Controversial new documentary by Martin Bashir

Martin Bashir’s new documentary—an English filmmaker and journalist who became famous for making the documentary “Living with Michael Jackson”—was aired on ABC last Thursday night. The documentary raised many questions, and this has led other networks to refuse to broadcast it. In this documentary, Martin Bashir interviews one of the witnesses in the case, named Carey Feldman. ABC claims it did not pay money for these interviews and only paid a fee for the broadcasting license, while it was Martin Bashir who had to pay the interviewees in order to use their statements in his documentary.

CBS officials said they initially wanted to air the documentary but then changed their minds because “as a news network, cost-sharing for payments creates problems for them.”

An ABC spokesperson claims that the network had no partnership in paying money to the sources whose statements Martin Bashir used in his documentary, and that viewers were informed of the arrangements. However, it has not revealed how much money was paid to the sources exactly. It has only said that an amount of less than one thousand dollars was paid.

An ABC representative said that “this network is very cautious about using interviews for which money is paid. Because every time you pay for an interview, you take the risk that the person interviewed will try to influence others rather than tell the truth of what happened—in order to get money into their pocket.”

The ABC spokesperson tries to justify airing the documentary by claiming that other news networks have also used parts of these interviews:

“I’m sure AP selected and aired parts of these interviews. Isn’t this a similar situation?”

Associated Press said about this: “There is no evidence that this network used these interviews.”

Media ethics expert Aly Colon says that news networks should not pay people for interviews unless the news is very compelling and cannot be obtained in another way: “They (ABC) didn’t involve themselves in these matters and allowed someone else to do it for them. (referring to Martin Bashir).”

But in any case, it seems that Martin Bashir’s words in this documentary have not attracted much interest compared to last time. The documentary “Living with Michael Jackson,” which aired on ABC two years ago, had 27 million viewers. Meanwhile, his new documentary, titled “Michael Jackson’s Secret World,” attracted only 8.8 million viewers. With this number of viewers, ABC ranks third with a significant difference compared to CBS and NBC in terms of viewership.

Source: AP