Oct 31, 2013 3 min read

When “The War of the Worlds” was broadcast 75 years ago, many people were unaware that what they were listening to was not radio news but rather a dramatization of the H.G. Wells story. The Martian invasion reported on the airwaves threw some communities into hysteria, but, as we reported Wednesday, our local populace was more puzzled than panicked.

We modern folk may chuckle at the gullibility of those radio listeners, forgetting how easily we can be bamboozled by tall tales told via 21st century technology.

In Wednesday’s article, Brad Hundt wrote of radio: “The medium itself was still relatively young – the maiden broadcast from Pittsburgh’s KDKA had happened just 18 years before – and audiences were still getting accustomed to this new medium. If they casually turned the dial and heard news bulletins, they had every reason to believe they were authentic dispatches from afar …”

Coincidentally, the Internet became popular as a medium for news and entertainment about 18 years ago. Twitter, Facebook and other social media are much younger. And many of those who use these media are apt to regard as truth and fact the fantasy and outright lies they find there.

In 1938, when the broadcast by Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre concluded, listeners realized that what was happening was just entertainment and not galactic war. But these days, rumors and misinformation are trapped in the Internet, circulating in a perpetual vortex.

Take the case of President Obama’s trip to Mumbai, India, three years ago. We still receive letters and emails here from readers complaining about the $200 million per day his administration spent on the trip. They believe that figure is true because they have read it on the Internet and heard radio talk-show hosts and lawmakers like Rep. Michele Bachmann blast it. But it’s not true.

“The president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day,” Bachmann said in a CNN interview on Nov. 3, 2010. “He’s taking 2,000 people with him.”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Bachmann how she came up with the number.

“These are the numbers that have been coming out in the press,” Bachmann said.

PolitiFact.com reported: “Actually it’s a figure that came from just one source, a news agency in India, relying on an anonymous source. It was then repeated thousands more times in the blogosphere and over conservative airwaves.”

The White House, because of security concerns, has never revealed how much it spends for presidential trips, but an administration spokeswoman said that the numbers were wildly inflated. An Air Force Times story in March 2000 reported President Clinton’s trip to India and Pakistan “may be the most expensive mission ever carried out by the Air Force.” That report estimated the cost at $10 million per day.

Picked up and passed along by media unconcerned with accuracy, the Times of India story claimed Obama would be accompanied by an entourage of 3,000 and be protected by 37 warships. Many people were more than willing to believe these figures, as ridiculous as they were.

It is important to note that on the night of Oct. 30, 1938, when residents of this area were frightened or skeptical about what they were hearing on the radio, they called the office of the Washington Observer. They knew the newspaper was the most reliable source of information.

We’d like to think that people still feel that way; that although the newspaper prints opinions on its editorial page, the rest of the paper is objective and factual; and that the journalists who work there value the truth.