The programme caused a ”significant breach of audience trust,” and Ofcom have ruled it ”materially misleading,” breaching Rule 2.2 of the Communications Act of 2003. Bad ITV, bad.
Essentially Ofcom were less than impressed when the programme makers failed to ”confirm the details of archive film provided,” which led to this rather embarrassing gaffe.
”It is not sufficient for a broadcaster or programme maker to rely on footage provided by a third-party source, on the basis that that source had previously supplied other broadcasters with archive footage, and fail to confirm the details of archive film provided,” ruled Ofcom.
”We take into account that ITV: apologised; removed the programme from its catch-up video-on-demand service; and, has now put in place various changes to its compliance procedures to ensure such incidents do not happen in future.”
The footage was from Arma 2 and showed a helicopter getting shot down by an anti-aircraft armament, which the ITV programme claimed was actual recorded footage by the IRA themselves. Developer Bohemia Interactive responded but humorously, saying how amazed they were that ITV couldn’t tell the difference between Arma 2 and real-life.
”However, the viewers of this serious current affairs programme were misled as to the nature of the material they were watching. In the circumstances, this represented a significant breach of audience trust, particularly in the context of a public service broadcaster,” continued Ofcom.
”As such, Ofcom considered the programme to be materially misleading, in breach of Rule 2.2. Ofcom was particularly concerned by this compliance failure by ITV. We do not expect any issues of a similar nature to arise in future.”
No LucasArts’ Mercenaries footage of North Korea then if it all kicks off? Surely people won’t mind some Battlefield 3 if there’s an earthquake in Iran? US troops would be in there by then anyway, right? Silly TV broadcasters.
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