Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds
was used to create false panic.By Michael Flaherty
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-radio-broadcast-news-coverage/
In New York City on Halloween night in 1938, 22-year-old Orson Welles had just completed his radio broadcast based on H. G. Wells’s science-fiction book
The War of the Worlds. Wells added a new twist. Instead of being a simple dramatization, the program was presented as a real-time news report. Using fictional newsflashes and updates, the program began with a report of a Martian attack originating in Grovers Mill, N.J. For the next 52 minutes, reporters conveyed their horror as they witnessed the rapidly escalating death and destruction the Martians were visiting upon the helpless earthlings. When the 52-minute program was complete, Welles exited CBS Studios and entered mythical history.
The next day, newspapers across the country reported that Welles’s production had been so frighteningly realistic that listeners had mistaken the story for an actual news report. The next morning a single headline dominated the front page of the New York
Daily News: “Fake Radio ‘War’ Stirs Terror Through the U.S.†The tabloid was not alone in manufacturing the narrative that Welles had tricked citizens from across the country into thinking that America was being besieged by little green men.
The New York Times covered the event with the same breathless urgency. They blasted the headline “Radio Listeners in Panic Taking War Drama as Fact†in the center column on the front page.
The stories reported that the program had inspired near-riots, traffic jams, and mass hysteria. Most of the stories neglected to mention that four different announcements written into the script reminded the audience that they were listening to a fictional story, not an actual newscast. Admitting this would have crippled the attempts to create a controversy and killed any chance for newspapers to manipulate the crisis to regain financial and moral superiority over the disruptive new medium of radio.
In creating the fantastical story of the War of the Worlds aftermath, newspapers were committed to a goal that mattered more to them than journalistic integrity: They were committed to self-preservation. Since its invention, radio had been encroaching on the newspapers’ business. As radios became more commonplace in American households, newspapers worried that they could become extinct. Radio possessed an enormous advantage in its ability to broadcast news and events live, as they happened, while newspapers were limited to one or two editions per day . . .
. . . That’s the thing about moral panics. They are not created by Martians; they are created by opinion leaders and people in authority who place limits on what can be said and who can say it. Selfish agendas supplant universal freedoms of truth and justice. Independent thought is sacrificed for groupthink . . .
. . . Today, we have more in common with the dystopia presented by Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World than with that of
1984. Our problem lies not with the impoverishment of available news and information, but its proliferation. Yet both extremes present us with a scenario even more dangerous than murderous Martians: a manufactured moral panic that demands that we relinquish our right to pursue truth and practice free speech and instead unquestioningly accept conventional wisdom as gospel truth for the greater good of those in power.[/quote]
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For those interested, you can listen to
Mercury Theater of the Air's "War of the Worlds" (and about a hundred thousand more vintage radio shows) at the link.
The writer made only one mistake: the broadcast originated the night before Halloween. He also didn't mention that part of what made the Welles drama so effective was that he convinced a couple of actual CBS news people to take part in it. In that way, it was a precursor to the eventual radio documentary hit
You Are There . . . --EA.
