Structuring ‘Truth’: The Uses of Drama in ‘Information’ Radio

Abstract

In its short history as a medium of mass communications, radio had the most dramatic impact on its audience during the famous broadcast of the Mercury Theatre adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in 1938. Structuring the program like an information documentary with on-the-spot interviews and ‘live action’, Orson Welles created a form of radio whose impact depended entirely on a confusion of genres. Although the broadcast was clearly identified as a play, those who tuned in late were caught unawares and, stricken by panic, took to the streets in an expression of collective fear and mass hysteria. They had made a simple error of perception, mistaking an artistically contrived product constructed according to strict rules of dramatic composition to be part of an on-going process which had life and death implications. A set of well rehearsed voices and sound effects broadcast from the studios of CBS was thought to be ‘real’ because of the nature of the medium itself.