The article below was published in the daily newspaper The Santa Fe New Mexican, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, page 4, on July 8, 1947.
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There are times when we get a little shamefaced about us newspapermen, and this is one of them.
American journalism - and this includes the news end of the radio business - has written itself no very bright chapter in its handling of the great flying saucer crisis of 1947.
The nadir was reached this morning when United Press came up with a straight-faced story about a "square disc."
Without entirely ruling out the possibility of some authentic basis for some reports, it is safe to say now that 98 per cent of the so-called news about flying saucers is unadulterated nonsense or outright hoax.
Granted the newspapers didn't make it up themselves. They just reported what was told them - but without very much discrimination. A little investigation would have shown the falsity of some reports, and a little study would have provided a simple explanation for others.
In a perverse sort of way, however, this flying saucer business has provided a useful and distinctly discomforting insight into our national state of jitters - which some have called "atomitis."
It is just about as frightening to behold a nation in a dither over a mess of phoney saucers as it would be to look out the window and see the sky filled with veritable atomic discs, each as big as the Enchanted Mesa.
Meanwhile, we guess we will keep on running saucer news, but strictly with tongue in cheek unless somebody actually comes up with something substantial.
Let the reader beware.
