What's True?

This morning I was channel surfing and came across a show on the Travel channel about Area 51. I don't really know much about this bit of American mythology, so I decided to watch. It was pretty intriguing. In case you, like I was, haven't a clue what makes Area 51 such a controversial topic, here's some background information. Area 51 is a place in the Nevada desert where the government(supposedly) tests new military aircraft and analyzes the weapons and aircraft of foreign "enemy" countries. It's ridiculously secretive, so much so that if you step onto the property, they have the right to shoot you or arrest you, depending on your intentions. People also believe that this is an are of UFO/alien activity, but there's no real proof. The government refused to admit that Area 51 even existed until the 1990s, when former employees filed a lawsuit saying that hazardous material used while they worked there caused major injuries and illness. Everything that goes on there is highly confidential, so naturally, Americans are obsessed with creating theories of what really happens there.

Fascinating stuff. Right?

It gets better. On the show, an expert was talking about all of the supposed UFOs that have been seen in the area. For years, Americans created their own wacky theories about the aliens that flew these UFOs and whatnot, until the government came out with a statement explaining that these weren't really UFOs at all. They were merely new military air crafts that the government was trying out, usually late at night so they couldn't be seen. It should've ended there, since that sounds like a pretty good explanation, right? Wrong.

The expert went on to say that even though that did sound logical, he believed it to be merely a case of "disinformation." What? Disinformation is the deliberate spreading of untrue information. According to the expert, the government didn't want America to know that there are aliens in Area 51, so they made up a clever cover up claiming that all of the UFO sightings were really military aircraft sightings. Pretty creepy.

Now, this example is pretty trippy and far fetched, and I for one don't believe that there are creatures from another planet roaming around Nevada, but that's not the point. Disinformation is a creepy thing, and probably something that gets used more often than we'd like to think in the news media. Think about it: We really have no choice but to believe what the media tells us in certain situations, because there's no way we can go out and find whether or not it is true. We are slaves to the media in this sense. We have to believe what they tell us and hope that it's all true. What if nothing the news reported was actually true? What if the evening news was more like a propaganda film than a reporting of what was happening in the world? Crazy stuff. This is probably starting to sound more like a tabloid conspiracy theory than an educated media blog, so I'll stop here. Hopefully at least some of this made sense.