TV Review: Opening the Lost Tombs - Live from Egypt

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (Richard C.Carrier)

Pseudoscience as news? The Fox Network's handling of its primetime special "Opening the Lost Tombs: Live from Egypt" raises ethical questions. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was a Sunday night, on the ten o'clock news. Right between a report on Y2K and another on a fine against a local construction company, Fox 5 News in New York saw fit to give us a "special report" on who built the pyramids. The graphic behind the announcer, on a backdrop of the Gizeh pyramids, asks the question: "Alien Architects?" The announcer plugs the upcoming Fox television network special "Opening the Lost Tombs: Live From Egypt," then segues into the story with the campy introduction, "There are many mysteries in Egypt, like the pyramids. Who built them and how did they do it?" With that she introduces Fox News correspondent David Garcia, who begins his voice-over to video of the pyramids: "The ancient future, a civilization of contradiction." Immediately we hear another voice in an Arabic accent, "a pyramid was a tomb," followed immediately by another similar voice, "the pyramid has never been a tomb."

This is how it begins, and it only gets worse. Besides the ramifications of this news report for the whole field of journalism-the way it was conducted, and the shoddy journalism it represents-there is the then-upcoming special that this "news report" was plugging, which aired the following Tuesday (March 2, 1999).

See the above page for the complete review.