The 'War of the Worlds' Panic was Anti-Radio Propaganda

Radio was a new competing medium, so newspapers tried to blame it for a imagine mass-panic.

Remembered as history’s most infamous radio broadcast, a 1938 dramatization of H.G. Wells “The War of the Worlds” reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought a fictional news broadcast of an alien invasion was real…

The day after broadcast sensationalist headlines ran from coast to coast: The New York Times placed “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact” front and center, with the report beginning: “A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners throughout the nation.”

Others headlines read “Hysteria Sweeps Nation”, “Fake Radio ‘War’ Stirs Terror Through US’ and ‘Death Blamed on Radio Scare’; the radio play was blamed for panic in the streets, suicide attempts and at least one fatal heart attack - reported by The Washington Post (but never corroborated or confirmed.)

The FCC would announced a probe of the incident and one congressman would promise to introduce a congressional bill "controlling just such abuses as was heard over the radio last night...”

Even H.G. Wells himself felt moved to issue a statement that he “gave no permission whatever for alternations which might lead to the belief that it was real news.”

FICTITIOUS NEWS

The thing is… the mass hysteria likely didn’t happen at all.

In a 2013 article for Slate Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow called into question this poplar historical tale - recently perpetrated by a PBS documentary - noting evidence to discredit the sensationalist reports at the time: ratings data suggesting a tiny listenership (just 2% of 5000 households surveyed) among other things.

In 1940 the initial media reporting was given academic legitimacy when Princeton Professor Hadley Cantril published the book ‘The Invasion From Mars’ that claimed a million American’s were ‘frightened’ by the broadcast, using flawed and misleading data.

Daily News New York, New York · Monday, October 31, 1938

Pooley and Socolow note when a team of researchers for the book tried to prove claims of hospitals treating people for shock due to the broadcast, they found the claims false.

Radiolash

The real reason for this sensationalism according to Pooley and Socolow? It amounted to what was essentially a smear against radio, a new competing medium that was siphoning of advertising revenue from newspapers:

“…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.”

The general sentiment in the reporting was that an easily fooled public were tricked by an immature, irresponsible new medium - radio - that The New York Times said did not “master the materials it uses” and was in need of more (self) regulation. This, a sentiment echoed by newspaper industry trade journal ‘Editor and Publisher’ which stated:

“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.”

Editor and Publisher 1938-11-05: Vol 71 Issue 45

This dynamic makes sense, and also gives context to the large number of erroneous reports in newspapers we’ve found blaming radio for all sorts of other things, including: killing birds, poor grades, droughts and skin rashes.

The old media were hostile to the new media, plus ça change.

A few concerned calls about a radio drama offered an irresistible opportunity to stick it to the the meddling radio-bros.

There certainly was a contagious panic about a strange invasion from the skies that posed an existential threat, but it didn’t happen on the streets or homes of America and it wasn’t about aliens: it was about radio and occurred throughout newsrooms. A sort of radio derangement syndrome that possessed the media elites of the era who felt a new technology diluting their power, influence and relevance.

Remind you of anything?

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