Currently we experience that the media is focusing heavily on the old typical picture of UFOs being extraterrestrial spacecrafts from the universe. It seems like we are in the middle of a wave of space ships - not in terms of sightings, but in terms the typical storylines in the press and on TV.
For the first time we experience in SUFOI that the media ask us, if we believe UFOs are space ships. If not - sorry - then they are not interested in having us in their story. What they really want is to locate people that are 100 % convinced of "flying saucers". A few years back they were more interested in serious information.
This trend is a serious backlash to years work to create a more broad understanding of the UFO phenomena. It is also a direct contradiction to SUFOI's belief: It is by far proven that UFOs have anything to do with space ships.
The new trend is international. When 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult decided to commit suicide, it was at least in part because they believed to be taken on board a space ship near the Hale-Bopp comet. Major international and US channels covered the story, but the treatment of CNN, NBC, ABC and others was a disaster. So-called "UFO experts" were interviewed, but to our amazement they were Whitley Strieber, Art Bell, and Uri Geller - the absolute worse and incredible persons on the US UFO scene. Nobody - absolutely nobody - from the serious organizations FUFOR, MUFON or CUFOS were interviewed.
In the Danish media we have seen similar unbelievable claims put forward of so-called UFO experts. Claims that the Earth is visited all the time by space ships, that sometimes these are being shot down by military and that space people are living among us.
What worries us is not, that such people with these claims exist - they have always existed. What really worries us is the fact that the media focus more on more on these people and that their undocumented claims is brought to the public without any serious comments or investigation!
One of the consequences has been, that SUFOI internally has discussed what to do in this situation. One of the suggestions internationally has been to appoint a joint spokes person to address the media when situations like the Heaven's Gate appears. However, one might ask what this would help when the media is not really interested in sceptical or serious information.
SUFOI has made a few conclusions. One of them is, that we must be more active towards the media ourselves. We must take every opportunity to inform the media about our research and the results from serious UFO projects. It also means, that we will be watching the media and whenever incredible claims are brought forward we will react and reply to the claims. SUFOI has already in a couple of instances issued press releases in cases like this.
In the future, SUFOI will be more aggressive to the media. We will give our contribution to the press so that the UFO topic is treated seriously and with so credible sources as possible. This is a part of our foundation and objective - and we will reply to the press although some will look at this as an "attack towards the believers".