Belgians were thrown into a panic when a spoof TV news report said their country had been 'abolished'. Government offices were flooded with calls after the report that the Dutch-speaking Flanders region had declared independence and Belgium no longer existed as a nation. The French-language RTBF interrupted programming to show footage of cheering crowds waving the Flemish flag and traffic jams at the new border.
Even foreign diplomats were taken in by the hoax which the station said was designed to show tensions between the French and Dutch-speaking communities. Belgium's broadcasting minister eventually ordered the station to flash up the words "this is fiction" over the broadcast, reports the Daily Record. A spokesman for Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt said: "It was in very bad taste. It scared many people."
RTBF television's head of news Yves Thiran said: "Our intention was to show viewers the real possibility of Belgium no longer being a country in a few months."
I saw that on CNN and thought it was a totally ridiculous thing to do. They weren't smart enough to realise that putting a small disclaimer at the beginning would be missed for people tuning in late, and of course it would cause people confusion and distress watching if they didn't realise it wasn't authentic.
It was quite cheeky to put it on as a news-report in the middle of pther programmes right enough, but having an irrational hatred of Belgium I had to laugh... haha
I just don't see it as funny or clever at all as I can't relate to hating a country for no real reason.
A country is made up of people.....all different sorts of people, some good and some bad.
Where it might be logical to hate governments of a certain country, hating the country itself makes no real sense to me.
I look at people on individual terms. If they are good people then great. If they're bad then I'd avoid them, but they don't represent millions of people who make up their country.
I think it's a dirty trick and totally unnecessary. I hope the ones that concocted this pay dearly as they're complete pricks to intentionally cause fear and confusion.
