From today’s Independent:
The London-based television company being investigated by Ofcom over a global news fixing row tried to “cultivate” a world-famous environmental economist and other leading opinion formers in the green movement for the documentaries it made for the BBC and other news broadcasters.
FBC Media claims in its promotional literature that it targeted Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, to be an “ambassador” for its corporate client on programmes it made about the controversial palm oil industry in Malaysia.
Mr Sachs, a special adviser to United Nations secretary general Ban-Ki Moon, was a prominent interviewee on a BBC World “Third Eye” documentary about Malaysia which was produced by FBC. The Independent has established that FBC was paid £17m by the Malaysian government to work on a “global strategic communications campaign”. The documentary was one of eight FBC programmes made for the BBC found to have been in “serious” breach of corporation editorial guidelines in a report issued yesterday by the BBC Trust.