UMaine Professor: Newspapers Lied About ‘War of the Worlds’ Hysteria to Smear Radio

By: Jefferson Pool and Michael Socolow | Slate

Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles’ electrifying “War of the Worlds” broadcast, in which the Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth. “Upwards of a million people, [were] convinced, if only briefly, that the United States was being laid waste by alien invaders,” narrator Oliver Platt informs us in the new PBS documentary commemorating the program.