BBC accused of routine 'fakery' in wildlife documentaries

[dutchman]

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph reveals viewers are often shown animals allegedly in the wild when they are not.



The corporation is also accused of flouting its own guidelines by failing to declare - either during the programme or in the credits - when footage has been obtained in studios in specially designed sets.

The BBC’s official guidance for nature programmes states: “Audiences should never be deceived or misled by what they see or hear.”

The BBC denies the claim and says viewers are not necessarily made aware during programmes but that its website does contain some details of studio filming.

A spokeswoman said viewers without the internet should go to their local libraries and use the internet there.

The controversy over faked footage follows revelations last week that a polar bear filmed, supposedly in the wild, giving birth in the programme Frozen Planet was actually a captive animal in a zoo in Holland.

Incredibly, the BBC had done exactly the same thing in another documentary also narrated by Sir David Attenborough in 1997.

That incident also caused disquiet at the time, prompting film-makers to wonder why the corporation had repeated the alleged deceit. On the first occasion the polar bear was from a zoo in Belgium.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose a series of further, apparently faked scenes including:

* Tragopans - a kind of pheasant purportedly living in a Chinese forest - actually filmed in a wildlife park in Somerset for the series Wild China

* clown fish shown hatching from eggs in David Attenborough’s Life series in 2009, in the ocean were in fact filmed in a tank built by Swansea University as part of a research project

* a chameleon in Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood in 2008 shown in the forest actually filmed in a studio as were leopard geckos shown mating in the desert

* a stalk eyed fly, described as lying “dormant on the forest floor” in Life in 2009, was filmed not in a south east Asian rainforest but in a BBC studio

As well as sight, sound is also recreated in studios in so-called 'foley sessions’ in which sound is added to a film.

Producers use sound effects to mimic the noises made by real animals, including such seemingly bizarre practices as adding custard powder to a woman’s stocking which is then squeezed to sound like polar bears skidding on ice or else bears walking through a forest.

The filming techniques of a handful of scenes shot in studios on specially constructed sets are revealed in programme notes published on the BBC’s website linked to the home pages for each individual programme.

Each episode of Frozen Planet contained a final section explaining how images were captured although no mention was made of the polar bear giving birth in a specially constructed den in a zoo.

The only clip explaining how it was done was on a BBC website linked to the programme.

Similarly, in previous landmark series, such as Life, studio shots do not seem to be differentiated from those taken in the wild. Some of those scenes are referred to on websites linked to the series.

Mark Cawardine, a zoologist and broadcaster who has presented a number of BBC programmes including the series Last Chance to See, said: “If you do this too many times you do lose people’s trust.

"The bottom line is honesty. The BBC should be more open about it.”