Given that I have occasionally blogged about Frozen Planet and other Attenborough-related stuff, I should probably give my two cents over the recent kerfuffle about the faking of certain scenes. The thing is, as much as I love David Attenborough and his programs, I do feel somewhat cheated; as an academic I think the beeb should have been more explicit in stating that certain scenes were not as they appeared to be. Of course, I understand why the scenes of the polar-bear cubs need to be shot in captivity; I just don’t like the way the show was cut to make the program look like it was filmed in the wild.

However, I don’t think we can be too hard on the bbc, and I certainly don’t think this in any way diminishes Attenborough’s reputation. After al, the only way that the tabloid press could have got wind of this story at all is by looking at the Beeb’s own website, so they were still open about it, just not as open as they could have been. As noted here, moreover, the bbc has experimented with on-screen titles which explicitly state where such scenes were filmed, but that it was found that ” [audiences] were quite happy simply [being told] after the programme, on the website, how we do it so those who want to know how it was made can find out. We’ve thought very hard about this and talked to the public.” I’m therefore quite happy with what the bbc did, even if I too raised an eyebrow at it. After all, it is not as if they tried to cover it up; on the whole, I think hey were explicit as they could have been without effecting the flow of the programme*. I think the fact that such a lot was made of this actually says more about the tabloids – they are clearly trying to fling muck at the bbc at time when they are in trouble. And I think phone hacking is a far more serious charge than filming polar bears in a sanctuary rather than in the wild, and not stating it overtly. *Television has no capacity for footnotes, after all