BBC admits faking scenes in documentary series

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has admitted that scenes from its "Human Planet" documentary series were staged by the camera crew.

In its series, an episode of the television documentary depicted the life of the Korowai people of Papua New Guinea and had scenes of tribesmen moving into a treehouse, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.

The BBC, in a statement last week, admitted that "the portrayal of the tribe moving into the treehouse as a real home is not accurate".

During the making of the documentary series, a member of the tribe talked about how they have built high treehouses for the benefit of overseas programme-makers.

Fans of BBC expressed their shock and anger on social media.

This is not the first time that the BBC is embroiled in a fake scandal.

In 2011, BBC filmed shots of a tarantula spider in a studio for an episode about wildlife in the Venezuela jungle.

In the same year, the "Frozen Planet" series featured newborn polar bear cubs in a den with their mother, with many people assuming they were born and filmed in the Arctic.

However, the cubs were actually in a Dutch animal park, as revealed in behind-the-scenes footage on the show's website.

In 2015, the production crew of a documentary about life of Mongolian camel herders used a semi-domesticated wolf after being unable to find a real wild wolf to film on location.

--IANS

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