7 ms·
75 Years Ago, 'War of the Worlds' Started a Panic. Or Did It? (2013)
- josefresco 6y agoThis just references a Slate article: https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-wo...
- dang 6y agoOk, we'll change to that from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/10/30/241797346/75-years-ago-war-of-the-worlds-started-a-panic-or-did-it https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/10/30/241797346.... Thanks!
- mc32 6y agoPrevious Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6634143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6634143 Pretty much it was not panick inducing (with a few exceptions) and everyone went home like the previous day. It wasn’t till days (and years) after that the papers made it seem like it caused pandemonium.
- dr-detroit 6y agoIt famously started a panic in the plot ofg that movie "Radio Days" made by New York City favorite son and child-rapist Woody Allen.
- Apanatshka 6y agoThe article mentions Radiolab. I remember listening to a Radiolab episode about War of the Worlds, but that must have been a later revision, because in that episode they go into how the first airing of the play did not cause a panick, but other airings of the play in other places certainly caused panick and violence.
- iggldiggl 6y agoWhen The Burkiss Way spoofed War of the Worlds in one episode in 1979, it apparently still generated enough complaints that for the repeat (and any repeats since) they had to stick in a totally out-of-place announcement about "You're listening to The Burkiss Way, the not-to-be-believed comedy show".
- worik 6y agoVintage fake news!
- yboris 6y agoGreat quote: > The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted."
- tpmx 6y agoWe all seem to think/assume that newspapers in general used to be honest and fair in the past. I think I got that idea from Movies/TV as a kid in the 80s/90s. It was a very common and prominent theme. The hero(ine) was very often a print journalist. Think e.g. Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane in the 90s.
- johnchristopher 6y agoI think “All the President's Men” helped a lot in that regard. But when I was a student in communication you learn really quickly that it has seldom been like that over the last 160 years. Sex, Blood and Sport sell (and Scandals). This is the three S rules. Early french newspaper from the industrial revolution (circa. 1860, Paris) were already promoting and enforcing short and concise sentences. And a populist and demagogic style to sell more. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)#Description_and_contents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspaper)#D... and others.
- ccsnags 6y agoThere is a narrative about journalism being a field by and for the everyman. I think that the exact opposite is true. It has become an institution dominated by the dominant. I like the idea that there is some hard-nosed blue collar people out there trying to speak truth to power but it seems that they speak for power because it pays.
- UncleSlacky 6y ago"All The President's Men" probably had an influence. Ed Asner (as "Lou Grant") too.
- sandworm101 6y ago
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoWikipedia article goes into more detail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_...
- rossdavidh 6y ago"A study by the Radio Project discovered that fewer than one third of frightened listeners understood the invaders to be aliens; most thought that they were listening to reports of a German invasion or of a natural catastrophe." Wow. Well if they're not going to listen enough to notice that it's Martians, not Germans, they're not going to hear the part about it being fiction.
- robgibbons 6y agoOrson Welles said in his autobiography that several police officers arrived at the studio during the live broadcast, prompted by calls from listeners. There are also reports from the time about telephone switchboards being overwhelmed by calls. I'm of the opinion that these recent takes on the coverage of the event are themselves a bit of an over-correction: there may not have been national pandemonium, but there were certainly examples of confusion and panic among listeners.
- spaced-out 6y ago>Orson Welles said in his autobiography that several police officers arrived at the studio during the live broadcast, prompted by calls from listeners Is there any documentation of that actually happening, though? How many calls were they responding to? Remember also that this is before the internet, if you wanted more info about something, calling the police is one of the few things you can do. Plus, an author writing an autobiography has a vested interest in trying to build the story up.
- input_sh 6y ago> Is there any documentation of that actually happening, though? How many calls were they responding to? I really doubt police in 1938 kept track of every time they left the station (especially if it turned really mundane) and same thing goes for phone calls. Best we can do is trusting someone's memory, which is not really reliable.
- spaced-out 6y ago>Best we can do is trusting someone's memory, which is not really reliable. I disagree, we can do a lot better than just blindly believing, aka "trusting", any claim just because it was made by someone in the past. First off, in a time when it was common to broadcast all kinds of shows on the radio, including variety shows, readings of novels, and plays/dramas, I find it rather dubious that a large number of people panicked and thought there's an actual alien invasion rather than just assuming it's another show. It also wasn't the only thing on the radio at that moment. The linked article mentions that a far more popular comedy variety show was broadcasting at the same time, so again, a huge number of people just panicked and thought aliens were invading, even though they could turn their dial and see only one station was talking about it. Finally, where are the first hand accounts? Where are the accounts of people who panicked, or who's family members, friends, or neighbors were panicking? Given all of this, I think what's likely is that the broadcast raised some eyebrows at the time (some people perhaps called the police for more information), and was later blown out of proportion for publicity reasons.
- cabaalis 6y agoFTA: > The night the program aired, the C.E. Hooper ratings service telephoned 5,000 households for its national ratings survey. From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._Hooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._Hooper]: > Compared to the earlier Crossley ratings, Hooperatings had the advantage of not depending on respondents remembering what they had listened to earlier in the day. However, they still only sampled an urban rather than rural population. They also failed to account for the millions of households at the time which had a radio set but no telephone. Seems like the answer is somewhere in the middle.
- JoeDaDude 6y agoIn addition to the "panic", there were apocryphal tales about local farmers getting their guns to fight the Martians. It was said that they shot at a water tower, which in the dark, they thought was one of the tripods. That story was debunked by Skeptical Inquirer some time ago: https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/shootout-with-martians-in-the-wake-of-the-1938-broadcast-panic/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/shootout-with-marti...
- samizdis 6y agoThere was a TV movie The Night That Panicked America made in the 1970s about the supposed public reaction to the broadcast by people who thought that they were being invaded. I think that featured people shooting at a water tower. Not a bad film, for the most part, if a little overly dramatic in places. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073454/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073454/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_That_Panicked_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_That_Panicked_Americ...
- wyldfire 6y ago> So which was it, mass panic or hyped-up hysteria? Something in between? Neither! It was a cover story for the incident when the Lectroids from Planet Ten smuggled their team (John Parrot, John Bigbooty, John Nolan, John O'Connor, John Small Berries, et al) into Yoyodyne. Saw a doc on this [1] back in the eighties. Welles was hypnotized for the coverup. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Banzai_Across_the_8th_Dimension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Ban...
- mjklin 6y agoIf there was panic, it most have been at the very start when the “news breaks” kept interrupting the music. I listened to the recording on vinyl back when I was a kid and after the aliens emerge the narrator takes off alone across the New Jersey countryside. Even as a kid I knew that they probably didn’t have portable single-operator radio equipment at the time and it was being recorded in a studio. The public must have caught on by that point.
- pavlov 6y agoI think you’re overestimating the general public’s understanding of production technique. Most people can’t even see edits in movies. Fixed vs. portable equipment is on another level.
- gerdesj 6y ago"I think you’re overestimating the general public’s understanding of production technique." Individuals can be clever but as a herd we humans are bloody daft on average. I use the word daft deliberately, rather than stupid. For example there are people who genuinely believe that Bill Gates is attempting to track them via a device that is implanted via a vaccine. I would hope that I might be given a chance to rip their mobile (cell) to shreds. I remove the GPS related stuff. Then I try to fit those bits down the barrel of a needle. The battery (cell really) would probably get stuck. I doubt whether I'd have questioned production techniques, were I there at the time. The very act of watching the goggle box is to often suspend disbelief. I watched Doctor Who in the 70s and onwards. Buck Rogers (in the 25th C). Old Star Trek. etc. I saw Star Wars E1 or 4 or whatever, the first time around. I'm not sure how I'd have reacted to a martian invasion on the wireless back in the '50s.
- Johnny555 6y agoI would hope that I might be given a chance to rip their mobile (cell) to shreds. I remove the GPS related stuff. Then I try to fit those bits down the barrel of a needle. The battery (cell really) would probably get stuck. That would not convince anyone that believes in the conspiracy, since of course Bill Gates would not use an off the shelf GPS chip, he created an all new needle-sized chip in his secret laboratory. It's impossible to fight a conspiracy based on magic technology by presenting facts since in their mind, that magic technology already exists even if they don't fully understand how it works.
- redsummer 6y agoA common belief in London is that there used to be signs on rental property saying “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs” up until the 70s. In fact, there is no evidence for this at all. You would have thought someone had taken a photo.
- QuadrupleA 6y agoThe media, and humanity in general, seems to value a catchy story more than the truth - and the catchy story sticks around a lot longer. Even in the 1940s apparently. Especially ugly in modern times when it comes to defaming people - a juicy memorable accusation becomes the truth, and anything proving it wrong is not nearly as viral or interesting.
- mrfusion 6y agoWhat if that radio station, and the rest of the news, and the government had doubled down on that story once the panic started? And then kept it going for a year.
- lai-yin 6y agoThe Slate article suggests that Radiolab sensationalized the Orson Welles version. Quite the opposite. Jad & Co told the shocking truth - that the whole event was not that eventful. Then they got into the tragic story of the Ecuadorian radio station that tried the same experiment in storytelling. https://aldianews.com/articles/culture/social/other-war-worlds-sowed-tragedy-ecuador/58526 https://aldianews.com/articles/culture/social/other-war-worl...
- coldtea 6y agoThis is a Mark Twain short on journalism in the 19th century: https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/journalism-in-tennessee https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story...