The 1938 'Martian invasion' panic was mostly a newspaper invention

Orson Welles's radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds is remembered for sending America into mass hysteria. In reality, ratings suggest almost no one was tuned to that station, and modern research found only scattered, anecdotal reports of fright. Newspapers — uneasy about radio stealing their advertising — ran wire reports that inflated a minor stir into a legendary nationwide panic.

— Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow, The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic — Slate, 2013