Dateline UFO Report

This is the entire episode form Dateline on Sunday. They decided to examine UFOs and here are the clips.

'The Pheonix Lights'


'The New Zealand Orbs'


'The Stephenville Sighting'


'Tinley Park Triangle'


'Air Force Encounter'


'The Hudson Boomerang'


'The Belgium Triangle'


'The Florida Mystery'


'The Galactic Encounter'


'The McMinnville Sightings'


'The Cartet Sightings'


'Minnesota Sightings a UFO Case?'


'What was behind the Soviet Obsession with UFOs?'


I think these are in the right order. They are presented on a case by case basis. I provided the labels for them that are on the msnbc website. Here's a step by step breakdown of this disgraceful show.

'The Pheonix Lights'
Announcer starts the talk of UFOs. A witness starts the actual clip. She describes an intelligence looking at her... ohhh shes a doctor. James Fox is somehow able to be a specialist for this. He interviewed a great deal of witnesses who could judge distance in the sky. The skeptic talks about the difference between witnesses testimonies. And seems to attack the witnesses. The Governor had it investigated and pulled a joke from that with an aid dressed as an alien. The military finally admitted to a training mission with dropped flares. Again the eye witnesses don't believe it. "I'm not saying it is a UFO, but it isn't military flare." Then the governor becomes a witness suddenly. A skeptic talks about the governor as a witness. Back to the witnesses.

'The New Zealand Orbs'
A news reporter starts out with his description along with a second hand story from pilots. The announcer is not funny. He said the camera man was having troubles getting footage and the sound reporter wouldn't try and go a second time. It is suddenly an alien sighting. Some people say it was a squid boat fishing and a skeptic gets his chance. Of course the 'investigator' doesn't believe it and points out some of the then debunked "problems." Die, announcer, die!!!!

'The Stephenville Sighting'
The center of Texas and people are the "back bone of Aerica" and "not prone to fancy." Nice set up. It starts with a police officer/ witness describing what he sees. Ken Cheery from MUFON is the 'specialist.' He talks about 1 person out of the hundreds who saw it said it was bigger than a super Wal-Mart. Because you can tell when it's in the sky. The government said they were flying jets. But the specialist believes the credibility of the witnesses not the specialists.

'Tinley Park Triangle'
More witness testimony starts off. 'Specialist' uses big words like 'isocolese' and 'illuminations' so he must be legit. The witness contacted a UFO invesigator. Great... The specialist talks about all the different witnesses. Somehow the jet is at the exact same height as a jet. Michal Shermer is labeled a skeptic and shows patterns and connecting dots, flares and balloons. The 'specialist' says he doesn't have to say where it came from and leans more towards extraterrestrial. The witness says it's not man-made. He must be right.

'Air Force Encounter'
The title of this one worried me because pilots cannot be wrong and neither can military people. This one is presented just as terribly as the rest. I wish the female announcer would stay out of it. They couldn't locate the radar blip and heat at the same place. The announcer chimes in, I hate her. Robert Schafer talks about oil flares. Their "specialist" talks about an unexplained radar target in spit of other stuff. The skeptic still doesn't get a good say.

'The Hudson Boomerang'
This is from 1983 to 1989 in the East Coast. There's another specialist who talks about how great the witnesses were. He talks about their jobs and how he witnessed it too. The skeptics are presented as saying it was hoaxers flying private aircrafts "lights on, lights off." The "investigator says there is no way it could have been planes and that skeptics wouldn't be skeptics if they had seen something.


'The Belgium Triangle'
A huge object appeared and some guyswho havetudied UFOs and so is therefore a specialist. They describe information collected from Belgium and envoke Star Trek. "All this" can't sway the skeptics. They are depicted as the outsiders and don't give any other evidence and seem to be attacking. Phil Embrogno, one of the UFO 'specialists' he sounds very knowledgable. D*mn.

'The Florida Mystery'
I was interested to see how they presented this one since I had previously read about it in depth. They opening description is really discouraging. They got the guy taking the pics wrong. He said it was someone else giving it to him. Other people came over and said they saw it too. This is all stuff that had been hashed and rehashed. They talk to a witness. They bring out the skeptics and their ideas that its a prank. They discuss the finding of the model in Ed Walters attic. End with the "there are still those who believe..."

'The Galactic Encounter'
This is from the fall of '66. The astronauts saw a flashing light outside one of the portholes. One took pictures of the blobby spots. NASA "couldn't explain" so NORAD said it could be a booster from a Soviet rocket. They then debunk it for the UFOlogists, but come back to a skeptic who says that it may have been something jettisenned by the astronauts. But invariably come back to "we can't prove" and "something weird".

'The McMinnville Sightings'
This is a revamping of a 1950s case in McMinnville, Oregon. A farmer and his wife photographed a spaceship. Some unnamed men talk about what the photos show. A physicist with the Navy who has been investigating the sightings says, "this is a real case." He goes through the photos talking about how it must have been built. Robert Schaffer says the couple made it and put it over the phone wires to explain Mrs. Trent having seen UFOs and people not believing here. End with the same usual "People still don't know and believe in UFOs" garbage.

'The Cartet Sightings'
Some witnesses from one family describe a set of lights. The talk about how the news media covers it and find nothing. They talk a great deal about who and what. Robert Schaffer says that something was sent up in a balloon (a whole 30 seconds of skepticism). Very much a witnesses say what they want and don't believe the skeptic who gets to give one possible explanation.

'Minnesota Sightings a UFO Case?'

'What was behind the Soviet Obsession with UFOs?'
This a very brief discussion of how unknown soviet launches coul be behind some sightings.

All in all it was a trashy exploitation of people's gullibility. It had the token skeptics looking like they were attacking the credibility of witnesses instead of presenting information about witness testimony. The specialists are not credible in their arguements and too much emphasis is put on distance judging in the sky and often at night. UFOs automatically mean aliens in this documentary. It was garbage and MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for presenting this on their Dateline show.