Hi all:
This April 7, 1950 CBS television commentary on UFOs is mentioned in UFOs and Government's Chapter 6: Duck and Cover (p. 99) which I have just finished reading:
"In the media, legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow produced the first extended television commentary on the subject. It aired at the end of the first week in April and was called "The Case of the Flying Saucer." The program was surprisingly well balanced. Murrow began with Kenneth Arnold, spoke of early cases such as Muroc AFB and the Mantell accident, and had a Major General who gave an extremely negative trashing of the subject, using Grudge-like words. However, Murrow came back with quotes supporting UFOs from True magazine, countered by the entry of the "great debunker," Donald Menzel, astronomer of Harvard, into the field. A lengthy description of a close encounter by a doctor was balanced by a Lockheed executive saying he did not believe UFOs existed. Henry Taylor's views that the phenomenon was a Navy project was aired, and then that theory was debunked by the designer of the "Flying Flapjack," engineer Charles Zimmerman. Truman's press secretary came to reiterate that the President believed that there was no substance to the concept of the disks. Finally, Murrow took to the street and got every conceivable opinion one could imagine, before signing off saying that he could find no pattern in this, and so was skeptical. It was an honest taking of the American pulse on the enigma."
Kind regards.
André Skondras
Case of the Flying Saucer with Edward R. Murrow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWqwB52wnuI (at 17:17 *Donald H. Menzel commenting on Flying Saucers)
SPECIAL REPORT ON UFO's: Hosted by the great Edward R. Murrow, this 1949 report, set to video images, features interviews and sound bites of military and civilian witnesses to many of the early landmark UFO encounters. This recording is believed to be the first assessment of the UFO phenomenon ever broadcast.
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