A spoof video about another Russian attack broadcast by Imedi as part of its Special Report programme has sent shock waves across Georgia.
The Chronicle, which is Imedi's news programme, said that it was describing dramatic events unfolding on June 7, 2010 but apparently people did not pay attention to the date. People watched Russian tanks leaving Tskhinvali, invading Mskheta and heading to Tbilisi thinking it was actually happening.
In the video President Saakashvili is evacuated but reportedly assassinated. An interim national Government led by Nino Burjanadze, one of the Georgian opposition leaders who recently visited Moscow, takes over. US President Barack Obama makes a special statement calling for a ceasefire while French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fly to Moscow to stop President Medvedev.
The anchor announced that it was a mock video at the beginning and end of the "Chronicle". However, most viewers apparently missed the introduction which led to such a widespread confusion and panic.
Just over a year after the real war Georgians saw such a scenario is akin to a horror film. It worked too: the hoax news programme which people believed was real instilled horror in the population within minutes.
People in the villages bordering South Ossetia started evacuating women and children. Gori residents headed into the streets and cars lined up at petrol stations. People started calling their friends and relatives, a hospital in Senaki was evacuated and Georgians in Akhalgori were reportedly expecting bombardments. People trampled on each other while fleeing from a movie premiere at Rustaveli Cinema in Tbilisi.
Number of calls to 03 emergency service in Tbilisi skyrocketed within minutes. "Children developed cramps from watching the video and a number of cases of fainting were reported," Interpressnews quoted emergency service officials as saying. A pregnant woman reportedly miscarried a baby after watching the programme.
The Imedi video misled not only ordinary people but also other media outlets, which took the vidoe for reality. Channel 1 interrupted its scheduled programmes for several minutes showing a live broadcast from its news studio while the GHN news agency reported that Russia had begun another invasion in its breaking news.
Both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia invaded and then "recognized" as independent in August 2008, dismissed the TV channel's stunt.
Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh called the fake news report "tremendous idiocy" that warranted no attention at all.
"Everything is peaceful here, we are going about our own business," he told RIA Novosti.
South Ossetia also dismissed the broadcast and subsequent panic.
"We do not consider it necessary to comment on the ravings of Georgian television," South Ossetian Foreign Minister Murat Dzhioyev told RIA Novosti.
While many analysts, journalists and artists at the Imedi studio were still analyzing the "scenario" in the live programme, President Saakashvili sent his Press Speaker Manana Manjgaladze to make a statement there. Manjgaladze said that media is free and journalists have freedom of speech but they are to comply with certain standards, and the channel should have posted a warning during the programme that the video was fake.
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