Marianne Pellechia (M.S., Purdue University, 1990) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at Purdue University. Her research interests center on science communication and journalism.

Chris Irvine was a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at Purdue University. She now works in the private sector.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, New York City, November, 1998.

Many recent surveys indicate that belief in paranormal events is widespread among Americans. While scientists and skeptics have frequently bemoaned the obvious role that the mass media play in misleading people to accept paranormal events uncritically, there has been remarkably little research evidence to substantiate media impact in this realm. In the experiment reported in the paper, viewers were exposed to one of two different news stories about UFOs. The two stories differed according to the extent to which the existence of UFOs was discredited by some scientific authority. Because the stories were naturally occurring segments from a network newscast, they also differed in terms of the topic of focus, the people featured, etc. The results revealed that subsequent UFO beliefs were affected by the story manipulation. The story that included discrediting information from a scientific authority discouraged UFO beliefs.