Crop Circle Debunking Discussed on Jan. 26 Dreamland

On the January 26 Dreamland show, Andy Thomas, Swirled News webmaster, and Gary Val Tenuta talk about the latest media debunking of crop circles.

On the website Swirled News, Carol Pedersen describes how a National Geographic television special shown in the U.S. debunked crop circles. When she confronted the producers about the show, they denied all knowledge of it, despite the fact that they?d broadcast it.

She says, ?I don?t know which people behind the scenes were responsible for putting it out, but it was only two days after October 31st and whoever did it chose and prepared a ?Halloween? set for the purpose of perpetrating mischief and deception.?

The production suggested that all the circles are man-made. In order to appear open minded, they occasionally mentioned that circles are found worldwide. Nothing was said about the years of laboratory analysis done on the crops by the BLT Research Group.

Carol describes the show this way: ?The first thing the viewer sees on the screen is ?Night Fright? in ghoulish dripping giant-sized lettering (a specific reference, I think, to the fact most circles are made at night, but this is intended to make the event seem fearful and humorous at the same time) and then the studio comes into view with many lighted candles and pumpkins all over the set and the two hosts, one in black and white and the other in autumn leaves.?

None of the well known researchers, such as Lucy Pringle, Michael Glickman or Linda Howe, were interviewed but ?a Mr Reg Presley, who I am told was a British rock star, is interviewed as a crop circle researcher. He explains that the Milk Hill 2001 circle was huge (as they show a shot of it), but also says that 95% of the circles are man-made?I suppose next that someone here will be interviewing Michael Jackson as a specialist on the topic.?

And of course they interviewed Matthew Williams, who admits to creating manmade circles and claims to have created almost all of them, despite proof to the contrary. The show?s host ?says that Matthew must ?hold the secrets to the creations in the corn,? giving the impression the viewers need to place faith in him,? according to Pedersen. Williams gives a demonstration of the ?Doug and Dave? type of circle construction, using ropes and planks, without any mention of the fact that it has been repeatedly shown that ?real? circles cannot be made this way.

At the end of the show, ?It?s back to the studio set where the host and hostess are laughing. The man says ?just another idea out of a British pub? and the woman says, ?but wait… there have been circles since 1600 and they are found worldwide so how many artists are out there???

Pedersen sent a copy of her article to the National Geographic Channel and received a reply from the ?Program Research Assistant,? who said that National Geographic did not put the program on, never had a special called ?Night Fright,? and that such a show on crop circles was not listed in their inventory and the show Carol referred to probably was not even aired in the U.S.

She wrote back saying that she personally knew people who verified having watched this hour-long show in Connecticut on November 2, 2001, and that this show was identified as a National Geographic Channel production shown on the National Geographic Channel (Channel 25), and that the NGC logo was visible on the screen. The crop circle portion was a 10-minute segment of the show.

Shortly afterwards, she received an e-mail from another official of the National Geographic Channel, who admitted that it might have been broadcast on ?The Today Show,? which is on NBC. He said he had searched their programming database and found no mention of the show.

To read Pedersen?s letter,click here.

Gary Val Tenuta of Everett, Washington, works with Swirled News and will be on Dreamland to talk about media debunking on January 26. He had a similar experience to Carol Pederson?s, when he tried to complain about the debunking of crop circles on a Learning Channel show in which, he says, ?they attempted to debunk several alleged phenomena, such as the so-called ?psychic surgery? practiced in the Philippines, and other unusual phenomena. Included in their line up of targets was the crop circle phenomenon. They successfully shot down each and every target in their sights and saved the crop circles for last.?

He wrote to the program director, noting that ?the promo for the program seemed to emphasize the crop circle portion of the show, yet that part of the program was left until the very end? and said that this ?set the viewer up, psychologically, for the big finale? ?by convincingly demonstrating hoax after hoax after hoax in an attempt to ?condition? the viewer to believe what they would finally be shown regarding the crop circles, ie. that they are unquestionably a scam of some kind.?

He also complained that the host said, ??No one has been caught in the act of making one…until now.? That statement, in itself,? wrote Tenuta, ?was a bold-faced lie ?Your program DID NOT ?catch? anyone making a crop circle. Your film crew set up the entire demonstration with cameras rolling! No one was ?caught? doing anything! The real truth is no-one (to my knowledge) has ever been ?caught? creating a crop circle and the producers of the program most certainly must know that. Otherwise, if this was a fair and balanced report, some attempt would have been made to interview such culprits.?

Tenuta complained ?The host claimed the hoaxers used ?rope, a wood plank and surveyor?s tape, and nothing else.? But there certainly appeared to be something else; there seemed to be a considerable amount of light on the field where they were working. This was attributed to natural moonlight. I don?t think it was. The lighting appeared to encompass only the area in which the men were working. Still, if it was moonlight (which, again, I doubt), it is not likely that moonlight of such magnitude was available on each of the nights when the thousands of crop circles were formed over the past dozen years or so. Could TLC?s band of hoaxers have created their design in the pitch black darkness of night without the aid of the kind of lighting we saw in your program?

?The crop design created by the hoaxers was noted to be similar to the huge formation which appeared near Stonehenge and which has been dubbed the ?Julia Set? because of its mathematical properties. In fact, the comparison was not a fair one. The Julia Set consisted of [151 circles] and covered an area much larger than the design created by the TLC hoaxers. Furthermore?it took only six hours for their hoaxers to create their formation, but they neglected to mention that the Julia Set may have been created in fifteen minutes or less, according to a pilot who flew over that field. On his first pass over the field, he saw no design whatsoever. Yet, some fifteen to twenty minutes later, the design was fully visible. An interview with that pilot would have been in order.? The Learning Channel did not mention the extensive BLT Group analysis of crop circle plants. Wrote Tenuta, ?The analysis has repeatedly shown anomalous molecular changes within the affected crop and suggests the crop was subjected to very short blasts of high energy heat; possibly microwave-generated.?

He went on to say, ?TLC implied that the video of the unexplained balls of light circling above a field was a hoax but no evidence was provided to support that claim. Other video footage of such anomalous lights exists yet none was presented and there was no interview with the people who shot the footage.?

In other words, those who claim that crop circles have an unknown origin have to document this extensively and produce much evidence, while self-proclaimed hoaxers don?t have to produce any evidence at all for the media to believe them.

He ended his letter with this sad statement: ?To your credit, your propaganda program has worked very well. Since it aired once before, several months ago, I can?t count the number of people I?ve talked to who saw it and are now convinced that all crop circles are hoaxes?Most people tend to think, ?Well, if it?s on TLC, it must be true.??

About a week later, Tenuta received the following reply:

?We are very sorry our program upset you. We encourage feedback about our shows and will pass your comments on to our program management and executives. This will help them plan for future shows.

?By their nature, documentaries express the view of the filmmaker and are their personal opinions. Our network intends to present viewers with a window of the world and to expose people to a wide variety of issues. We?d like our viewers to draw their own conclusions about what they see.

?Thanks for taking the time to write. We appreciate it.?

Tenuta made several calls, but got very little interest or response from the few live human beings he managed to talk to, and this doesn?t surprise him.

To read Tentua?s letter,click here.

To go to his website,click here.

Why, when so much information on crop circles is available, is the media too lazy to do the small amount of research necessary to produce an objective program? At unknowncountry.com, we believe that many more Americans would be interested in watching a serious show on the phenomenon, rather than just another debunking.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.