By Abigail Hyslop
First published 19th September 2021
During discussions with the UFO Identified team it was observed that many of the mentions in the mainstream media concerning the UFO/UAP issue, regarding sightings or experiences being reported, the background information that was used in the reporting was of no later than 2009. As we all know there have been a great deal of sightings all over the world and some cases of serious note here in the UK since then. Cases have been reported to many organisations including ours which we duly investigated. With the USA release of documents and the now famous “Tic – Tac” incident we had high hopes that maybe the media was starting to take the issue, and us, more seriously.
We have had quotes appearing in some national newspapers and even a video interview, but as the story faded so did the interest and apparently the coverage of any UAP/UFO related topics. It appears yet again we, as a community, have brushed under the metaphoric rug to the point I don’t think even Mr Dysons wonderful invention could clean up. So after a chat with the team I decided to test the news outlets and mainstream press to find out if they are just being lazy in the reporting and research or if they are ignoring us all together.
I found out that many of the larger press outlets have smaller sister papers that cover many areas so I stuck to the larger newspapers and news outlets. I sent emails to the big ones including but not limited to The Times, The Express, The Daily Record in Scotland and The Independent. I told them who were, what we do and that we have one of the biggest up-to-date databases in the country concerning UK reported sightings and should they require any assistance with background for recent activity in any reports they may have on the subject we could provide a valuable resource. I included the link to the website, told them of our Facebook group and even about the Mini-con we are hosting in October (being one of the only a few taking place in this country this year it is newsworthy in itself in my humble opinion).
How many replies did I get? One!! And that was an automated reply saying, “thank you for your email which will be seen by our news team”. One line, that’s it, since then nothing, not a word, zilch, nada, not even a thank you for the offer but no thanks. It seems that the mainstream media are content to trot out the same old hash from the history books. I even posted on twitter to see if I could get a bite on there (thanks to all who retweeted) but still nothing. Is it avoidance? Do they think that reporting this topic would somehow ruin their credibility?
I tried another angle and hit the internet to see what if I could dig up some statistics. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2015/09/24/you-are-not-alone-most-people-believe-aliens-exist show that over half of the sample population believe that aliens exist, that was back in 2015 . I have included the link to the full survey, its quite enlightening. https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/n0j9ws4pao/Internal_Results_150914_ExtraTerrestrial_Website.pdf
Wales online have more recent numbers. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/quarter-people-uk-believe-aliens-20227290 Interviewing Nick Pope for their piece, stating a quarter of the UK population believe. I personally believe the number is much much higher but as there is still so much stigma attached to publicly stating this belief many don’t admit it. However with Walesonline, at least they made an effort to bring some light to the subject.
As I see it there are at least a couple of reasons for the total disinterest shown by the media in the UK. One could be that they have been instructed to avoid any stories that might be of particular interest and pique the interest of people like me and you into delving further into it, maybe coming across something that may have repercussions and actually trip over something that proves what many of us already believe. Printing stories that are easily disproved as fake or obvious misidentification pushes the idea, planting the seed in our subconscious, that everything we see up there is actually identifiable and not worth the trouble of reading about never mind investigating, seems to fit with a disinformation agenda.
I find it hard to believe that so many supposed respected journalists would send a story to print that has not been thoroughly researched and fact checked, a story that ultimately makes them and their publications look like fools. To reject an up-to-date data resource which is offered freely seems odd to me when they are writing a story about a current sighting. The current social media outlets are awash with the latest reports from congress in the USA, their Government officials stating on the record that they will have a team looking into UAP’s. Many great podcasts interviewing the who’s who of ufology…. scientists, authors, investigators, ex-military and current military and still very little, if nothing, is mentioned in the UK press. Elon Musk breaks wind and its in the papers but a tweet he put out recently concerning the turnabout in belief going from “man, I tell you, pretty sure I’d know if there were aliens” (https://www.space.com/elon-musk-on-aliens-area-51-starship-spacex.html) to “I’m not saying there are UFO’s…. but there are UFO’s” an amazing turn around.
Love him or hate him he is one of the most well known when it comes to privately funded space exploration and never fails to attract a great deal of media attention. The tweet was reported to have been deleted according to rumours on twitter but after checking, it took a while but it is still there. This tweet, however, did prompt a news outlet in the UK to print a story about the comment made by Musk yet still they ignore UK based organisations with up to the minute data…
Why? Is it because we here at UFO Identified are relatively unknown and not rich enough to merit acknowledgement or blocking of anything UK related?
It could, of course, be a bit less conspiratorial. It could be that it is just journalistic laziness, lack of enthusiasm for their chosen profession, but then why go through the years of university education for a degree to then not care about your subject matter. If it is disinterest then why write the stories at all? I am an amateur, this is not my day job and I put work and effort into whatever I write. Some of you may not like it, some of you may not even read it to the end (thank you if you read this far) but I have taken the time to write and to research. The countless podcasts relating to the subject, more than I could listen to in my lifetime probably, are for the most part ordinary men and women with a keen interest in the subject, not professionals, not paid to write stories and interview people but they seem to be doing more fact checking and research than those who have made it their profession. They have passion and pride in what they do that the professionals these days in the mainstream press don’t seem to share.
The subject and community are growing by the day. Facebook is full of pages dedicated to the topic, Twitter awash with tweets from the famous and the average man/woman/whatever you identify as all of whom have something to add, it’s a global movement and social media is bringing us all together. You would think that would create a ripple at least but no it has yet again been relegated to the fringes of the UK national mainstream media.
So I ask you dear reader, what do you think, laziness or imposed avoidance?
