Journalism Versus the Flying Saucers: Assessing the First Generation of UFO Reportage, 1947–1967

Abstract

Stories of flying saucers and unidentified flying objects reflect one of the most expansive and enduring news topics of the twentieth century. A historical analysis of UFO reportage over its first two decades indicates that American news organizations were deeply implicated in hyping and often obfuscating the UFO phenomenon. Journalists not only created and perpetuated the label “flying saucers,” but news organizations also thrived on a synergistic relationship with the entertainment industry. Consequently, germane issues related to UFOs, science, national security, and culture often became lost in the seams that delineated news values and reporting traditions from entertainment. When judged against the professional standards of the era, UFO coverage often was superficial, redundant, silly, and poorly coordinated.

Notes

1 Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: Ace Books, 1956), 12–13.

2 Associated Press, “Mysterious Object Still Unidentified,” News (Frederick, MD), June 26, 1947.

3 Associated Press, “Flying Saucer Mystery Deepens as Eyewitness Descriptions Increase,” Albuquerque Journal, June 27, 1947.

4 Earth versus the Flying Saucers, directed by Fred F. Sears (1956; Hollywood, CA: Columbia Pictures), Motion Picture.

5 Roger E. Bilstein, Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Joe Christy and LeRoy Cook, American Aviation (New York: McGraw Hill, 1994).

6 Karal A. Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

7 Adam Roberts, The History of Science Fiction (New York: MacMillan, 2005), 195–229.

8 Robert Genter, “‘Hypnotizzy’ in the Cold War: The American Fascination with Hypnotism in the 1950s,” Journal of American Culture 29, no. 2 (2006): 154–69.

9 William J. Dewan, “A Saucerful of Secrets: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of UFO Experiences.” Journal of American Folklore 119, no. 472 (2006): 184–202; James R. Lewis, UFOs and Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002); David Seed, American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999). These are just a few widely cited examples of hundreds of similar studies and compilations.

10 James W. Carey, “The Dark Continent of American Journalism,” in James Carey: A Critical Reader, edited by Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 148.

11 Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, “Myth, Chronicle, and Story: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News,” in Social Meanings of News: A Text Reader, edited by Dan Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 333–50.

12 Adrian Bingham, “The Digitization of Newspaper Archives: Opportunities and Challenges for Historians,” Twentieth Century British History 21, no. 2 (2010): 225–31.

13 Ibid.

14 Multiple archival database searches confirm this.

15 James W. Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication,” Communication 2 (1975): 8.

16 Associated Press, “He Solves Mystery,” San Antonio Light, June 30, 1947.

17 “Walla Walla Man Sees Flying Disks, Finds Them Seagulls,” Union-Bulletin (Walla Walla, WA), July 1, 1947.

18 United Press, “Army, Navy Officials Silent as ‘Flying Saucers’ Reports Pour in from Many Parts of US,” Mason City Globe-Gazette (Mason City, IA), July 5, 1947.

19 Ibid.

20 Targeted searches on both newspaperarchive.com and newspaper.com, which comprise thousands of local newspapers, reveal similar proportions and ratios: approximately a 10:1 increase. Strentz, 26–27 cites similar findings.

21 “Walla Walla Man Sees Flying Disks”; Ed Harrington, “Flying Saucer ‘Jitters’ as Lights Go Out through Area,” Lowell Sun (Lowell, MA), July 8, 1947.

22 George Gallup, “Nine out of Ten People Heard of Flying Saucers,” Public Opinion News Service (Princeton, NJ), August 15, 1947.

23 Hal Boyle, “Boyle Describes 57,600-Mile Trip with ‘Balmy’ in Flying Saucer,” Pampa News (Pampa, TX), July 10, 1947.

24 “Saucers over Atchison,” Atchison Daily Globe (Atchison, KS), July 12, 1947.

25 United Press, “Many Explanations Are Given for Mysterious ‘Flying Saucers,’” Butte Montana Standard (Butte, MT), July 5, 1947.

26 For example, see United Press, “Orville Wright Calls Disks War Propaganda,” Cedar Rapids Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA), July 9, 1947.

27 “Jr. C. of C. Will Sponsor Big Day July 30th,” Estherville Enterprise (Estherville, IA), July 24, 1947.

28 “Around the Town,” Independent (Long Beach, CA), July 15, 1947.

29 Associated Press, “Four Boys Perpetrate Flying Saucer Hoax,” Benton Harbor News (Benton Harbor, MI), July 12, 1947.

30 Digitized archives indicate that, for example, the Chicago Daily Defender and Pittsburgh Courier ran almost no news stories about flying saucers throughout the duration of this study.

31 Langston Hughes, The Best of Simple: Stories (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015), 231.

32 “Caught One ‘Saucer,’” Statesville Daily Record (Statesville, NC), July 22, 1947. Strentz, 115–28 provides many similar examples of newspapers ridiculing less privileged members of the public, although most involved poorer white people.

33 “Army, Navy Officials Silent.”

34 “Disc Mystery Is ‘Solved’ for Three Hours until Roswell Find Collapses,” Albuquerque Journal, July 9, 1947.

35 Kal K. Korff, The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know (Amherst, NY: Dell, 2000).

36 United Press, “Disc Fragments Linked to Crash,” Oxnard Press Courier (Oxnard, CA), August 4, 1947.

37 Strentz, 211–12.

38 Associated Press, “Thinks Flying Saucers from Russ Rockets,” Waterloo Courier (Waterloo, IA), December 22, 1947.

39 United Press, “Flying Saucer Worth $3,000,” Telegraph-Herald (Dubuque, IA), July 8, 1947.

40 Associated Press, “National Guard Flyer Killed while Chasing ‘Flying Saucer,” Galveston Daily News (Galveston, TX), January 9, 1948. In later investigations, the US Air Force attributed the UFO to a US Navy weather balloon.

41 Ruppelt; J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report: What the Government Suppressed and Why (Amherst, NY: Dell, 1977), 11–27; Hector Quintanilla, UFOs, An Air Force Dilemma (unpublished manuscript, 1974), https://archive.org/details/ufos-an-air-force-dilemma.

42 Donald Keyhoe, Flying Saucers Are Real (New York: Fawcett, 1950), 141.

43 Ruppelt, 93.

44 United Press, “US Ban Hinted on New Flying Saucer Book,” Telegraph-Herald (Dubuque, IA), May 25, 1950.

45 “Year: 1951,” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/year/1951/?ref_=tt_ov_inf.

46 S. Mark Young, “Creating a Sense of Wonder: The Glorious Legacy of Space Opera Toys of the 1950s,” in 1950s Rocketman TV Series and Their Fans, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdin Van Riper (New York: MacMillan, 2012), 149–62; Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

47 Fred Morrison and Phil Kennedy, Flat Flip Flies Straight!: True Origins of the Frisbee (Wethersfield, CT: Wormhole Publishers, 2006).

48 H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna Jr., “Have We Visitors from Space,” Life, April 7, 1952, 96.

49 Robert E. Ginna Jr., “Saucer Reactions,” Life, June 9, 1952, 20.

50 “Total UFO (Object) Sightings,” February 15, 1967, MAXW-PPBB1-1188, Project Blue Book Archive, http://bluebookarchive.org.

51 United Press, “‘Flying Saucers’ Elude AF Jets,” Long Beach Independent (Long Beach, CA), July 28, 1952.

52 “Total UFO (Object) Sightings.”

53 Searches of newspaperarchive.com and newspaper.com generate similar proportions and ratios.

54 Strentz, 290–303.

55 Ibid., 95–98.

56 Walter Sullivan, “Air Force Selecting University to Study ‘Flying Saucer’ Data,” New York Times, August 14, 1966.

57 Walter Sullivan, “Campus Engaged for Saucer Study,” New York Times, October 7, 1966.

58 Associated Press, “Lighted Object Sightings Real, Idaho Man Says,” Era (Bradford, PA), March 30, 1966.

59 Roscoe Drummond, “Pooh-poohing Isn’t Enough,” Leader-Times (Kittanning, PA), March 26, 1966.

60 Associated Press, “UFOs Merely Swamp Gas? Observers Won’t Buy It,” Ogden Standard-Examiner (Ogden, UT), March 27, 1966.

61 UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?, narrated by Walter Cronkite (May 10, 1966; New York: CBS News), Television broadcast.

62 John Fuller “Aboard a Flying Saucer,” Look, October 4 and 18, 1966; John Fuller, The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours (London: Dial Press, 1966).

63 Associated Press, “Victim of Saucer Creatures?” Farmington Daily Times (Farmington, NM), October 5. 1967.

64 Ibid.

65 Strentz, 279.

66 We Are Not Alone, narrated by Edward P. Morgan (August 10, 1967; New York: ABC News), Television Broadcast.

67 John Gosling, Waging the War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic, Including the Original Script (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009); Brian Thornton, “The Moon Hoax: Debates about Ethics in 1835 New York Newspapers,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 15, no. 2 (2000): 89–100.

68 Strentz, 170–75. Fear of communist infiltration was among the key cultural dynamics that influenced the UFO phenomenon for years. Of significance, in early 1953 a secretive scientific panel chaired by H. P. Robertson, a theoretical physicist at California Institute of Technology, met to review government UFO research. The panel concluded, in part, that there was little to be gained by scientific study of UFOs. But the discussion, which included CIA representatives, worried that UFO hysteria might, “in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic.” So instead of terminating Air Force involvement, the panel called for continued government action to educate the public and debunk UFO reports in light of the perceived communist threat.

69 Strentz, v.

70 Siegfried Mandel, “Great Saucer Hunt,” Saturday Review, August 6, 1955, 28–29; Donald H. Robey, “Theory About Flying Saucers,” Saturday Review, September 5, 1959, 51–55.

71 “Unidentified Flying Objects and Air Force Project Blue Book,” US Air Force Fact Sheet (Washington, DC), April 25, 2003, http://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104590/unidentified-flying-objects-and-air-force-project-blue-book/.