Fake news about the radio show "War of the Worlds"

"A wave of mass hysteria last night captured thousands of radio listeners who believed in the invasion of the Martians. Interrupted church services, traffic jams, broken communication lines.. Whole families left their homes in a hurry, hiding behind towels from what they thought was a gas attack. Some even took out the furniture, " The New York Times wrote on November 1, 1938.

An unprecedented panic, as hundreds of other American newspapers reported on the same day, was caused by a radio play based on the novel "The War of the Worlds"by H. G. Wells. The director of the production was 23-year-old theater prodigy Orson Welles.

Once a week, in his own program "The Mercury Theater on the Air "on CBS, Wells did radio versions of classic bestsellers like "Oliver Twist" and "Treasure Island". Especially for Halloween, he prepared an innovative adaptation of the"War of the Worlds". The action was transferred from England to a provincial town in New Jersey, and the plot is presented in the form of a news report: urgent reports from regional reporters about the landing of a spaceship, special news releases about the Martian attack on New York and interviews with scientists, military personnel and eyewitnesses of the alien invasion.

The production went down in history as one of the largest hoaxes of the XX century and an example of the terrifying impact that the media can have on a gullible audience, but in reality almost no one listened to the production.

The story of the mass panic was invented by newspapers, the purpose of which was not to advertise Wells ' show at all, but on the contrary — to overcome a competitor. During the Great Depression, radio was rapidly gaining popularity and took away advertising profits from newspapers, who were looking for opportunities to discredit radio as a source of information and regain their lost positions. Orson Welles, who turned the invasion of the Martians into a news report, was perfect for this.

The New York Times was outraged that CBS irresponsibly gave out bloodthirsty fiction for news, and the specialized magazine Editor & Publisher wrote:

«[..."the nation has been threatened by incomplete and misunderstood news spread by a new media outlet that has yet to prove its ability to work with news."

To make it more convincing, the newspapers reprinted anonymous testimonies of various victims of deception: a husband who found his wife at the radio with a bottle of poison, and farmers who shot a water tower that looked like a flying saucer out of fear. Wells was perplexed in response to the accusations.

The series actually seemed rather stupid to him, and he had no hoaxing ambitions: the announcement of the radio show was published the day before in the same The New York Times and other newspapers, and during the broadcast, the director, as usual, reminded four times which program was on the air and who its author was.

The newspaper campaign lasted for several weeks, until it was announced that on the day of the broadcast, the police did not record any riots related to the "War of the Worlds", and no victims of mass panic were admitted to hospitals. The crusade against radio was over, but it had a paradoxical effect: after the news about the panic of thousands of advertisers flooded for a new audience on the radio, which is believed to have led to the closure of many print media.

The myth of the hoax itself turned out to be extremely tenacious — by the end of his life, even Orson Welles himself believed in it, who in his old age boasted how he once sowed panic throughout America.

Also kommersant.ru indicates:

• 2% of radio listeners listened to "The War of the Worlds" staged by Orson Welles on October 30, 1938, according to a telephone survey conducted immediately after the broadcast.
• 12,5 thousand notes about the radio play "War of the Worlds" were published in the media within a few weeks after the broadcast.
• 7 people were killed during riots over the remake of the radio play "War of the Worlds" in Ecuador in 1949. Realizing that there was no invasion, the listeners burned the radio station.