Tuesday, April 25, 2017

The New York Times has a remarkably balanced article on UFOs

Article title from the New York Times with the word "Proves" in it
The New York Times has recently published a remarkably even-keeled article about a recent UFO book. The article is linked HERE.

The book is titled UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015, by Cheryl Costa and Linda Miller Costa. I haven't read the book, but it appears to be a thorough collection of statistical analysis of data collected by MUFON and NUFORC. The stats are broken down by state complete with graphs and year by year charts. What is remarkable is that the "paper of record" is treating this subject so blandly, as if it were a book detailing the annual facts and figures about car accidents.

This book is not any kind of sensationalistic expose, it's is a self published labor of love from two number crunchers.
typical page from the book full of facts and figure 

The article was penned by veteran journalist Ralph Blumenthal (right). A staff reporter for the NYTimes from from 1964 to 2009. He is now a free lance contributor to the paper, as well as the author of six non-fiction books mostly dealing with crime and police work. How this article made it into the pages of such a stoic paper leave me mystified.

Blumenthal is now in his mid-70's and maybe he's achieved the kind of standing at the paper where they'll just print whatever he drops on the editor's desk.

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Text added Wed April 26:

I sent an email to Ralph Blumenthal, the author of the recent UFO article in the NYTimes. Below is my letter to him, and his reply.
I read your recent article about the 'UFO Sightings Desk Reference’ book. It struck me as remarkably even-keeled for a subject that is consistently dismissed by the main stream press. My question: How did that article make it into the pages of the New York Times? I have been researching the subject of UFOs and found your article remarkably refreshing and unbiased. 
Thank you.
with regards,
Mike Clelland
__________________________ 
Thanks, I'm aware of the Times's record on the subject. I was a reporter there for many years and know the editorial mindset so was able to pitch it sensitively. Also I'm writing a book on John Mack. 
Best wishes,
Ralph Blumenthal
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Of note:
Blumenthal penned an excellent article about John Mack in Vanity Fair back in May of 2013—linked HERE. Like the article in the Times, this was also remarkably balanced.

self published cover image
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4 comments:

Uriah said...

Any time I think we can dispel myth, break down misinformation, and stop illogical reasoning I think we should all do everything in our power to get the process through and expose the lies before they can be contracted and retain a perception in the easily mislead. One of the things I like to do lately is figure out how white privilege controls the perspective of all media in our country. The connection I have found to the paranormal and privilege opinion came from me talking to other experiencers who demean their own experience or doubt it, and those people who categorize and label experience like its a holy bucket list of some sort. Anyway what I'm getting at is that I hear over and over from people, researchers, abductees, how a traumatic childhood acts as some gateway to experience. The thing that is wrong with this is if you come from white privilege you are sheltered by the process of media and controlled sheltered communities who's job is too ignore the massive suffering and trauma rampant all over the world due to poverty. So from your biased p.o.v. of privilege you imagine that the world is like your covenant yuppie neighborhood and think suffering and trauma effects only minorities of the population, not race just small percentages. So what I'm saying is if trauma in childhood is a gateway then 70 to 90% of the world population should be having them. If this was true we should see paranormal and ufo abductions sky rocketing and rampant all over the world correlating to the spreading of war and monopoly of wealth. Now n.d.e. may be a different thing, I'm talking about people in the ufo field believing a bad childhood equals encounters. I can't agree I have met to may people with privileged or un-tramatic childhoods to convince me of the validity of such a red flag. Again people in privilege bubbles believe they are the majority and so want to pass off your real experience as delusion of a broken mind. And again trauma, violence, death, horror, pain, suffering, these are being experienced every day by people unprivileged, the majority all over the world. And I just don't see any value to assuming trauma causes experiences. It makes experiencers look broken minded and makes the yuppie elite look at the montage of the privileged permeating the tv and think that their small, pointless, fake reality bubble is acquirable and the reason you can't acquire it is because your damaged trash.

Unknown said...

My apologies off topic.

Mike, if you have a chance check out Damon t berrys video series knowledge of the forever time. It's latest "invitation " 7, right off the bat goes into the owl/grey comparison and has a really interesting take. :)

Unknown said...

https://youtu.be/yfh34IK9AHc

Anonymous said...

Seems the first commenter is suffering from their own set of biases. To think all paranormal researchers and hobbyist are upper middle class white suburbanites peddling victimhood and gatekeeping? Absurd.