False News from Nation of Georgia
From the nation of Georgia comes an example of what not to do with your media.
French television station TV5Monde reported last night that a Georgian broadcasting station had perpetrated a hoax on the order of Orson Welles’s 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.
A news broadcaster at the station had falsely reported that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had been killed and that Russian tanks had begun to invade the nation.
The French station reported that Georgians had panicked, causing a run on food supplies at markets, and that calls for emergency medical help had skyrocketed as a result of the so-called news. But it was all a hoax.
In the article Panic in Georgia After a Mock News Broadcast, Andrew Kramer of the New York Times gives some details.
