THE MYTH OF THE WAR OF THE WORLDS PANIC

This past Halloween marked the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles' production of H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" for The Mercury Theatre radio program. If you aren't familiar with the tale of Martians invading Earth, then you're at least likely to know the story of the panic that this ersatz news broadcast generated. Or so we're often led to believe. The truth is far less dramatic.
The radio play--done in the style of an actual news report--aired at Halloween with all the requisite disclaimers informing listeners but if you tuned in late, you might be forgiven for thinking the world was coming to an end.

And so the story goes that millions of listeners lost their ever-loving minds over this fake broadcast. However, in reality, hardly anyone was fooled by the broadcast. In fact, the broadcast didn't have a large market share and was in competition with the much more popular
Chase and Sanborn Hour" on another network. 
Much of the hoopla surrounding a supposed panic arose from newspapers at the time, which saw an opportunity to undermine their chief competitor (radio) and reclaim a chunk of their lost business. The increasing popularity of radio as a source of news and entertainment was hitting print media harder and harder as each year passed.
So by lambasting the radio drama as a source of fear-mongering and consternation, the newspapers of the time were able to paint the whole of radio with a broad brush of distrust and misinformation. And they sold it well.
80 years later, most people are still under the impression that the War of the Worlds broadcast fomented a panic theretofore unseen in the annals of human history. And whenever someone dredges up the old tale at Halloween or such, it all gets regurgitated because their primary sources of information are...you guessed it. Newspapers. When the written record is largely comprised of false accounts, it's easy to see how people decades removed--people accustomed to trusting newspapers--might believe that one little radio broadcast in 1938 nearly destroyed a nation.