'History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television'
A major new article on the subject on government manipulation of UFO-themed media products is accessible from today as an advance publication for the Spring 2011 issue of 49th Parallel - a journal of North American Studies jointly run through the UK universities of Birmingham and Nottingham.
This is one of only a small handful of articles dealing with UFOs and entertainment-media-control ever to have been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and is all the more unusual in that it treats UFOs not as a mere cultural abstraction, but as a real, physical phenomenon of considerable concern to officialdom..
PDF file
Rcanem, thanks for the reply -it's certainly a good read and Stephen Spielberg's comments are quite interesting -here he is discussing the work of Dr J. Allen Hynek on the film 'Close encounters of the third kind' and, I don't know if you've seen it, but Easynow has authored an excellent thread hereconcerning the 1966 Portage County incident which inspired the police UFO chase from the film.
The government’s historical engagement with such fare can most thoroughly be discussed with regard to the Department of Defense (DoD), which has worked extensively with Hollywood in exchange for the right to edit scripts for sixty years
there's also a relevant excerpt below from Richard Dolan's (excellent) book 'UFOs and the National Security State' about the U.S. Intelligence communities 'penetration' of mainstream press and it seems they've been at it for quite a while.
..In addition ,the history of the U.S. media shows unsettling developments,not least of which is penetration by the intelligence community.
By the early 1950s,the CIA had cosy relationships with most major media executives in America.
The most significant of these were with the New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, New York Herald Tribune, Saturday Evening Post, Miami Herald, Time-Life, CBS News, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, The Associated Press, United Press International, The Mutual Broadcasting System and Reuters.
In addition ,the CIA had major ownership over many proprietary publications throughtout Europe,Asia and the Americas.
By the early 1970s the agency admitted to having working relationships with over four hundred American journalists.
Consider the possiblities with four hundred strategically placed people throughout the mainstream media.
There is evidence that this relationship continues..
link
That the pentagon has a hand in the
sanitisation of the military’s public image through
its removal of a key character in Black Hawk Down (2002) who in real life had been
convicted of raping a twelve-year-old boy. When it refused to cooperate on the
feature film Counter Measures (1998) on the grounds that it did not want to remind
the public of the Iran-Contra scandal, or when it removed a joke about “losing
Vietnam” in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
.
is quite unsurprising.
the corporate media collusion aspect of the UFO subject is certainly a very interesting (and relevant) one - talking of the CIA and the 'acclimatization' of the public, there's some pretty interesting comments at the beginning of this video about the 'management of public perception' in regard to the UFO subject - there's also some pretty revealing government documentation below dealing with 'the creation of the correction of public opinion'
CIA Document referring to this RAF 'flying disc' incident over Yorkshire, England,1952:
"In some RAF field, there was some sort of demonstration to which high officials of the RAF in London had been invited. During the show, a 'perfect flying saucer' was seen by these officials as well as RAF pilots.
So many people saw it that many articles appeared in the public press. This is distressing to Dr Jones because he realises that the creation of the correction of public opinion is a part of his responsibilities."
link
HOW TO "EXPLAIN" UFOS TO THE PUBLIC:
This is an early policy document focused on a strategy for "explaining" UFOs to the public and "working" with the media.
For example:
"...for those times where the object is not explainable, it would be well to advise your people to say something on this order. "The information on this sighting will be analyzed by the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Dayton, Ohio," and leave it at that..."
link
Anyone who wants to read more about media treatment of the UFO topic should get a copy of Terry Hansen's book "The Missing Times: Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up".
it does not surprise me that the DoD has tried to influence public opinion of not only the UFO phenomenon but of how they are portrayed as well. This gives weight to the earlier sightings of the 40's and 50's but it becomes real easy to recreate modern sightings making them easier to be classified as hoaxes. Could be a lot of these hoaxes are intentional as well, in order to put a bad light on the subject as a whole.
One of the authors, Robbie Graham, runs a pretty good blog called Silver Screen Saucers. It's good enough to visit every week or so and see what's new. He's got some interesting ideas and it helps that he's only really getting to know people in the ufology world this year.
Not really being connected to ufology is a very good thing imo and allows people to have an opinion without worrying about upsetting others. Although there is ample evidence of perception management coming from Hollywood, how many studies have looked at the same thing within ufology? Some of it is based entirely on commercial interests...other elements keep singing from the same hymn-sheet out of personal loyalties and ties. Some of the ufologists are always directing attention towards official cover-ups and supporting some awful BS...deeply suspect.
Are they just as big a part of perception management?
Do they represent the same core interests?
Terry Hansen - there's a realy good interview with him below where he discusses the media/UFO connection and he makes some pretty astute points.
Tim Binnall Interview:
A longtime goal of binnall's was completed on August 11th, 2005, when he interviewed Terry Hansen, author of "The Missing Times", for BoA. In this in-depth interview, we discuss Hansen's background prior to writing his book, what brought him to studying the UFO/media connection, complicity v. conspiracy with regards to the media's coverage of the UFO phenomenon, historical precendence that suggests a government/media cooperative, local media v. national media, the role of propaganda and disinformation and the various methods used to employ them.
Link
Spielberg article about Ronald Reagan's comments after the Whitehouse screening of E.T.
Reagan wasn't joking, and Spielberg knows it
According to Spielberg, Reagan did not address his remarks to him personally, but rather - and more remarkably - to all guests in the room collectively (some of whom were astronauts). Here is what happened in Spielberg's own words:
"It was in the White House screening room and Reagan got up to thank me for bringing the film to show the President, the First Lady and all of their guests, which included Sandra Day O’Connor in her first week of as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and it included some astronauts… I think Neil Armstrong was there, I’m not 100% certain, but it was an amazing, amazing evening.
He just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, 'I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,' and then he looked around the room and said, 'And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.'
And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling as he said it."....
Continued at link
As for the corporate media I do think 'Russia Today' is one of the more responsible news outlets - they did quite a fair piece on Leslie Kean's new book and were the only agency to cover the Argentine government's decision to commission a new UFO investigative committee - the vids are below in case you missed them but unfortunately one of them is in Spanish.
Link
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