Before the fame-seeking backyard scientist Richard Heene phoned the police to report that his 6-year-old son, Falcon, had floated away on a homemade flying saucer Thursday morning, he called a local TV station and asked them to send a news helicopter.

Taken aback by the request, the news director at the station, KUSA-TV, Patti Dennis, said she called back and told Mr. Heene flatly, “I don’t believe you.” Still skeptical when Mr. Heene put a police officer on the phone to verify the story, Ms. Dennis added, “I told the deputy that I didn’t believe he was real, either.”

Eventually satisfied by the local police’s report of a missing child, she dispatched the helicopter to the skies over Fort Collins, Colo., where the helium-filled balloon had taken flight, jump-starting an extraordinary afternoon of television coverage. Cable news anchors suspended skepticism in favor of spectacular images of the balloon as it glided across northern Colorado and landed in a dusty field about 60 miles away, and the ratings for CNN and the Fox News Channel doubled for the duration of the spectacle.

But even before Falcon was found hours later hiding inside a box in the Heene family home, incredulous observers were asking: Is it all a hoax?