Polar bears give birth to their young in only two places on earth - the Arctic and in zoos. Confuse the two on television and you are in trouble: when the BBC's Frozen Planet series included a sequence of newborn bear cubs captured by cameras concealed in a cage, in a programme ostensibly filmed in the Arctic, there was an outcry. These programmes, broadcast in December last year, bore the hallmarks of integrity and excellence, and the unacknowledged switch of location was bound to raise hackles. I concede a certain sympathy for the producers; it may simply be that the script implied more than it should. The art of television lies in the skill of the director and creative licence is sometimes necessary to tell a scientific story visually.
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