Huge hoax pulled off

@manick (132)
India
December 16, 2006 12:12pm CST
This is a really incredible story that happened last night in my country. For those that don't know belgium, it's a country in europe consisting of 2 regions, the flemish and the walloon region, speaking dutch and french respectivly, with sometimes a bit conflict between those 2 regions, and cries for independance often heard from the extreme right. Yesterday evening, the french language public tv broadcaster pulled the biggest hoax ever. Around 20h30, they interrupted there programming for a special news bulletin lasting about 1h30, stating that flanders had declared it's independance. The news bulletin looked 100% genuine, featuring the same journalists that present the news every other day, complete with reactions from real politicians who were either in on it or misled (or with clever editing), including the walloon prime minister and the president of the federal parliament. It also showed scenes of the police patrolling the newly created "border", and trams and busses stopping at the "border" telling their passengers that they cannot proceed. Even footage of the king leaving the country in a military plane. Needless to say, people everywhere in wallonia were quite shoked and after a half an hour, at the insistence of the walloon minister for media & culture, the broadcaster added the caption "This is fiction" at the bottom of the screen. Still, even this morning a lot off people still believed the newscast to be true, and AFP ( the french press agency ) even reported that lot's of embassy's in brussels were taken in too, starting to send messages to their respective home country's telling the news. I think this is a very nice example of the power of the media, and it's probably the largest succesful hoax ever
1 response
@ESKARENA1 (18261)
16 Dec 06
you are right it does show clearly the power of the media but it is also misguided and down right dangerous what if for example a loyalist or belgium nationalist had decided to shoot someone of the other side, sillier things have happened