Answer the questions in pairs.

1) Read the text and find general information: type

of document, source, author, topic, date.

This document is an article from www.slate.com.

It was released in 2013 by J. Pooley and M.J. Socolow.

It is about the event that happened on the radio in 1938. This article explains
that the radio drama did not create the controversy described in the newspapers.

2) Focus on line 1 to 8. Who exaggerated this story and why?

The newspapers exaggerated the story to discredit the radio about the “fake
news” that they broadcasted. What really happened was that Orson Welles was
telling the radio adaptation of the fictional novel ‘The War of the Worlds’. So, it
was not a joke and not a fake news.

Newspapers made a fake news about it while accusing the radio of making one.

3) Rephrase this sentence: “from these initial newspaper item on Oct. 31, 1938, the
apocryphal apocalypse only grew in the retelling” (l.11-12).

As time went by, more and more people told and retold the story, and each time it
was retold, new elements must have been added, making it more and more
scandalous / more and more exaggerated.

4) What does the last paragraph show (l.18-28)?

It shows that according to a survey carried out when the program was
being broadcast, only 2% of the respondents were listening to CBS, which
means that most people were listening to another program, that is why
the so-called panic can’t have happened.