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The War of the Worlds broadcast caused nationwide panic
On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles's radio drama The War of the Worlds supposedly convinced millions of Americans that Martians had landed in New Jersey. The next morning The New York Times reported "Radio Listeners in Panic," and a 1940 Princeton study put the number of frightened listeners at 1.2 million. The legend has been retold for nearly a century as proof that mass media can make whole populations believe anything.
The evidence tells a different story. A ratings survey taken that night found only about 2 percent of respondents listening, and they said they were hearing a play. Claims of deaths and mass flight were never substantiated, and newspapers losing advertising to radio had every reason to portray the new medium as dangerous. Some listeners were genuinely scared, but there was no nationwide panic.
The irony is the lesson: a story about the dangers of media misinformation became one of the most durable pieces of media misinformation of the twentieth century. As deepfakes and AI fakes raise new fears, it is worth remembering how a sensational account, repeated often enough and dressed in scientific authority, became accepted fact.