The 1938 radio panic was mostly a newspaper invention.
On 30 October 1938, Orson Welles aired "The War of the Worlds" as a fake news broadcast. Legend says millions fled from Martians. Historians such as Jefferson Pooley show the audience was small and panic rare. Newspapers, which saw radio as a rival, inflated isolated cases into mass hysteria. What you know is the myth, not the event.
Useful: In any media panic, ask who benefits from telling the panic story.
Source: en.wikipedia.org