Robert E. Bartholomew - The Martians Have Landed!: A History of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes

The Martians

Have Landed!

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The Martians

Have Landed!

A History of Media-Driven

Panics and Hoaxes

ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW

AND BENJAMIN RADFORD

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

A companion title by Robert E. Bartholomew: Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion (McFarland, 2001) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Bartholomew, Robert E.

The Martians have landed! : a history of media-driven panics and hoaxes / Robert E. Bartholomew and Benjamin Radford.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-6498-2

softcover : 50# alkaline paper

1. Mass media Psychological aspects. 2. Hoaxes in mass media. 3. Mass media Influence. I. Radford, Benjamin, 1970

II. Title.

P96.P75B37 2012

302.23 dc23

2011037370

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

2012 Robert E. Bartholomew and Benjamin Radford.

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

On the cover: (foreground) Orson Welles (CBS Radio/Photofest); background 2012 Shutterstock

Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640

www.mcfarlandpub.com

Table of Contents

Preface

Section One : It Came from the Airwaves Radio 1. The London Riot Hoax

2. Radio Daze The Martian Invasion Broadcast 16

3. The Martians Return

4. Infamous Disc Jockey Hoaxes

5. Playing with Fire: Nuclear Scares

Section Two : It Came from the Small Screen Television 6. This Just In... NBC Frightens Viewers

7. Look! Up in the Sky! Asteroid Panic

8. Pokmon Panics and Creepy Crawley Scares

9. The Documentary That Fooled England

10. Hurricane Katrina Mythmaking

11. Chicken Little and the Bird Flu Panic

12. The Russians Are Coming!

13. The Video Nasties Scare (Peter Hassall)

Section Three : It Came from Ink Newspapers 14. The Batmen on the Moon Hoax

15. The Central Park Zoo Panic

16. The Halleys Comet Scare of 1910

17. How the Press Created an Imaginary Terrorist 92

v

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

18. The Hook Hoax

19. The Ghost Slasher of Taiwan

20. The Phantom Clown Panic

Section Four : It Came from Cyberspace The Internet 21. Chemtrails and Conspiracies

22. Morgellons: The First Internet Disease?

23. Katrina Evacuee Myths

24. The E-mail Virus Panic (Bill Ellis)

Section Five : It Came from a Friend of a Friend

Media-Spread Urban Legends

25. Urban Legends and the Media

26. The Curse of the Crying Boy (David Clarke)

27. Photos of the Gods (David Clarke)

Section Six : It Came from Everywhere

28. The Satanic Cult Scare

29. Halloween Panics

30. Stranger Danger and the Predator Next Door 170

31. The School Safety Panic

32. Out of the Water! Media Shark Frenzy

33. The Great Puerto Rican Chupacabra Panic

34. YouTube, Popcorn and the Killer Cell Phones 187

35. Someone Stole My Kidney! Organ Theft Scares 192

36. Killer Vaccines (Felicity Goodyear-Smith and Helen Petousis-Harris)

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

The mass media shape public opinion like no other force in society.

Radio, television and newspapers have a long history of causing undue alarm.

The newcomer on the block the Internet is rapidly gaining a similar reputation. From the 1835 batmen on the Moon hoax to recent bird flu scares and Hurricane Katrina myths, this book presents a number of colorful case studies that highlight the impact of the media on our lives and its tendency to sensationalize. Most accounts are from the United States, while others are from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Australia and New Zea -

land. Some are global in scope. A single shark attack on a popular beach may generate headlines for weeks, yet each day over 40,000 people mostly women and children die of starvation and poverty-related diseases and it rarely makes the news. Such is the nature of the media with its focus on the unusual and the sensational, that it often paints a distorted picture of the world.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, unprecedented amounts of information cross international boundaries of our global village in the blink of an eye. As we grow more reliant on the media in our everyday lives, we must also be wary of its potential be it intentional or unconscious to transmit erroneous images of the world we live in. George Santayana once wrote: Those who do not heed the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.

The cases in this book are a good starting point from which to understand the nature of the media, which is ultimately a business aimed at selling a pro -

duct, and the many instances where it has created public fear and unrest, either inadvertently or by design. Make no mistake: no matter how educated or experienced, we are all potential victims.

Chapter 1 looks at the events of January 1926, when the British Broadcasting Corporation stunned listeners by reporting on a worker revolt in London. It was said that an angry mob of unemployed workers were running riot 1

PREFACE

through the city, lynching, burning and looting everything in sight. In reality, they were hearing a radio play. In the opening segment, Ronald Knox announced that the upcoming stories were fictional, but many listeners in England and Ireland missed the disclaimer and took the show at face value.

In Chapter 2, the infamous Martian invasion is examined. On October 30, 1938, over a million Americans became frightened after listening to a live radio drama about a Martian invasion in the New Jersey marshlands. In Trenton, twenty families fled their homes, covering their faces with wet handkerchiefs to protect themselves from the poison gas. At St. Michaels Hospital in Newark, fifteen people were treated for stress. Phone lines jammed as police and newspaper offices were swamped by callers desperate for information on the Martian gas raids. The New York Times alone logged 875 phone inquir -

ies. In Indiana, a woman burst into a church service, shouting: New York destroyed; its the end of the world. You might as well go home and die. I just heard it on the radio. Years later, the shows producer, Orson Welles, said he did it on purpose to boost his ratings, but was surprised by the scale of the response. How did the 23-year-old actor pull off what is arguably the greatest hoax of the 20th century, and why are we vulnerable to similar hoaxes today?

Since the infamous Welles broadcast, other radio dramas have sparked simi lar scares. Chapter 3 looks at two of episodes from South America. On the night of November 12, 1944, pandemonium erupted in Chile after a nation wide broadcast of the War of the Worlds . Some people barricaded themselves in their homes; others fled to the hills. One provincial governor mobilized artil lery units to repel the Martians. Five years later there was an even greater uproar in Quito, Ecuador, after a radio drama about invading space aliens. Upon realizing it was a play, angry residents began rioting. A mob marched on the radio station and burned it to the ground, killing fifteen, including the dramas mastermind.