BBC withdraws nature series in new row over fakery
THE BBC was embroiled in another fakery row yesterday after it emerged footage from a nature series had been manipulated.
The corporation said it was pulling its Human Planet series to conduct a ‘full editorial review’ after a journalist found scenes of an Indonesian hunter harpooning a sperm whale (pictured above) had been faked. The first episode of the 2011 series showed harpoonist Benjamin Blikololong jumping into the sea and killing a sperm whale. In footage, shot on the Indonesian island of Lembata, the whale is shown almost pulling the boat under the water, before it is hit by another harpoonist.
As blood fills the water, narrator John Hurt says: ‘It’s been an epic eight-hour battle, but Benjamin has shown his skill and bravery.’ But journalist doug Bock Clark met Blikololong during a visit to the island and found he had not successfully harpooned the whale. The BBC put out a statement admitting the editorial breach. A spokesman said Blikololong’s ‘role’ in the hunting of the whale was ‘not accurate’.
This is the fourth fakery row surrounding the eight-part documentary series. Earlier this month the BBC apologised after it admitted it inaccurately portrayed a Papua new Guinea community. Will Millard, who visited the Korowai tribe to film another BBC series, discovered a tribe built treehouses for the benefit of the cameras – but did not actually live in them.
In 2015, the BBC admitted it used a semi-domesticated wolf in one episode because the crew could not find a wild one. And shots of a tarantula, shown as if they were taken in the Venezuelan jungle, were actually taken in a studio.