'War of the Words': A Global Media Production

American Thinker ^ | October 6, 2022 | Peggy Ryan

[Kenny]

On Sunday, October 30, 1938, thousands of radio listeners

heard terrifying news: aliens had invaded New Jersey.  From a New York Daily News article, October 31, 1938:

A radio dramatization of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" which thousands of people misunderstood as a news broadcast of a current catastrophe in New Jersey created almost unbelievable scenes of terror in New York, New Jersey, the South and as far west as San Francisco between 8 and 9 o'clock last night.  

Ridiculous, you say.  Why would people believe that aliens had invaded?  They believed because it was news.  Orson Welles's adaptation of the War of the Worlds novel used familiar, trusted devices to report the fictional attack — news bulletins, updates from live reporters on the ground.  He used actual government positions like New Jersey governor and secretary of interior and physical locations like Trenton, Mercer, and Princeton.  These positions and locations were all too familiar to those listening to the "news" updates — confirmation that the reports were real. 

Still, does hearing it on the news make it any less impossible?  Apparently, because thousands were convinced right up until they switched channels or heard the retraction.  But what would have happened if War of the Worlds had been on every channel, reported by all news outlets?   Wouldn't millions have believed the impossible?

These lessons were not lost on power brokers around the world.  In the U.S. today, eight billionaires control our once free press. Their messages are not only uniform across all channels but often repeated word for word.  And because it's every mainstream media channel, fake news is the order of the day — fabricated stories, nonexistent sources, blatant propaganda presented as fact.

[Kenny]

"You are young yet, my friend, but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the [reports] gossip of others.  Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see."

—Edgar Allan Poe - “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"

[dfwgator]

These lessons were not lost on power brokers around the world. In the U.S. today, eight billionaires control our once free press.

Howard Beale tried to warn us all those years ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eT8QF6L1pk

[SoCal Pubbie]

The reaction to this broadcast has been waaayyy overblown over the years. My parents lived through it and no one on the west coast paid any attention. Maybe there were a few fools in San Francisco. In fact my folks first thought the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been attacked was another fake radio drama like War of the Worlds.

[dfwgator]

I suspect the fact it took place on the East Coast may have had something to do with that.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Of course, but there were 130 million people in the country at the time. A few thousand in NY and NJ hardly equals “mass panic.”

[Telepathic Intruder]

Today we are confident in the knowledge that there is no other intelligent life in the Solar System besides ourselves. But in 1938 it was widely believed that there was life on Venus and even intelligent life on Mars more advanced than us, thanks to Percival Lowel’s erroneous discovery of artificially-built canals there. That of course resulted in apprehension of whether or not Martians were friendly or malevolent.

[Right Brother]

"Today we are confident in the knowledge that there is no other intelligent life in the Solar System besides ourselves"

There seems to be little evidence of intelligent life on Earth.