The War of the Worlds Lie—The Truth About Fake News

People still believe that Orson Welle's performance of the War of the Worlds triggered a mass hysteria. It's become the quintessential fake news story. In truth the War of the Worlds fake news story is itself fake news. In this episode we explore what really happened, how much hysteria there was and why people didn't actually believe they were experiencing a Martian invasion. We also explore why people were so happy to believe in this hysteria and what it tells us about our modern post-truth fake news crisis.

Further reading:
Broadcast Hysteria: this is the book where Princeton historian Brad Schwartz does his deep dive into the reality of the supposed hysteria:
Broadcast Hysteria https://amzn.to/3ts0VfaBad News: Why We Fall for Fake News—for a short account of the story as well as some quality correlation with our present situation the opening chapter of Rob Brotherton's book comes highly recommended
https://amzn.to/3gexCsE
Also worth reading is the 2013 Slate article about the perpetuation of the myth: https://slate.com/culture/2013/10/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds-panic-myth-the-infamous-radio-broadcast-did-not-cause-a-nationwide-hysteria.html
And then there is the original NYT article from the day after the event:
http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/Radio/Newspapers/Oct31/NYT.html

Media used:
End of the Era by Kevin MacLeod
License: CC BY 3.0 (http://goo.gl/BlcHZR​)
Download: https://bit.ly/3wWil5L
#fakenews #thelivingphilosophy

Видео The War of the Worlds Lie—The Truth About Fake News канала The Living Philosophy