This video presentation seems to be spinning off its own PR machine.
It's crazy. Here's what happened as best I can reconstruct it.
Way back in April 2010, a journalist with the Melbourne, Australia "Herald Sun" newspaper interviewed me for an article he wrote about our then-upcoming Niku VI expedition. He did a great job.
Late last month, he got in touch with me again. He had seen the video of the Asheville presentation and noticed that one of the credible post-loss signals was from a ham in Melbourne. That gave him a local angle and he wanted to write another article. His story ran on September 8 and was headlined "Amelia Earhart mystery: New evidence shows pioneering aviator survived landing on remote Pacific Island". It was well-written but the on-line version could only be read by subscribers, so it didn't get much international traction.
Possibly due to the Herald Sun story, on September 10 the New Zealand Herald (
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11707328) wrote their own story headlined "Amelia Earhart made contact with radio operators for days after her plane went down." I had nothing to do with this story. The lead sentence in the article was "Did Amelia Earhart survive her plane crash? This is the most likely theory, with evidence emerging that she was making contact for days after her plane disappeared." Nothing about "according to TIGHAR" or "Gillespie claims." Just a flat statement that this is the most likely theory.
The New Zealand article was picked up by news.com.au who put it out on their wire. It was picked up by the New York Post who ran it under the sexier headline "Eerie Evidence Amelia Earhart Died a Castaway."(
http://nypost.com/2016/09/09/amelia-earhart-survived-her-plane-crash-new-evidence-suggests/)
The Daily Mail in the UK then picked up the story but wrote their own version headlined "Pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart 'died a castaway after crashing on a Pacific island' - despite making more than 100 chilling radio distress calls that were heard around the world." (
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3782724/Amelia-Earhart-died-castaway-Nikumaroro-island-eerie-evidence-suggests.html#ixzz4JzRwsj9C)
James Wilkinson, the Daily Mail journalist who authored the story, wrote that "Earhart disappeared from radar on July 2, 1937."
Fox News picked up the story combining the New Zealand assertion that "This is the most likely theory" and the Daily Mail statement that "Earhart disappeared from radar on July 2, 1937."
Yahoo and other media outlets have also picked up the story.
Of course, I'm getting bombarded by people who think I'm an idiot for saying Earhart disappeared from radar but I gently tell them that their beef is with the media, not TIGHAR.
Although it was totally unplanned, I'm hoping this blast of media attention will help attract funding for Niku IX.