the Nimitz incident, but steers well clear of updating that story. Otherwise, this is just another garden-variety piece on “believers.”
So to reiterate: Who’s calling the shots on UFO coverage back in New York? Was the inclusion of the Times’ scoop on the Nimitz incident in Tuesday’s profile of Bingham a reporter’s dog whistle for management to get its s*%# together? If the Times has had a change of heart on going deep with UFOs, why bother with the sort of innocuous filler it ran on Aug. 3, or a personality piece that won’t move anybody’s bar on standards of evidence? When it comes to shepherding material with this amount of public interest from the fringe to the mainstream, the Times’ news judgement is looking more incoherent by the month.
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/
By Billy Cox Wednesday, Aug 15, 2018
What in the world is going on at the New York Times? Did you happen to catch its latest pass at UFOs? They’ve shrunk from breaking the biggest related story in memory back in December to dribbling out the sort of featherweight beginners blog fare that appeared on Aug. 3. How does this happen? Who’s running the show?
All appearances aside, De Void really doesn’t like to rant. It’s usually juvenile and rarely cathartic. Plus it never changes anything. But this, this, this thing that ran in the Times two weeks ago belongs in a truly special category of regression, like four-legged tadpoles deciding they’d rather revert to gills than take their chances on lungs and land. Normally you see formula writing of this caliber farmed out to Newsweek interns, or maybe to poor overworked Wiki-trolling legacy-media newbies pressured to generate quick traffic in off-peak hours.
Eight months ago, the Times startled the world by exposing the Pentagon’s $22M UFO research initiative, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. But despite intense reader interest in the 2004 Nimitz incident, in which at least one UFO was videotaped by a Top Gun F-18 pilot who was thoroughly outmaneuvered, the Times hasn’t done a lick of followup.
But suddenly, on Aug. 3, from out of nowhere, without any news peg whatsoever, with no anniversary date that ends in a 0 or a 5, or any additional eyewitnesses or supporting documentation, the Times decided to dust off a moldy oldie from 1952. It’s one of the most famous cases, involving UFOs that buzzed the nation’s capital on consecutive weekends in July that year. Perhaps feeling the need to justify recapping this old story, reporter Laura M. Holson tossed in a few quasi-newsy cultural references in the third graph, e.g., Gillian “X-Files” Anderson’s upcoming role in a UFO movie next month, and a planned reboot of the “Men In Black” franchise.
The only new voice Holson brings to light is the 68-year-old daughter of a commercial pilot who saw UFOs during one of those summer night incursions in ‘52. Too young to remember the event, Faith McClory tells the Times “My sister has memories of men (reporters) coming to our home. People were enthralled with the flying saucers.”
Her sister. Fascinating. Do go on.
“It should be noted,” the Times tells readers, “that the term U.F.O., as used by the government, does not mean extraterrestrials from outer space. It means any object in the sky that has not been identified.” Whoa, wait, what? It doesn’t mean Martians? Since, like, when? “When asked recently about the 1952 Washington sightings, Ann Stefanek, chief of media operations for the Air Force, wrote in an email that” – now this should be interesting, a PIO who probably wasn’t even born in 1952, I wonder what she’ll say – “the objects had posed no threat to national security.
OK, yo, hold up. What’s with the periods between U.F.O.? Is this another formalistic brand quirk like using a proper salutation before each and every surname reference, no matter how undeserving or grotesque? Before boiling Mr. Doe’s flayed skull in acid, Mr. Dahmer cued up Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” and contemplated refreshing his spice rack. Does anyone else but the Times put periods between UFO? It’s distracting. It’s so distracting I haven’t finished my rant yet. Back to it:
“The events in Washington were not the first unexplained encounter report. Debris from what observers called a ‘flying disc’ had been spotted in Roswell, N.M., five years earlier, which Army officials said was from a ‘weather balloon.’” Wow! Interesting! I wonder if anybody claimed to have picked up any of that Roswell stuff. Hm. “By 1952, though, a number of sightings of U.F.O.s were being reported across the country and the nation was on edge.”
OK, look, I can’t hang with this anymore. The thing ends with how the USAF’s official explanation of the July ’52 phenomena was temperature inversions, a hand-rinse that’s only been out there for 66 years. And this article – “A Radar Blip, a Flash of Light: How U.F.O.s ‘Exploded’ Into Public View” – ran under the Times’ heading “Science.” Even as the Times continues to ignore the continuing expansion of the story it set into motion.
The Times’ reluctance to revisit its game-changing coup got even weirder yesterday with its publication of yet another “U.F.O.” story, dateline Los Angeles, titled “They’ve ‘Seen Things.’” It’s about a guy named Robert Bingham who has attracted a considerable following for his alleged ability to “summon” UFOs into view. Not insignificantly, this piece actually references its own reporting into the Nimitz incident, but steers well clear of updating that story. Otherwise, this is just another garden-variety piece on “believers.”
So to reiterate: Who’s calling the shots on UFO coverage back in New York? Was the inclusion of the Times’ scoop on the Nimitz incident in Tuesday’s profile of Bingham a reporter’s dog whistle for management to get its s*%# together? If the Times has had a change of heart on going deep with UFOs, why bother with the sort of innocuous filler it ran on Aug. 3, or a personality piece that won’t move anybody’s bar on standards of evidence? When it comes to shepherding material with this amount of public interest from the fringe to the mainstream, the Times’ news judgement is looking more incoherent by the month.
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/author/cox/