The maker of the video game that mistakenly featured in ITV1’s Exposure documentary will not take legal action against the broadcaster.
Gaddafi and the IRA was the first film in ITV1’s new investigative journalism strand but was left damaged after it emerged a key sequence, which purported to show the IRA shooting down a British helicopter in 1988, was actually from video game ArmA 2.
Since it was spotted by eagled-eyed gamers, the broadcaster has faced criticism from factual producers, but will be relieved to learn that ArmA 2’s creator Bohemia Interactive will not be pursuing legal action over the mishap.
Bohemia’s chief executive Marek Spanel said he was comfortable the company’s reputation had not been damaged and - even though ITV was not cleared to broadcast the footage - it would not be worthwhile consulting lawyers over potential copyright infringement.
ITV has formally apologised to the Czech company and explained how the clip found its way into the Exposure documentary, Spanel added.
The broadcaster has an original clip of the IRA incident (which does not show the helicopter) in its archive from an episode of The Cook Report, but in an effort to find a “cleaner” version, it was mistakenly replaced with a YouTube clip from the tactical shooter game.
“I’m concerned about how this came about - it seems a bit crazy. Some people, including myself, thought the procedures would be a bit more solid for this kind of high profile media,” Spanel told Broadcast.
“In my company it wouldn’t be possible for someone to download something from YouTube and then use it.”
He added that Bohemia, which specialises in military simulation games, had actually benefited from the publicity surrounding the events.
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