Eighty years ago this week, CBS broadcast Orson Welles’ adaptation of “War of the Worlds,” and mass panic ensued. Or did it?

We know today that the popular story of the mass panic sparked by “War of the Worlds,” a radio drama staged as a normal news broadcast interrupted by breaking reports of an alien invasion, was far overblown. In a nation of about 130 million people, fewer than 50 Americans were panicked enough to flee outside. That number emerges from recent scholarship by historian A. Brad Schwartz and others who have explored the scope of the panic in the past decade.

But the myth that thousands mobbed the streets remains powerful. Sensationalist journalism at the time was later validated by social scientists and relayed by historians, creating a myth that just won’t die. Efforts to debunk this myth reveal that fake news doesn’t just distort the historical record but also often spreads damaging racial and gendered stereotypes.

Newspapers that reported on the panic did so in ways that advanced ideas of racial inferiority. “Harlem was shaken by the ‘news,’ ” read one subhead in the New York Times. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle offered a similar, if more fanciful, account. “Sugar Hill in Harlem was transformed from a gay neighborhood into one in which sober, frightening thoughts were uppermost. Excited Negroes rushed into the parlor congregations they had ignored for years to join in singing spirituals. They were welcomed by their more pious brothers and sisters with ‘I told you so,’ as they changed their tune from swinging and swigging to hymning and praying,” the newspaper reported.

The racism in these reports was often coupled with gender stereotypes. Frightened mobs of women and children made appearances in newspapers throughout America. One famous example emerged from Providence, R.I., when “women in hysterical tears … besieged the switchboard of the Providence Journal.”

As with the mobs of frightened African-Americans, none of these women were identified or quoted. Even the policemen involved apparently preferred to withhold their identities. Everyone remained nameless. When researchers from Princeton University later analyzed approximately 12,000 news articles about the panic, the review “failed to produce more than a half dozen interviews” for a follow-up study. That’s because, with few exceptions, real names of actual people weren’t published — but racist and misogynistic stereotypes were.

Some newspapers, however, searched for facts, not tropes. And quite a few discovered little actual panic. “Maine Refused to Get Excited,” read the headline of a piece in the Lewiston Daily Sun. “The nationwide wave of hysteria generated by the Sunday night broadcast … apparently failed to affect Dubuque,” noted the Telegraph-Herald in Dubuque, Iowa. In Chicago, Salt Lake City and elsewhere, some newspapers relayed the lack of any detectable local panic.

Perhaps the most professional reporting to occur that evening came out of the Long Island Daily Press newsroom. Once the phone started ringing, the Press’ reporters and editors got an idea. They decided to conduct a telephone poll of 50 people, and found only four were tuned into the broadcast but “none of them were upset.” More than half of the people telephoned weren’t even listening to the radio, thus confirming the findings of the C.E. Hooper nationwide ratings survey. The Hooper survey established that the ratings for “War of the Worlds” were tiny, and it concluded that 98 percent of Americans were listening to something else, or not listening to the radio, when “War of the Worlds” was on the air.

The Daily Press telephone survey was excellent journalism. Once alerted to a rumor, the newspaper’s staff investigated its reality and reported results. Yet nobody has cited their work. It was forgotten until Tom Tryniski digitized the defunct newspaper’s front page and put it on the Web, where we found it.

The discovery of this forgotten reporting, when compared with the cultural memory inspired by the media’s sensationalism, pinpoints the issues arising when historians inadvertently rely on the fake news from the past. In this case, the mass panic as commonly understood didn’t happen — but newspaper journalists believed that readers would pay for stories about huge mobs of panic-stricken citizens. Their unethical and sensational journalism was a response to economic and social incentives. (Today’s fake news is responsive to these same incentives.)

This episode provides a clear example of the process by which fake news can quickly become ingrained deeply in American culture. Political decisions, governmental administrative moves and even social theory in the United States were made based on the idea that masses of panicked listeners fled their homes, terrorized by the radio — even though it didn’t happen that way.

The lesson is clear. Both journalists and scholars need to be more self-aware and skeptical whenever sensational stories about media manipulation arise. Today’s fake news can just as easily inform tomorrow’s social psychology and history textbooks.

Jefferson Pooley is associate professor of media & communication at College in Allentown, Pa. Michael J. Socolow teaches journalism at the University of Maine.

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Nicole Saraniero

Photograph by Joe Reginella

Standing at the edge of the water in The Battery, with the Statue of Liberty just behind it, is a monument dedicated to the crew of the tugboat Maria 120. According to the plaque on the pedestal of the statue, the six man crew and vessel mysteriously vanished from New York Harbor in July of 1977. Perhaps this story doesn’t ring a bell because that summer is better known in New York City for the two-day city-wide blackout or the terrifying crimes of serial killer David Berkowitz. Or perhaps, it’s because it never happened. This fun and farcical memorial, which depicts a longshoreman crewman gazing up at what can be presumed to be an alien spacecraft as an extraterrestrial figure lays at his feet, is the latest public art piece from Staten Island based sculptor Joe Reginella. Reginella’s previous installations include the Brooklyn Bridge Elephant Stampede monument and a monument to an octopus attack on a ferry in Staten Island harbor.

As in his previous work, for the NYC Tugboat Abduction monument Reginella draws from true New York City history to add credibility to the story. The blackout of July 13th was a very real occurrence that happened during the summer of 1977. Many neighborhoods saw a surge in crime and flaws in the city’s infrastructure and emergency preparedness were brought to light. Reginella frames his fictional story in the context of this real life event. In the story of the Maria 120, crewmen were patrolling the waters between Liberty Island and Battery Park when in the pitch blackness, a bright streak of light shot through the night sky and what appeared to be a private aircraft crashed into the harbor. The crew immediately radioed the Coast Guard a distress signal and informed them that they were going to try to tow the crashed vessel to shore. However, when the Coast Guard boats arrived to help, there was no aircraft, and the tugboat Maria 120, as well as her crew, had vanished.

Photograph by Joe Reginella

The tugboat abduction narrative is further enhanced by supplemental material that includes a website, documentary trailer and even souvenirs that you can buy. Reginella and a team of up to a dozen creatives work together for months to bring these stories to life through various mediums. For this piece, the accompanying documentary follows the son of one of the abducted crewmen as he seeks to uncover the truth of his father’s disappearance. Though in the trailer you see this character perturbed by the commercialization of the tugboat “tragedy”- which has spawned a touristy “Harbor Mystery Cruise” and Statue of Liberty abduction tchotchkes – fans should check out the website’s shop, as proceeds from the themed t-shirts and souvenirs help fund these fantastical projects.

The bronze statue and pedestal, which breaks down into four pieces for mobility, weighs a hefty total of around 300 pounds! What is exciting for Reginella is to see the different ways people react to his statues, whether they believe the story is real or not. While people-watching on a windy Sunday in the Battery, Reginella told Untapped Cities that he loves to see when people “get it,” the moment of head scratching as they realize maybe what they are looking at isn’t what it seems. Regardless of whether the story is true, seeing the sculpture creates a fun moment and story to tell friends about, for those who take the time to stop and observe it. The reactions to this sculpture in particular have been very entertaining for Reginella as a lot of people interact with the it by re-enacting the dramatic pose of the longshoreman figure.

Photograph by Joe Reginella

For a chance to see the monument for yourself, head down to the Battery on a Saturday or Sunday now through November. The monument is periodically on display across from the East Coast Memorial. Dive deeper into the story of the NYC UFO Tugboat Abduction Monument and purchase themed souvenirs here!