As we hurtle toward Election Day, many of us are sitting on the edge of our seats, reading, watching and listening to the news. But one thing we aren't doing is bundling the family into the old sedan and racing toward the hills because of something we heard on the radio. Yet, that's exactly what happened nearly 80 years ago this Oct. 30.
It was 1938 and the eve of Halloween, and Americans were settling down to listen to their favorite shows on the radio. Some tuned into the weekly broadcast of "The Mercury Theater of the Air" on CBS. The producers, Orson Welles and John Houseman, had adapted H.G. Wells' 1898 science fiction novel "War of the Worlds" for their ongoing series of radio dramas. The program was produced in the guise of a live news broadcast, and it is still cited by scholars today as an example of the unexpected power of mass media.
After a brief introduction by Welles that clearly sets the stage for a radio drama involving the Earth and alien "intellects," the program cuts to a weather report in progress, and then segues into a show featuring the music of Ramón Raquello and his orchestra. Following 47 seconds of music, the broadcast is interrupted by a series of breaking reports about strange explosions on Mars and introduces an on-location interview with a Princeton astronomer (Welles as Professor Pierson). We soon learn that some kind of flaming meteor has landed in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. The sequence ends with an on-site reporter's horrifying description of a tentacled creature emerging from a space craft and frying everyone and everything in its sight with a fiery beam.
From here, time is condensed as fleets of these invaders destroy units of the New Jersey State Militia and eight Army bombers, and march on Trenton and Manhattan. Each news report includes interviews with representatives from official-sounding government agencies and has real-sounding production chatter, like a reporter asking, "Am I on?" By this time, panic set in with the program's audience. Experts have estimated that of its 6 million listeners, 1 million really believed the country was under attack. The CBS switchboard received almost 900 calls. People all over the country, but especially on the Eastern Seaboard, huddled in churches or escaped by car toward remote areas.
Why did this radio drama prove so terrifying? Aside from its faux news format, the answers are many. The show aired one month after European powers appeased Hitler at Munich, and anxiety and insecurity were rampant. When news bulletins frequently interrupted broadcasts to report on German saber rattling, these war jitters increased. In fact, some listeners believed those alien space craft were actually fiendish Nazi weapons. Many had also heard a live disaster unfold on air when the Hindenburg dirigible exploded and crashed in 1937. The CBS actor who played an on-the-scene newscaster tried to mimic that same frenzied delivery and sense of horror.
The script was exceptional. Howard Koch, who would go on to write the legendary "Casablanca," was the author, and the Orson Welles-inspired production values — acting, music and sound effects— were extremely high. The director cleverly built and then released tension by interspersing the live reports with ongoing music. This classic propaganda technique destroyed the listener's sense of time and helped to conflate events like the mass exodus from New York City into an hour broadcast.
However, the real root cause of the panic was unearthed by a 1940 Princeton University study. It concluded that the broadcast had the greatest impact on people with low critical ability, those who didn't have "the capacity to make intelligent decisions." They didn't think to check alternate sources, like other radio stations or the local police. These believers also considered themselves extremely religious and too readily accepted the event as an act of God.
I find parallels between the so-called Panic Broadcast of 1938 and the current election. Many voters are relying on a narrow selection of news sources and refuse to fact-check what they are being told. Some of those who consider themselves religious plan to vote based on a single issue — abortion — and ignore the many spiritual, ethical, intellectual and temperamental faults of their candidate that threaten to wreak havoc on the nation. By doing so, they risk subjecting all of us to a trick-or-treat proposition with horrific consequences.
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears Fridays. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
