YouTube is good for many things: videos of cute kittens, videos of people injuring themselves, free TV shows and movies. What it’s not so good for is sourcing footage for TV shows, because hugely embarrassing mistakes can occur.
Gaddafi and the IRA
The show is titled Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA, and was intended to investigate deposed Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi’s links to Irish Republican terrorists, and how he helped channel money and weapons their way.
To demonstrate these links and the real-life effects they had, the show included footage billed as Republican terrorists shooting down a British helicopter 1988. The narrator Paul McGann delivered the following voiceover as the footage played:
With Gaddafi’s heavy machine guns, it was possible to shoot down a helicopter, as the terrorists’ own footage of 1988 shows. This was what the security forces feared most. It may have been a lucky hit, but for the army and crew, once was enough. No-one died in this attack but there were many other deadly arms to fear.
Unfortunately for ITV, they used the wrong clip. Rather than using PIRA shoot down Brit Heli, they used PIRA Shoot Down British Helicopter 1988. The second is much more dramatic because it never actually happened. It is, in fact, just footage from a video game called ARMA 2.
ARMA 2?
A simple mistake to make? Sure, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. This show actually aired on national television in the U.K., with no one noticing the rather monumental mistake before transmission occurred.
It was only after the fact that anyone did notice, and it was gamers who recognized the footage and the video game it came from. ITV has now removed the show from ITV Player and will instead replace it with a re-edited version which includes the real footage.
Conclusions
If any television production companies are reading, please take note. Don’t use YouTube as a repository for historical clips. As ITV has shown, mistakes can be made all too easily.
