[HN Gopher] 75 Years Ago, 'War of the Worlds' Started a Panic. O...
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75 Years Ago, 'War of the Worlds' Started a Panic. Or Did It?
Author : 1cvmask
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-03-01 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| redsummer wrote:
| A common belief in London is that there used to be signs on
| rental property saying "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" up until
| the 70s. In fact, there is no evidence for this at all. You would
| have thought someone had taken a photo.
| robgibbons wrote:
| Orson Welles said in his autobiography that several police
| officers arrived at the studio during the live broadcast,
| prompted by calls from listeners. There are also reports from the
| time about telephone switchboards being overwhelmed by calls.
|
| I'm of the opinion that these recent takes on the coverage of the
| event are themselves a bit of an over-correction: there may not
| have been national pandemonium, but there were certainly examples
| of confusion and panic among listeners.
| mjklin wrote:
| If there was panic, it most have been at the very start when
| the "news breaks" kept interrupting the music. I listened to
| the recording on vinyl back when I was a kid and after the
| aliens emerge the narrator takes off alone across the New
| Jersey countryside. Even as a kid I knew that they probably
| didn't have portable single-operator radio equipment at the
| time and it was being recorded in a studio. The public must
| have caught on by that point.
| spaced-out wrote:
| >Orson Welles said in his autobiography that several police
| officers arrived at the studio during the live broadcast,
| prompted by calls from listeners
|
| Is there any documentation of that actually happening, though?
| How many calls were they responding to? Remember also that this
| is before the internet, if you wanted more info about
| something, calling the police is one of the few things you can
| do.
|
| Plus, an author writing an autobiography has a vested interest
| in trying to build the story up.
| input_sh wrote:
| > Is there any documentation of that actually happening,
| though? How many calls were they responding to?
|
| I really doubt police in 1938 kept track of every time they
| left the station (especially if it turned really mundane) and
| same thing goes for phone calls.
|
| Best we can do is trusting someone's memory, which is not
| really reliable.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > So which was it, mass panic or hyped-up hysteria? Something in
| between?
|
| Neither! It was a cover story for the incident when the Lectroids
| from Planet Ten to smuggle their team (John Parrot, John
| Bigbooty, John Nolan, John O'Connor, John Small Berries, et al)
| into Yoyodyne. Saw a doc on this [1] back in the eighties. Welles
| was hypnotized for the coverup.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Ban...
| rcurry wrote:
| It's Bootay, damn it. And your overthruster is shit!
| Apanatshka wrote:
| The article mentions Radiolab. I remember listening to a Radiolab
| episode about War of the Worlds, but that must have been a later
| revision, because in that episode they go into how the first
| airing of the play did not cause a panick, but other airings of
| the play in other places certainly caused panick and violence.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| When The Burkiss Way spoofed War of the Worlds in one episode
| in 1979, it apparently still generated enough complaints that
| for the repeat (and any repeats since) they had to stick in a
| totally out-of-place announcement about "You're listening to
| The Burkiss Way, the not-to-be-believed comedy show".
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| In addition to the "panic", there were apocryphal tales about
| local farmers getting their guns to fight the Martians. It was
| said that they shot at a water tower, which in the dark, they
| thought was one of the tripods. That story was debunked by
| Skeptical Inquirer some time ago:
|
| https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/shootout-with-marti...
| samizdis wrote:
| There was a TV movie _The Night That Panicked America_ made in
| the 1970s about the supposed public reaction to the broadcast
| by people who thought that they were being invaded. I think
| that featured people shooting at a water tower. Not a bad film,
| for the most part, if a little overly dramatic in places.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073454/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_That_Panicked_Americ...
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| The media, and humanity in general, seems to value a catchy story
| more than the truth - and the catchy story sticks around a lot
| longer. Even in the 1940s apparently.
|
| Especially ugly in modern times when it comes to defaming people
| - a juicy memorable accusation becomes the truth, and anything
| proving it wrong is not nearly as viral or interesting.
| cabaalis wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > The night the program aired, the C.E. Hooper ratings service
| telephoned 5,000 households for its national ratings survey.
|
| From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._Hooper]:
|
| > Compared to the earlier Crossley ratings, Hooperatings had the
| advantage of not depending on respondents remembering what they
| had listened to earlier in the day. However, they still only
| sampled an urban rather than rural population. They also failed
| to account for the millions of households at the time which had a
| radio set but no telephone.
|
| Seems like the answer is somewhere in the middle.
| yboris wrote:
| Great quote:
|
| > The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to
| advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was
| irresponsible and not to be trusted."
| mc32 wrote:
| From the reporter fired by the NYT following an unflattering
| daily beast, albeit full of apparent fabrications, story[1]:
|
| ". ..But we're still jackals. We can befriend you for years,
| and then bite off your arm just as you're offering us a treat.
| We can't help it. It's the nature of the job. At the highest
| levels, like Watergate, it's about digging for the truth, no
| matter what corrupt government official it hurts. At the basest
| level, when even the crummiest scandal erupts, you have to
| repeat the accusation, even if you know it's untrue or half-
| true, in order to explain the truth -- no matter how much you
| may personally like the source you're hurting."
|
| [1] https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-
| word-p...
| tpmx wrote:
| We all seem to think/assume that newspapers in general used to
| be honest and fair in the past.
|
| I think I got that idea from Movies/TV as a kid in the 80s/90s.
| It was a very common and prominent theme. The hero(ine) was
| very often a print journalist. Think e.g. Teri Hatcher's Lois
| Lane in the 90s.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| A lot of people think journalism has always strived to be
| impartial and that couldn't be farther from the truth. In the
| 19th and early 20th centuries newspapers were explicitly
| biased like Fox News and MSNBC.
| BeetleB wrote:
| See also "yellow journalism". Particularly common in the
| early 1900s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I think "All the President's Men" helped a lot in that
| regard.
|
| But when I was a student in communication you learn really
| quickly that it has seldom been like that over the last 160
| years. Sex, Blood and Sport sell (and Scandals). This is the
| three S rules.
|
| Early french newspaper from the industrial revolution (circa.
| 1860, Paris) were already promoting and enforcing short and
| concise sentences. And a populist and demagogic style to sell
| more.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Journal_(newspape
| r)#D... and others.
| ccsnags wrote:
| There is a narrative about journalism being a field by and
| for the everyman. I think that the exact opposite is true.
| It has become an institution dominated by the dominant.
|
| I like the idea that there is some hard-nosed blue collar
| people out there trying to speak truth to power but it
| seems that they speak for power because it pays.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Why all this hate on journalists and newspapers? It is a
| demanding and very underpaid profession and the whole
| industry is squeezed.
|
| A few owners sadly own large parts of the media and push an
| agenda, but I really do not want to imagine a world where
| newspapers don't exist anymore. They are not perfect and its
| easy to criticise articles after the fact, but its incredibly
| difficult to pump out timely and relevant news.
|
| There often is no single truth but rather many perspectives
| and I don't think we can expect a journalist paid a barely
| livable wage and working long hours to keep up the highest
| quality standards every day all day.
|
| Please have some respect for the role this media plays,
| holding authority to account and getting by and large useful
| and correct information to the public. That doesn't mean you
| need to trust every written word, but comments like yours
| that newspapers are not/don't try most of the time to be
| honest and fair is simply not correct or fair.
| BeetleB wrote:
| You appear to be attributing a position and an intention to
| the parent, and then attacking it. The attribution does not
| seem warranted.
| tobmlt wrote:
| I want to recommend "his girl Friday" here, as there is some
| news related manipulation of the public / politics in play,
| (back in 1940) but really it's a second or third act to the
| real star (the "punched up" dialogue).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| So you thought Lois Lane was honest and fair? She was
| literally dating the story. Or Clark Kent. He was Daily
| Planet reporter by day, newsmaker by night. Both of these
| people would not be considered ethical journalists today.
|
| And don't mention that one co-worker is living an adopted
| second persona to seduce and/or spy on a fellow reporter.
| Also, his immigration status and all the forms he must have
| faked to get his job and file his taxes. If Clark Kent was
| real he would almost certainly be locked up somewhere.
| leetcrew wrote:
| in lois's defense, I think she got pretty deep before she
| realized she was dating the superhero she was covering.
| peter parker was a lot worse, covering his own alter-ego!
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Foundlings below the age of five on US Soil are US
| Citizens. Clark Kent is a legal American citizen with
| adoptive parents -- no need to fake anything!
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| "All The President's Men" probably had an influence. Ed Asner
| (as "Lou Grant") too.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Wikipedia article goes into more detail:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_...
| mc32 wrote:
| Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6634143
|
| Pretty much it was not panick inducing (with a few exceptions)
| and everyone went home like the previous day. It wasn't till days
| (and years) after that the papers made it seem like it caused
| pandemonium.
| josefresco wrote:
| This just references a Slate article:
| https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-wo...
| dr-detroit wrote:
| It famously started a panic in the plot ofg that movie "Radio
| Days" made by New York City favorite son and child-rapist Woody
| Allen.
| worik wrote:
| Vintage fake news!
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(page generated 2021-03-01 23:01 UTC)