In hindsight moral panics always seem deeply silly, you have to wonder how anyone fell for such nonsense.
Media plays a role in allowing panics to happen either by uncritically repeating the claims of the morally panicked, or by presenting those claims as a question. I remember local news segments that wondered if maybe there really were "demonic messages" encoded in records played backwards. If D&D clubs maybe really were Satan worship.
And this is still occurring in right wing media. 2/