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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowdancer" data-source="post: 1521338" data-attributes="member: 515">I was older than you when X-Files came on -- I was in my early 30s. I've always been interested in UFOs, urban myths, conspiracy theories, Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, etc. I was really into a lot of that stuff when I was in junior high, in the mid-70s. Read every book I could get my hands on, and watched everything on TV I could -- which wasn't really that much, in the pre-cable TV explosion; cable TV existed, but we didn't have it. What I find interesting is how the U.S. news media has basically stopped covering almost anything to do with UFOs since the '80s. Yes, there were a rash of stories back on the 50th anniversary of Roswell, but basically, if there are large-scale UFO sightings -- such as those over Mexico City in the '90s -- the national media in the U.S. gives it no coverage. If something happens locally, like the sightings in Gulf Breeze, or the lights over Phoenix, the local media might report it, but nationally it gets no coverage expect by what is considered to be "fringe" media -- supermarket tabloids and cable television programs. That's not the way it used to be. The last wave of UFO sightings to get widespread, national coverage was probably in the mid-70s, when I was in jr. high. There was coverage on the national evening news, special hour-long news reports in prime time, stories in the newspaper that moved on the major wire services. But at some point the news media decided UFOs were no longer news, and stopped covering them. I've often wondered if it was because of subtle influence from the government or some other group that is "in control," or if the media is afraid of being laughed at, or if they just decided most people now believe in UFOs and aliens so there's no reason to do stories about them. I work in the news media, and I can't answer that question. Someone above posted that no government conspiracy can work for a long period of time. I agree with that to an extent, and disagree with it as well. There are ways that a conspiracy can last long-term. It depends on the number of people who actually know what the "secret" is. For a conspiracy to work long-term, there has to be only a small group who actually know the secret; everyone else is not privy to the secret, they are just guarding the secret. So let's say, for example, the JFK assassination plot is true. It could be pulled off by a small group of men with the power to give the orders, and to find the men who will follow the orders without question. Then the men who gave the orders have the men who followed the orders killed. Then have those men killed. Any evidence relating to the assassination, have it declared super top secret and hidden away where access to it -- even if you have the right clearance -- is controlled. Eliminate all reference to it, so no one knows it is hidden away, or where. (Think of the final scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark") The conspiracy would stay hidden long-term, unless someone discovered the evidence or one of the original conspirators talked. That's how they kept Roswell secret for so long -- knowledge was on a need-to-know basis only, and many of the people who were involved were military men who were ordered -- under threat of death -- to never talk about it. And they didn't, until they got older and realized they were going to die soon anyway. The threat of death held little power against them. So they started to talk. The more people who know the secret, the harder it is to keep secret. A lot of these secrets have started to be revealed, or will be revealed in the near future, because the people originally in charge are now dead or have no power left, and the people who helped cover up the secret are no long afraid of the consequences. Also, times have changed. In the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, even into the 1970s, people were more willing to keep a secret if they thought it was a matter of national security or of national importance. That mindset was created by WWII and the Cold War. But after various government and military scandals were uncovered in the post-Watergate and Pentagon Papers era, people in the military and the government didn't feel keeping these secrets were that crucial anymore. Others were talking, why shouldn't they -- there might even be some money to be made. Where once it was thought heroic by the public not to talk, now it is considered to be heroic to blow the whistle.</blockquote>

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