Late last year, a British documentary used footage from a video game and amazingly labelled it as a secret IRA recording. It has now, a few months later, been given a severe dressing-down.
British communications regulator Ofcom, which began an investigation into the incident last October, has this week issued its report on the matter, and called the error a “significant breach of audience trust”, which highlighted “clear deficiencies” in fact-checking. Ofcom also said it was “very surprised” the ITV crew could believe the gameplay clip was actually footage of a Libyan tank.
“We considered that there were clear deficiencies in the steps taken by both production and compliance staff for sourcing and verifying the archival content of the helicopter attack in this programme,” Ofcom’s report says.
“As such this represented a significant breach of audience trust, particularly in the context of a public service broadcaster. Ofcom considered the programme to be materially misleading.”
ITV breached audience trust over ‘IRA’ video game footage, says Ofcom [The Guardian]
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