<em><strong>Artists spliced fake nuclear blast into TV weather news</strong></em>
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Guardian,  4 January, 2008

A group of radical artists who panicked viewers of a Czech TV station by sneaking a nuclear mushroom cloud into its weather report are to be put on trial, prosecutors confirmed yesterday.Six members of the Ztohoven collective, whose aims include "penetrating public space", are to appear in court this month charged with spreading false information. They could face three years each in jail.

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...

In the Czech broadcast viewers saw their screens obscured by a flash of bright light after which an orange fiery mushroom cloud ascended on the horizon.

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

View the footage <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzaN2x8qXcM">here</a>.