Thanks for taking up the War of the Worlds story that I had used as an analogy without having full knowledge of it.

The articles you refer to show the birth of another legend, becoming bigger than the radio play itself, created by a bunch of newspapers worried about their circulation and which achieved a result contrary to their intentions. Fame for Welles and no legislation against radio news broadcasts.

As I said, legends have a life of their own and grow in unexpected directions …

The film produced in 1957 The Night America Trembled must be the one I saw as a kid in France in the sixties, my only info up to now about the event. I particularly remember the search in the studio for the sound that would represent the opening of the door on the Martian spaceship. It was achieved by recording the opening of the lid of a jam jar inside a toilet bowl!

We kids somehow got the feeling from that film that Americans were a strangely gullible bunch, an idea I have been fighting against all these years until finally and resolutely losing the fight in these last elections. I know, not the majority, only the Electoral College Vote or whatever you call it, but tell me: what is the difference?