When a conspiracy theory begins gaining traction online, a thorough takedown is usually guaranteed in the establishment press. Yet when Jaime Maussan, a Mexican journalist and “ufologist” last week unveiled two “alien corpses” at the Mexican national congress, the media was less dismissive than one might have expected.

The Guardian reported that a representative from Mexico’s congress “stressed the importance of listening to ‘all voices, all opinions’”. The paper isn’t historically known for indulging all opinions, voices or perspectives when it comes to science, previously publishing blueprints on how important it is to combat “alternative facts” and “fake news” in the midst of “an uneasy tide of untruths”. Last week’s article concludes that “the congressional hearing was a sign of the increased respectability of a field once seen as the reserve of conspiracy theorists”. 

While Maussan’s claims about “aliens” are treated as credible by the Guardian, the outlet is much more cynical about, for example, Graham Hancock’s Netflix documentary Ancient Apocalypse, which offers alternative theories about prehistory. “Ancient Apocalypse is the most dangerous show on Netflix,” the paper cries in its headline, citing Hancock’s “truly preposterous theory” and asking, “Why has this been allowed?”

One would be hard-pressed to explain how Hancock’s theories on lost civilisations are any more outlandish than the idea that extraterrestrial beings lived on Earth a thousand years ago, yet the Guardian pulls out all the stops to debunk Ancient Apocalypse, even — in a separate article — accusing the programme of racism. In a longer piece last month, the paper disparaged the mainstreaming of “crazy conspiracy theories”, arguing that “it is the nature of conspiracy theories to turn tragedy into grist, to transform grief and human suffering into an abstract game.”

The Guardian is not alone in affording the Mexican aliens story more plausibility than it would other “conspiracy theories”. The Independent treated it with equal credulity, writing about these “mummified specimens” as if their alien status were undisputed. The paper highlights the fact that Maussan was testifying “under oath”, and even declares the previously debunked ufologist an “expert”.

By way of comparison, only a few months earlier, one Independent journalist was so troubled by the debuting of Graham Hancock’s theories on Netflix that he claimed it called into question all independently regulated broadcasters and argued the case for the revival of publicly funded TV. 

The New York Times’s reporting on the “alien discovery” follows the Guardian and Independent model, resisting any attempt to debunk and again making sure to highlight that Maussan was under oath. This, from a publication which once offered advice to those whose friends or family have succumbed to conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, Sky has called those speculating about alien UFO crashes and US Government cover-ups “theorists” as opposed to “conspiracy theorists”. It is a new term to add to the press lexicon. 

Even Nasa seems to be willing to put scepticism to one side: at the end of last week, officials from the US space organisation convened to release a new report on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena”. When asked by a BBC reporter what he thought of the “alien corpses”, astrophysicist and Nasa official David Spergel, after conceding that he had only seen the discussion “on Twitter”, said that “when you have unusual things, you want to make data public”. 

Daniel Evans, from the organisation’s Space Mission Directorate, added, “One of the main goals of what we’re trying to do here today is to move conjecture and conspiracy towards science and sanity.” Does the media share this aim? Developments in Mexico in the coming days and weeks may provide a clue.