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Reviews of Peter Jennings Report on UFOs
The definitive special about alien life ...has yet to be made.
by Will Bueche
John E. Mack Institute
Peter Jennings' report on UFOs was awaited with much excitement by people such as myself who have an interest in the subject of alien contact - excitement which was only partially tempered by the unfortunate news that the final interview given by Harvard's Dr. John Mack, a leading authority on the subject of alien contact, would not be presented in the finished program. Still, the potential for a powerful program remained, due to the high quality work which Peter Jennings Productions are known for. I duly tuned in the broadcast this evening.
It seems that the best of what Peter Jennings Productions (and the filmmakers at Springs Media) delivered was a strong 20 or 30 minute introduction to the UFO subject, and then (much later in the program) an all-too-brief couple of minutes of modern perspectives on how alien visitation could be possible (from internationally recognized authority in theoretical physics Dr. Michio Kaku).
The first segment persuasively argued that early investigations of flying saucers on the part of the Air Force or government were so weak as to be considered a squandered opportunity for knowledge. But from that segment on, the program seemed rather uninspired.
If the program had taken the lead of modern scientists such as Dr. Michio Kaku or Brian Greene this program could have been a grand statement about the current theories and ideas about ufos/alien encounters, and how we might investigate them if we apply this modern knowledge. I refer to knowledge which - as anyone who has looked into alien encounters would appreciate - involves theoretical physics' insights into the structure of reality as well as theories of consciousness or, to put it more simply, theories of how perception of reality is affected by different states of consciousness.
Instead, modernity was given a couple good minutes of limelight (in the form of Dr. Kaku explaining how modern physics believes that seemingly vast distances between worlds could be crossed in an instant) followed by far too many people who are retreading theories of the 1970s - including present day researchers who are parroting theories from that era (the people from SETI, Harvard's Dr. McNally, and - to be entirely fair - even some "pro" ufo folks).
If only Jennings' program had been as fascinated by contemporary theories as they were by the early days of the UFO era. It was evidently not to be, and therefore this special was itself an opportunity squandered.
Sadly, the definitive special about alien life has yet to be made.
 As alternative viewing choices, I'd recommend the Nova special called The Elegant Universe hosted by Brian Greene. Although the DVD hardly mentions alien contact it paints a picture of the universe which provides ample context for the presence of alien life visiting life on Earth. Also suggested: Laurel Chiten's documentary Touched which the John Mack Institute was instrumental in bringing to schools and institutions last year.
Viewers Respond
Reaction to the Peter Jennings Special, sampled from the web.
"...thank god for the Dr. Kaku segment; as he said, I believe most of our skeptics are only thinking 100 years in the future; not 1 million. The arrogance [of some scientists who] think we know the way the universe works is amazing to me - especially because science has been revised and proven wrong so many times in the past. Considering the age of the universe, why would we assume that any race near us would be as young as we are? And using radio waves for god's sake?"
"John Mack, whose interview was cut, was sorely missed here as plenty of abduction stuff was offered up, only to be coolly dismissed by pretty Dr. Clancy, with little or no rebuttal or debate presented."
"...the 'experts' have that haughtiness that indicates they think they know what is going on in the universe. Well, nobody knows. I'm inclined to think that what actually is going on is so bizarre that any one of us would be hard pressed to believe it [unless it] were it presented to us in a way we would understand -- an unlikely prospect in itself. There's likely more to it than we can imagine."
"I was left with the feeling that [Jennings] wants the audience to give the topics serious consideration, and that scientists should give it serious study."
"It seems as if a number of the Scientists, Psychologists, Psychiatrists and others interviewed for these and similar topic shows pound the drum of the fallibility of memory and the concept that the mind is weak storage device because everything is filtered through perception and that the information within is prone to be rewritten and edited over time. To some extent I believe that most would agree this is true, but I hardly believe this means that memory should never be trusted. After all, some folks put these little PhDs, MDs, and other markers of learned knowledge behind their names, which I would assume, means they don’t doubt their own experience, suggest that we should trust their memory, and what they say should somehow hold some weight because of the memory of their past educational experience, which is somehow immune to be rewritten or edited. Is that faulty logic? Are these two different concepts?"
"[ABC] showed Michio Kaku but did not help establish a method for further scientific investigation. They left the viewer believing that some of this UFO stuff may be true but did not establish any direction and methods for
establishing that truth."
"It's easy to tell the smart people from the dumb people. Compare some of those skeptics on the show with their smirks and blank eyes to the bright light of Michio Kaku's eyes and his clear passion for learning and physics. I think there are really two kinds of people in the world - those who are fascinated by the universe and what it might contain, and those who want to just plain contain it within a predetermined idea structure."
"Truthfully, I was embarrassed and ashamed [of] the scientists interviewed in the second part. If they represent the majority of the scientific community then it is no wonder that we are in trouble and nothing ever gets resolved in the UFO arena. Dr. Michio Kaku was the only bright light in the whole second half of the program. He was the only one to express intelligent thoughts on the subject. He is a truly Renaissance Man. If all of our scientists were as open minded as he, (and to be able to call themselves scientists, they should be) we might be living in a far better world."
Response from an Experiencer featured on the program
I was interviewed [for] the Peter Jennings show. They
did use my interview in the abduction section. I thought they treated me with respect compared to past experiences but was very upset that they did not include John Mack's interview or David Jacobs' and went down the same road of the hypnosis, sleep paralysis thing. I did not have hypnosis to recover what happened but was made to look like I did.... I was glad they
included me saying that we need more questions asked. That is
the truth.
Response from a friend of Dr. John Mack's
Presented anonymously by request
John and I used to have chats in his kitchen about where we thought this phenomenon was "at", and what we thought were the next steps the larger cultural conversation needed to take. He and I both agreed that before further discussion about the reality of "contact" could be addressed in the mainstream, the first point that needed to be addressed in public forums is WHY we westerners have such a hard time even engaging as a possibility the idea that "contact" has already happened.
I had a phone conversation today with one of the people who helped put together the Peter Jennings special, a man similar in age, education, and upbringing as myself. But despite our similarities, we were the perfect embodiment of the polarities that exist in our culture about this subject matter. And yet, the two of us represent people, equally "of sound mind and body", who have the capacity to engage in private a much more sophisticated dialogue than what a mainstream two hour program is willing to discuss in public (for all of it's myriad of reasons).
For me, and for many others in communities that address issues of Evolving Consciousness (not just "ufo/alien" folks), the need to create platforms or media (whatever you want to call it, whatever it looks like) that DOESN'T represent ungrounded, new agey mumbo jumbo - or it's current polarized counterpart that is the mainstream media - but that DOES represent the cutting edge of mainstream consciousness and the issues it is dealing with, is a pressing one.
We are not just a few hundred people, we who are interested in the physics of a new reality, we who are aware of the fact that we are NOT alone in this universe (even though we may not as yet be able to explain any where close to fully, what has been the exact nature of our contact experiences - though, rest assured, sleep paralysis it ain't).
There are millions of us who are interested in really moving this larger conversation forward.
That there exists SUCH a gap between the mainstream and those who are interested in actively participating in conversations that push forward the evolution of our western consciousness is telling.
And what it suggests, is that the mainstream is afraid, just as those of us who had these "alien encounter" experiences were afraid. It was terrifying to have our realities and beliefs shattered over and over again. And yet, most of us survived our paradigm deconstruction (even if it was in a "sink or swim" kind of fashion) and have managed to recreate meaningful new realities for ourselves in the wake of our experiences.
That the mainstream is unconsciously facing what would certainly represent the collapse of all it has held dear (including beliefs about God, religion, humans being at the "top of the food chain", and reality being a definable structure as interpreted only by our five senses and empirical science), has everything to do with why the Peter Jennings documentary had to be AS watered down as it was.
Interesting questions to ask here are:
Why CAN'T we have a balls to the wall, full blown documentary "on air" that articulates the phenomenon and it's accompanying confusion, just as it has been authentically presenting itself?
Why CAN'T we have the skeptics present their arguments, and have them FULLY responded to by equally qualified professionals, scientists, & academics who possess both the letters after their names, and the experience to satisfyingly rebutt and make clearly obvious that the skeptics arguments are weak at best, and in truth, fall FAR short of being able to describe what's actually happening in this phenomenon?
If we COULD manage to pull off those kinds of investigations, MAYBE we could begin the careful but courageous dance of beginning to stick our faces into the heart of this phenomenon (instead of into the sand) to begin to honestly explore what seems to be the collapse of reality as we currently understand
it.
One of the problems, I think, so far, has been that we in the consciousness related communities have been waiting for the mainstream to bring itself into the larger conversation. We have been expecting the mainstream media to WANT to investigate the contact phenomenon in spite of its fear of ridicule for being truthful in it's reporting.
Problem is though, no one of sound mind who wants to stay safe and accepted within the cultural framework of what's believable wants to be played the fool.
So time and time and time again, we who have had these experiences are called out to report what has happened to us. And time and time again, we are dismissed, explained away, pathologized or marginalized. We are sacrificed because nobody has the courage to say "hey, maybe the emperor really ISN'T wearing any clothes".
We have a long way to go, we humans. As one of the experiencers featured on the program said, we really are just babies. That may be one of the most important things we need to remember as we consider why we, as a culture, have thus far lacked the courage to engage these possibilities... we're only babies.
And not so unlike infants, we think the Universe extends only as far as the four walls we can see around us.
Or perhaps, even more tragically, we believe that we don't matter. That we're alone in a vast void of space and time.
But we're wrong.
And eventually, hopefully, before it's "too late", we'll figure that out. We'll make adjustments in our cultural belief system to accommodate a new reality, before our old one comes crashing down around us.
Response from Kathy (Kit) Vaquilar,
International Contact Support Network
Many in the UFO community have responded to Peter Jennings' "UFO's: Seeing is Believing" with a lot of frustration and deep anger -- again. Anger is good if it's turned towards positive energy, but negativity has reined in the ranks of the community for a very long time and for a reason, but it's getting too old. Anger will not move this community forward unless we all band together with more creative and positive energy, and also take care of each other. The Universe is always calling us to this task. Anger is a fire energy and from fire there is either great destruction and/or great creativity. Its our own community's responsibility to get its act together and to keep working together at it, supporting each other in many ways. It's not the responsibility of the beings in the UFOs to do this for us. We have been asked to do this for a long time by them. People like Peter Jennings or the other skeptics in their own ways are asking us to do this too, but they come at it from a very different angle.
The solution to all these negative mainstream media blitzes that fail so badly on the UFO subject is not to mourn, but to organize and to create something that's better. To not be afraid, but to be courageous. To not sit back, but to get out there and do the work. It's not over until it's over. Many of us are in this for the long haul because we've been contacted. Most of you know that I'm an experiencer, but I have never seen myself as a victim of abduction. It was a matter of figuring out what I had and have to learn in this life. The beings I encountered keep inspiring me, but they too find human beings frustrating to work with because of our limitations as 3 dimensional creatures. They find the UFO community frustrating to workwith. We find each other as humans frustrating to work with.
We must work together and we must do it with love and courage in our hearts, not with fear or anger. Fear and anger is really how people, who want to keep the old paradigms in place, want us act, especially in the United States. If we let our anger and frustration get in the way we are simply playing into their hands. The UFO community will help change this world for the better if our combined positive energies of free willed manifestation are at the center of our collective awareness and actions -- even when the chips look like they're coming down.
We have another opportunity here! It's time to act and time for us to work together -- again and again.
1) ABC can be reached at:
ABC, Inc.
500 S. Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521-4551
Tell them what you think.
2) Share the absolutely best UFO video of all time to your family, friends, and community. It's an award winning film called "OUT OF THE BLUE" and it's really good! Go to www.outoftheblue.tv for more info. Even that film made the folks at "Skeptic Magazine" think twice. ICSN will be assisting OOTB again with local distribution here in and from the Bay Area. Help us get that great film out -- again!
3) Support the UFO folks in your locations and elsewhere to keep doing what they're doing to advance Disclosure and related information, because they're doing most of the work out of pocket on their own funds.
There are two good conferences coming up that I'll send you more info on soon -- International UFO Congress and Steven Bassett's PRG Conference. If you can attend or help spread the word, please do.
4) ICSN will be meeting again soon in the springtime.
Let's keep changing the world for the better. Believe me, that's the message that the beings want us to listen to and act upon. No, they aren't going to eat us. That's mostly dis- and misinformed entertainment that started with the radio program "War of the Worlds", which Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruz are resurrecting soon at a theater near you. As for the negative ETs that seem to pop up sometimes? I think we have more to worry about with the negative human beings who are already inhabiting our planet and creating havoc around the world.
Peace and best wishes,
KATHY (KIT) VAQUILAR
International Contact Support Network
kitkatshado@earthlink.net
Review by Kathy Vaquilar
Below is Vaquilar's initial review of the program
On February 24, 2005, Entertainment Tonight reported that Peter Jennings does not believe in UFOs. One of Jennings' conclusions in ABC's "UFOs:Seeing is Believing" was that Roswell is a myth. Jennings did a very sophisticated journalist's job of dismissing the UFO subject as "myth-making" by unscientific believers.
However, he also presented some impressive modern and historical records, interviews and testimony from quite an array of professional experts and civilians who can't all be discounted in the UFO field. His program left his audience to their own conclusions and seemed to give more weight to well funded scientists like SETI's Seth Shostak, who want material evidence such as "pens" and "wheel parts" from UFOs, than to many expert eyewitnesses.
This wasn't surprising at all. Jennings wanted to come across as balanced and rational in his reporting, but his own beliefs still leaked through. It would be hard for him to hide that. After all, his career would be at stake.
"UFOs: Seeing is Believing" started out sounding sympathetic to the phenomena, but also gave critics and skeptics major air play. It came down to pitting "believer" against "nonbeliever" -- again and again. Whatever evidence is available was still not enough, especially for mainstream scientists and skeptics, who seemed to count more than the witnesses and UFO researchers themselves.
Personal perspectives and subjective views continue to play a major role in the formation of opinions on this controversial topic and how far one is willing to go with those views. It's unfortunate that Dr. John Mack was not available to counter his fellow psychologists from Harvard on this national TV show.
A couple of them came out and put forth the repeated theory that the abduction experience is simply caused by sleep paralysis and a certain level of Rapid Eye Movement (R.E.M.) that can be used to explain many paranormal experiences.
Budd Hopkins was shown and left alone to fend for himself as an artist leading in abduction research with hypnosis as his only tool. Hypnosis was conveyed as unreliable. Peter Davenport was interviewed as the only full time UFO investigator in the entire United States.
Michio Kaku was given the limelight to express himself, and as a scientist he encouraged viewers and colleagues by exclaiming, "Let the investigation begin." His inclusion as a contemporary physicist, who wants us to open up our minds to more possibilities, was very refreshing to hear amidst the more traditional and conservative skeptics who think interstellar space travel is too difficult to conceive and that radio waves are the most advanced form of communication in space by ETs.
Jennings' traditional "objective" journalism was displayed well in his program and gave both sides their day in court. However, sometimes it felt a bit schizophrenic going back and forth. He also stated that in courts eye witness reports are considered "high evidence", whereas in science, it is "low evidence."
Jennings ended his special with "Ultimately only contact is going to solve the mystery." Problem was that those who told Jennings and his staff that they had contact were already dismissed by him and others on television. There was obviously a lot covered in his special, which I didn't mention here, and also a portion that reminded me of some of journalist Terry Hansen's work related to the history of media with UFOs and the U.S. government's dismissal of the phenomena that was designed to keep our population under emotional control.
Historian Richard Dolan, Stanton Friedman and many others we're familiar with were key sources for Jennings to tap into. I hope you were able to catch "UFOs: Seeing is Believing" on television. It was a professional piece, but still not the best work out there on mainstream television. However, it's a real technical notch above anything else that the other national networks like NBC and Fox have done in the past.
Thank ABC that Jennings did not wear a trench coat with scary music playing throughout the broadcast. In spite of its shortcomings, "UFOs" was a slick piece of mainstream media work that both denied and acknowledged the phenomena. It still left enough room for further discussions in chat rooms and elsewhere.
I'm sure there will be many people talking about this show over the next few days to weeks. Disney owned ABC probably received the ratings that they were looking for. If that's the case, they may come out with another UFO program to follow this. Let's hope it gets better, especially in regards to further real Disclosure, but it will still take more work on our part to keep pushing that through. Art Bell is probably up late discussing this one. He and Ramona were also featured by Jennings.
In the meantime, I have to get some shut eye myself so I can perhaps experience some of my own sleep paralysis and R.E.M.
Good Night,
KATHY (KIT) VAQUILAR
International Contact Support Network
Budd Hopkins' Response
to the ABC Peter Jennings "Seeing is Believing" TV Program
Courtesy of the Intruders Foundation
During the past year Jenning's producers interviewed me a number of times, and because I sensed what they had in mind, I made, as
a preemptive strike, a number of careful, highly specific observations about the UFO abduction phenomenon. All of these crucial points - recorded by ABC on videotape - were designed to underline the physical reality of UFO abductions and to demonstrate the implausibility of current skeptical explanations.
To its shame, ABC suppressed ALL of these observations.
I knew, of course, that the skeptics' favorite explanation du jour is impossibly simple: abduction reports, they believe, are all due to misperceived "sleep paralysis." Ranking as a distant second is another erroneous belief: abduction reports, they say, "ONLY emerge under hypnosis," and since hypnosis is "totally unreliable", all abduction reports must be discarded.
In the light of these tediously familiar errors and misstatements, I made certain in my taped interviews to explain the following:
- In the first two decades of our research, ALL of the central
abduction cases involved people who were outside their houses
when they were taken NONE were lying paralyzed in their
bedrooms. They were driving cars, walking, fishing, hunting and
even, in one famous case, driving a tractor on a farm. "Sleep
paralysis" as a blanket explanation of UFO abductions is
therefore, ipso facto, a ludicrous non-starter. Nevertheless
ALL of my insistent statements on this point were systematically
eliminated by the producers.
- Second, I indicated that there are many abuction reports
involving two, three, six or more people who were taken
simultaneously and whose highly detailed recollections are
virtually identical. This fact alone eliminates not only "sleep
paralysis" but "fantasy-proneness" or any other idiosyncratic
psychological aberrations as triggering causes. My
descriptions of these many cases of multiple abductions were
likewise completely suppressed by the producers
- Third, I showed the interviewers many photos of, again,
virtually identical scoop marks, consistent straight-line scars
and ground landing traces at abduction sites, and other physical
sequelae. ALL of these vivid photographic examples of physical
evidence were suppressed by the producers.
- Fourth, I was not alone in making these points. My colleague Dr. David Jacobs was asked by ABC to carry out a hypnotic regression for the camera, but since the woman he chose had been abducted in the daytime while driving a car, the case did not fit ABC's "sleep paralysis" agenda and was thus not only suppressed, but Dr. Jacobs' many hours of taped interviews were also scrapped.
- Fifth, I made it very clear that perhaps 30% of all the
abduction reports collected by researchers are recalled WITHOUT
THE AID OF HYPNOSIS, a fact which renders the issue of hypnosis
moot. This point was also suppressed by the producers whose
only goal, it appeared, was to eliminate any data that
contradicted their transparently false debunking hypotheses.
Despite my having presented - and reiterated - the points above, the producers chose to trot out on camera two debunking scientists (whose experiments with a mere handful of subjects have yet to be taken seriously by the psychological community) to buttress the untenable "sleep paralysis" theory, the false "no physical evidence" claim, and the demonstrably untrue "its all hypnosis" assertion. The smug presentations of these two would-be experts were accompanied by the producers' lurid "reenactments" of "sleep paralysis" phenomena, complete with flashing lights and spooky music. The taped testimony of a serious mental health professional like Dr. John Mack was likewise suppressed, along with my statement that over the years eight psychiatrists and numerous other mental health professionals had come to me about their own UFO abductions. The producers' obvious goal was to conceal the fact that within the mental health community there are many professionals who look with amusement on the "sleep paralysis" theory, and who accept the physical reality of UFO abductions.
So what can one say about such a deliberately dishonest presentation as Peter Jenning's "Seeing is Believing" take on abductions? Perhaps one can only shrug and warn, yet again, that the incurious members of the press and the many blinkered, conservative scientists had better collectively pull their heads up out of the sand and join us in our work. Whatever one's personal attitude toward the UFO abduction phenomenon, science insists that an extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation. What ABC served up on Thursday night was, instead, an extraordinary whitewash of the abduction phenomenon, and a brutal suppression of the evidence for what
may well be the most portentous event in human history.
Peter Jennings and his staff should be ashamed
Budd Hopkins
New York, Feb 25, 2005
Response from Joe Firmage
I don't offer many public comments on this subject these days,
as my time is necessarily focused on other equally important
agendas. But given the unique nature of the ABC broadcast, I
would like to offer a few comments.
1 - Another, compatible explanation for the strengths and
weaknesses of the program is this: the "limited hangout".
Clearly, rational and objective observers watching the first
half of the program would conclude that the core of the
phenomenon is real and of ET origin, particularly if they are
sufficiently well read to realize that the testimonies offered
represent just a tiny fraction of the rugged observational
evidence available today.
Yet, from the third quarter of the program, rational and
objective observers unfamiliar with the full dimensions of the
evidence would likely conclude that even the most secretive of
government agencies has nothing under wraps.
The treatment of the history of and evidence for a highly
classified, partially-privatized program involving hardware
recovery and possibly much more was completely absent from the
program, and any implication of such was shot down summarily by
the treatment of the Roswell case.
Whatever one may think of that particular case, there is no
question that this program's treatment of the larger question -
of the available body of evidence of classified programs
involving hardware and biology - was either intentionally
suppressed, or simply eliminated from the narrative due to its
controversy and complexity.
I'm surely willing to give ABC and Jennings the benefit of
the doubt on that question.
I know for a fact that very few folks are "in the loop" on
issues deeper than those explicitly revealed in the program.
That loop likely includes no one directly in the ABC orbit. So a
purely pragmatic interpretation of the weaknesses of the program
- and the desire for ratings as justification for the program in
the first place - is fully sufficient to explain the approach
taken by ABC.
But either way, the effect, intentional or not, was the perfect
limited hangout for the current administration. After all, if
you're in power today, and you know that the great secret is in
the process of coming out, but you'd rather the public not know
how deep the military-industrial-intelligence programs really
go, this program was spot on message.
2 - The arguments of the debunkers were unconvincing, to say the
least. It is insulting to generations of scientists everywhere
to suggest that 'eyewitness testimony is the least credible'
kind of evidence. This assertion is particularly indefensible in
domains that involve biological systems, where predictability of
location and periodicity of phenomenon are often impossible in
principle.
How would a zoologist or anthropologist react to such a sweeping
assertion as made by many of the physicists and astronomers
interviewed in the program? Yes, the particulars of eyewitness
testimony are subject to great margins of error. That is one
main reason why statisticians have jobs. The implications of the
statistical evidence compiled over decades of eyewitness
testimony concerning this phenomenon are clear.
Consider an analogy: imagine that we're all fish swimming close
to one coral reef in a vast ocean. A tiny number of fish report
having seen "giant beings, thousands of lengths longer that we,
swimming below and around our home". Of course, blue whales are
a rare sight for the Nemos of our world. Other reef fish
ridicule the observers, since the observers can offer no
predictable schedule or locations for observing such creatures.
It is remarkably arrogant to suggest that we humans, after
less than 50,000 days during which we even knew of the
existence of things called "galaxies", fully appreciate the
possibilities of far more ancient fish in the cosmic ocean.
These arguments become even more relevent if there is a reason - like some kind of prime directive - that dictates a
threshold of interaction between ancient, highly advanced
civilizations and the barely newborn civilization of human
beings on Earth. Why would they "land on the White House lawn"
until they deem we're good and ready to join their civilization?
Would we behave any differently if we were observing from above
a young garden world with its more primitive children weilding
nuclear matchsticks in petty conflicts that should otherwise be
easily resolved? Would we wish to bequeath to them far greater
powers than those they are already abusing?
3 - Which brings me to the third observation.
Michio Kaku's comments are quite profound, as they represent the
beginning of a wedge in the "mainstream" physics community
concerning the appraisal of UFO evidence.
I prefer the science of Puthoff, Haisch, Hestenes and others
(polariziable vacuum interpretation of general relativity,
origin of inertia and weight in charge-ZPF interactions,
physical interpretation of quantum mechanical behaviors,
respectively) to explain how such wonders as interstellar travel
may one day become everyday. But Kaku's position is of great
value in advancing the dialogue on this subject within the
scientific community, and he is to be commended for his courage
and wisdom in taking the stand that he has taken.
ABC's UFO Special: An Autopsy
Dateline: Friday, February 25, 2005
By: RANDALL FITZGERALD
By: Phenomena Senior Editor
By devoting two hours of primetime to the subject of UFOs, alien abductions, and prospects for the existence of other intelligent life in the universe, the ABC television network took a courageous yet calculated gamble.
It was courageous because, despite the predictable nature of the content, no other network in recent memory has attempted such a bold brushstroke treatment of such a broad and controversial subject area. That it did so for two riveting hours merits appreciation from those of us who consider ourselves open-minded, but not so open that we allow our brains to fall out.
Yet it may have also been a safe and calculated ratings gamble in the sense that few people, except the most dogmatic cynics or believers, will find much to take offense with in ABC's attempt at balance. Both believers and debunkers were given their point and counterpoint opportunities. The UFO extraterrestial visitation hypothesis was contrasted with the usual 'there is no credible evidence' perspective of mainstream science. No other theories for the phenomenon were entertained. In the guise of 'objective' reporting, this program tried to be all things to all people.
During the opening minutes of hour one the tone was set with a NASA scientist stating how there is no credible evidence for alien visitation, but given the size of the universe intelligent life must exist elsewhere. So where are they? Then we were treated to a visit with Art Bell, host of the Coast To Coast radio show, who along with his wife described their 1994 UFO sighting and the impact it had on their lives.
Next up came the March 13, 1997 UFO sightings over the state of Arizona. Numerous witnesses gave their accounts of seeing an immense, silent object ringed with five lights, which a Tuscon astronomer dismissed as a combination of military flares and five airplanes flying in formation.
The network's treatment of this case captured my attention because, as some of you readers may recall, last year I published three columns here recounting my interviews with more than 50 witnesses to the Phoenix Lights, as the sighting became known. My conclusion based on interviews with commercial pilots flying over Arizona that night was that five airplanes were indeed responsible for the sighting. But a legitimate mystery remained as to why these military pilots were conducting an apparent psychological warfare experiment, a hoax intended to dupe thousands of people. ABC chose not to pursue this line of inquiry.
Several of the 15-minute segments of this program were devoted to the history of the UFO phenomenon in the United States. From 1947, with the first wave of sightings, until the creation of the Air Force's Project Blue Book with the alleged intention of investigating these sightings, ABC made clear how the U.S. government was more interested in defusing 'public hysteria' than in solving the mystery. So Blue Book became nothing more than a public relations effort to assure everyone that we had nothing to fear from the unknown.
Among the many UFO personages who are either interviewed or make taped appearances in the program are Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Blue Book scientist who transitioned from debunker to UFO believer, Stanton Friedman talking about the 1947 Roswell crash, Budd Hopkins on alien abductions, Jerome Clark, Karl Pflock, and Dr. Michael Swords. Among SETI scientists we find the usual cast of characters in Frank Drake, Seth Shostak, and Jill Tarter. Michael Shermer was one of the few active debunkers featured.
Peter Jennings rarely ventured what could be interpreted as his own opinions during the program, except in one instance. Speaking of Roswell and the alleged discovery of alien bodies in a crashed spaceship, Jennings declared: "There is not a shred of evidence of alien bodies or a crash...believers cling to a myth."
During 15 minutes devoted to the alien abduction phenomenon, Jennings described abductees as normal people who, according to psychiatric specialists, have had extraordinary experiences. Several abductees related some details of their experiences, followed by several psychiatric commentators who ascribed the phenomenon to a common sleep disorder that involves paralysis. No new ground was broken here and the absence of Dr. John Mack, the late Harvard professor and alien abduction expert who was interviewed for this program before he died, seems particularly inexcusable.
As many of you might expect, ABC devoted the last 15 minute segment to scientists debating whether it is even theoretically possible for extraterrestrials to be visiting us. The distances are too vast, argued one. But wormholes could be gateways for travel, countered another, and besides, how can we even begin to predict what sort of technology a civilization millions of years more advanced than us might possess?
Prior to the airing of this program Jennings was quoted as saying, "I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible." At its conclusion I could not help but think that Jennings had opened his mind even more than I had thought possible. There is hope for us humans yet!
Archived Information About Peter Jennings' Special
 An airdate for the program featuring John Mack's last-ever interview is
8PM Eastern on Thursday, February 24, on ABC. The interview for "Peter Jennings Reports: The UFO Phenomenon: Seeing is Believing" was conducted at Mack's home in Cambridge, MA, on August 19. It marked the first time he had accepted a television interview invitation in several years.
Technology buffs may be interested to know that this was John Mack's only interview shot in high definition widescreen.
UPDATE: We have just received the unbelievable news that John Mack's last-ever interview, the only interview he'd granted for a major program in many years, will not be present in the finished piece. We are absolutely stunned by this information, and cannot conceive of how a documentary purporting to explore the subject of alien encounters could have been made without the views of the man who was arguably the world's leading authority on how these encounters affect people's lives. It is also deeply saddening news, since it was hoped by many that this program would in some ways serve as a farewell to a great man.
UPDATE: The DVD of this television special can now be ordered from ABC television's online store, for delivery in March. Click here for ordering info.
The UFO Phenomenon: Seeing is Believing
Two-hour Primetime Special Airs Thursday, Feb 24 at 8 pm
Source: ABC News
Feb. 4, 2005 -- Almost 50 percent of Americans, according to recent polls, and millions of people elsewhere in the world believe that UFOs are real. For many it is a deeply held belief.
For decades there have been sightings of UFOs by millions and millions of people. It is a mystery that only science can solve, and yet the phenomenon remains largely unexamined. Most of the reporting on this subject by the mainstream media holds those who claim to have seen UFOs up to ridicule.
On Feb. 24, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" takes a fresh look at the UFO phenomenon. "As a journalist," says Jennings, "I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible. After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators, and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered — and a great deal not fully explained."
"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" airs Thursday, Feb. 24 from 8-10 p.m. ET on ABC. The program will be broadcast in High Definition.
This two-hour primetime special reports on the entire scope of the UFO experience — from the first famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 to the present day. The program draws on interviews with police officers, pilots, military personnel, scientists and ordinary citizens who give extraordinary accounts of encounters with the unexplained. Also included are the voices of professional skeptics about UFOs, including scientists who are leading the search for life forms beyond earth elsewhere in the universe.
The program explores the facts behind the enduring mystery of the incident at Roswell, N.M., and looks into the strange stories of alien abductions. Among the UFO cases presented:
Minot Air Force Base, N.D., October 1968 — Sixteen airmen on the ground and the crew of an airborne B-52 witness a massive unidentified object hovering near the base.
Phoenix, Ariz., March 1997 — Hundreds witness a huge triangular craft moving slowly over the city.
St. Clair County, Ill., January 2000 — Police officers in five adjoining towns all independently report witnessing a giant craft with multiple bright lights moving silently across the sky at a very low altitude.
Today if you report a UFO to the U.S. government you will be informed that the Air Force conducted a 22-year investigation which ended in 1969 and concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security and are of no scientific interest. But as one of the world's leading theoretical physicists says in the program, "You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by … a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology."
"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" is produced by PJ Productions and Springs Media for ABC News. Mark Obenhaus and Tom Yellin are the executive producers.
What's on Peter Jennings' radar? The truth about UFOs
By MELANIE McFARLAND
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER TELEVISION CRITIC
In the span of more than 40 years with ABC News, Peter Jennings has built one of the most respected reputations in television journalism.
Recently, Jennings anchored "World News Tonight" from Iraq. He returned to the States, only to hit the road again. Tomorrow and Thursday "World News Tonight" reports from Seattle, where Jennings and his team will examine our region's industries.
"One of the great frustrations common to people like me ... is not getting out enough," he said in a phone interview, calling his Iraq tour some of the happiest days he's had in his life.
Having spent more than two decades as the face the country's second-highest-rated evening news broadcast, the Ontario-born Jennings has become synonymous with descriptors such as urbane, aristocratic and sophisticated. And although these adjectives are not always used in a positive sense -- some viewers equate them to haughtiness -- they're undeniably apt.
It probably will come as a surprise, then, to hear that urbane, sophisticated Jennings' next documentary chases down the truth about UFOs. As in, flying saucers and little green men. [see footnote]
Seriously.
"UFOs -- Seeing Is Believing," airing Feb. 24 from 8 to 10 p.m. on KOMO/4, is the latest entry in the "Peter Jennings Reporting" series. His goal is to take a serious look at a subject most scientists, the government and the media tend to brush off as lunacy. When some 80 million Americans claim to have seen a UFO, he explained, it's worth an investigation.
"I grant you that there may be a lot of people out there in the country who think they've had these experiences, and some of them may even be unhinged," he said, "but I think even those people deserve a serious hearing from a serious reporter."
It probably doesn't hurt ABC to air it during sweeps, either, even if Jennings insists the all-important ratings period played no part in his choice of subject.
To Jennings, tackling UFOs is part of the natural progression of the long-form projects he has produced through PJ Productions, an independent documentary production company he formed about four years ago.
"When we got to the end, I realized two things. First of all, that many of the people who had these experiences were the very people -- police officers, pilots, military personnel and ordinary citizens -- who we regard as being trustworthy and, not only that, very valuable to our society because they protect us.
"Secondly," he continued, "we came to conclude, as with the Kennedy program, that the government, by not taking something particularly seriously at various moments in time, has contributed to undermining people's trust and probably contributing to some theories that don't hold water."
Not many newshounds are looking skyward with him, however. Much more has been made recently about his status as the last man standing in a long-lived trio of broadcast news giants.
"World News Tonight's" main anchor since 1983, Jennings has outlasted Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, once the latter returns to being a reporter in March. Speculation abounds as to how he'll fit into the next generation of network news. For his part, "There isn't much time, to be honest, to think much about it."
Jennings has a similar nonchalance toward the many people who decry his reporting as slanted. "I recognize the accusation of bias is there. Sometimes I think the accusation is made by people who want to advance their own bias.
"But ... people do tend to see the media through their own particular prism. What I find lacking in television and in broadcasting information these days, is that reporting is outweighed by opinion. ... Most people don't understand what they're getting unless they absorb a wide variety of information from numerous sources."
At 66, Jennings is one of the most recognizable faces on American television. His career was built on jumping time zones: Following a failed first run at the anchor chair, Jennings cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent based in Rome beginning in 1968.
From there, he went on to establish America's first TV news bureau in the Middle East. He has since gained interviews with leaders from every part of the social and political spectrum, bore witness to historic moments while they were still in the making, and opened parts of the world to American audiences that other outlets could not.
Considering all this, why not an earnest probe into whether the truth is out there?
"I feel the same way about reporting about UFOs as I feel about reporting on Iraq," Jennings said. "The great joy we have in our business ... is the opportunity to learn new stuff every day, and to write about it."
P-I TV critic Melanie McFarland can be reached at 206-448-8015 or tvgal@seattlepi.com.
Footnote from JEMI website editor: Those who are aware that aliens are generally reported as being gray skinned may wonder where the expression "little green men" came from, since it is evidently not based on people's descriptions. The term may have originated from comic strips in the 1930s such as "Buck Rogers" which oftentimes depicted aliens as green, according to researcher David Rudiak. The expression tends to draw attention away from accurate descriptions of the phenomenon.
Excerpt from The Houston Chronicle
02-18-05
Local panelists discuss concerns
Peter Jennings focuses on matters of the media
By MIKE MCDANIEL
...For a report on UFOs to air Thursday on ABC, [Peter Jennings] plays three roles: writer, reporter and editor.
He believes UFOs: Seeing Is Believing (7-9 p.m., Channel 13) is
going to be "stunning."
"Some people in the UFO community were a little bit surprised
that we were going to do it," he said. "What we've done here is
take both the established and UFO communities seriously. They
don't often converge, but they do on occasion."
More than 150 "serious and thoughtful people" are interviewed
for the special, Jennings said, though he admitted, "That
doesn't mean there are no kooks.
"However skeptical we begin, you come to the end of this
believing people should have taken it more seriously (in the
beginning). You certainly wish that of government. The
government intention has been to dismiss the notion of UFOs. It
creates a disconnect between the public and government
credibility."
The New York Post
THEY'RE HERE
By LINDA STASI
February 23, 2005
"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing is Believing"
WHY would a serious journalist like Peter Jennings tackle a silly subject like UFOs?
Maybe it's because 40 million Americans can't be wrong.
It turns out that 40 million of us have claimed to have seen UFOs, while half — yes, half — of all Americans believe in their existence.
Those are the kinds of numbers that would send any network over the moon with happiness.
Jennings and producers Tom Yellin and Mark Oberhaus made a decision to look really hard at the facts surrounding some of the millions of accounts of UFO sightings.
And they decided to do it despite government's long-standing official stance that there are no such things as UFOs.
After interviewing more than 150 people — believers and nonbelievers, scientists and regular Joes — they put together a terrific two-hour special, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing is Believing."
The show thoroughly explores "Project Blue Book," the official government "agency" in charge of investigating UFOs — or, more precisely, in charge of pooh-poohing UFOs. Begun at the height of the UFO frenzy in 1948, the "agency" wasn't disbanded until 1968.
So what was Project Blue Book actually?
It was an office with about four people — including an Air Force colonel, a corporal, a secretary, and a scientist, J. Allen Hynek — charged with explaining away UFO sightings. Problem was that Hynek, at his core, was a scientist — and he knew that he couldn't always explain away the unexplainable.
Jennings reports that Hynek did a total turnaround when Blue Book was disbanded, and spent the rest of his life — much to the ridicule of his fellow scientists — trying to make people believe what he'd come to believe: that UFOs really existed.
So, why, if millions of people have seen UFOs, are the eyewitnesses immediately reduced to the level of raving loonies (from "lunar")?
Interestingly enough, that is the legacy of another successful government PR campaign.
The feds thought they could keep a lid on UFO sightings and keep a budding worldwide panic under control by making witnesses look crazy. Yes, it seems you could fool all of the people all of the time.
In one case, the Air Force sent their own pilots up in B-52s to track strange lights in the sky. When they got up there, the craft began following them instead. The pilots and crew appear on camera to verify what they saw — despite the government explanation that the pilots were only seeing, yes, stars.
Of course, nowadays when everyone has a camera or video cam in his cell phone, and can immediately record what he's seen, it will be a whole lot more difficult to debunk all sightings.
Good for Jennings for reaching for the stars!
Dallas News
Review: 'UFOs' revisits theories on extraterrestrials
Jennings documentary gives fair treatment to 'intelligent life' debate
Thursday, February 24, 2005
By ED BARK / The Dallas Morning News
"Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's nine disc-shaped objects that "looked something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of convex triangle in the rear."
So said Kenneth Arnold, who on June 24, 1947, became the first known American to publicly proclaim he had seen an unidentified flying object. Tonight's two-hour ABC News special, Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs – Seeing Is Believing, telescopes more than a half-century of debate on whether another planet's "intelligent life" has ever given Earth a look-see. Only the first half of the program was available for review, but it looks to be an enticing, even-handed treatment of this hot-button topic.
Mr. Jennings and co-executive producer Tom Yellin again are trodding on turf where "true believers" roam in abundant numbers. Deploying state-of-the-art technology, they earlier dared to build a case that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy. The origins of Jesus and the importance of Paul in spreading his word also were reinvestigated at length. All of the programs had surprisingly robust ratings in times when the elongated, single-subject documentary has been deemed all but dead by rival broadcast news divisions.
"We do believe there's a mandate for us to relook at things that people have an enduring, passionate interest in," Mr. Yellin said in a telephone interview. "That's not an accident. That's intentional on our part."
The second half of Seeing Is Believing deals in part with "the making of a myth, the story of Roswell." Many "ufologists" still believe that the government covered up the crash-landing of extraterrestrial visitors on a Roswell, N.M., ranch in the summer of 1947. The military said that a top-secret research balloon had malfunctioned.
"Roswell is sort of the touchstone of many Americans' interest in UFOs, so we thought it was crucial to address it," Mr. Yellin said. "Something did happen in 1947 in New Mexico, but as best as we can tell it was nothing that would define itself as extraterrestrial or remarkably unexplainable."
Post-1947, more than 40 million Americans claim they've either seen UFOs or know someone who has, Mr. Jennings says in tonight's program. Scientists tend to scoff at such sightings while also holding to the belief that there indeed is life on other planets. Typical is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of PBS' recent Origins series.
"As a scientist, I need something better than ... eyewitness testimony," he says. On the other hand, "To suggest that we're alone is inexcusably egocentric."
Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs, 7 tonight, ABC (Channel 8). 2 hrs.
New York Times
An ABC Documentary Lands in U.F.O. Territory
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: February 24, 2005
During a sweeps month, U.F.O. is not solely an abbreviation for unidentified flying object. When a veteran network anchor devotes two hours to the subject in a special prime-time report, U.F.O. can also be code for uncontrollable fear of obscurity.
Tom Brokaw's retirement as the NBC anchor did not drive viewers to ABC en masse; actually, the ratings of his replacement, Brian Williams, are higher than Peter Jennings's. Even Dan Rather's fall from grace and imminent retirement have not significantly benefited ABC's "World News Tonight." And that may help explain the mystery of why Mr. Jennings, ABC's lofty and fastidious anchorman, chose to lend his gravitas to a lengthy examination of extraterrestrial life forms.
Space aliens are not particularly timely. Newspapers are not brimming with fresh reports of mass sightings of bright lights hovering over the Mojave Desert. Steven Spielberg does not have a sci-fi sequel, "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind," in the works. And no one would argue that this is a slow news period.
But the race for ratings is particularly intense in February. Mr. Jennings points out in his introduction that as many as 80 million Americans believe in U.F.O.'s and that 40 million say they have seen one or know someone who has. If even a fraction of those people turn to ABC tonight, "U.F.O.'s: Seeing Is Believing" could do for Mr. Jennings what more somber special reports like last June's "Guantánamo Bay" could not.
Not that this special report is a day at the beach. Mr. Jennings applies the same solemn, impassive tone he used to examine Christianity in his special report "Jesus and Paul: The Word and the Witness" last April. He does not try to prove or debunk the existence of U.F.O.'s. Instead, he handles Ufology, as he refers to it, like a religion whose followers are numerous and steadfast enough to merit respectful treatment.
And that is not inappropriate. Ufology has many of the rites and rhythms of more traditional faiths, and the skeptic-turned-convert is a crucial element in any belief system. The millions of followers of Padre Pio, a 20th-century friar who was said to have had stigmata and supernatural powers and was canonized in 2002, bolster their case by pointing out that Father Maccari, a Vatican investigator sent to prove the friar a fraud, later recanted and prayed to Padre Pio on his deathbed (at least according to a Capuchin publication, "The Voice of Padre Pio").
The documentary showcases a U.F.O. version of Father Maccari: J. Allen Hynek, an astrophysicist and a consultant for an Air Force project created in 1952 to assess U.F.O. reports. Early on, he dismissed witnesses as crackpots. He later repented and went on to found the Center for U.F.O. Studies in Illinois. He was one of the first scientists to give the study an aura of respectability. (Dr. Hynek came up with the phrase "close encounters of the third kind," which Mr. Spielberg used for his film title.)
The history of U.F.O. sightings is interspersed with contemporary accounts by witnesses: housewives, pilots and truck drivers who do not look or sound like crackpots and who matter-of-factly describe what they saw that turned them into believers. ("It arched over the top of our car. ...") The most recent well-known incident was reported over Phoenix in 1997, when hundreds of people said they saw strange lights overhead that did not resemble an airplane or a helicopter. One man videotaped some of what he saw: a row of lights in the sky that he said were atop some kind of spaceship. The tape is not very distinct, however. Mostly, ABC uses animation to recreate what the witnesses say they saw.
The U.F.O. is a topic usually relegated to the tabloids, but Mr. Jennings gives the phenomenon his full consideration. "Seeing Is Believing" is not likely to create a new army of converts, but it may draw viewers who are already convinced and hungry for network affirmation: believing is seeing.
'Peter Jennings Reporting' 'U.F.O.'s: Seeing Is Believing' ABC, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.
Mark Obenhaus and Tom Yellin, executive producers. Produced by PJ Productions and Springs Media for ABC News.
Knight Ridder Newspapers (syndicated)
(headline selected by local paper)
By MARK WASHBURN
Peter Jennings has never seen a flying saucer, and when he started working on a two-hour special on UFOs, he didn't believe aliens were among us.
Nothing he learned changed his mind. But Jennings thinks something's up, unidentified-flying-objects-wise, he just doesn't know what.
He points to two of the most compelling cases in recent years.
One is the 1997 Phoenix mystery, captured on video, in which thousands of people saw a huge delta-wing craft drift over the city. "There has never been a satisfactory explanation," Jennings says.
Another is the 1968 case in North Dakota in which ground observers, radar specialists and the crew of a B-52 observed a strange luminous craft hovering over Minot Air Force Base.
Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing is Believing, is a balanced and at times provocative treatment of the UFO issue, one that covers the spectrum between hardball science and hard-core crackpots.
It touches on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, alien abduction and the odd career of astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek, the government's chief debunker of UFO reports until his contract expired and he spent the rest of his life urging scientific study of the UFO phenomenon. And Jennings' program aims the spear of reason at enduring myths, particularly the 1947 report of a crashed alien spacecraft at Roswell, N.M.
In Roswell and in other cases, Jennings says, the government became an unwitting partner to conspiracy theorists and fringe elements of the UFO community by repeatedly covering up evidence or offering ludicrous explanations.
"What struck me at the end was how much harm government can do when it disses people," he says.
Fifty years after insisting what was found at Roswell was merely a weather balloon, the military admitted that the device that crashed was a top secret, high-altitude probe designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. But by then, skepticism was too entrenched to shake in the circle of believers in the spaceship theory.
"The government took away the evidence, thereby allowing the conspiracists and the exploiters to own the field for years," Jennings says. "And then the government came along X years later and said, 'There was this super-secret program called Program Mogul.'
"In some respects, the government just helps conspiracists, almost like it's a sport."
The media has exploited the public's interest in UFOs as well, Jennings says, through movies, TV shows like The X Files and sketchy documentaries.
"One of the most ridiculous of all was when Fox did this autopsy of an alien," Jennings says, referring to the highly hyped 1995 special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? (Fox got additional mileage out of the film for the 1998 special, World's Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed).
"Fox managed to have it both ways," Jennings says. "They put it on as a serious piece in the beginning, and later put in on as one of the great hoaxes."
Jennings admits being defensive about Thursday night's ABC special because of its topic, but points out that polls show nearly half the American public believes in UFOs.
"I hope that at the end of the program people say, 'That was really interesting.' Because at the risk of sounding like a PR guy, that's what I felt."
Make your opinion count: A suggestion from the John E. Mack Institute
After the Peter Jennings program airs, you can be sure that response from those who condemn research into the subject of alien encounters will be swift.
If you feel that research into this subject is important, then why not express why this is so?
Perhaps you are a clinician who has seen clients struggling to integrate these experiences into their lives. Perhaps you are a scientist who sees in these reports suggestions that theories of multiple dimensions may be true. Perhaps you are a theologian who believes that the verification of alien life would cause a renewed appreciation for humanity's unique qualities. State your case.
The New York Times' Letters to the Editor can be sent via email to:
letters@nytimes.com
Remember to Include your name, location, and phone number for verification. Do you work at a university? We suggest you send your email from your university address (yourname@harvard.edu, for example), rather than from your home email (yourname@yahoo.com, for example), to help make your email stand out.
Are you an excellent writer? Consider writing an Op-Ed:
Op-Ed submissions to the New York Times should generally be a maximum of 700 words. File attachments are not accepted, so type within the email itself. Submit your piece with a letter that includes a brief biography, your phone number, and an explanation of why your piece is timely (the Peter Jennings special) and relevant to readers (if you can't summarise why your piece is relevant in a single sentence, then your Op-Ed likely lacks clarity). Op-Ed submissions can be sent to:
oped@nytimes.com
Contact information for other newspapers is easily available on the internet; we provided the New York Times' contact information because the Times is arguably the most visible forum in which to express one's ideas.
Of related interest...
Viewers interested in the Peter Jennings television special may also be interested in:
Touched (DVD) featuring Dr. John Mack
The
award-winning documentary film by Laurel Chiten featuring Dr John Mack
may be ordered directly from the filmmaker. Select from Personal Home Use or Educational Screening Use for proper price information.
In addition to Dr. Mack, Touched features: Alan M. Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School • Arnold Relman, M.D., professor emeritus of medicine at Harvard Medical School • Monsignor Corrado Balducci at the Vatican • Gilda Moura, Ph.D., clinical psychologist • Wendy Kaminer, Radcliffe Fellow and social critic.
Touched has helped educate students at many schools including: Harvard University • Stanford University • Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio • Cal State San Marcos • Southern Methodist University, Dept of Psychology, Dallas, Texas • Argosy University, Twin Cities, Minnesota • Bosque School (6-12), Albuquerque, New Mexico • Cedar Rapids Public Library • William Woods University, Fulton, Missouri • University of Great Falls, Montana • Covenant College, Georgia • Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio • Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
Touched won Best Documentary at its Canadian premiere at the Female Eye Film Festival (FeFF) in Toronto on November 22, 2003. Touched also won Best Documentary of 2003 in the “Abductee or Contactee” category (!) at a long-running UFO convention, The International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada, in 2004.
“I screened Touched at a symposium for undergraduate juniors. Students’ initial skepticism about the subject was replaced with curiosity, tolerance, and a desire to understand. They could not stop asking questions!”
—Edward A. Kravitz, Ph.D.,
Professor, Harvard Medical School
“Touched opens up questions about the complexity of human psychological experience, human relationships, and scientific investigation. It does all this with sensitivity, humor, and impressive cinematic flair. Highly recommended for a lively classroom discussion.”
—Anne Harrington, Ph.D.
History of Science, Harvard University
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