From a Toronto Star story on the exopolitics movement -- those who believe there are intelligent extraterrestrials who have made contact with Earth and have much to teach us:

... In order to get to the point where a team of investigative reporters would be willing to dive into what (Victor) Viggiani (media relations director for Exopolitics Canada) calls a "cosmic Watergate," he faces what is arguably an even greater hurdle: "the ridicule factor."

Ridicule is a potent weapon that ensures newspapers actually willing to mention extra-terrestrials in their pages usually add throwaway lines about little green men.

Viggiani believes this is part of a deliberate government plan to keep this stuff under wraps because it inhibits potential witnesses from coming forward.

"The ridicule factor is extremely powerful," said Viggiani. ...

 Stephen Bassett, executive director of the Paradigm Research Group in Washington, D.C., said he has noticed a change in the way extra-terrestrial topics are covered in the media of late.

"They still have to apply the same sort of phraseologies and some of the lightness and the humour and – I guess you could call it ridicule – but they get all the information in," said Bassett, referring in particular to three recent stories published in the Washington Post.

Here's the ones I could find:

But the dearth of serious coverage has Bassett suspecting whether publishers and national security forces are working together to keep things quiet.

"The failure of the major media in the United States to cover the ET issue is one of the great failures of all journalism," he said.