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Written by Keith Rowell
Last Updated: 26 January 2013

Occasionally, Portland area media concerns decide to do UFOs. This time around it was Portland Monthly, a slick travel, dining, and entertainment magazine. Their May 2012 issue features on page 101 a general article about UFOs in the Pacific Northwest.

The magazine assigned research editor Martin Patail to research and write the article "UFO Oregon!". Of course, the graphics are over the top and the writing style is amped up a bit, but the information is generally factual and not distorted too much. (A Portland Monthly fact checker actually checked a few things with me as the article was put together.)

Patail did a creditable job of pulling together facts and information in a very short time while also writing the article. Usually, media people have only vague and erroneous UFO information in their heads when they start a UFO media treatment, so we folks in the know about the good, the bad, and the ugly about UFOs are always surprised if the public ends up with any decent UFO information in the final product.

Patail interviewed Tom and hit me up for some photographic UFO "eye candy," which I supplied from my files. You'll find some of it in the article. William Puckett of UFOs Northwest was also interviewed for the article.

The article ends with the obligatory "skeptical" opinion, of course, for "fairness and balance." Media folks do not understand that the easy-to-reach "skeptics" are actually merely debunkers. But to be fair to Patail and all other media folks under a deadline, it would take long scholarly study to be able to distinguish the true skeptics from the debunkers. And media people just don't have the time to figure this out for themselves. In ufology, it is ironically the ufologist "believers" who are the true skeptics.

And so it goes in the land of media treatment of UFOs. Check the article out online.