Wednesday’s BBC Ten O’Clock News found time for a report

by Nick Higham about an ITV documentary about the death of terminally-ill Malcolm Pointon. Here’s a transcript of Nick Higham’s report:

An ITV press statement implied the end of the film showed the point of Malcolm’s death. Newspaper coverage reflected that, so did interviews with Malcolm’s widow. One of those interviews, on Radio 4’s Today programme, prompted this email from a listener:

We then cut to a mock up of an email from Graham Pointon, with Higham reading:

“Malcolm was my brother and although I was not with him when he died… I know that Paul Watson was not there either, having left on the Monday before saying that he had enough material and would now leave the family in peace. Many of the papers are saying this film breaks the last TV taboo, but it is not true.”

I wonder what was said in the bit indicated by the ellipsis (…) – perhaps one of our resident Beeboids can help with that detail. Higham continues:

The Pointons were filmed several times. These pictures are from a BBC Panorama. Today, Malcolm’s widow said there’d been no intention to deceive.

Cut to Barbara Pointon, saying:

“I’m too honest to say that we faked the death, we didn’t. You saw Malcolm’s last semi-conscious moments”.

Malcolm’s widow said “there’d been no intention to deceive” did she Nick? It sounded to me like she said that Malcolm’s death was not faked – not that there was any deception, intentional or otherwise. Higham continues:

Last month, Michael Grade, ITV’s Chairman, promised a zero tolerance approach to programme makers who deliberately mislead. Today, he launched a formal inquiry into what happened.

Among other things, ITV’s inquiry will want to establish whether the programme itself is ambiguous about what it shows, why ITV’s publicity was misleading and why the programme makers didn’t come forward sooner to explain exactly what it was they’d filmed.

The film-maker Paul Watson blames ITV for the confusion, and says he’s being made a scapegoat.

Cut to Paul Watson, saying:

“I’m filming a dying process. What I’m not filming, and never claimed to have filmed, and others seem to have done on my behalf, is that you’re getting the last moments of a man’s dying gasp”.

Cut to that picture of the Queen arriving for the Annie Leibovitz photo shoot, with Higham enunciating that:

Of course, we’ve been here before, when the BBC’s documentary on the Queen was also accused of misleading viewers in pursuit of publicity.

But that of course is where you are wrong Nick! Perhaps ITV’s press people have hyped up the difference between Malcolm’s “last semi-conscious moments” and the occurence of his death, perhaps it is the press who have interpreted the film that way – but, and here’s the difference between this ITV documentary and the BBC’s faked footage – Malcolm’s death is true, it actually happened.

The story told by the ITV documentary (and let’s be realistic here, documentaries are a form of (hopefully) true story telling) is true – that is what happened, which is quite different from the BBC’s faked documentary footage – the Queen did NOT storm out of the photo shoot in the way that Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC1, said that she did.

There is a world of difference between these two situations – in one, press officers and press appear to have over-egged the pudding, to no great harm. In the other, the Controller of BBC1, no less, showed faked footage purporting to show the Queen storming out of a photo shoot, and then took until the next day to issue an apology once the damage to the Queen’s reputation had been done. You’ve only got to look at comments around the web to see that many people still believe that the story was that the Queen stormed out of a photo shoot, rather than the truth, that the BBC’s documentary makers had faked it!

It’s very convenient for the BBC (“we’re all just as bad”) that you failed to spot that difference and report it to your tellytax customers Nick.