Welles presented War of the Worlds as fake news bulletins.

Evidence

Finding H. G. Wells’s novel ill-suited to a traditional performance, Welles and his producer, the actor John Houseman, presented it as a series of dramatized news bulletins, describing an ongoing alien invasion of the United States. It famously caused some panic among listeners who missed the show’s disclaimers.*5 Paley’s programming was, of course, not all so elevated. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 356

Categorization

• XREF: The fake-news-bulletin format prefigures later media distrust and format-driven deception debates.
• CANDY: A familiar-but-neat historical anecdote; the framing-as-news-bulletins angle gives it a fresh hook for conversation.