An upcoming PBS documentary about the famous War of the Worlds radio dramatization seems certain to embrace the media myth that the show provoked panic across the United States when it aired nearly 75 years ago.
The PBS program is to be shown October 29, on the eve of the anniversary of the radio play that starred Orson Welles and cleverly told of the invasion of America by Martians wielding deadly heat rays.
A description PBS has posted online signals that its documentary, as suspected, will buy into the panic myth. The description says, in part, that â??perhaps a million or moreâ? listeners that night in 1938 were â??plunged into panic, convinced that America was under a deadly Martian attack.â?
PBS also says The War of the Worlds program created â??one of the biggest mass hysteria events in U.S. history.â? As if there have been many such events.
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