Unky
Martian Baby
Great UFO doc — what’s for supper?
by Billy Cox
The major networks have blown beaucoup resources and programming hours on UFOs over the years, and the best of the lot — Peter Jennings’ two-hour hedged bet for ABC in 2005 — was a masterpiece of equivocation. Jennings produced what has come to be the MSM formula for UFO coverage, with its distracting allusions to Hollywood movies, rote skepticism from SETI astronomers, and its deference to the condescending attitudes of “mainstream science.”
Last night, independent producer James Fox did more to advance an adult conversation on UFOs than all the recent network slop combined. Unfortunately, it wound up in a niche market — The History Channel — where it will likely be overlooked by the big boys who seem congenitally incapable of fresh approaches.
Although embroidered with some overlapping material from his 2003 SciFi Channel doc “Out of the Blue,” Fox’s two-hour Sunday night package — “I Know What I Saw” — was built largely upon an original idea that actually rated brief MSM headlines on 11/12/07. That’s when Fox and journalist Leslie Kean convened an international cast of more than a dozen former government officials, military and civilian, along with pilots, to advocate a renewed public UFO study by the U.S. government.
Given the extraordinary documentation provided by these players, which included the deputy chief of staff for the Belgian Air Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s division chief for accidents and investigations, this was the type of story that — had the issue been the illegal dumping of toxic waste, or something just a tad more conventional — might’ve created a clamor on Capitol Hill. That is, if the MSM had followed up. But of course, it never does.
Keeping cheesy recreations and special effects to a minimum, “I Know What I Saw” examined the claims of eyewitnesses to events as distant as the 1980 Bentwaters/Rendlesham Forest incident in the United Kingdom to last year’s UFO incursion near President Bush’s home in Texas. But its strength is the quality of its high-level witnesses, a stark rebuke to a Fox News hyena wiseguy who asks his chortling cohorts, “If these extraterrestrials are so highly evolved, how come it is that they only address people named Bubba who are out hunting and fishing?”
James Fox spent three months attempting to procure a visa for retired Iranian general Parviz Jafari, whose name surfaced in Defense Intelligence Agency documents for his role in an attempt to gun down a UFO from the cockpit of his jet fighter in 1976. Wilfried De Brouwer, chief of operations for the Belgian Air Staff during the UFO wave of late 1989, recounted how his American counterparts inquired about obtaining copies of his jets’ dramatic radar video during their unsuccessful intercepts. “I said you can have a copy, providing this is a formal request,” de Brouwer recalled. “I never received a formal request.”
The MSM could have followed these or any number of storylines from that 2007 National Press Club gathering into the slammed doors of national security, but chose not to. And that’s too bad, because had Fox been able to push “I Know What I Saw” into the movie theaters — which was his original goal — the buzz might’ve forced the media to retool its relationship with this phenomenon.
Fox properly ended his piece with Clinton White House Chief of Staff on UFO disclosure. After all, this is ultimately a political matter. But will “I Know What I Saw” further that goal? Unless it can find a broader venue, the gold standard for an investigation the networks should’ve conducted years ago is likely to wind up as just another harmless curiosity on cable.
Great UFO doc De Void - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Sarasota, FL - Archive
by Billy Cox
The major networks have blown beaucoup resources and programming hours on UFOs over the years, and the best of the lot — Peter Jennings’ two-hour hedged bet for ABC in 2005 — was a masterpiece of equivocation. Jennings produced what has come to be the MSM formula for UFO coverage, with its distracting allusions to Hollywood movies, rote skepticism from SETI astronomers, and its deference to the condescending attitudes of “mainstream science.”
Last night, independent producer James Fox did more to advance an adult conversation on UFOs than all the recent network slop combined. Unfortunately, it wound up in a niche market — The History Channel — where it will likely be overlooked by the big boys who seem congenitally incapable of fresh approaches.
Although embroidered with some overlapping material from his 2003 SciFi Channel doc “Out of the Blue,” Fox’s two-hour Sunday night package — “I Know What I Saw” — was built largely upon an original idea that actually rated brief MSM headlines on 11/12/07. That’s when Fox and journalist Leslie Kean convened an international cast of more than a dozen former government officials, military and civilian, along with pilots, to advocate a renewed public UFO study by the U.S. government.
Given the extraordinary documentation provided by these players, which included the deputy chief of staff for the Belgian Air Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s division chief for accidents and investigations, this was the type of story that — had the issue been the illegal dumping of toxic waste, or something just a tad more conventional — might’ve created a clamor on Capitol Hill. That is, if the MSM had followed up. But of course, it never does.
Keeping cheesy recreations and special effects to a minimum, “I Know What I Saw” examined the claims of eyewitnesses to events as distant as the 1980 Bentwaters/Rendlesham Forest incident in the United Kingdom to last year’s UFO incursion near President Bush’s home in Texas. But its strength is the quality of its high-level witnesses, a stark rebuke to a Fox News hyena wiseguy who asks his chortling cohorts, “If these extraterrestrials are so highly evolved, how come it is that they only address people named Bubba who are out hunting and fishing?”
James Fox spent three months attempting to procure a visa for retired Iranian general Parviz Jafari, whose name surfaced in Defense Intelligence Agency documents for his role in an attempt to gun down a UFO from the cockpit of his jet fighter in 1976. Wilfried De Brouwer, chief of operations for the Belgian Air Staff during the UFO wave of late 1989, recounted how his American counterparts inquired about obtaining copies of his jets’ dramatic radar video during their unsuccessful intercepts. “I said you can have a copy, providing this is a formal request,” de Brouwer recalled. “I never received a formal request.”
The MSM could have followed these or any number of storylines from that 2007 National Press Club gathering into the slammed doors of national security, but chose not to. And that’s too bad, because had Fox been able to push “I Know What I Saw” into the movie theaters — which was his original goal — the buzz might’ve forced the media to retool its relationship with this phenomenon.
Fox properly ended his piece with Clinton White House Chief of Staff on UFO disclosure. After all, this is ultimately a political matter. But will “I Know What I Saw” further that goal? Unless it can find a broader venue, the gold standard for an investigation the networks should’ve conducted years ago is likely to wind up as just another harmless curiosity on cable.
Great UFO doc De Void - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Sarasota, FL - Archive
