UFO Alert: NBC, The Crystal Skulls and The Peckman Alien Video

By Bill Knell

NBC recently aired a Dateline episode entitled ‘10 Close Encounters Caught on Tape.’ It should have been called ‘10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Watch UFO Reporting On NBC.’ With little or no interest in getting at the truth, they took on The Phoenix Lights by showing a potpourri of video and lots of commentary. They mixed video of the unexplained lights with video of military flares that were dropped later to try and explain away the series of unexplained events that took place before, during and after the famous March 13, 1997 sightings.

In all fairness to NBC, the idea was to simply examine a bunch of videos that were connected to various UFO sightings and see how they held up to eyewitness testimony and other evidence. It would not only be fair, but legitimate to suggest a number of explanations for what appeared on video. However, NBC had no intention of presenting a fair report like that. They did what they always do; bit the hand that feeds them and pander to the Naysayer.

The Sci-Fi Channel is one of NBC’s more profitable holdings. Despite a few regrettable attempts at UFO journalism involving Roswell and Kecksburg, Sci-Fi’s programming mix of paranormal fact and fiction has paid off in good cable network ratings. Even with shows like Ghost Hunters which many ghost researchers consider to be little more than a kind of paranormal live-action cartoon show, they have scored a ratings hit. The NBC broadcast network hasn’t faired quite so well.

Even after trying to transplant shows like Ghost Hunters and other Sci-Fi Channel ratings grabbers to their broadcast network, NBC hasn’t been able to break out of a ratings slump that consistently puts them in last place. The reason is clear to everyone but them. Viewers interested in paranormal fact or fiction do not trust NBC. Their latest attempt at reporting on the UFO subject by portraying unexplained objects caught on video as everything from flares to shrimp boats is a good example of why. However, the reasons for Viewer distrust go deeper than that.

Every time a new fictional show appears on NBC with a paranormal or supernatural theme, the network displays the incessant need to inject morality plays and social injustice lessons into these shows. After being exposed to episodes stuffed with an endless variety of left or right wing propaganda that takes the shine off the original plot, Viewers start changing the channel.

Everyone has their own view of life and there are ample opportunities to watch issue-oriented programming on a wide variety of broadcast and cable television networks. However, I do not know one person that sits down to watch paranormal programming and expects the supernatural version of a disease of the week movie. People watch paranormal fiction to be entertained. People watch news specials about unexplained events to be educated and informed. When the entertainment starts sermonizing or the news becomes a one-sided view, they stop watching.

NBC apparently decided a long time ago to report on UFOs and most other paranormal subjects from an extremely narrow and skeptical point of view. Smug in their convictions, I’m sure the network and their news division could care less about how the bulk of the television viewing audience feels about these subjects. Despite cashing in on Sci-Fi Viewers that faithfully tune into shows like Stargate Atlantis and Ghost Hunters, NBC can’t seem to produce a single fair report on the paranormal, supernatural or unexplained.

If smugness is a disease, than all of the original broadcast networks suffer from it. I recall a 48 Hours episode that aired on CBS a number of years ago with Dan Rather at the helm. The program featured a segment about the late Dr. John Mack, a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvest School of Medicine. Dr. Mack wrote a book about people who claimed to have been abducted by Aliens and made of the mistake of saying he believed their stories. Despite his credentials, CBS found as many ways as they could to slam and discredit the good doctor.

PBS has always given us an endless line-up of Astronomers like Carl Sagan that love to talk about the stars, as long as they don’t have to say there are any planets with life on them out there. If they do admit there could be life other than ours in the universe, they’ll say it’s swimming around in some slime pit waiting for an evolutionary spark or too dumb to find the earth and visit it. Series like NOVA never met a skeptic or government explanation for UFOs that they didn’t like.

Finally, there’s ABC News that gave us ‘UFOs: Seeing is Believing.’ I can honestly say that it’s the only network news report about UFOs that consistently asked a question and answered it with another question. For example, “If Aliens can visit, how did they get here?’ and who can forget their statement on how “Aliens changed Roswell, even without proof.” For every point made in favor of a UFO encounter being unexplained, three points were made for a conventional explanation.

It’s not unusual to find evidence stacked for or against the reality of a particular phenomenon. It is unusual to have certain parts of that evidence purposely ignored or misrepresented. It’s not enough for incidents like the Stephenville Lights to go off the news reporting radar screen after the U.S. Government says they were just military aircraft on maneuvers; NBC has to bury the story by presenting just one side of it. A side that completely discounts the statements of trained observers, civilian pilots and an honest local journalist just trying to cover the story in a fair manner.

Even when NBC tries to cash in on the paranormal by presenting special reports created by NBC News and shown on Sci-Fi, they manage to make the subjects look ridiculous. Their report on Atlantis was prepared to help promote Stargate Atlantis and was hosted by Amanda Tapping from Stargate SG-1, but reruns replaced Tapping with an NBC Reporter. The program included an interesting segment with Zecharia Sitchin, but they barely gave Sitchin time to explain the artifacts he showed them. Instead, their team of ‘experts’ assembled to investigate Atlantis went out of their way to exclude important evidence and include skeptical hearsay.

NBC’s more recent Sci-Fi Channel report on The Bermuda Triangle included some interesting material, but managed to gloss the Philadelphia Experiment and the infamous U.S. Navy Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center on Andros Island as possible explanations for ship and aircraft disappearances. Instead, they claimed that the missing aircrafts from Flight 19 probably crashed into the Okefenokee Swamp. Flight 19 took off from the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a training mission in 1945 and vanished with a trace. Not done yet, NBC also managed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of most of the crystal skulls that are the subject of the new Indiana Jones film.

Scientists have been busy attempting to bash the crystal skulls ever since they were back in the news. The crystal skulls were fashioned from blocks of clear or milky quartz crystal rock and are thought to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts. A few have been labeled as modern relics manufactured in the nineteenth century, however, experts disagree on these findings. Part of the legend that surrounds them is that they will all be brought together in the year 2012 and usher in an apocalypse or a major earth change

One of the videos that NBC should have included in their special is offered by Jeff Peckman. Peckman is pushing a ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver and says he has actual video of a “living, breathing Alien.” Jeff says, “It shows an extraterrestrial's head popping up outside of a window at night, looking in the window, that's visible through an infrared camera.” Peckman claims that the Alien is about 4 feet tall and can be seen blinking. He also plans to present “other related credible evidence" proving aliens exist will be shown at Friday's news conference.

While it’s possible that all the people who believe UFOs are something more than flares and shrimp boats are just wishful thinkers, it’s also possible that the major broadcast networks have simply failed to produce a single report about UFOs or the unexplained that is objective and fair. Instead, they have pandered to skeptics and found solace in an ever-increasing number of self-serving government explanations for UFO events that are as bogus as they are silly.

For more, visit http://www.ufoguy.org/articles.html

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