Doesn’t BBC DG Mark Thompson sound a tad defensive?
Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, has suggested criticism of its faked wildlife programme scenes had been fuelled by newspapers’ bitterness over the corporation’s coverage of the phone hacking inquiry. Mr Thompson questioned whether condemnation of misleading footage of polar bears in its Frozen Planet show had been influenced by the BBC’s comprehensive reporting of the Leveson inquiry into press standards. “I do rather wonder whether this is really about polar bears or about Lord Leveson and other matters,” he told MPs.
It’s about truth, Mr Thompson. Is that such a hard concept to embrace? Attenborough misled and has been caught out – it is as simple as that. Trying to deflect everything onto Leveson smacks of desperation to me.
Astonishingly petulant comment. You do not expect someone in Thompson’s position to be playing the victim card.
The producers of this series were caught doing something wrong and it should not be excused. We all know wildlife photography is extraordinarily difficult, which is why we all feel so betrayed when it transpires that all is not as it seems.
Thompson should behave in a more dignified manner, apologise for the lack of transparency and promise to ensure that it will not happen again. We should not be subjected to the sort of apology that my 7 year old daughter gives me – a mumbling sorry under her breathe followed by a tirade against why it was all her elder sisters fault.
I honestly think there’s more important problems at the BBC to worry about than this one. Sound effects on nature programmes have always been faked, and no-one seems to care as the idea is to show as closely as possible what it is like to actually be there. The polar bear footage is perhaps stretching the point but it’s not as if the BBC actively tried to hide it.
It isn’t bias – at worst it’s an error of judgement.
It is not bias – it is dishonest. And the whole programme depends on Attenborough’s integrity. They clearly seek to mislead, listen to the voiceover introducing the bear cubs. now it turns out that the spider was filmed in another zoo, who knows where it will end? I could aslo do a nature movie by splicing together film from zoos and the wild, with my own commentary, but nobody would trust me. THAT is why it matters.
Yes, it’s dishonest. But so is putting on false sound effects. The programme is not just information – it’s entertainment as well. You might argue it shouldn’t be, but would as many people watch and learn something if it were dry facts only? I don’t know why the BBC doesn’t come out and say that, instead of this wriggling around on the “fake but true” hook.
At the end of the day though, there’s bigger fish to fry than this one.
There’s a difference between fake sound of effects of real footage and fake footage presented as something else. Especially when it was unnecessary to do so. They could have explained during the show how impossible it is to film a den in the wild, and said they’re showing the zoo footage instead out of respect to the animals and all that. Nobody would have batted an eyelash. Instead, they went with creating an impression, which is more important than ever, even when they report the news. And this isn’t even the first time the BBC has been busted for faking footage of polar bears.
The thing is, this is what the BBC gets when they play all high and mighty, oh so superior to everyone else, legacy of trust, etc. Particularly with the lofty reputation of the nature documentaries, which always seem to get mentioned near the top when people defend the value for money of the precious license fee. If they’re no better than anyone else, they don’t deserve it. The faux pas, minor as it may be in comparison to editing Presidential speeches to create a false impression or lying to children or buying guns and hiring someone to pose with them for a story, is compounded by their pathetic excuses. Rightly or wrongly, people expect better of the BBC, the Beeboids themselves claim they’re better, and they didn’t get it right.
Thompson playing the projection card doesn’t help.
I’ve been thinking about the difference between normal “tricks” of production and deception. I think you’re right, David, its a matter of being up front.
In their defence, the BBC have made programs revealing the “behind the scenes” secrets of nature shows. I remember seeing one about how they get shots of birds in flight: an elaborate rig on a speeding truck, if I remember.
The deception comes in trying to hide these “tricks”. For example, I know (because I did it) that laugh tracks are added to BBC comedy shows. The official BBC line is that they NEVER use laugh tracks. They do. That’s deception.
The area that needs most oversight is political documentary film making. If for example, a “climate change” conclusion is drawn using a camera trick as evidence – that’s deception.
Finally, I would venture to suggest, that Mark Thompson’s irritation is because the “nature documentary” is the last vestage of BBC credibility.
That’s the whole point, Louis. The BBC clearly treats the audience with a bit of contempt, as we keep learning time and time again. Nobody cares if they put out bait to attract a bird or use time-lapse or have a foley artist faking footsteps in the snow or use various tricks to get the good shots. It’s still the animals doing their thing, which is what people like to see. But if it’s in a zoo, just say so, and explain why. Nobody will care, and it won’t detract from the lofty goals of the show.
And I agree about Thompson being especially touchy about the nature docs. I realize it’s a very minor issue compared to faking competitions and stealing money from children or lying about Israel and the Palestinians, but the BBC claims to be better than this and deserving of a special position in the world.
I think Attenborough has given a superb response to your first paragraph DP, he said to have done what you’re suggesting would have ruined the atmosphere of the programme and spoilt viewers’ pleasure. Quite right.
The BBC wasn’t trying to hide how it got the footage. They ran it on the Beeb’s Frozen Planet website.
I do believe we are on this site guilty far too often of BBCHS – BBC Hatred Syndrome. We need to try to be what the BBC all so often isn’t – objective.
Roland, You miss something pretty fundemental here that the BBC do all the time.
You say “The programme is not just information – it’s entertainment as well”.
This is a method the BBC use when they wish to convey many ideas and opinions. We go from a series that is presented as factual documentary but veers into your ‘entertainment’ mode when something a bit ‘non-factual’ needs to be inserted for effect or disinformation, be this
political or climatic for instance.
Witness many BBC shows that enrich and inform but cannot resist dragging in a presenters’ personal/BBC comments/opinions regarding global warming or co2 emissions into an otherwise totally factual programme.
This subtle and sometimes not so subtle blurring of fact and fiction must always be flagged-up for “offside” in BBC sound/video output.
As many people actually beliveve everything served up for them by the BBC the ability for ‘good old auntie’ to get away with stunts like this will only lead to more of it.
It was a flash in the pan on a slow news day.
Which the clown has now bigged up into something else, and potentially bigger.
BBC vs. the tabloids.
I think he was meaning the Mail & Sun, but given the red top that kicked all this off with two front pages was the Mirror, unsure this was a smart play.
Unless he knows something about the Mirror and Leveson we don’t (yet)?
pressgazette Press Gazette Mirror hits back at Mark Thompson’s Frozen Planet revenge claim :”viewers go wild when they are taken for dumb animals” blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/8453
QED
It is not so much the issue of faked wildlife footage as his attempt to “analyse” critics motives to neutralise their comments – that has a familiar ring to it, climate reporting watchers. That shows Thompson up. FFS he is paid three quarter of a million pounds a year – by us! He should be paid what he is worth. On current performance, nothing.
DV
This is just a small example of the whole “fake but true” culture at the BBC. This particular example of minor fakery could have been covered, not during the programme (thus spoiling the “flow” as claimed by St David and the rest of BBC luvviedom), but perhaps as a note online that some scenes (eg this particular one) were not actually taken in the wild and the reasons for this.
Other “fake but true” examples include coverage of the Jenin (non)massacre http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1937048.stm , Orla Guerin’s coverage of the Lebanon imbroglio http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-401060/BBC-accused-anti-Israeli-bias.html and any coverage about the “settled science” of CAGW that you care to mention. There’s more, of course, but other contributors can add their favourite examples. At this point I have to go back to my day job to earn a living in order to pay taxes to support those in “relative” poverty: yet another “fake but true” narrative brought to you by the BBC.
Our coverage of you is ‘comprehensive’.
Your coverage of us is ‘vindictive’.
The man is a fool.
Of course the polar bear stuff is minor trickery when compared with the BBC’s 24/7 rolling output of waste, double standards, bias, chicanery, and outright lying but my isn’t it something to have a good laugh at their expense.
How I love the smell of pricked pomposity in the morning.
I’d agree the Frozen Planet PolarBearGate ‘scandal’ is at best a mildly diverting case of the ‘meeja’ frothing at the bit over something largely unimportant. It’s been known for years by most intelligent viewers that natural history programmes almost always feature a mix of both ‘staged’ and real-life footage.
The sad thing is that all this needless kerfuffle has diverted attention away from the criticism of the BBC’s proAGW agenda and how that was so disgracefully deployed onto the final epsiode of the (otherwise fantastic) series. The BBC are serial offenders in this regard, as well as pathologically incapable of accepting any kind of criticism for it – the p*sspoor ‘Points Of View’ more than exposes the truth of this. I can’t think of more patronizing, insincere, audience-insulting attempt to ‘face the critics’ than this dire turd of a programme.
I’m getting cross again, lol. God bless this site. At least I have somewhere to sound off against ‘The Corporation’, because God knows they won’t be listening.
Truth is far from the top of the BBC’s agenda.
I just received a reply to a complaint that I made in July, re. the use of social networking sites, and an utterly discredited Communist organisation called Searchlight, in their reporting on Newsnight.
They claim to have fact-checked all the claims made by Searchlight, regarding photos of supposed EDL members brandishing guns, and say they were happy with what they found, and thus were happy to broadcast them.
I have just replied, asking them exactly what checks they carried out, as I have evidence that they were fabricated by the far-left.
I also asked why viewers were not made aware of Searchlight’s agenda, and they replied, “Searchlight is a very well known organisation/magazine and the informed viewers of ‘Newsnight’ are well aware of its background.”
This, of course, is nonsense. Searchlight is barely known of outside of far-left circles, those who monitor the far-left, or anyone who has been on the recieving end of their smears.
They are nothing but a gang of common criminals and hard-line Communists.
Given the BBC’s penchant for placing the words ‘far-right’ infront of any person, Party or organisation who’s views are to the left of Stalin, you’d think that placing the words ‘far-left’ ahead of Searchlight would be something that any impartial broadcaster would do.
When did you hear the words “far-left” applied to anything on the BBC?
*right of Stalin
“Searchlight is a very well known organisation/magazine and the informed viewers of ‘Newsnight’ are well aware of its background.”
I agree that’s nonsense. I for one don’t know what Searchlight or its background is. What intrigues me, though, is the kind of excuse they see fit to come up with.
What informed viewers? How does the Beeboid Corporation know whether they know about it? Is the viewing audience of Newsnight some sort of a club with entry requirements and a knowledge test? If not, what happens when new viewers come along? How are they to know what Searchlight is?
And if Searchlight is well known to every Newsnight viewer but me, is it only well known because it has been featured and promoted by Newsnight in preference to some other organisations, which remain less well known as a result?
Basically it’s like an anti-white/anti-British version of The Sunday Sport.
Actually, that’s being unfair to the Sunday Sport.
I am not bothered about faked wild life footage, Attenborough is overdue for retirement in any case. What about canned laughter and applause on every show? Most do not realise how often it is used. Tv viewers are treated with contempt by the BBC so you should all be well used to it by now.
I can only say that MY laughter at some of these “news” programmes is far from canned…
Canned laughter would be entirely appropriate every time Ed Milliband stands up to speak during live coverage of Parliament.
Clearly touched a nerve about the EU! What possible reason is there for Thomson to stick his oar in to a minor scuffle if not to distract from THE MAJOR and blatant pro EU coverage of the Veto. Now all the polls and the news fron other EU countries is PROVING the BBC were well out of line. This polar bear bluff is the smoke and mirror to hide far greater TREASON.
ok this isnt a big fat black lie, its a little white lie, on its own it is nothing, but when all the little white lies from Al Beeb are added together, youve got an absolute load of bollox
I’m not with those who say that it is a minor matter or it’s not bias or that most intelligent viewers know that documentaries are faked. Sorry for being a thick head but I thought the point of going to so much trouble to make it look not like a zoo was so that viewers wouldn’t know it was in a zoo. O:-) If the viewers knew it anyway, well…what a waste of time money and effort. Or…was the purpose to provide the Beeboid staff with something to do? Perhaps…if you have so many thousands upon thousands, well, they have to be doing something.
But anyway, it is to do with quality and standards: with trust, honesty, integrity and being straight with the viewer. If it’s filmed in a zoo, there is no good reason to hide that. I am sure viewers can survive being shown a zoo scene and
knowing it is a zoo scene. It’s not even as if TV never tells us something is constructed or reconstructed or that something is a fictional drama or a drama based on true events and something else is a documentary.
This kind of thing is a bias against truth and most Beeboid bias in other fields also amounts to that. Bias is a form of deception, but also a kind of sloppiness and lack of quality, whether the bias is of the political kind or not. Political bias is one variant or one manifestation of the lack of quality and standards at the Beeboid Corporation. Many aspects of Beeboidery are raised on this blog without being scrutinised and found unworthy of note or of being called bias. I am not sure why this particular sort is singled out for unusual scrutiny and found wanting.
Just found this article by A N Wilson on the subject of Beeboid fakery and the attitude when anyone dares to criticise the Beeboid Corporation. It’s lengthy and cites several examples. I’m not going to select and quote extracts but I would say that it is worth read the whole thing.
Also makes the telling point that he was writing about this long before there was anything in the media about the newspaper hacking scandal.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2073829/Frozen-Planet-Even-national-treasures-fib-viewers.html
Typo: reading
4.30 this afternoon on Radio 4.
The porgramme was called the Media Show…Steve Howletts sinecure.
Cue the Leveson enquiry as the only game in town…none of that fakery and polar bears, getting it wrong over Millie Dowler and other turds in the Beebs jacuzzi.
Well…who`d a thunk it?…turns out that Harriet Harmans view on the unfolding Once in a Lifetime event was to be craved and begged.
That Harpic has never held any policy brief in this field is neither here nor there…for today Matthew, I`m going to Robert Maxwells wetwipe.
How many hours of flummery-puffery are New Bolder ever-fresher Labour going to get gratis from the BBC?…and is it being declared or even checked?
getting the idea that these soft spots are getting offered to Prescotts, Harmans by way of free PPBs by the BBC…and it has got to stop!
I do not know, but I guess the production team on the last episode had people that where not involved with the rest of the series. This episode would also be deliberately timed to coincide with the political Climate Change conference in Durban, with the intention of using the reputation of Attenborough to persuade the viewer that man is responsible for melting ice, in the Polar Summer daylight. Attenborough’s time at the BBC would be over if he had an opinion based on the scientific method. That fate has fallen on people of real integrity such as Bellamy and Ball.
Political consensus is more important that a none existent scientific consensus to the morons at the BBC, which is why the politicians are realising that they can make the BBC a scapegoat when this madhouse unravels. We are not going to see a documentary on the latest findings in Atmospheric Physics and Solar Astronomy on the BBC.
I have ordered Printed Copies of the GWPF report “The BBC and Climate Change” for distribution to family and friends for Xmas reading and for showing to the visitor from TV Licensing.
Mac on… BBC fakery row”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073845/Mac–BBC-fakery-row.html
So it’s quite obvious Thompson is aware of the allegations of bias and being pu the arse of the Guardian.
Here’s a piece of news for Thompson, it’s true you are a bunch of lefty Guardian loving twats.
Is this only the tip of the iceberg.
A fake iceberg!
A fake consensus that the BBC is not biased. Care of all future BBC Trust Findings.
Here we go… more polar bear references hidden in plain sight. Jesus wept.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pk6h2/Outnumbered_Christmas_Special_2009/?t=34m12s
Get ’em while they’re young.
Any notions on what changed or why the specific time code prefix no longer seems to work on iPlayer? It used to when I added it too, but reading the above it snaps to the start.
Apols. Tried it on the other thread link and it worked, and now agin here and it did too. Must be my browser is temperamental.
“BBC Faked Polar Bear Footage re Climate Alarmism”
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=37614
I think Attenborough’s defence of the Polar birth sequence was perfectly legitimate and all Thompson has to do was back it. Instead he siezes another opportunity to convince the public that he simply isn’t up to his 800,000 pounds per year job.