Award-winning
TV team criticised over faked
scenes By
Tom Leonard, Media
Correspondent AN
award-winning
Central Television documentary about
heroin smuggling was largely faked and so
seriously flawed that it should not have
been broadcast, the company's own
investigation ruled yesterday. An
independent inquiry set up by Carlton
Central's owner, took six months to uphold
complaints that crucial elements of The
Connection were staged or
untrue. While
the inquiry criticised Carlton executives
for failing to question the programme's
credibility with sufficient vigour, it
concluded that they had not set out to
mislead viewers. The
investigation was overseen by a panel
comprising Michael Beloff, QC,
John Wilson, a former senior BBC
executive, and Nigel Walmsley,
Carlton's director for
broadcasting. The
46-page report has been passed to the
Independent Television Commission, which
will decide what action to take against
Central. Possible sanctions range from a
warning or onscreen apology to a
shortening or even termination of its
broadcasting licence -- although the
latter is unlikely. The
documentary, which was shown in October
1996, won eight international awards for
its supposedly courageous investigation
into how the drug was being smuggled from
Colombia to Britain by a new route unknown
to the authorities. The
highlight of the documentary was film of a
drugs "'mule" swallowing heroin capsules
and smuggling them into London hidden in
his stomach. However,
a number of serious allegations were
subsequently made that suggested that much
of the film had been a sham. They included
the fact that the capsules had been mints;
that the mule's journey from Colombia had
been filmed in stages, and that he was
stopped at Heathrow and sent back to
Colombia. It
was also claimed that the mule, another
supposed drug trafficker and a man
purporting to be a senior member of a
Colombian drug cartel had been paid to
play parts. A Colombian police raid on the
house of a suspected Cartel boss was also
said to have been staged. All
the main allegations were justified, the
inquiry said. It also criticised senior
Carlton executives for failing to read a
statement from a researcher working on the
programme acknowledging that some of it
had been faked. Marc
de Beaufort, the film's producer,
should have known what was happening, the
report said. "It was his programme, made
to his design. If he did not know, he was
seriously at fault because he ought to
have known." An
ITC spokesman said there was evidence that
the documentary had "in important
respects" breached its programme code. The
matter will be discussed at its next
meeting on Dec 17. ![](../../std/dings/square.gif) POST
SCRIPT: On
Friday, December 18, 1998 the U.K.
Independent Television Commission fined
Carlton TV two million pounds ($3.2m)
for perpetrating this fraud.
|