Never underestimate the power of mass media to transform a “good story” into “fact”:
…a growing body of scholarship — which the documentary utterly ignored — has impugned the conventional wisdom and has offered a compelling counter narrative: The War of the Worlds program sowed no widespread chaos and alarm. Instead, listeners in overwhelming numbers recognized the program for what it was: A clever radio show that aired in its scheduled Sunday time slot and featured the not-unfamiliar voice of the program’s 23-year-old star, Orson Welles.
More at Slate: Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?
Via
“never waste a fact”
“just the facts mum”
“known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknows”
who ya gonna trust?
“listeners in overwhelming numbers recognized the program for what it was”
That is not in dispute. Were some people extraordinarily alarmed?
We were taught in school in the 1970s that some were.
I have little doubt that the type of people who would believe the ‘Tawana Brawley’ story or the ‘Twin Towers were felled by controlled demolitions story’ were the minority subset of the population who reacted in alarm that day.
It’s as likely that some people overreacted to ‘War of the Worlds’ as it was that masses of people believed that a notable number of Americans overreacted to ‘War of the Worlds’.
Or not.
Was there an H1N1 pandemic in 2009?
I’ve never met anyone who personally knows anyone who has been proven to have gotten H1N1 even though the flu shots arrived 2 months late and half the population didn’t get inoculated.
The media makes shit up all the time and then the pols react.
It’s no surprise that some in the media get a prize for exposing the media’s own rumormongering. They worship the ground theirselves walk on.
75 years after the fact one can write anything. So who to believe eh?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0617_050617_warworlds.html
So vested interest media,spins in ever smaller circles?
Once an attractive lie has become so entrenched in the culture, it’s hard to uproot and discard it. I suspect that this urban legend (of sorts) will persist for some time. It also doesn’t help that some people aren’t open critical thinkers.
“Play it again, Sam”
Those words were never uttered by bogart. Yet most people think he did. And you can watch the proof on YouTube.
The Welles myth in a pretty inert one. Not something to get worked up about.
Not old enough to have heard the show in ’38 but have had an LP of the show for decades. Played it for a group of high school students in a media class about 25 years ago then discussed it and what made it seem real or a show of fiction. Kids couldn’t believe how anyone could have been so gullible and they pointed out all the obvious things that gave it away as a fake.
But before we become too smug about the fact that today we can instantly pick out fiction from fact in media broadcasts lets look at how the MSM has dragged so many around like a dog with a ring in its nose on topics from worship or demonization of certain political leaders, AGW, political correctness, fracking etc. Maybe the human race can be that gullible?
Well Oz, we had numerous laboratory proven cases of H1N1 in 2009 starting in July of that year and I had one patient die from H1N1 in October of 2009 (also laboratory proven). In my experience, the vaccine had considerably more side effects than H1N1 itself which responded readily to either Tamiflu or Relenza (although the latter was essentially impossible to get that year). Never had any of my patients die from the vaccine but did have a number of elderly patients hospitalized, one for several weeks with severe H1N1 vaccine induced arthritis. That particular batch of vaccine turned me from getting vaccinated against influenza yearly to refusing any further injections of influenza vaccine. The curious thing was that, in July, the patients who were coughing in the waiting room and had lab proven H1N1 infections didn’t infect anyone around them. That’s when I started on my 20,000 units of Vit D3 daily during influenza season.
As far as War of the Worlds, just goes to show that the MSM has been totally corrupt for much longer than most of us suspected. While radio didn’t result in its demise, hopefully the internet and dedicated bloggers will eradicate this statist aberration once and for all.
“But before we become too smug about the fact that today we can instantly pick out fiction from fact in media broadcasts lets look at how the MSM has dragged so many around like a dog with a ring in its nose on topics from worship or demonization of certain political leaders, AGW, political correctness, fracking etc. Maybe the human race can be that gullible?”
Aye. AGW has panicked quite a few, hasn’t it?
In the past the biggest loudmouth in the community had the task of fomenting and organizing the mob whether for a lynching or a mere tar and feather run. The media has gladly assumed that role for many years now.
“The media makes shit up all the time and then the pols react.”
Indeed. This sentence couldn’t be more true. I found myself in the middle of the BS in Kososvo in 1999 because the media lied and convinced the world that the Serbs were ethnically cleansing the Albanians. This led to Clinton doing his usual protect-the-poor-muslims routine and pressuring NATO to get involved. Once we were on the ground I noticed a lot of things didn’t jive. The Serbs didn’t actually occupy the areas where the mass graves were. The Albanians held them! So after a little bit of questioning the locals it turned out that these graves were filled with the victims of Albanian blood feuds. They were taking the opportunity to kill their personal/political enemies and then blame it on the Serbs. And the Serbs were the ones that were in real danger. Albanians went on a rampage after NATO arrived and started burning Serb homes and churches and murdering Serb civilians when we weren’t around. And of course the media perpetuated the lie and kept saying the Serbs were guilty. When I suggested to a CNN “journalist” in our area that he should actually research why there were no Serb military or police in the areas where there were mass graves he quickly turned away from me and ignored me. Lying coward! Because of the media being duped by the Kosovar Albanian propaganda machine, and then influencing moron liberals like Clinton to get involved and take sides, NATO was tasked with going in and essentially stealing a province of Serbia and giving it to some of the lowest forms of life on the European continent. Absolutely shameful.
Well Loki, thank you for the information. I believe you.
Still, I’ve never met anyone who personally knows anyone who has been proven to have gotten H1N1 even though the flu shots arrived 2 months late and half the population didn’t get inoculated.
(and of those who were inoculated many only got one shot–purportedly, it was a 2 stage inoculation)
There was no H1N1 pandemic and it wasn’t because the inoculations scotched it.