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BY JOHN SANFORD On the eve of Halloween in 1938, what could best be described as mass hysteria swept across the nation after millions of Americans tuned in to CBS radio about a quarter past 8 p.m. At that moment Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air were performing a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Belated listeners had missed Welles' introduction, and many believed the "reports" of a large, extraterrestrial object that had smashed into the earth in the area of Grovers Mill, N.J.; of creatures emerging from the metallic object and torching police officers with a heat ray; and of the object transforming into a giant, robot-like machine and killing off close to 7,000 state militiamen. Some residents of New York, New Jersey and parts of New England packed their cars with their belongings and fled. Many took to the streets to try to glimpse the invading Martians. Thousands of callers contacted media outlets and police stations. Others went to church to pray. Welles, at the end of the show, said the broadcast had been "the Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying, 'Boo!'" But did he know it would have this kind of effect? Could something like this occur in modern-day America? After performing its stage adaptation of the radio play last Wednesday evening at Stanford, the New York City-based SITI Company sat down with James Bettinger, director of Stanford's Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists, and current Knight Fellows Elizabeth Osder and Beth Fouhy to discuss these questions and others. Bettinger began by asking Stephen Webber, who plays Orson Welles in the production, whether he thought Welles was aware of the kind of effect the play would have on listeners. According to Webber, Welles would respond to that question by acknowledging that he knew it would have some effect but had no idea how widespread and disruptive it would be. Webber added that he couldn't believe the Mercury Theatre on the Air "really thought people were going to get in their cars and drive to Canada to get away from the Martians." Bettinger noted that in the wake of the recent terror attacks, the play has resonated differently with audiences, and he asked the actors whether they were approaching performances differently. Susan Hightower, who plays a member of the Mercury Theatre company in the production, said SITI hadn't changed any elements of the show since Sept. 11. "But we're hearing it and experiencing it a little differently, and I'm sure audiences are," she added. Fouhy, an executive producer for CNN, said that after hearing the SITI Company's re-enactment of the broadcast it was easy to understand how a radio audience could have confused it with reality. "The narration is authoritative, and that's so essential to the believability of a broadcaster in radio and in television," she said. "The voices you all used to convey the information did sound like people who were in positions of authority who were sharing information." What was not realistic -- at least from the perspective of a broadcast journalist -- was the radio reporters' ability to garner so many facts about the situation and report them in such an orderly fashion, Fouhy said. "In an emergency situation in a live, breaking newscast, nobody knows anything," she said. "Whatever they are saying on the air is their best guess most of the time." So are people today more media savvy? Bettinger asked. Could they be deceived in the same way as the 1938 listeners? Osder, a freelance editor and producer who helped to create the Online News Association in 1999, said she wasn't sure it could happen on television or radio. But she said a similar kind of phenomenon occurs on the Internet, with its multitudinous sources of dubious information. However, there also are many web sites, such as Hoaxbusters, that aim to flag Internet misinformation, Osder said. "I
think at the same rate that bad information is shared, good
information can be shared as well," she said. |
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Stanford Report, December 5, 2001
