- Challenging good will is not easy
In spring 2007, a team from the Norwegian channel TV 2 went to Niger to find the victims of the famine the BBC reported on in 2005. They found none.
 xxx  Screenshot from the documentary. |
Now BBC threatens with lawsuits if the Norwegian channel publishes their material again. What the TV team found, was in fact a totally different story from the one BBC, amongst others, told in 2005.
The channel told the audience about millions dying from famine, and the Norwegian UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, supported the story.
- 3.6 million people are affected by the catastrophe, he said at the time.
TV 2 Norway went to Niger, and found that no one they met had heard of such a catastrophe.
- There was no drought. No plague of locusts, Doctors Without Borders-representative Johanne Sekkenes told the team.
The TV-team made a highly controversial documentary, “The Famine Scam”. Part of this was shown at GIJC Thursday afternoon. Both aid workers and the BBC is criticised in the film, and BBC are now threatening TV 2 Norway with lawsuits if they ever use the archive material they bought from them again.
- They use various excuses for why we can’t use the material again. Challenging good will is not an easy thing to do, desk editor Mats Ektvedt in TV 2 Norway concluded.