Pylimitics

Once you have a broadcast station, you have to broadcast something. And once you decide to publish a periodical, you have to print something. Sometimes that “something” turns into “anything.”

International Business Times (IBT) sounds like a perfectly normal, staid, commercial publishing outlet. It’s based in the UK, and has a typical financial results crawl just under the masthead on its home page. Seems like a normal alternative to the Wall Street Journal or the like. And maybe it is; I don’t really know.

But they published this story today, and it’s a news story about somebody saying something. That’s it. Somebody said something. Now, sometimes a story like that can be (or seem) important, depending on who the speaker is. But in this case, we have 23 paragraphs about what “Matthew Brown” said in an interview. Not an interview with the author of this story, by the way. This is a story about somebody else’s interview, as reported by yet another person on a podcast.

In other words, the author of this story listened to a podcast where an interview from another publication was discussed, and wrote a story about hearing a discussion about an interview some other people read (or heard).

The supposed information in this story is about how Matthew Brown, described as a “UFO whistleblower” (an idea that gets odder the more you think about it), said in that interview that “humans are sharing Earth with another intelligent species whose existence has been deliberately kept from the public.” Just in case you’re still wondering about the “UFO whistleblower” term, the IBT helpfully provides a link to yet another story they published about somebody saying something and mentioning the term “UFO.”

At least IBT appears to have fact checkers on staff. The evidence is right in the story:
“Neither Brown nor Jack presented publicly available evidence…“
“Brown also stopped short of explaining where these alleged beings live…” (I’m betting on Florida -ed.)
“No evidence…“
“Claim“: used 7 times
“Allege“: used 7 times

And of course, Matthew Brown could “provide further answers” but only “if he were permitted to speak freely.” Evidently nothing in his allegations was prohibited by…um…never mind.