Are UFO Sightings Real? A Look at Peter Jennings' Investigative Program on ABC

[Ivan Seeking]

But the race for ratings is particularly intense in February. Jennings points out in his introduction that as many as 80 million Americans believe in UFOs and that 40 million say they have seen one or know someone who has. If even a fraction of those people turn to ABC on Thursday night, "UFO's: Seeing Is Believing" could do for Jennings what more somber special reports like last June's "Guantanamo Bay" could not.[conitnued]

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050224/NEWS/502240307/0/FRONTPAGE

This is hilarious! The obvious point missed by the author is that this is newsworthy by definition. This since "40 million Americans say they have seen one [a UFO] or know someone who has" - rather obvious isn't it! Considering the overwhelming evidence for a mystery combined with the shear numbers this is certainly newsworthy. If we use this as a rough head count and then use the classically conservative estimate that 5% of all sightings are unexplainable, we have 2 million qualified UFO events to explain today in the US alone. Of course this estimate ignores the previous fifty years of sightings; not to mention the reports going back five thousand years and more. Perhaps this journalist could take some lessons from Jennings on what is news.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

please see also the new post above.

ABC News Special on UFO's Uses Footage, Research from Acclaimed James Fox Film, 'OUT OF THE BLUE'
Thursday February 24, 2:20 am ET
Award winning documentary now available on DVD from Hannover House


NEW YORK, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- The Peter Jennings ABC News Special "The UFO Phenomenon -- Seeing Is Believing" may be one of the most complete investigations ever into unexplained aerial phenomenon [to those who know absolutely nothing about the subject]. But viewers from the scientific and research communities may recognize that some of the material in the ABC special comes from the acclaimed documentary Out Of The Blue from producer/director James Fox. [continued]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050224/nyth085_1.html

WHY would a serious journalist like Peter Jennings tackle a silly subject like UFOs? Maybe it's because 40 million Americans can't be wrong.
It turns out that 40 million of us have claimed to have seen UFOs, while half — yes, half — of all Americans believe in their existence. [continued]

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/41079.htm

..."We have a lot of skeptics -- I am very skeptical -- but we seriously investigated something a lot of people are serious about," he said. "And when we come to the end, this is wonderfully interesting.

"More than 80 million Americans believe intelligent beings from somewhere else have come here," he said. "Forty million believe they have seen UFOs, so this is of deep interest to people."...

http://www.indystar.com/articles/5/224037-2085-062.html
also
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002184393_jenningsufo21.html?syndication=rss
and
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_np=0&u_pg=1458&u_sid=1339398

...Too often the mainstream media holds those who claim to have seen UFOs up to ridicule. "I approached this project as a skeptic. And I still am.
"But as a reporter it would be foolish of me to simply dismiss these mysteries as something perpetrated by a bunch of kooks." [continued]

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/entertainment_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_84_3553634,00.html

etc etc etc...

 

[Sneaksuit]

a good job?

chronos...you and everyone else should read this http://www.disclosureproject.org/Transcripts/TranscriptCharlesGoyetteRadioShowInterview-DrStevenGreer-Feb252005.htm

 

[Ivan Seeking]

more complaining from Greer

Inside The ABC News UFO Documentary Hoax

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00274.htm

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I recently watched this again. I can't believe the scientists or so called "experts" who, in spite of hundreds of witnesses, claim that "we would have seen it on RADAR", so no UFO was seen. Clearly stealth planes don't exist either.

I also remember A.C. Clarke using this as his argument right before the B1 bomber was presented to the public.

This sort of thing has heightened my interests in the subject as much as anything else. The explanations are often reaching beyond reason. This only serves to discredit any efforts to provide reasonable explanations for the seemingly inexplicable.

Edit: I always want to forget the e in Clarke.

 

[ravenfire]

I was very dissapointed by the documentary. They decided, for whatever reason to do the story the way they did.

I personally believe that UFO's are real. Does that mean that little grey men are piloting any of them, of course not. As far as roswell goes, well I believe that "something" crashed out there. I lived in new mexico and I have traveled out to the site. Here are some possible theories.

1: Its all true. As spectacular as it sounds, an alien ship crashed on our planet and living/dead aliens were recovered. The technolgy was reversed engineered and that could explain the massive technology boom that has occurred over the last 50 years. We also have established treaties with exterrestrial goverments and have built alien bases on Earth and the moon.

2: This second one is slightly different from the first in one way, a craft was recovered but the crew died in the crash. We still recovered the ship but have been struggling to reverse engineer the technology. No contacts, No treaties, No bases.

3: A top secret program developed by defecting german scientists went wrong.

4: Believe what the airforce said. It was a balloon with a radar reflector designed tp pick up radiation from exploding russian a-bombs.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I recently watched this again. I can't believe the scientists or so called "experts" who, in spite of hundreds of witnesses, claim that "we would have seen it on RADAR", so no UFO was seen. Clearly stealth planes don't exist either.

I see your logic: if we can fool radar, why couldn't they. This renders any dismissal on the basis of lack of radar confirmation lame.

However, you have used radar confirmation in the past to support your contention that there is something worth investigating out there. So now we're faced with UFOs that have an on/off switch to their stealth capabilities. Maybe. But it just makes the whole thing more byzantine.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I agree, now that I've looked up the defintion of byzantine.

I know that many people think this is a subject for nuts. But I swear, it is one of the most complicated problems that I know of. Of course the implications are staggering if even one event was a genuine ET, or ET-technology encounter. But even if not, it's still a poser.

 

[Maaneli]

To all,

You may find this aspect of the "UFO" phenomena seriously interesting:

http://www.nidsci.org/articles/8_25trireport.php


Maaneli

 

[hypatia]

eh Gads, acording to MUFON there swarming over my house! I wonder why so many in SW Michigan?
I look at the stars, sometime everynight for weeks on end, I've never seen anything out of place..ok..well one time I did, but it was in a different state.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

eh Gads, acording to MUFON there swarming over my house!

Well, I for one am not surprised.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, I for one am not surprised.

Because? (Sorry I'm running very slow tonight.)[/size]

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Because? (Sorry I'm running very slow tonight.)[/size]

Well, I like hypatia.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, I like hypatia.

So, it sounds like what you're saying is that you took a look at her pic and had the same reaction I did, which is that she's kind of hot for being one of us in the old folks club, and that, as a grey space alien, you can understand your bretheren wanting a closer look?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Except that we don't call each other bretheren. We told that lunatic Adamski, that was his word, not ours. And from my point of view, hypatia is a spring chicken.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Except that we don't call each other bretheren. We told that lunatic Adamski, that was his word, not ours.

I know what you mean. Most zoobies have never even heard the word "sasquatch, much less use it themselves.

And from my point of view, hypatia is a spring chicken.

That's what I said. I also noticed the interesting birthday. We should start an interesting birthday club.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

That's what I said.

I know; I was just helping to make that clear.

 

[hypatia]

lol..just lol, cause now I'm thinking I should make aluminium lined curtins.

 

[zoobyshoe]

lol..just lol, cause now I'm thinking I should make aluminium lined curtins.

As long as you can open them during the day. Otherwise people will think you're nutty.

 

[hypatia]

I fear it may be late to reverse what people think of me. I saw one neighbor looking oddly at me, then I looked at myself. In my backyard, I was wearing M&M PJ's and dissecting deer lungs{looking for signs of TB} while talking to my dog like it was human.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I fear it may be late to reverse what people think of me. I saw one neighbor looking oddly at me, then I looked at myself. In my backyard, I was wearing M&M PJ's and dissecting deer lungs{looking for signs of TB} while talking to my dog like it was human.

Yeah, in that case just glue the foil right to the window panes if you want.