Correction: the War of the Worlds 'mass panic' did not happen

OCT 30 1938

The popular image of millions fleeing their homes is not supported by the evidence. A C. E. Hooper survey of 5,000 households found roughly 2 percent were listening to the drama at all. Media historian W. Joseph Campbell concluded in 2003 that the panic and mass hysteria 'did not occur on anything approaching a nationwide dimension', and Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow found the supposed panic 'so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast'. Newspapers, then losing advertising to radio, amplified scattered reports of confusion to discredit the rival medium.