How many people believed war of the worlds

So how did a non-panic become a known panic? Regardless, the show is considered a classic. Interesting, especially since Bongino has already been vaccinated, according to published reports. For his part, he says he is sticking up for his fellow employees who may not wish to get it. The idea that intelligent Martians might actually exist had largely been discredited. Even with the fake news conceit, Koch struggled to turn the novel into a credible radio drama in less than a week.

Ever the diplomat, Houseman rang off with the promise to see if Welles might agree to adapt another story. But when he called the Mercury Theatre, he could not get his partner on the phone. With the future of his theatrical company in crisis, Welles had precious little time to spend on his radio series.

With no other options, Houseman called Koch back and lied. Welles, he said, was determined to do the Martian novel this week. He encouraged Koch to get back to work, and offered suggestions on how to improve the script. Koch worked through the night and the following day, filling countless yellow legal-pad pages with his elegant if frequently illegible handwriting.

By sundown on Wednesday, he had finished a complete draft, which Paul Stewart and a handful of Mercury actors rehearsed the next day. Welles was not present, but the rehearsal was recorded on acetate disks for him to listen to later that night. Everyone who heard it later agreed that this stripped-down production—with no music and only the most basic sound effects—was an unmitigated disaster. Like the original novel, this draft is divided into two acts of roughly equal length, with the first devoted to fake news bulletins about the Martian invasion.

The second act uses a series of lengthy monologues and conventional dramatic scenes to recount the wanderings of a lone survivor, played by Welles. Most of the previous Mercury broadcasts resembled the second act of War of the Worlds ; the series was initially titled First Person Singular because it relied so heavily on first-person narration.

But unlike the charming narrators of earlier Mercury adaptations such as Treasure Island and Sherlock Holmes , the protagonist of The War of the Worlds was a passive character with a journalistic, impersonal prose style—both traits that make for very boring monologues. Welles believed, and Houseman and Stewart agreed, that the only way to save their show was to focus on enhancing the fake news bulletins in its first act.

The first act grew longer and the second act got shorter, leaving the script somewhat lopsided. Unlike in most radio dramas, the station break in War of the Worlds would come about two-thirds of the way through, and not at the halfway mark. Apparently, no one in the Mercury realized that listeners who tuned in late and missed the opening announcements would have to wait almost 40 minutes for a disclaimer explaining that the show was fiction.

Radio audiences had come to expect that fictional programs would be interrupted on the half-hour for station identification. Erika Dowell, associate director and curator of modern books and manuscripts at Iowa University's Lilly Library, said Welles' first-person narratives was part of what made the broadcast feel so real. People likely didn't hear much of the broadcast, instead focusing in on the urgent-sounding news bulletins that cut in, experts told ABC News in , on the 50th anniversary of the radio drama.

Listener Henry Sears told ABC News in that "everyone" was "going after their shotguns and going to Grovers Mill," but the mass hysteria reported after the broadcast may have actually been sensationalized. Popular myth detailed people flooding out of their homes in a panic, but several theories have emerged in recent years suggesting that no widespread panic occurred -- especially since most people probably were listening to the comedy variety show, "Chase and Sanborn Hour," which aired at the same time, the Telegraph reported.

The broadcast fueled skepticism around radio, a relatively new form of mass communication, according to the library, which houses a collection of Welles' work. Every year, the town of Grovers Mill celebrates the anniversary of the broadcast that made it a household name, holding costume contests, seances and Mars-themed events. The community even erected a monument in its Van Nest Park, marking the spot where Martians supposedly landed in , according to NJ.

Can you tell real news from fake news? RTO Code: Skip to main content. VU Home Library Guides. Search this Guide Search. Use What Where or Not at All. Home Who to believe? On this page. More than years of Fake News. The 'original' fake news. The challenges of media literacy in the past.