The War of the Worlds' radio broadcast was an adaptation from the novel written by H.G. Wells, directed and narrated by Orson Welles on October 30th 1938.
Before the radio broadcast Welles believed that his audience would be annoyed at hearing a story that was unlikely to happen. However, the broadcast proved to be frightening to the audience, because people did not listen to the introduction in which it was claimed that the events were fictional. Afterward, Welles will apologized by saying it was a Halloween joke.
Moreover, this episode demonstrated the power of the media as a simple fictional broadcast resulted in mass panic.
