The
limits of Those Who Know
Billy Cox
Published Monday, March 31, 2008 at 5:49 p.m. In
his insightful essay in the March 31, 2008, issue of The New Yorker, Eric Alterman
interprets the ongoing collapse of newspaper journalism through the competing
ideologies of Walter Lippman and John Dewey in the early 20th century. Lippman
argued that no amount of information could motivate largely apathetic readers
to be trusted with the rudders of democracy; he said governments should be run
along the lines of Socratic elitism, by Those Who Know. Dewey
rejected Lippman’s “class of experts” paradigm. “The foundation
of democracy to Dewey,” writes Alterman, “was less information than
conversation.” In
other words, Alterman says, Dewey’s ideal is likely attaining full measure
in the sorts of exchanges accelerating across the Internet as readers abandon
traditional media for Web sites that validate and reinforce their own predispositions. “Vastly
more Americans believe in flying saucers and 9/11 conspiracy theories than believe
in the notion of balance — much less ‘objective’ — mainstream
news media,” Alterman proclaims. Alterman’s
linkage of UFOs with 9/11 conspiracy theories is as unintentionally revealing
as it is intentionally pejorative. In tacitly assigning equal status to two unrelated
subjects regarded as fringe tripe by the MSM, Alterman reinforces traditional
media’s inability to make the sorts of distinctions responsible for driving
part of its market to alternative sources. Sadly,
given more than 50 years of UFO data accumulating in government files and dribbling
out through Freedom of Information Act declassification, the Lippman-esque MSM
remains incapable of soberly approaching this massive inconvenient truth despite
its broad and enduring public appeal. Maybe the best we can hope for anymore is
the sort of piece that appeared Friday in the Los Angeles Times (see here). The
Times profiled Peter Davenport, the persistent researcher who logs daily sightings
at his National UFO Reporting Center, the Web site he operates out of a decommissioned
nuclear missile bunker in Washington state. Reporter Tomas Alex Tizon treats his
subject with the equanimity one might apply to a cattle rancher or an elected
official. And yet, this unremarkable approach is remarkable for its rarity in
a medium whose tepid designs on this issue rarely stray beyond revelers wearing
E.T. masks at Roswell conventions. Contrary
to prevailing opinion, UFOs have never been about “them.” The phenomenon,
first and foremost, has always been about us, and our reactions to it. The MSM
lacks the resolve to jam a crowbar into the data and put a shoulder into sustained
exertion. But it can still participate in a portion of Dewey’s projected
“conversation” by reconsidering audiences it has had the luxury of marginalizing
until now. Media
institutions rise and fall. As newspapers (which Alterman points out have lost
42 percent of their market value since 2005) will likely discover too late,
UFOs are a growth industry. And they're here to stay. Like it or not. | 
