Film-maker blames ITV for false claims about documentary

The man at the centre of a row over whether an ITV documentary faked footage of an Alzheimer's sufferer's death blamed the broadcaster yesterday and said he had been made a "scapegoat".

Paul Watson, whose documentary Malcolm and Barbara: Love's Farewell is due to be broadcast next week, claimed he told ITV that the film only showed the moment Malcolm Pointon slipped into a coma but that the broadcaster had refused a request to make the difference clear.

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The publicity material released to promote the film said the documentary showed Malcolm Pointon, a composer and long-term Alzheimer's sufferer, "passing away" but yesterday ITV admitted that Mr Pointon had in fact died three days after the final scene of the film.

Mr Watson, who spent 11 years working with the Pointon family in order to make the documentary, blamed ITV's promotional material. "My crime is that I did not compile that press statement and I did not read it sufficiently clearly," said Mr Watson in an interview with BBC Radio 4.

He added: "I asked to put in five words to explain absolutely that the picture you are looking at at this moment is not of Malcolm's death. They [ITV] turned it down at that instant and came back to me much later and said 'maybe it is a good idea and we lost time'."

ITV yesterday admitted that it had been approached by Mr Watson but blamed the film-maker, saying he only notified them of the clarification on Monday, a day before the publicity statement for the film went out.

In a statement, ITV said: "We have begun a formal inquiry to establish the sequence of events and the facts and until that is complete we are not prepared to comment in detail. However, it is correct that Paul Watson approached ITV on Monday to suggest a clarification in the film about the moment of death.

"When ITV did establish, later that day, that the death was indeed some days after the end of the film, we immediately agreed with Paul that a clarification needed to be made. ITV issued a statement the following morning."

ITV's director of television, Simon Shaps, admitted that the clarification "should have been made earlier" and would be shown at the end of the film when it is broadcast next week.

The row comes amid a recent spate of scandals that have shone a spotlight on broadcasters that fake footage in shows.

Earlier this month it emerged that the BBC had faked television phone-ins during at least six shows, including the charity telethons Comic Relief, Children in Need and Sport Relief. In response, the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, announced a package of new measures to combat breaches in editorial standards and vowed to put the corporation's "house in order".

In response to the various scandals, the ITV chairman Michael Grade told MPs that the company would never work with any organisation again if they were to be found faking footage.

In a separate interview with BBC Five Live yesterday, Mr Pointon's widow, Barbara, defended Mr Watson's documentary.

"I want people to know that Paul filmed Malcolm's last semi-conscious moments - and those moments were the most precious to me," she said. "The film ends with a freeze frame, a still image of Malcolm, which very simply, very sensitively and very poignantly, sends the message Malcolm has died, end of story. Does it really matter whether it was two minutes, two days, two weeks after that point?"