Assessing Credibility of UFO News Sources
In the exciting world of UFO X (Twitter), there’s been some great conversation in the past around the topic of the quality of media outlets UAP related stories. Specifically, some of the U.K tabloids, like The Sun and The Daily Mail which can be a bit salacious have recently carried some good UAP reporting. Note these two articles:
Dozens of sailors confirm their warships were swarmed by ‘at least 100 otherworldly UFOs
These are relatively good quality articles reporting on statements by credible witnesses. None-the-less, they have been denigrated due to the news outlet that published the articles.
Who has credible UAP news?
Because of the history of the UAP phenomenon, there is a built-in bias in the main stream media in the U.S. against the UAP phenomenon. The history of government coverup in the U.S. has led the mainstream media to shun the topic in order to stay in the good graces of their sources in government, politics and the military. Since the top of the media hierarchy, the mainstream media, has traditionally spat on the UAP phenomenon, they have become a low-quality source for UAP related information. This puts Ufology in the position of having to abandon the normal hierarchy of news source credibility.
Frequently, those institutions that are often considered the least credible news sources are, for the UAP phenomenon, the most credible. Consider the case of the British tabloid, The Sun, which in 2017 filed a FOIA request for information on the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). In 2022 they received 1500 pages of documents from the government including information showing that humans had received a number of dangerous injuries including burns, heart problems, sleep disturbances from direct interactions with UAPs. Here’s the article. Clearly the Sun carries some amount of good quality UAP news reporting.
Similarly, young journalists Josh Boswell and Christopher Sharp occasionally write about the UAP phenomenon in the Daily Mail. These are well researched and written articles that break meaningful UAP news. From these two examples we can conclude that the London tabloids present some good quality news on the UFO phenomenon despite the negative perceptions they carry.
How to establish the credibility of UAP news sources
The only way to determine source credibility is the hard way. We must do what all people should be doing at all times when reading the news. We exercise our skepticism. That means evaluating everything up and down the publishing chain and thinking about how each of those might impact what is being published.
- The publishing entity, newspaper or web site, and their motivation for publishing the piece
- The author of the piece and any biases they might carry
- The quoted sources or experts or references in the piece
The Publisher
The publisher in first article linked above, The Sun, is a tabloid, known for throwing up lots of sometimes salacious click bait such as this:
Travis Barker’s daughter Alabama, 16, dances around in new TikTok before quickly deleting it
They also perfectly capable of posting real news:
Tesla is shutting down it’s entire San Mateo office and laying off 200
Here’s the same article form CNBC. You can Google this story and see it is carried at a number of respectable news outlets.
Just because they are a click bait oriented tabloid doesn’t mean they don’t carry real news. Don’t borrow established bias or you will miss real news. Establish publisher credibility on your own.
The Author and the Sources
Authors and subject matter experts are relatively easy to evaluate. They are public figures of sorts. In general, they will have a social media presence. They may have a LinkedIn profile. Read a past article or two. Establish their credibility for yourself. However, remember not to paste your own political biases onto the person. Good UAP news can come from a person of any political stripe.
It's up to you
When assessing the value of a news source pertaining to the UAP phenomenon, you need to do you own homework. If you borrow established biases toward news organizations, authors or sources you will miss real UAP related news. If you don’t do your own homework you may pick up on untruthful or unverifiable news. In the world of Ufology, the onus is on you to verify your news sources.
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