A few years ago I heard a story about a farmer in New England who while working in his fields one day saw something fall from the sky. He immediately ran to the spot on the ground where he saw the object drop to discover a rather large bluish ice-like substance. He then took off his shirt which he used to wrap the chunk of bluish ice and carried it off to his freezer. Soon afterwards he notified the local newspaper of his discovery. The paper sent a reporter out to verify the facts but before printing the farmer’s story placed a call to a scientist at NASA who came out to inspect the object. The NASA scientist identified the object as fluid that had solidified in the upper atmosphere after it was inadvertently ejected from the toilet compartment of a commercial airliner making a landing at Boston’s Logan airport. Since the story was never reported in the newspaper I don’t know if it is true or not but it certainly is a good one. It usually gets a mild chuckle whenever I tell it and then a response of “Did that really happen?” Since I’m not under any professional obligation to tell the truth I sometimes respond, “yes,” which I think makes the story all the more sensational. The trouble is sometimes people go looking for that story on the Internet and when they can’t find it they come back and tell me I’m a liar. It’s a slippery slope but I think it’s worth it just to see people’s eyebrows lift up and their eyes bulge out when I tell them, “It’s all true.”

I used to think it was harmless but these days I’m seeing stories of blue ice falling from the sky everywhere and even I can’t tell which ones are true or not. On April 26, ABC's World News Tonight led with a major scoop of blue ice. Anchor Claire Shipman announced at the top of the broadcast, "U.S. troops discover chemical agents, missiles, and what could be a mobile laboratory in Iraq.” It was an ABC News exclusive. For two days the network pumped the story saying, "The U.S. military has found a weapons site 130 miles northwest of Baghdad that has initially tested positive for chemical agents. Among the materials there, 14 55-gallon drums, at least a dozen missiles and 150 gas masks." Correspondent David Wright went further to explain that "Preliminary tests showed it to be a mixture of three chemicals, including a nerve agent and a blistering agent." The trouble is that it all turned out to be something else entirely. The story just wasn’t true. If they only had the same reporter or editor of that small New England newspaper working for them they might have gotten some kind of verification, maybe independent verification, before running the story. But to their discredit and the viewers disservice, they didn’t. Although ABC hyped the story for two days when it was learned that the military’s Mobile Exploitation Team (MET Bravo), which conducts testing of suspected weapons sites, concluded that there were no chemical weapons at the site, the story quickly petered out. Since ABC failed to inform viewers of their mistake once the truth was learned many ABC viewers still believed and still believe that the chemical weapons of mass destruction that were the impetus for the war on Iraq have been found. ABC by no means has a monopoly on the blue ice business, the New York Times has been under a lot of heat recently for wrapping blue ice up in its pages and after having melted it seems to have really hit the fan in their editorial offices.

In a decision upholding the press’ First Amendment rights, Supreme Court Justice Powell once noted, “no individual can obtain for himself the information needed for the intelligent discharge of his public responsibilities.” He went on to state, “By enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process, the press performs a crucial function in effecting the societal purpose of the First Amendment.” We need a media that will help us make informed decisions. I’m just like that New England farmer who thought he had made a huge extraterrestrial discovery. I wouldn’t have been able to tell that the dreamy bluish ice that had fallen from the heavens was really a chunk of frozen excrement from a commercial airliner. Thank goodness there was a responsible press to save that poor farmer probable embarrassment, not to mention valuable freezer space, and the rest of us from the fear that the sky was falling. We have airplanes that can eject unnecessary blue ice. We need a media that will figure out what the blue ice is and eject it too.

John Cassidy lives in Yokohama, Japan where he works as a proofreader of translated documents, teaches 3-5 year-olds in his neighborhood how to speak English really well and is a member of Tsurumi Peace Link - a very small community based organization that "tries to bring a local perspective to a global vision of peace." He can be contacted at: cassidy@apple.email.ne.jp

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