I’ve brought up in previous Gralien Report blogs how strange it is that, today, more reports of UFO sightings seem to cause lesspublic interest in the matter. What I mean by this is that, with the major media overhaul of today, courtesy of several different news channels feeding 24-7 coverage of everything newsworthy (and many things that aren’t) via print, television, radio, satellite, and Internet, we no longer have the “breaking news” of yesteryear. Granted, there are still “hot” stories, but they aren’t the kind of thing that you often see interrupting your regularly scheduled program like in the bygone days. After all, why interrupt your MTV reality programs, etc, with breaking coverage when you could go to an all news, all the time station a few channels up the dial?

But how does this affect UFO reports? In my mind, it’s simple: True, the media reports on UFOs and unexplained phenomena daily (trust me, if you don’t agree, try signing up for a Google-alert for the word “UFO”). Still, it seems to be that the amount of information we receive from media sources daily has made us a bit apathetic in response to all things “newsworthy”. Therefore, even if there is actually more coverage of UFO related stories in the news today, we seem to pay attention to it less, lending to statements like “UFOs were seen all the time in the 1970s, but you don’t hear about them as much today.”

I had a discussion about this with the operations manager at 99.9 FM KISS Country, the largest pop country radio station in Western North Carolina. Jeff described how back in 1986, when news of the Challenger shuttle breaking apart interrupted programming all across America, “we didn’t hear about it but once or twice a day. They interrupted broadcasts and announced what had happened, but we had to wait until that evening to learn more details, and then we all bought the paper the next morning.” At the time we had this conversation, the death of Anna Nicole Smith had been the primary focus of all the major television news sources. “This stuff makes me sick,” I recall Jeff saying, “and with due respect to the dead, it’s not about Smith. It’s the fact that Americans die each day due to horrible tragedies, and yet the media can’t find anything to occupy air time with any better than by sensationalizing her death as a celebrity. It’s sickening, and that’s not the kind of thing we reported as ‘news’ back in the day.”

I think my buddy Jeff has the right idea; we hear so much about certain subjects that we finally grow apathetic. To some degree, I think we’ve gotten used to hearing about UFOs; so much so that we don’t pay attention to reports like we used to. Factor in the fact that, thanks to programs like Adobe Photoshop, virtually anything can be faked easily, and you have a recipe for complete apathy. In a similar bit of analysis over at the UFO Iconoclast(s) blog, the subject was addressed recently, citing that “UFOs are a dead issue, like some languages and arcane sciences.” Below is an excerpt from the piece they featured, titled The Resuscitation – and Death of UFOs:

Even the impending influx of UFOs, predicted for mid-October, when it fails to occur, will be one more nail in the coffin of ufology and the UFO/flying saucer mystery. We reiterate: UFOs have no impact on humanity. The never have and they never will.

Though stated a bit grimly, I think that the underlying theme here is similar to what I propose.  UFOs, once a sensational means of making headlines, have probably succumbed to being reported more frequently on specialty websites (like The Gralien Report) which deal exclusively with such issues, rather than the front pages of major newspapers like they did back in the 1970s, when “UFOs were still big news”. I don’t think UFOs are a dead issue; it just seems that we aren’t paying attention like we once might have… but if that’s the case, will UFOs as we know them ever have any impact on humanity?

I know several people right off the top of my head who might argue that UFOs already have helped shape humanity, with rumors afoot like those which claim fiber-optics and other technology have actually been obtained through back-engineering alien spacecraft. However, at present I’ve seen no evidence of this, and frankly, I’m not so certain there’s any such likelyhood. Therefore, wherever, whenever, and however they appear, we’ll have to continue waiting on who decides to report on our alleged “Space Brothers”, and furthermore, on who will pay attention when news breaks. For the Gralien Report, I’m Micah A. Hanks… next news at the bottom of the hour, and as always, breaking news as it happens!