
The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic - tcoppi
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.html
======
andyjohnson0
For context, the _Mercury Theatre on the Air_ site has a full recording of
Orson Welles's staging of The War of the Worlds available at [1][mp3]. It
doesn't sound to me like the cast were trying to make it particularly
realistic. Commercial radio broadcasting was still relatively novel in 1938,
but its hard to understand now how anyone thought it was real.

The site [2] also has a brief recording of a conversation [3][mp3] between
Orson Welles and H. G. Wells (which I haven't listened to). I hadn't realised
that their adult lives overlapped.

[1]
[http://sounds.mercurytheatre.info/mercury/381030.mp3](http://sounds.mercurytheatre.info/mercury/381030.mp3)

[2] [http://www.mercurytheatre.info/](http://www.mercurytheatre.info/)

[3]
[http://sounds.mercurytheatre.info/mercury/401028.mp3](http://sounds.mercurytheatre.info/mercury/401028.mp3)

~~~
orblivion
The explanation I read was that this show was not very popular, at least at
the time. Most people were listening to another station. Then, when it went to
commercial, they switched to Mercury Theatre. This means they missed Orson's
introduction, which says explicitly that it is just a drama. So the first
thing they heard was the series of fake news flashes.

~~~
evan_
That's specifically addressed in the article.

~~~
orblivion
I noticed that later, though it seemed to be in response to the amount of
people who were listening, not the fact that they missed the intro.

------
mhb
Radiolab War of the Worlds episode:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-
worlds/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/)

~~~
drivers99
I caught this on the radio this weekend, and couldn't stop listening. It
included a story about a radio station re-doing War of the Worlds in Quito,
Ecuador, only they really tried to fool people. I don't want to give away the
result, but it's worth a listen. The Slate article doesn't mention it.

------
samatman
>The legend of the panic, however, grew exponentially over the following
years. In 1940, an esteemed academic solidified the myth in the public mind.
Relying heavily on a skewed report compiled six weeks after the broadcast by
the American Institute of Public Opinion

American Institute of Public Opinion, huh? Considering this is the artist who
brought us Citizen Kane, I suspect a submarine job:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
DanBC
AIPO is a pre-runner to the Gallup polling organisation.

([http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/amerinst.htm](http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/amerinst.htm))

> _The American Institute of Public Opinion was founded by Dr. George Gallup
> in 1935. The stated purpose of this organization was "impartially to measure
> and report public opinion on political and social issues of the day without
> regard to the rightness or wisdom of the views expressed."_

> _The institute conducted "Gallup polls" on a wide variety of issues. The
> results of these national surveys were then distributed to subscribing
> newspapers in the form of press releases._

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nextstep
There are thousands of these stories which are so commonly repeated that most
people refuse to accept them as myths.

See also JFK's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, which is often (falsely)
claimed to be German for "I'm a Jelly Donut".
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#Jelly_doug...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#Jelly_doughnut_misconception)

~~~
phreeza
Claiming that it means "I am a Jelly Donut" is not false, just claiming that
it doesn't also mean "I am from Berlin". It has both meanings.

~~~
lukifer
Eddie Izzard made the best comparison to help it click: if a resident of
Frankfurt were to hear "I am a Frankfurter", it still makes perfect sense,
even if it also means "I am a hot dog".

~~~
mikeash
Funny how it works perfectly fine for "I am a Frankfurter," but I can't see it
working for "I am a Wiener."

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
A Wiener might be a person from Wien, Osterreich (which translates to Vienna,
Austria in English).

~~~
mikeash
I know, but at least when rendered in English, "I am a Wiener" does not work
to indicate a city.

~~~
dublinben
The correct English transliteration would be more like "vienner" which pretty
closely follows the common English practice of adding an -er suffix to denote
someone's place of origin.

[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/er_4](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/er_4)

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orblivion
For what it's worth, here's Orson apologizing and/or answering for the
broadcast, as I understand the very next day.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuEGiruAFSw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuEGiruAFSw)

If this is an irrelevant story that is overblown, it must have been overblown
immediately.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
If a few dozen or hundred people were fooled and called in to complain, that
would be worth an on-air answer. It's still a long, long way from the "over a
million" that was claimed.

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Scramblejams
Meh, it's a question of scale.

In the 1980s, there was a TV program on in the US (I think it was Countdown to
Looking Glass) which depicted what a hypothetical escalation between the US
and USSR might have looked like, culminating in a nuclear exchange. It was
complete with actors as news anchors, Newt Gingrich apparently played himself
(don't remember that part), etc.

My poor grandmother, who was staying with us for a few days, started watching
in the middle of it, unaware that it was fiction. A little later she walked
grimly into my room to announce that we'd just traded nukes with the Soviets
in the Middle East.

So, yeah, I'm sure a number of people were fooled by War of the Worlds and its
descendants. Whether it rose quite to the legend doesn't strike me as a
particularly interesting question.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Really? You don't see a notable distinction between "over a million people
panicked by fictional news" and "one grandma panicked by fictional news"?

~~~
Scramblejams
That's not the distinction drawn by the article.

The problem with this article, which isn't completely the fault of the
authors, is that it's unsatisfying. They're saying, "Hey, we have a strong
case here that it wasn't anything like a million people," but then they don't
go lay it on the line and make a firm case for it having panicked X people.
And that's probably the best they can do, given the lack of historical data,
but it's not enough to deliver the kind of hard-hitting, conclusive punchline
that's frequently necessary to kill off widespread myths. (Assuming, of
course, that they really are myths. Some historical facts derided as myths
have come back to haunt their doubters.)

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kmfrk
If stories like this one intrigue you, you should check out Joseph Campbell's
myth-busting at
[http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com](http://mediamythalert.wordpress.com) and
buy his book:
[http://academic2.american.edu/~wjc/mythsbook/](http://academic2.american.edu/~wjc/mythsbook/).

~~~
huxley
Someone named Joseph Campbell doing myth-busting is actually kinda funny ...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell)

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singold
Single page link:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_wel...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.single.html)

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marcosdumay
I like the idea of the newpapers of manufacturing a huge lie that proves that
they can be trusted.

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PaulAJ
For another perspective on this story, see

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f86lh](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f86lh)

You probably can't listen to it unless you are in the UK, but it seems that
there _were_ panics, just localised ones. There have also been repeats of this
event when similar programs were broadcast in other countries. For instance,
see here:

[http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_quito.htm](http://www.war-ofthe-
worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_quito.htm)

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addedlovely
Side note: I found that top fixed bar so distracting on the mobile / iPhone
view I stopped reading. Just me of bad ui?

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mtdewcmu
More people were listening to a radio ventriloquist. lol

~~~
huxley
For the Chase and Sandborn Hour, Edgar Bergen was actually just doing multiple
voices (being a radio ventriloquist was just a humorous hook). You can hear
some episodes here:

[https://archive.org/details/BerganMccarthy](https://archive.org/details/BerganMccarthy)

Mel Blanc (of Looney Tunes voice acting fame) did much the same thing for the
Jack Benny radio shows and also had his own half-hour long radio show, which
you can hear here:

[https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Mel_Blanc_Singles](https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Mel_Blanc_Singles)

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MrZongle2
_This just in:_ media hypes influence of media, turns out to be full of
itself, film at 11.

EDIT: Downvoted, _really?_ Why are we pretending that the media doesn't _love_
to cover itself?

~~~
TallGuyShort
I don't think anyone's disagreeing with you, they perhaps just don't like the
sarcastic, snarky tone of your otherwise empty comment. Personally, I enjoyed
it, but I suspect many in the community would not have.

