Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News”
By RAY KELLY
Due for publication during what has been dubbed “The Year of Orson Welles” is Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News – an informative look at the infamous radio show and its impact.
The book is penned by A. Brad Schwartz, who co-wrote the 2013 episode of the award-winning PBS series American Experience focusing on The War of the Worlds broadcast.
The PBS episode was based in part on research from Schwartz’s senior honors thesis at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The paper caught the attention of PBS, which hired him to co-write the episode, and led to a subsequent book deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Set for publication in May 2015, the 352-page Broadcast Hysteria examines the history and impact of the Mercury Theatre On-The-Air’s October 30, 1938 broadcast.
“This is the first book to draw upon the nearly 1,400 letters sent to Welles from ordinary Americans who heard War of the Worlds firsthand, which are preserved among the University of Michigan’s Welles collections,” Schwartz told Wellesnet. “Those letters, as well as the more than 600 sent to the FCC at the same time, capture the full range of reactions to the broadcast, and they make it possible for the first time to reconstruct how audiences truly responded to the show.
“Most of what’s previously been published on The War of the Worlds relies on the same few sources (contemporary news articles, the Princeton study, etc.); even those who claim that the panic was entirely a myth offer little in the way of new information. But these letters, along with dozens of other documents uncovered in my research, shed new light onto every aspect of the broadcast’s production, reception, and legacy, getting past the myths to finally reveal the true extent of the fright it caused,” he added.
Schwartz, who has been interested in the Golden Age of Radio since childhood, believes the CBS broadcast offers lessons that are relevant more than 76 years later.
“The letters reveal that the so-called ‘panic’ was really an early example of a viral media phenomenon, much like what still happens on social media today,” Schwartz said. “People often think of 1930s radio as a relic of a bygone era, but the book shows that Welles and The War of the Worlds were decades ahead of their time. Welles’s skillful use of radio, the new medium of his day, has much to teach us in the age of the Internet.”
More about the book can be found at the Broadcast Hysteria Facebook page
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He has concluded relatively few listeners believed an actual attack was under way, but, he says, Welles’ broadcast prompted a different kind of “mass panic” as Americans debated the bewitching power of the radio and the country’s vulnerabilities in a time of crisis.