07/12/04,
11:21pm : our hoax is broadcasted on TF1 !
The
night ends in chaos with us sending refutations everywhere and starting
to receive emails from all directions.
France : Incredible but True, amateurs fooled a national TV channel.
PARIS, July 12th 2004, 10:35pm - Amateurs without any links with the world
of television managed to hoax the show "Incredible but True!", broadcasted
on the national channel TF1 during the second half of the evening on Monday.
The Crobard team, artist-humorists, who edit a humorous website of the
same name since 1999 in which they had created a fake section proposing
"misfits" for rent to enliven parties: Destroy-Escort, staged a fake art
exhibit opening in order to fool a team of journalists who had most likely
not read all the web pages of the section in question.
Indeed it is enough for one to click here and there on the pages dedicated
to Destroy-Escort to read enormities like the recruiting of misfits using
zoological tests, accounts from - fake - customers describing apocalyptic
family parties ransacked by punks, or even the complete list of misfits
who are up for rent.
Staging the false exhibit opening of a fake artist, which is voluntarily
disturbed by the intervention of two fake punks for the sake of the journalists,
they then remained silent about it during several months while waiting
for the hoax to be broadcasted this Monday July 12th 2004 on TF1 in the
show "Incredible but True". |
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07-13-04
:
After
a short night, we go back to our PCs, and Fab has an email from Europe
1 (one of the major French national radio station) in his mailbox.
09:30am
: We
call back the journalist - this one has checked his facts beforehand
- he harasses us with questions and compares the answers with what he
has read online, and offers us to have a live interview with Jean-Marc
Morandini (a Europe 1 radio host) and the journalists of TF1 around
10:30am.
10:23am
: Warned by Europe 1, Vincenti (one of the TF1 journalists) discovers
the hoax and calls us.
Bits from the surreal conversation :
Denis Vincenti :Fab, it's Denis Vincenti, tell me, we have a problem,
some of Morandini's people say that your story is a sham?
Fab Crobard : Well, yeah, that's normal, because it is a sham! Everything
is fake, the artist, the punks, everything!
Denis Vincenti : But why did you do that?
Fab Crobard : Well, because you didn't do your job as journalists.
Denis Vincenti : Bravo, that's just great, you just made 15 people jobless!
-- hangs up ---
10:24am
: Moment of deep solitude where we motivate each other and try to get
rid of the guilt by reminding ourselves of the "52 a la Une" (a well
known investigative TV show) affair where Vincenti had faked a story
about the Catacombs. Even after that he kept working for TV (other journalists
we'll talk to later will tell us the same kind of thing).
10:27am
: Denis Vincenti calls back. He's really nicey nicey this time, we are
great people, honestly hats off for having trapped him like that, he
tries the "fair play" bit, blindly continues with his "Good Prince of
the TV God" speech, and offers us a "real" subject this time during
his September show.
It's really the cherry on the cake, the nail in the coffin. He remains
so blinded by his power...
It's true that the gift is a nice one : 4 minutes on TF1, we'd be able
to sell quite a few of our books with such advertising, yep, that's
a sure thing from his point of view of pre-formatted journalist.
But no, it's a no, we are the Crobard, we came to have a laugh and we
had one.
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10:40pm
- Live on Europe 1 with Morandini
The
phone rings, Fab picks it up. Denis Vincenti is there facing us.
Morandini introduces the topic : the authors of the hoax which fooled
TF1 yesterday are live on the radio.
They play some of the stuff broadcasted yesterday on TF1 (where one
can clearly hear the now infamous bips).
Fab intervenes to explain the thing to Morandini.
Sand then speaks.
Vincenti intervenes and concludes ( the
french
mp3 is here therefore on the radio archives on their website Europe
1 )
The goal for them
is to keep their party line : yes they really fooled us, hahaha,
it's a good lesson... but you know we are not a news program so...
And here some corrections are in order, that we didn't think were necessary
until then.
As we said,
Denis Vincenti has already had problems with the authenticity of one
of his broadcasts, and despite that he's still working in the TV world.
That first experience should have taught him something at the time,
or it should have made him move away from the TV world.
Next, yes it might be a frivolous show, but search for the producer's
name on Google and you'll see that that show is not as innocent as that
when you see the kind of people who make it happen.
Their last excuse will have been to say that it was a short light topic,
that the other reports are more serious... Okay but, regardless of such
an empty excuse, he forgets to say that initially it was supposed to
be a full length topic with interviews of the punks and everything,
but that they didn't do it because they panicked during the shooting
of the fake exhibit opening and that they simply ran away when we had
an appointment, even forgetting to have the punks sign the broadcast
release forms!
In short, if a full length topic wasn't made it wasn't because they
didn't want to but because they were scared of being unable to manage
our punks if they tried!
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