Yes, you're quite right about yellow journalism, which goes against my argument that competition between newspapers necessarily means more scepticism and fact-checking. But I'll stand by my comment that the US didn't have 'many' competing national newspapers, at least when compared with Britain. Here's a list of the the major national newspapers: I count 31 for 1913. And it was a much smaller market, in terms of both population and geography, which was dominated by the London press (a paper printed in London in the early hours of the morning could be on sale in Edinburgh by the afternoon or maybe even noon). Anyway, that's partly why I expected that wholesale fabrication wouldn't happen.

Dominic:

Thanks, it's true that there will be gaps for many reasons (and not all of it is up on the web yet). And it's a small sample anyway so no firm conclusions can be drawn.

Dimitrios:

Very cool! It's probably unlikely to air down here but I'll keep an eye out for it.

In the farmlands northeast of Toronto, various rustics are seeing UFOs. There is a death, seemingly from an attempted abduction, and much speculation about visitors from Mars. The investigation by the main characters of the series (members of Victorian Toronto's police force) is brought to a halt by order of the Canadian Prime Minister. It turns out the stories of Martian spaceships are cover for a secret military airship project run jointly by the United States and the British Empire, worried about Germany's airship capacity. Soon after the project is exposed, the researchers disappear. The characters speculate on where the airship project has been moved to...perhaps the deserts of California, or New Mexico...

An amusing little entertainment, but its fun to see turn of the century airship concerns reflected in TV pop culture today.