Who did honest reporting on David Grusch and the July UAP/UFO hearings?
In honor of the recent UAP hearings that were held on July 26, I did a quick scan of some major news outlets (like The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and more) to see how they were reporting this story. I read the articles, analyzed how they presented things, and gave them a grade. Of course, my assessments are not gospel; I invite everyone to read these pieces and interpret what they say about the media reaction to this topic going forward.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and it’s only focused on US-based publications. Final disclaimer: one article does not necessarily speak to the quality of a publication as a whole.
Even though, in my opinion, some of the folks below did not do this story the justice it deserves — or even tried to shut it down — it’s still obvious that the truth embargo surrounding this topic has finally, finally started to crack. Let’s take a look.
The F-tier: the worst of the worst
The New York Times decided to go with a bug-eyed, unflattering photo of Grusch, and they sandwiched the lean content of the article between presupposed conclusions.
Beneath the article heading, we see a subtitle:
Pentagon officials have said most reported incidents involved items like airborne trash, weather balloons and drones.
Message clear; nothing to see here. Our brusque article ends as dismissive as it began:
Representative Eric Burlison, Republican of Missouri, said “the concept that an alien species is technologically advanced enough to travel billions of light years and gets here, and is somehow incompetent enough to not survive Earth, and crashes, is something I find a little far-fetched.”
Of course, Grusch did provide a reasonable answer to this question, but you won’t find it here.
Now, I’m not opposed to having skeptical view points in an article at all — it’s especially necessary with this topic! But when you present these dismissals as the story itself — that’s journalistically lazy at best, and unethical at worst. There’s a great example below of how this is done right with NBC News.
As we proceed through this list, the New York Times’ repulsive irresponsibility with regards to this story will become more and more obvious.
The D-tier: lazy
This article was barely about the hearing itself, consisting primarily of statements from congressional representatives alongside denials from AARO and the DoD. There’s (somewhat hilariously) almost nothing here of any substance. The headline, “UFOs Are a Common Sight” sounds like it belongs on a 5th grade essay. Intentional or not, the mood at the Wall Street Journal is clear: bury this story.
AP ran this article, which was also reproduced in The Washington Post. At first glance, this one seems to be pretty good. It fairly focuses on the “whistleblower” aspect of this story, but it fails to report the contents of the hearing in sufficient detail, which is quite unfortunate.
Moreover, within this short article, a significant and disproportionate amount of real estate is dedicated to lines of dismissal from various government bodies. I can understand the need to have this viewpoint included, by why is it titled so heavily that way?
And, like in many of these articles, there’s this conclusion drawn that’s quite strange. A picture is being painted of a kind of “stuck-in-the-mud” effort to get something off the ground in the near future with regards to “THE UFOS”. It’s a tone of “don’t worry, we’re going to start investigating soon”.
Don’t buy this junk.
Such investigations have already been a multi-million dollar, ongoing effort for decades — and this is easily verifiable. I do not know why outlets allow this particular line to go unquestioned like this. It’s a “kick the can down the road” thing. But we’re here — and it’s time to ask these questions.
There’s nothing inherently wrong or dishonest about Axios’ take on the hearing, but if you read this short article — you’ll notice that the only mention of David Grusch’s name is in the photo caption.
While, Representatives Robert Garcia, Glenn Grothman, and witnesses Ryan Graves, and David Fravor are all featured in equal measure, there is no mention of Grusch, nor his claims. Why?
The C-tier: not quite
Fox News’ reporting largely reflected the proceedings; the article did not have some unflattering photo of Grusch, however, the headline was senslessly sensationalistic, and this can serve to give a “tabloid” nature to the story that is inappropriate.
There were also misdirecting quotes interspersed throughout the content, a gentle reminder that all of this is under control, from the DoD’s Susan Gough and AARO’s Sean Kirkpatrick.
To date, AARO “has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”
That actually makes sense, considering this organization’s troubled funding history (and increasingly suspect operating procedures and leadership. Conversations are ongoing, with some speculating that Kirkpatrick may have violated the Hatch Act with a LinkedIn post calling out David Grusch — bizarre stuff).
“There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification,” [Gough] said.
This is of course, false. And the article ends with this minimizing salve:
About 2% to 5% of the 800 cases that AARO is investigating are “truly anomalous,” Kirkpatrick said.
Politico’s article leans too heavily into Representative Tim Burchett. It’s all Burchett all the time. That being said, Politico did publish Christopher Mellon’s article, If the Government Has UFO Crash Materials, It’s Time to Reveal Them as well as We Have a Real UFO Problem. And It’s Not Balloons from Ryan Graves. In general, this is a fair publication to this topic.
The B-tier: pretty good
A well-done article from CBS News. Like AP News, kudos to CBS for having a headline that calls Grusch exactly what he — by law — a “whistleblower”. The main image reflects the seriousness of the moment.
To contrast with the New York Times debacle, a later video thumbnail shows Grusch depicted again with eyes wide open and brow furrowed, but this time, the image is not unflattering, and, especially within the context of this well-done piece, it only serves to reflect the concern of a man with the guts to testify about something like this under oath.
In my view, some very good reporting from ABC News. The “very” comes from this great call-to-action headline: investigate these claims. No stupid pictures here, no AARO misdirections, no presupposed conclusions.
CNN’s reporting was largely fair; they portrayed the seriousness of the indecent, did not preemptively draw a conclusion, and critically, the primary photo is of the three witnesses raising their hands while being put under oath — a powerful image for those following this topic, and perhaps something for the history books.
This article from NBC News is quite good. It’s pretty balanced overall, and it includes skeptical and dismissive viewpoints and responses without presenting them as inherently factual.
Plus, this article notably goes into detail on topics that a lot of the others just skimmed over: how the supposed funding for the alleged crash-retrieval programs is conducted, the discrepancy between AARO and Grusch’s assertions. The testimony from Ryan Graves highlighting the safety issues and continued stigma was integrated into the overall story quite well. There’s also some notable narrative impact here by having Commander David Fravor’s account of the Tic-Tac encounter as the closing remarks, instead of the rote “no evidence at this time” dismissal that so many others go with.
Time’s article is pretty much on par with NBC in terms of balance.
The A-tier: what everyone should be doing
NPR wins my award for the absolute best and most honest coverage of this issue in the mainstream media (unless we’re counting News Nation).
Just look at that headline! Add to that the fact that they actually have the full video from the 2+ hour congressional hearing embedded directly in their story, and this speaks volumes about how they’re treating this topic.
So, now that you’ve cancelled your subscription to the New York Times, my suggestion is to reroute your funds to NPR.
Bonus A+ tier: NewsNation
This is kind of obvious, considering they’re the ones who dropped the hour-long interview with David Grusch in the first place. (By the way, he name-dropped that video a couple of times during the hearing as a point of reference.)
Final word: BBC’s Russian Service
Although this isn’t from a US-based outlet, and it’s not even in English, I had to include this one from the BBC’s Russian Service because it’s probably the actual worst article I came across from a major news outlet. Not only did they chose a cover photo that makes Grusch appear absolutely bonkers — there’s also a completely random photo of Steven Greer presenting a amateurish 3D mockup of a supposed craft — which is completely unrelated to this story, and this is not elaborated on at all.
On that note, it’d be interesting to do a similar survey and see how folks around the world are reacting to this story.
