Actually, in a similar vein to the whole, "The media has been fake news for a long time" narrative, do you remember that story about how Orson Welles's broadcast of War of the Worlds incited a nation-wide panic because everyone thought that the broadcast was real? That's been pretty firmly cemented in the public consciousness and there's plenty of news articles from back in the day about it.
Did you know that
whole story is fake?
"Far fewer people heard the broadcast — and fewer still panicked — than most people believe today. [...] The night the program aired, the C.E. Hooper ratings service telephoned 5,000 households for its national ratings survey. 'To what program are you listening?' the service asked respondents. Only 2 percent answered a radio 'play' or 'the Orson Welles program,' or something similar indicating CBS. None said a 'news broadcast,' according to a summary published in Broadcasting. In other words, 98 percent of those surveyed were listening to something else, or nothing at all, on Oct. 30, 1938. This miniscule rating is not surprising. Welles' program was scheduled against one of the most popular national programs at the time — ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety show."
When the radio play for War of the Worlds was being broadcasted, 98% of the audience was listening to something else, and there are no records of a spike in police calls being made around October 30th, 1938. In Slate's opinion--before Slate had turned into absolute, melted dogshit-- the newspapers likely made the entire thing up in an effort to discredit the radio as a viable source of news, since they were in a heated competition with each other at the time.
Even though none of this ever happened and the papers made the entire thing up, Orson Welles was still
forced to apologize.
