'History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television'

For those that are interested in this sort of thing, there's a good article below about the 'History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television' and it contains some interesting speculation about certain aspects of the UFO subject, especialy the 'treatment' it receives from the corporate media -there's also some good points made about the work of Major Donald Keyhoe, Walt Disney and Stephen Spielberg as well as some interesting reading concerning the USAF, the CIA and the Pentagon. THIS presentation also raises some intriguing questions about media-government collusion, censorship and precision propaganda.

'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

reply to post by karl 12


I have printed off a copy and will have to read it later but I will get back with a reply later. thatnks for the find, I am interested in what it may reveal.

reply to post by rcanem


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 here concerning the 1966 Portage County incident which inspired the police UFO chase from the film.





Cheers.

S&F
great read
only on page 5

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

werd
so for sixty years the DOD
has been censoring Hollywood movies
go figure

reply to post by spoonbender


Spoonbender, it certainly is mate - I don't know if you've read it but 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

Cheers.

I have been in Ufology many years, and it always amazed me, as to how saturated with CIA people it's always been. Some you knew because they weren't secretive about it, and a number more who weren't open about it. There was a 1950 Rand Report document called "The use of superstitous beliefs for the purposes of psychological warfare". I don't know what -all- they deemed "superstious", though, or "beliefs"............

Very interesting read. Thank you for posting.

It seems there have been efforts to both acclimatize the public to the UFO phenomenon and to downplay certain historical UFO-lore aspects.

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.

Great thread Karl. Thanks for sharing.

I found it interesting that Spielberg received no direct cooperation on Close Encounters because that is, to me, the most accurate depiction I've come across as far as Fed/Gov involvement and reaction to a public UFO event.

Appreciate the replies and I'd say 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:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/884179506585.jpg[/atsimg]

"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:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b417c035bb0c.jpg[/atsimg]

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

Cheers.

reply to post by karl 12


Great find. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the whole subject, in my opinion, and I believe this kind of perception management is still going on. 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".

As far as I know the media shows ufos from friends to foes, saviors to demons. It changing every couple of years. I wonder if that's the way the government controls them. They may, in some strange way, be popularity whores. lol.

It was an excellently written article with almost 12 pages of references to where the information came from. That is a lot of research. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, 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?

Originally posted by Orkojoker
reply to post by karl 12

 

Great find. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the whole subject, in my opinion, and I believe this kind of perception management is still going on. 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".

Hola Orkojoker, kudos points to you mate for the UFO education series of videos -some realy good information in there You're not wrong about Terry Hansen either, probably one of the most knowledgeable chaps when it comes to this subject - don't know if you've heard it before but 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:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fcd8befe4c36.jpg[/atsimg]

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

Cheers.

I had this feeling before that the government covered up aliens and anomalies in space on moons and other planets. It can be slightly enraging at times because the government wants control and I am not a controlling person or would never lie to people. If we did not have people who lie in the world there would be no hate from me to another because we cannot lie to ourselves(for the people who love lies). I think we can use intuition as a larger factor in our decision making to see who we can believe along with the other skills.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Hey Kandinsky, can't disagree with anything you've said there mate and, who knows, maybe some of the more infamous ufologists do enjoy bringing the impartial study of the UFO subject into disrepute -whatever their agendas may be. Many thanks for the SilverScreenSaucers link by the way - I realy enjoyed reading the 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

Cheers!

Excellent thread, Karl, and very well presented; just re-enforces to me that, perhaps, some of the more ludicrous statements and claims made by "names" in ufology are very deliberate in order to promote the general idea that admitting to or claiming sightings, abductions, et al, are merely delusional and/or psychotic in general... which does indeed point Joe Sixpack towards believing that anyone seeing a UFO has had their cheese slip off their cracker...

think about it, though, why would Secretary of Defense Forrestal supposedly commit suicide after dealing with this "apparently" non-existent phenomenon?

Keep up the good work, my friend, this is a good example to all the members here of how a thread should be approached and constructed.


seeker

reply to post by the seeker_713g


Hey my friend, thanks for the post and I'm sure you're right about Joe Sixpack chuckling into his beercan when he hears the term 'UFO' - perhaps it's all to do with the conditioning he receives from the corporate media and/or irresponsible Ufologists but the effect is much the same - I'm also sure the average Joe on the street would be truly shocked if they ever objectively looked into the UFO subject for themselves - even just the sheer number of police reports is pretty mindboggling. :

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

Link

Cheers.

reply to post by karl 12
Well said, friend; we all are conditioned and programmed from birth to see, feel, and perceive in a structured manner; yet more and more are awakening and looking around, realizing that all is not as it seems or appears to be explained...

I did enjoy the interview with Ms Keane; there is also a good transcript of Timothy Good with Paola Harris on her site; all very good food for thought and provocative thinking...

Still though we are confronted with the spectacle of Orson Welles' broadcast that wigged out so many of the population, and the worn out " it would cause panic,blah,blah,blah"; yet I daresay that the majority of the citizens are so blaze' that multiple landings around the world would have little affect or impact on their paradigm unless one landed in their driveway and sat down for coffee...


seeker

Originally posted by the seeker_713g
reply to post by karl 12

 

Well said, friend; we all are conditioned and programmed from birth to see, feel, and perceive in a structured manner; yet more and more are awakening and looking around, realizing that all is not as it seems or appears to be explained...

Seeker, I'd certainly agree there my friend, especially when it comes to the UFO/UAP subject -there's some interesting statements made here about specific incidents and I don't know if you've read it before but this Rand Corporation report is also pretty relevant and brings up some the points you mention.
Cheers.