Conspiracy theory? Media have been colluding for almost 100 years to turn myth into history
The year is 2120. In a high school classroom in Alabama, students sit riveted as their teacher recounts the events of a century ago, when tens of millions of people lost their lives in a terrifying pandemic that swept the globe with a virulence never seen before, not even during the Black Death, as this was a truly world-wide phenomenon.
Billions of people cowered in fear in their homes, afraid to step out even to purchase the most basic necessities for their families. Those who did venture out were people defined as “essential workers” upon whom the nation relied — healthcare professionals, warehouse packers, those ensuring that there was still food on the shelves of the few supermarkets permitted to remain open, and that the power stations and water companies continued to function.
Stores were shuttered and online businesses stepped into the breach as the internet became the only link to the outside world for many.
And in the hospitals, staff were swathed in PPE, only their eyes dimly visible behind plastic visors, their bodies enclosed in white padded garments. Nurses in particular were stretched beyond endurance, forced to work 12-hour shifts without even time for bathroom breaks as they rushed between one dying patient and the next, here adjusting the ventilator for one person struggling to breathe, there calling for oxygen support for another person just barely clinging to life...
The situation only took a blessed turn for the better when new and revolutionary vaccines were introduced, manufactured at warp speed, finally enabling humankind to reassert its mastery over nature. Yet things would never be the same again...
Think rewrite of history couldn’t happen? It has happened. It happened almost 100 years ago, after the “now infamous October 30, 1938 radio broadcast of ‘The War of the Worlds,’ starring Orson Welles, terrified America,” as many once believed and indeed many still do:
ANNOUNCER ONE: Ladies and gentlemen, here is the latest bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. Toronto, Canada: Professor Morse of McGill University reports observing a total of three explosions on the planet Mars, between the hours of 7:45 P. M. and 9:20 P. M., eastern standard time. This confirms earlier reports received from American observatories. Now, nearer home, comes a special announcement from Trenton, New Jersey. It is reported that at 8:50 P. M. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton...
ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grovers Mill by telephone. Just a moment. At least forty people, including six state troopers, lie dead in a field east of the village of Grovers Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition. The next voice you hear will be that of Brigadier General Montgomery Smith, commander of the state militia at Trenton, New Jersey.
SMITH: I have been requested by the governor of New Jersey to place the counties of Mercer and Middlesex as far west as Princeton, and east to Jamesburg, under martial law. No one will be permitted to enter this area except by special pass issued by state or military authorities. Four companies of state militia are proceeding from Trenton to Grovers Mill, and will aid in the evacuation of homes within the range of military operations. Thank you.
ANNOUNCER TWO: You have just been listening to General Montgomery Smith commanding the state militia at Trenton. In the meantime, further details of the catastrophe at Grovers Mill are coming in. The strange creatures, after unleashing their deadly assault, crawled back into their pit and made no attempt to prevent the efforts of the firemen to recover the bodies and extinguish the fire. Combined fire departments of Mercer County are fighting the flames which menace the entire countryside. We have been unable to establish any contact with our mobile unit at Grovers Mill, but we hope to be able to return you there at the earliest possible moment. In the meantime we take you — just one moment please.
(LONG PAUSE)
(WHISPER) Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been informed that we have finally established communication with an eyewitness of the tragedy. Professor Pierson has been located at a farmhouse near Grovers Mill where he has established an emergency observation post. As a scientist, he will give you his explanation of the calamity. The next voice you hear will be that of Professor Pierson, brought to you by direct wire. Professor Pierson.
PIERSON: Of the creatures in the rocket cylinder at Grovers Mill, I can give you no authoritative information — either as to their nature, their origin, or their purposes here on earth. Of their destructive instrument I might venture some conjectural explanation. For want of a better term, I shall refer to the mysterious weapon as a heat ray. It’s all too evident that these creatures have scientific knowledge far in advance of our own. It is my guess that in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute nonconductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. That is my conjecture of the origin of the heat ray.
MC DONALD: We have received a request from the militia at Trenton to place at their disposal our entire broadcasting facilities. In view of the gravity of the situation, and believing that radio has a responsibility to serve in the public interest at all times, we are turning over our facilities to the state militia at Trenton...
Can't fool all of the people all of the time?
The story of Orson Welles’ CBS broadcast has been described as “the most extreme case of fake news in the democratic West.” CBS’ adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic story as a radio drama featured the invasion of Martians determined to eradicated human civilization and equipped with technology that overcame the most advanced equipment then available to the U.S. military.
A PBS documentary that aired in 2013, 75 years after the broadcast, related how,
By the next morning, the panic broadcast was front-page news from coast to coast, with reports of traffic accidents, near riots, hordes of panicked people in the streets, all because of a radio play.
This occurred even though the show had been billed in advance, and was introduced before airing, as fiction. In fact, there were even several reminders during the show that it was a fictional account. And yet, millions of people panicked and believed themselves to be gazing doom in the face.
Or did they?
The media as cartel
Also in 2013, historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow published an article in Slate titled: “The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic: Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?”
Among their findings, Pooley and Socolow noted that, “98 percent of those surveyed [shortly after the broadcast] were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938.”
Frank Stanton was then head researcher at CBS. He would later write that his team “conducted twenty-five hundred personal interviews” on the day after the radio show. Sixty years later, he admitted that,
The research showed that most people saw it for what it was. In the first place, most people didn’t hear [the broadcast] … But those who did hear it, looked at it as a prank and accepted it that way.
And yet, shortly after the broadcast, CBS ordered Welles to hold a press conference at which he apologized for creating the “mass panic.”
Reporter: Were you aware of the terror at the time you were giving this role, were you aware of the terror that was going through the nation?
Welles: Oh no, of course not ... I know that almost everybody in radio would do almost anything to avert the kind of thing that happened, myself included...
During the press conference, Orson Welles also noted that “radio is new; and we are learning about the effect it has on people, and we’ve learned a terrible lesson.”
Decades later, when the story of the “great panic” began to be challenged, there were those who suggested that the scam was a plot hatched by the newspapers, who, as one, reported the hysteria as real, in order to discredit radio as an irresponsible form of media that could not be trusted to provide accurate reporting. What this viewpoint overlooks is that radio itself, and later, television, also fell into line with the newspapers and all of them contributed to ensuring that the story of millions of Americans terrified at a Martian invasion entered the history books.
Media + academia + lies = ?
It wasn’t just mass media, however. Academia, too, entered the picture in the form of Hadrey Cantril, a social psychologist at Princeton University, who authored a highly reputed volume of research on the CBS broadcast and firmly established the mass panic as a genuine event.
Cantril’s book, “The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic,” was published in 1940. According to Pooley and Socolow, Cantril based it on a “skewed report compiled six weeks after the broadcast,” a report that was conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion which used a “cherry-picked data set” to confirm that hysteria had indeed taken hold of the American public.
So we have newspapers, radio, and academia conspiring to convince the entire U.S. public that they had panicked when they had not — and succeeding to a massive degree.
But why? What possible benefit could anyone have from establishing a myth as history?
The elite, authors of past, present, and future
Cantril of Princeton and Stanton of CBS had no obvious connection. But they were connected. These two men, along with Paul Lazarsfeld, collaborated on what was presented as Cantril’s book, a fact that historian Christopher Simpson unearthed, many years later. This is the same Stanton who admitted in his later years that he always knew that there was no mass hysteria — and yet, he contributed to a book that went a long way to establishing the hysteria as history.
And Cantril, together with Stanton and Lazarsfeld, were also collaborators in another project, the creation of the “Office of Radio Research,” which was a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation (and based at Princeton). According to Socolow, this Office was engaged in “the first significant attempt to empirically analyze the effects of mass media.”
Among the leading lights of this endeavor, as documented by Simpson in his book, “Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960,” were Harold Laswell and Walter Lippmann. At a seminar sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, Lasswell insisted that,
The elite of U.S. society ... those who have money to support research ... should systematically manipulate mass sentiment.
And this was no rogue organization. The Office of Radio Research, according to Simpson, “enjoyed confidential contracts from the Roosevelt administration for research into U.S. public opinion.” William Paley (of CBS), Stanton, and Cantril would all go on to work for the U.S. government in various capacities during the Second World War.
Who are their successors today?
