Recapping some highlights of the mainstream media’s 2013 UFO coverage:

In March, just for the hell of it, apparently, the FBI issued a press release proclaiming how an innocuous, disregarded, single-page squib on an alleged UFO crash in 1950, declassified in 1978, is the most popular document sitting in its two-year-old online “Vault” archives. Wide-eyed newsies at Fox, NBC, Wired, Time.com and others went into scramble mode and treated it like breaking news on a chemical fire.

More acceptable than covering UFOs: Even when we manufacture fiction and call it reality TV, we manage to find the time and space to report every non-scripted utterance and banality as news/CREDIT: breitbart.com

In August, the CIA conceded the existence of Area 51 in a report about the development of the U-2 spy plane. American movie-goers discovered the top-secret Nevada airbase from the 1996 blockbuster “Independence Day,” but the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, et al, ran with the “scoop” like Paul Revere through the streets of Boston. An Associated Press reporter wrote that “UFO buffs and believers in space aliens are celebrating” but provided no details about the size, location or nature of said merriment, nor the name of a single reveler.

At a Center for UFO Research conference in Greensboro, N.C., in June, speakers included leaders from the French equivalent of NASA and Chile’s counterpart to America’s FAA. Both of those official government agencies continue to collect UFO data from military and civilian sources. The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, et al, were no-shows.

UFO activist Stephen Bassett organized a mock congressional panel in Washington called Citizen Hearing on Disclosure in late April/early May. Its mission statement held that “an extraterrestrial presence [is] engaging the human race.” The media turned out en masse. Coverage excerpts: “Extraterrestrials. As in little green men,” (Washington Post); from the San Jose Mercury News to a former California representative on the hearing panel: “Lynn Woolsey. Phone home”; “Only little green men at National Press Club are dead presidents on $20,000 honorarium paid to committee members,” (The Guardian); “Space Cadets Hit D.C.,” (New York Daily News). Prior to the conference, Bassett predicted “We’ll create so much public interest, a lot of the editors are gonna say, Christ almighty, enough is enough, that’s it, let’s get some answers from these guys.” Media interest dissolved immediately thereafter, like ice cream in July.

Al Jazeera debuted widely across the U.S. in 2013 with the promo: “There’s more to it. Change the way you look at news. Get more depth, more perspectives, every day.” AJ’s perspective-changing coverage of UFOs crested with a 2-minute 30-second blurb from Bassett’s Citizen Hearing. Although the Pentagon dismissed the iconic 1947 Roswell Incident, noted AJ’s standup blow-dry, “the FBI has confirmed that in 1950, it passed on a report” — flash to an image of the same tired old FBI document declassified 35 years ago — “of three flying saucers recovered in New Mexico.” More depth, more perspectives, EVERY day. Exit line from the Citizen Hearing spot: The White House may have ignored public appeals for a new investigation of UFOs, but “that won’t stop a small but vocal few from maintaining that the truth is out there.”

Good god. De Void has more items on the list, but what’s the point? Enough already, I’m done with 2013. Just shoot me.