Some guys thought it was a clever thing to stage a UFO sighting. On april first they decided to post a video showing how they did it and the video got discovered by the feds. Now they're expecting criminal charges. News report here.
News report

A collection of the videos that they posted.
Part 1
Part 2

So...dumb pranks are a crime now? Geez.

Well it was a dumb prank that caused a lot of stir and tax payers money was wasted on calling out police to check them out. Naturally the government will want to set an example out of them.

I like how, at the end of the news report, they talk about the famous War of the Worlds "hoax", and question whether or not they would have faced criminal charges if they'd tried that today. This, of course, completely ignoring that it wasn't a hoax, and in fact was introduced as a story. It's just that it was a story told in the format of a newscast, and not everyone saw the intro. Is it really that hard to do the absolute minimum of research on this kind of thing? It's not like this is breaking news: everything I've just said has been readily available public information since the damn thing aired.

Product Placement
Well it was a dumb prank that caused a lot of stir and tax payers money was wasted on calling out police to check them out. Naturally the government will want to set an example out of them.

Maybe peole shouldn't call the cops every time they see lights in the sky. I get what you're saying, but it just seems like it's not really worth the time.

Inkmonkey
Is it really that hard to do the absolute minimum of research on this kind of thing? It's not like this is breaking news: everything I've just said has been readily available public information since the damn thing aired.

Well it's Fox news. Did you honestly expect them to do actual research? ^^ They've also could have mentioned that although Orson Welles, the creator of the broadcast was never charged for anything he did publicly apologize for the mass hysteria that his program caused.

LOL
Culture jamming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jammer [en.wikipedia.org]

Inkmonkey
I like how, at the end of the news report, they talk about the famous War of the Worlds "hoax", and question whether or not they would have faced criminal charges if they'd tried that today. This, of course, completely ignoring that it wasn't a hoax, and in fact was introduced as a story. It's just that it was a story told in the format of a newscast, and not everyone saw the intro. Is it really that hard to do the absolute minimum of research on this kind of thing? It's not like this is breaking news: everything I've just said has been readily available public information since the damn thing aired.

Even funnier is that it was Grover's Mill NJ, not Grover's Corner as reported by the Fox News Babe. Some local water towers still have the buckshot/bullet scars from the 1938 War of the Worlds Broadcast.

Guess they couldn't use the B&W footage of Orson Welles and had to use technicolor from the 1950's movie. ;)

I subscribe to the web magazine the hoax was revealed in. You shoot flares in Lubbock Texas and everyone still claims it was a real sighting. You reveal you shot flares in NJ and they prosecute you. Another black eye for NJ. The state stupid enough to prosecute UFO hoaxers. Maybe the mayor of Morristown should pay more attention to his pay to play and less to hoaxers and the prosecuter more time to the drug problem?

Nah, this is NJ.

It just strikes me as incredibly stupid that these guys are being charged for someone else calling the police. A video of aliens on youtube should not constitute enough evidence to require the government to send out federal agents.

If we prosecute these guys, shouldn't we prosecute all the other people who claim they saw a ufo and got exposed as liars?

lba
It just strikes me as incredibly stupid that these guys are being charged for someone else calling the police. A video of aliens on youtube should not constitute enough evidence to require the government to send out federal agents.

If we prosecute these guys, shouldn't we prosecute all the other people who claim they saw a ufo and got exposed as liars?

While I agree with you that the whole prosecution is silly, their prank was little more then just post a youtube video. They tied road flares to weather balloons that were linked together so that they'd make a formation once they were released. The guys then video taped it once it was high enough and called the local news agencies. If you watch part 2 of their video, you can see them being interviewed by some news reporters and, later on, people from the tv show "Ufo Hunters". Other people called the police to report the strange sightings and thus they're indirectly responsible for wasting their time. What they're officially charged for is disorderly conduct and creating a dangerous moment since the road flares could have landed on someones house and set it on fire.

How do you 'reveal' a UFO hoax?

They're all planted by the government to make us believe that aliens exist.

Clearly they're all fake.