Funny as the Yes Men? Newsbreakers!

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The Cheese Ninja is my favorite so far:

http://www.newsbreakers.org/videosingles/wxxa_single.htm

Home page:

http://www.newsbreakers.org

and

from this morning's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/arts/television/26lass.html

Media Activists Who Smile and Throw Cheese

By MARK LASSWELL
Published: June 26, 2005
AS soon as he heard about the Arthur Chi'en incident last month - in which, at the end of a live report, that WCBS-TV reporter in New York was caught on camera cursing out a prankster sent by the "Opie & Anthony" satellite radio show - Chris Landon, 33, and his fellow Newsbreakers jumped online to find the video.

A group devoted to monkey-wrenching live reports on local news, the Newsbreakers have a standing interest in media mishaps. But in this case their interest was personal: just a month before, an "Opie & Anthony" producer had approached them about joining in its Assault on the Media campaign of on-air stunts. And now one of those stunts, staged by one of the show's interns, had cost Mr. Chi'en his job. "We looked at each other," Mr. Landon recalled, "and said, 'That could have been us.' "

Well, yes and no. The Assault on the Media stunts are essentially a bid for free publicity, in the loutish tradition of Howard Stern fans calling television stations during breaking news events and blurting out references to Mr. Stern. The Newsbreakers, Mr. Landon said, are something else entirely.

Since Jan. 6, when the five-member Rochester-based group executed its first bust, as it calls them, of a live remote in their hometown, viewers in Boston; New York City; Manchester, N.H.; Columbus, Ohio; and several other cities have seen their local news briefly hijacked by elaborately planned vignettes that are more likely to baffle or alarm reporters than make them curse on the air.

. . . more

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1. My geode must be acknowledged!