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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump voters remind me of this date. OCT 30 1938.
The radio broadcast of war of the worlds. It set off a nation wide panic. A lot of people believed it.
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Trump voters remind me of this date. OCT 30 1938. (Original Post)
shockey80
Apr 2017
OP
Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)1. The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic
The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic
Orson Welles infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?
By Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow
Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles electrifying War of the Worlds broadcast, in which the Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth. Upwards of a million people, [were] convinced, if only briefly, that the United States was being laid waste by alien invaders, narrator Oliver Platt informs us in the new PBS documentary commemorating the program. The panic inspired by Welles made War of the Worlds perhaps the most notorious event in American broadcast history.
Thats the story you already knowits the narrative widely reprinted in academic textbooks and popular histories. With actors dramatizing the reaction of frightened audience members (based on contemporaneous letters), the new documentary, part of PBSs American Experience series, reinforces the notion that naïve Americans were terrorized by their radios back in 1938. So did this weekends episode of NPRs Radiolab, which opened with the assertion that on Oct. 30, 1938, The United States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that weve never seen before.
Theres only one problem: The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. Despite repeated assertions to the contrary in the PBS and NPR programs, almost nobody was fooled by Welles broadcast.
How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame Americas newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted. In an editorial titled Terror by Radio, the New York Times reproached radio officials for approving the interweaving of blood-curdling fiction with news flashes offered in exactly the manner that real news would have been given. Warned Editor and Publisher, the newspaper industrys trade journal, The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove ... that it is competent to perform the news job.
...
Orson Welles infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?
By Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow
Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles electrifying War of the Worlds broadcast, in which the Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth. Upwards of a million people, [were] convinced, if only briefly, that the United States was being laid waste by alien invaders, narrator Oliver Platt informs us in the new PBS documentary commemorating the program. The panic inspired by Welles made War of the Worlds perhaps the most notorious event in American broadcast history.
Thats the story you already knowits the narrative widely reprinted in academic textbooks and popular histories. With actors dramatizing the reaction of frightened audience members (based on contemporaneous letters), the new documentary, part of PBSs American Experience series, reinforces the notion that naïve Americans were terrorized by their radios back in 1938. So did this weekends episode of NPRs Radiolab, which opened with the assertion that on Oct. 30, 1938, The United States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that weve never seen before.
Theres only one problem: The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. Despite repeated assertions to the contrary in the PBS and NPR programs, almost nobody was fooled by Welles broadcast.
How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame Americas newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted. In an editorial titled Terror by Radio, the New York Times reproached radio officials for approving the interweaving of blood-curdling fiction with news flashes offered in exactly the manner that real news would have been given. Warned Editor and Publisher, the newspaper industrys trade journal, The nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove ... that it is competent to perform the news job.
...
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.html
shockey80
(4,379 posts)2. A lot of people were fooled.
The panic part may have been overblown but a lot of people were fooled.