Sir David Attenborough defends ‘misleading’ Frozen Planet footage

SIR David Attenborough has defended his documentary series Frozen Planet after it emerged that footage of newborn polar bears was filmed not in the wild, but in a Dutch animal park.

The BBC had been accused of misleading viewers after the programme’s commentary failed to mention that the scenes were filmed in a zoo in the Netherlands.

But the veteran broadcaster said the decision to film in the zoo was made for “the safety of the animal”.

He said: “If you had tried to put a camera in the wild in a polar bear den, she would either have killed the cub or she would have killed the cameraman, one or the other.”

He said explaining about the zoo during the show’s commentary would have ruined the atmosphere, adding: “It’s not falsehood and we don’t keep it secret either.”

The BBC has denied misleading viewers over the footage and said the way it had been captured was “clearly explained” on the programme’s website.

“This particular sequence would be impossible to film in the wild,” a spokeswoman said.

“The commentary accompanying the sequence is carefully worded so it doesn’t mislead the audience and the way the footage was captured is clearly explained on the programme website.”

The footage, narrated by Sir David, was made in a zoo and was mixed with real wild scenes.

Producer Kathryn Jeffs said on the website that female polar bears give birth at the peak of the winter.

“The problem for us is that they do it underneath the snow, in these dens of ice,” she said.

“There is absolutely no way that we can get our cameras down there; it would just be completely impractical,” she said.

“Even if we could, we would not want to disturb the polar bears by getting that close.

“This was not part of the story that we could leave out of Frozen Planet.”

John Whittingdale MP, chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, said: “If this was not filmed in the wild, it would have been much better to have made that clear in the commentary. “It’s questionable how many people would visit the website and find the video clip which explained the circumstances of the filming.”

In the episode, broadcast on 23 November, the camera follows a female polar bear in the Arctic as Sir David comments: “She starts to dig a shallow nest…once the snow here is deep enough, she’ll dig down to make a den. She’ll then lie waiting for her cubs to be born as winter sets in.”

Later, the film cuts to a mountainside. “On lee-side slopes beneath the snow, new lives are beginning,” Sir David narrates. Footage of the newborn cubs filmed at the animal park is then screened.

The BBC said the narration “talked in general about polar bears in the wild rather than the specific cubs shown”.

More than eight million viewers tuned into the episode, and the series as a whole was well received by both critics and the public.

The Scotsman’s TV critic, Paul Whitelaw, said it was sometimes necessary for film-makers to “cut corners”, but said it was not intended to mislead the viewer.

He said: “I don’t really think it’s a big deal at all. Documentary film-makers cut corners all the time. “As long as they’re not telling lies. It’s slightly disingenuous, but I don’t think they were misleading the viewer.

“I absolutely loved the series. People often say these sort of things are awe-inspiring, but it was genuinely humbling and beautiful. It was one of the best programmes of its type.”