Still trust the BBC? You shouldn't

[Cain]

-

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sounds familiar.

"We found WMDs!"

It was a box of Tide.  No retraction.

"We found WMDs!"

It was a bucket of Chlorine powder for Uday's pool.  No retraction.

"We found WMDs!"

Etc.

It's not as blatant as editing, but it has the same effect.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Ugly shit, there.

[Demolition Squid]

Jesus.

I was hoping we could get through ONE MONTH without a BBC scandal. We barely made it seven days.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You can guarantee that if the BBC is doing it, every other major news outlet is doing it as well.

[Cain]

-

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm just amazed they thought they would get away with it.  The second video is the first in the timeline, you'd think, if they were intending to decieve the public, that they would actually replace the video with the new one, instead of upload two conflicting stories.

In the age of RSS feeds, the discrepancy was bound to be noticed.

How many people noticed, though?  And how many who DID are in their target audience?

[Cain]

-

[The Johnny]

I personally think that one of the most malicious of things one can do in either research or reporting is warping someones discourse either thru shitty alliteration or deliberate changes...

i mean, its literally stealing someones voice and saying things they didnt mean for ones own personal gain...

So its either some retarded and negligent intern that should get expelled/fired, or very dark intentions and corrupt reporting.

[Pæs]

Hey now, that's not really fair. I don't think they wanted to deceive anyone. They were just trying to entertain us, which is what the news is for. AND IT WORKED. Chemical weapons is WAY MORE EXCITING.

[Cain]

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[Nephew Twiddleton]

This just keeps getting better and better.

[Demolition Squid]

Drop the Dead Donkey made fun of people doing this way back. I didn't think it was quite so close to the truth, though. What annoys me is that this is a huge credibility hit... to, presumably, make the crisis more sensational. Because the genuine horror wasn't quite right for TV.

On the other hand, if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, I imagine that getting doctors to give usable footage in a crisis situation would be incredibly difficult without some kind of staging, just given how many times they need to get people in reality TV shows and similar to do the same shot again and again. It might just be about getting something presentable rather than sexing something up to be sensational enough.

But that's being very generous, and I'd like to see the BBC try to explain that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Craig Murray has a follow-up:

Close inspection of the two different versions, by numerous commenters and for which I am grateful, reveals that there were actually two or more takes of this scene.  The easiest tell is the arm position of the man in the fluorescent jacket next to the doctor.

Actually, that is much worse than if it were overdubbing.  What this means is, that what is portrayed as a live action piece with casualties being rushed in, was actually a rehearsed piece of which several takes were done.  Rehearsed because, with the exception of the words napalm and chemical weapons, the words are precisely the same, which is not easy spontaneously especially under that kind of stress.

This raises some even weirder questions.  In a hospital where dozens of  desperately wounded casualties are at that moment being rushed in for life-saving treatment, this British doctor not only has time to talk to the BBC, but to do several takes? Is that not extremely strange?  Furthermore, nobody else in the courtyard is wearing a face mask.  If the doctor has time to do several takes with the BBC, why on earth has she not slipped off her mask to talk?  Is it for theatrical effect, to give the impression of someone just rushed from the theatre, as opposed to someone doing several takes for the BBC?

WOW.

So, now we're talking theater, presented as live reporting.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What's even weirder is that it's clearly scripted and rehearsed. Since when are doctors good enough actors to pull that off? Is she even a real doctor, or is that part of the fraud as well?