BigShinyThing

Six members of the Ztohoven collective, whose aims include “penetrating public space”, are to appear in court this month charged with spreading false information. The artists sent shock waves through the Czech Republic in June last year by splicing footage of the atomic explosion into a live panoramic shot of the Krkonose mountains, in north-east Bohemia.

The fake blast prompted panicked calls to the switchboard of the TV channel CT2, with some viewers fearing that a nuclear war had begun while others suggested there had been a gas explosion. The impact was compared to that of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast of 1938, in which listeners were led to believe that Martians were invading Earth. Listeners who took it to be a news broadcast panicked, and several suffered heart attacks.

Ztohoven said the aim of its project, which it called Media Reality, was not to harm, but to illustrate how the media manipulates reality. In a statement it said:

We are neither a terrorist organisation nor a political group. Our aim is not to intimidate society or manipulate it, which is something we witness on a daily basis both in the real world and that created by the media. On June 17 2007, [we] attacked the space of TV broadcasting, distorting it, questioning its truthfulness and its credibility.

The group added that they hoped their action would “remind the media of their duty to bring out the truth”.

But Martin Krafl, spokesman for the TV channel, called the hijack irresponsible. “The fake broadcast was really very inadvisable and could have provoked panic among a wide group of people,” he said.

Which brings us neatly to this article in Technology Review where veteran news reporter John Hockenberry bemoans the lack of bravery and empathy in modern news reporting. Maybe he should get in touch with the folks at Ztohoven…

Source: The Guardian.