The Russians Are Coming? 'News' Angers Georgians

(March 15) -- When Georgians turned on their TVs Saturday night, they saw what they thought was their worst nightmare unfold on screen: The Russians -- who invaded the former Soviet republic in the summer of 2008 -- were back.

A news report on the pro-government Imedi channel carried pictures of the Kremlin's tanks rolling across the border, fighter jets screaming over the capital, Tbilisi, and reported the shocking "news" that President Mikhail Saakashvili had been assassinated.

Mass hysteria quickly spread throughout the country, which is still bruised by its humiliating defeat -- and the loss of about 400 lives -- in the nine-day war two summers ago. Cell phone networks seized up as panicked relatives and friends tried to check on each other's safety. Citizens reportedly were trampled as the audience fled from a Tbilisi cinema. And the elderly mother of one serving Georgian soldier apparently died of shock, according to a newspaper editor.

But history wasn't repeating itself. In fact, the news report was just a simulation of what could happen in the event of another war. Unfortunately, many viewers didn't notice the small disclaimer at the start of the show saying the program was an account of events taking place some three months in the future.

"People were completely shocked. I was driving to my friend's party when I got a phone call telling me to turn on the TV," Zaza Gachechiladze, editor-in-chief of the Georgian Messenger newspaper, told the U.K.'s Guardian. "I rushed upstairs. There was Dmitry Medvedev saying that Russia was intervening in Georgia. I didn't notice this was old footage from August 2008. I immediately started looking for my children." Ten minutes later, he realized the story was nonsense.

"It was a very cruel simulation. One lady whose son was in the army had a heart attack and died. Another pregnant lady lost her baby," he added. "Many children were taken to hospital suffering from stress. It was horrible what happened, actually. It is a criminal act that should be punished."

Many more Georgians have echoed that call. Angry demonstrators protested outside Imedi's headquarters calling for senior executives to resign. And the country's opposition parties -- which the faux news item accused of collaborating with the enemy and seizing power after Saakashvili's "killing" -- denounced the hoax as government propaganda designed to scare people into backing the president. Critics have pointed out the close ties between the authorities and the private station, whose current director, Giorgi Arveladz, once served as Saakashvili's chief of staff.

"Full responsibility for the preparation and the results of the report lie with the Georgian authorities, which have practically monopolized all television space in order to wage information terror on their own people," the opposition Alliance for Georgia declared in a statement.

Despite the demands of ordinary citizens and opposition politicians, Arveladz has so far refused to resign. And while he has apologized for the "shock" caused by the report, he appeared to place the blame for the overreaction on the public. "It was a miscalculation to think that the society would have perceived the broadcast adequately," Arveladz said, according to the U.K.'s Sky News channel.

Saakashvili, meanwhile, said the scariest part of the bogus news item was that the events portrayed might one day be real. "The major unpleasant thing about yesterday's report -- and I want people to understand this well -- was that it's extremely close to what could really happen, and to what Georgia's enemy keeps in mind," he said.

Whether or not the Georgian station deliberately set out to send its viewers screaming into the street, the program makers now deserve a dishonorable place in the news hoax hall of fame. Other famed fakers include:

New York Sun, 1835: In an attempt to bump up its circulation, the New York paper announced that a British astronomer had discovered life on the moon using "a telescope of vast dimensions." In six articles, the Sun chronicled the critters living on our lunar neighbor, which included primitive, hut-dwelling bi-ped beavers, and a race of peace-loving winged humans. The wheeze worked, pushing the paper's sales up by several thousand copies to over 15,000.

Father Ronald Knox, 1926: In the 1920s, Brits viewed the British Broadcasting Corp.'s radio service as a reliable, trustworthy news source. So they were stunned when a speech from Edinburgh was interrupted with the news that revolutionaries had taken over central London, felled Big Ben with a trench mortar and hanged the minister of traffic from a lamppost. Some listeners attempted to escape the city, and the panic abated only when the BBC announced it had been broadcasting a supposedly comic skit called "Broadcasting the Barricades" by Father Ronald Knox, a Catholic priest.

Orson Welles, 1938: Listeners fled their homes, fainted in shock and jammed emergency switchboards after Welles' adaptation of "The War of the Worlds" was aired on U.S. radio. Directed and narrated by the legendary actor and movie maker, the show shifted the action of H.G. Wells' novel from Britain to New Jersey, where a "huge cylinder" had been found in the ground. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I've ever witnessed," Welles boomed. "Good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. ... It's as large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather"

Belgian TV station RTBF, 2006: The French language TV station cut into a show about the future of the country to announce that the country's Flemish regions had declared independence. Crowds were shown celebrating in the Flemish city of Antwerp, and grainy pictures purported to show King Albert II and his wife abandoning the country for life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Critics accused the broadcaster of trying to split the country in two, but RTBF said it simply wanted to expose the dangerous rift emerging between the country's French- and Flemish-speaking communities.