![]() Articles claiming that the radio play led the country into mass hysteria became commonplace. National press quickly jumped at the opportunity to stir the pot. For anyone who tuned in after the Mercury Theater introduction, the second station break occurred about 40 minutes in, allowing ample time for confusion (not necessarily panic in the streets). ![]() The simulated broadcast interruptions mimicked real breaking news. Welles suggested to slow the pace of the show’s opening minutes to highlight the monotony, which sped up during the alien invasion. Most importantly, Frank Readick who played the reporter on the ground as aliens emerged from their ships, decided to mimic his panicked reporting of the audio from the Hindenburg disaster. The result was a group effort made up of producer John Housemen, writer Howard Koch, as well as several suggestions made from Mercury Theater cast members. Prior to production, Welles showed interest in creating a broadcast that would appear real. In 1938, radio was still relatively new, having recently become a primary means for information gathering and entertainment. What we should focus on today, as many did then, was the importance of media literacy. The FCC investigated War of the Worlds immediately, promising to put a stop to any kind of “simulated news items.” The FCC closed its investigation in December 1938 when it found that while some people took the program to be real for various reasons, CBS agreed to take steps to avoid making a fiction broadcast sound like it was actual breaking news. First Left the Family: Betrayal and High Drama In a Classic Hollywood Megadeal Then, as now, media literacy is a key facet towards intelligent public engagement. Finding the truth takes work, not unlike any fact-finding mission today, because we need to sift through a lot of salacious attention seeking information to find the facts. But while there were many confused listeners, some scared by the play’s deceptive production methods, there was not mass panic coast to coast. The reason corrective stories keep coming up is that some people prefer to believe that the radio play sparked a nationwide mass panic. For anyone looking for a straightforward history of what happened, look no farther than A. We know the truth – the stories about mass hysteria were overblown. Every year there are new essays about unveiling the truth behind Orson Welles’s 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast that aired on CBS radio on October 30th, 1938.
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