The Wildlife Docusoap

Introduction

This is the Masai Mara in Kenya, one of the best places on Earth for watching wildlife. But in this series we are going to be looking at it in an entirely new way. Over the next six weeks we are going to be following in intimate detail the lives of Africa’s big cats, sending back a weekly report, a diary of their hardships and good fortunes as they happen.

In October 1996, a new wildlife series featuring intimate portraits of big cats and their cubs going about their daily lives in the Masai Mara was broadcast on BBC1. The title sequence of this series, perhaps unintentionally, provided a wonderfully succinct example of the new aesthetic that was in the process of transforming wildlife documentary. A quick succession of images—featuring lions violently attacking one another, camera crews in jeeps careening across the African savannah, and cheetahs kicking up dust in pursuit of their prey—were cut together to a rapid mix of staccato drum beats and rising Masai vocals. The sequence culminated in a shot of a mud-splattered Big Cat Diary logo adorning the door of a jeep. Like the logo, the footage used in the series was shaky and sometimes incomplete. At certain points, the camera panned wildly as it tried to capture the action; and at other points, the shots were grainy and dull, drained of the saturated colors, and carefully choreographed angles that usually accompanied wildlife documentaries. In Big Cat Diary, the lives of wild animals were being framed and edited in a new way. Viewers were being offered a vision of wildlife that was intimate, personal, and self-consciously rough edged. The dominant traditions of blue chip programming, which had banked on fluid and spectacular wildlife cinematography since the days of Disney’s True-Life Adventure films (1948–60), were being pushed aside in favor of a new style of personality presenter-led series, shot on digital video, and designed to create a sense of “liveness.”

The reasons behind the emergence of this new aesthetic are not difficult to discern. Mirroring changes in the wider factual television marketplace, particularly in the United Kingdom where a few high-end documentaries were scattered across schedules swamped with reality TV and factual entertainment (Born 2004, 434–36; Kilborn 2003, 90–100), the standard production model for wildlife documentaries began to change. Instead of being filmed by small, two or three person teams of specialist wildlife cinematographers who undertook lengthy filming trips, often over the course of a number of years, a new generation of program makers began to shoot their material on the fly, in much shorter and concentrated bursts. With condensed shoots and tightened budgets, there was little time to film detailed footage of animal behavior or construct the overarching narrative arguments that were the hallmark of blue chip programs. Programs following the blue chip format, named for its ability to sell well in international television marketplaces, are denoted by one key attribute: the absence of people and all artifacts of human culture. ¹ The economics behind the migration from blue chips to personality presenter-led series was simple: wildlife programs that depended on presenters, not wild animals, for their quotient of drama could be produced quickly and relatively cheaply using video, digital video, and digital editing systems (see also Bousé 2000, 72–83; Chris 2006, 79–121; Cottle 2004, 91–93; Palmer 2010, 90–101).

As the first ever wildlife docusoap, combining elements from a number of earlier media forms, Big Cat Diary was part of a new trend for personality presenter-led programming, which mixed tried and true elements of the wildlife genre with the subjective intimacy and “live” aesthetic of reality TV. Despite the lightweight connotations of the docusoap format, this series demonstrated a new rhetoric for filming wildlife. Behind its claim to look at wildlife “in an entirely new way,” was a genuine attempt to portray the lives of wild animals in a manner that was closer to their actual lives, regardless of whether they were inactive for days on end. In this sense, Big Cat Diary can be understood as an experimental and innovative format that not only blended genres but also raised questions about the ethics of wildlife documentary, muddying the already blurred boundaries of fiction and nonfiction.

This article takes Big Cat Diary as its focus, looking how decisions about the ethics of wildlife documentary were made and actively negotiated by wildlife documentary makers working within the wider context of the BBC and the wildlife television industry. The rapid shift in the conventional production methods and aesthetics of the wildlife genre throughout this period raises an important ethical question regarding the representation of science and the lives of wild animals. Can new production methods in the wildlife genre, which has historically required high levels of staging and editing to construct seemingly objective scientific narratives, really provide us with a truer picture of the everyday lives of individual animals in the wild?

I begin by exploring the ethics of wildlife documentary and presenting a conceptual framework for understanding changes to the ethics that underlie different modes of production. Then I move on to analyze the ethical production practices that informed Big Cat Diary, looking at how these production practices changed over the course of its twelve-year run on the BBC. I conclude by suggesting some explanations concerning the ethics of wildlife documentary, most importantly, that is the ethical responsibilities that wildlife documentary makers owe to animals that matter most, rather than issues of audience deception.

The Ethics of Wildlife Documentary

To get an idea of the key ethical issues at play in the wildlife genre, one need only recall a notorious sequence in White Wilderness (1958), a film in Disney’s True-Life Adventure series. Despite the assurance of truth conveyed by the studio’s insistence in publicity material that its films were “unstaged and unrehearsed,” the filmmakers used a movable turntable to catapult lemmings off a cliff into a river, creating the enduring but entirely erroneous myth of lemming mass suicide. Contemporary wildlife documentary makers emphatically disown Disney’s wildlife films. But in the fifty years, since Disney’s True-Life Adventures (1948–60) set the style and conventions of blue chip programming, the wildlife genre has been the subject of a number of high-profile scandals. These scandals called into question the ethics of wildlife documentary.

In the early-1980s, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) documentary Cruel Camera (1984) uncovered evidence of the mistreatment of animals by several leading wildlife filmmakers. This program focused attention on the dubious practice of using tethered animals as bait to attract predators, as well as the routine use of staging and editing to create highly constructed sequences. In the mid-1990s, the issues of animal cruelty and audience deception surfaced again. American wildlife filmmaker Marty Stouffer, in particular, was publicly criticized for flagrant ethical violations. He was found to have staged dramatic attack scenes involving predators and engaged in acts of animal cruelty in his Wild America (1982–96) series on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which was subsequently canceled. The late Steve Irwin, the most famous and successful of the new breed of personality presenters, was also criticized in the media, and by industry insiders, for his willingness to interfere with wild animals in his Crocodile Hunter (1996–2004) series on Animal Planet. Such criticism proved prophetic given his death in 2006, after swimming too close to a stingray while shooting footage for a new series. The air of anxiety that accompanied these scandals disrupted wildlife documentary’s taken-for-granted practices, signaling to many in the industry that it should be open to greater ethical scrutiny, particularly in the increasingly competitive context of the late 1990s in which programs featuring inappropriate and sometimes dangerous interactions with wild animals could command high ratings.

To suggest a conceptual framework for understanding changes to the ethics of wildlife documentary, I find it useful to look at the three theorists and practitioners who have written extensively on this issue: Jeffery Boswall (1989, 1998), Derek Bousé (2000, 2003a, 2003b), and Chris Palmer (2010).

Jeffery Boswall, a producer at the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU), from 1957 to 1987, laid out two rules for ethical wildlife documentary production: “thou shalt not deceive the audience” and “thou shalt not harm the animals” (1989, 208). Troubled by the increasing use of slow motion, staged sequences and close-ups of animals in zoos, he later added a third directive, advocating the use of on-screen disclaimers (Boswall 1998). The media theorist Derek Bousé has also criticized the production practices traditionally used in blue chip programs as thoroughly deceptive. He suggests, “The rules for presenting strictly factual evidence, or for constructing narratives and telling fabricated stories are far more vague and far less inhibiting than in human-centred documentary filmmaking” (Bousé 2000, 24). Writing elsewhere, he expresses his fear that in an increasingly competitive, market-driven industry, wildlife filmmakers will increasingly be subject to “the law of the tool,” or, put another way, tempted by the siren call to use all available technologies to distort truth and misrepresent nature (Bousé 2003a, 218–20). Environmental filmmaker Chris Palmer has, likewise, detailed a litany of “ways to deceive,” citing examples of staged set-ups, the routine use of captive animals and animal cruelty. Adding to Boswall’s call for screen disclaimers, he suggests that all wildlife documentaries should include announcements about the provenance of their footage in their opening credits. The ideal disclaimer, in Palmer’s view, would say, “All animals in this film are completely wild and not captive or controlled in any way. No staging of any kind was used, and no animals were disturbed or harmed” (2010, 117). However, he is quick to point out that few wildlife documentaries could truthfully make this claim. Underlining the need for staged sequences, Palmer supports “ethical staging,” in which he advocates practices that minimize any suffering or distress to animals kept in captivity for the purpose of filming and openness from filmmakers about the practices they use (2010, 112–14).

Boswall, Bousé, and Palmer essentially argue that wildlife documentary makers owe a dual responsibility to animals and audiences. In these accounts, the responsibility to animals is primarily phrased in terms of the essential obligation to uphold standards for animal welfare, whereas the responsibility to audiences remains largely focused on the issue of audience deception. The problem with this stance is that a narrow focus on audience deception of all kinds, regardless of the individual production contexts in which animals are filmed and the truthfulness of broader narrative claims that are made about animals, including individual animals, overlooks the very real complexities of ethical wildlife documentary production. What is missing from these critiques, with their obsessive detailing of the countless deceptions perpetrated by wildlife documentary makers on “unsuspecting” audiences, is a more nuanced analysis of how the ethics of wildlife documentary are enacted or played out in practice.

In the analysis that follows of how the makers of Big Cat Diary conceived of, and acted on, their ethical responsibilities, I want to suggest that the general framework for understanding changes to the ethics of wildlife documentary needs to be redrawn. The ethics of wildlife documentary should be recentered on the complex ethical relationships between wildlife documentary makers and the animals and ecosystems they film, rather than on issues of audience abuse or deception. By rebalancing questions of ethics on the relationship between wildlife documentary makers and animals, wildlife documentary makers will be better able to incorporate new media technologies and new filming practices into the repertoire of techniques available to them, while still maintaining ethical standards.

This study serves to emphasize the usefulness of attending to wider “production ecologies” within the wildlife television industry to understand how the ethics of wildlife documentary are actively negotiated and implemented in practice. Cottle defines the concept of “production ecology” as the evolving “organisational relations and dynamics that exist within a particular field of media production” (2004, 82). By studying the dynamics of these shifting organizational relationships, as well as broader market forces such as increasing competition, the internationalization of television, and the fragmentation of audiences, it is possible to understand how ethics are negotiated and implemented throughout the production process. In the case of Big Cat Diary, as I will demonstrate, new ethical production practices developed and evolved over time, in conversation with the BBC’s evolving public service values, the economics of ratings, and wider market forces.

Tracking the Commissioners: The Rise of Big Cat Diary

In September and October 1996, the first series of Big Cat Diary was broadcast on BBC1. It was a coproduction between the BBC and Animal Planet, produced and directed by Keith Scholey and Robin Hellier, both senior producers at the BBC NHU. In their mixing of elements of the BBC’s Livewatch (1977 to the present) series, docusoaps, and personality presenter-led series, the makers of Big Cat Diary drew liberally on the history of wildlife documentary to create the first wildlife docusoap. Although intended as a one-off series, Big Cat Diary soon became a successful television formula (and a globally recognized brand) that continued to evolve for over a decade.

The idea for Big Cat Diary arose out of discussions among Keith Scholey, Robin Hellier, and Alastair Fothergill (who was then the head of the BBC NHU), early in 1996. Research conducted by the BBC at this time revealed that the audiences for its wildlife programming were primarily middle-aged and middle-class. In the mid-1990s, TV reviewers such as Victor Lewis Smith had also begun to mock David Attenborough as the “whispering Attenbore” (Smith 1995, 31). The deliberate cross-genre styling of Big Cat Diary was designed to appeal to a younger audience and to keep costs down. As Fothergill explained,

The area that I thought we had to grow was cheaper programming that could do well in the early evening family slot on BBC1—i.e., expand the Wildlife On One area. Now Wildlife On One is relatively cheap for the BBC because it sells well around the world, but they are quite expensive programmes to make. Big Cat Diary was an attempt to do something very fresh and different. We thought there were a lot of people watching soap opera at the time, and we were looking for a natural history soap opera. (Hellier 2003)

The choice to focus on big cats was based on the fact that they are among the most popular and charismatic of wildlife subjects, routinely garnering high ratings. The Masai Mara Reserve was also carefully chosen as the location for the series, as its high level of tourism and scientific research means that it is virtually the only “wild” location where big cats behave “naturally” in the presence of so much human activity. The BBC commissioned a series of six thirty-minute episodes. Jonathan Scott, a wildlife artist and expert who had copresented Africa Watch (1989), a program in the BBC’s Livewatch series, was chosen to present Big Cat Diary together with Simon King, an experienced wildlife cameraman and presenter.

Big Cat Diary required a large production team (up to sixty people) on a similar scale to live broadcasts. But instead of being broadcast live, it was designed to be produced in a period of just two months. The production schedule was intended to get each program on air as quickly as possible. For example, footage for the first program was shot over the course of Week One, and then edited in Week Two, and so on throughout the series. The commitment to broadcast each episode as quickly as possible meant that the first few episodes of the series went to air even before filming had begun for later episodes. The fact that the series was not strictly live—a decision that gave producers the liberty to build sequences out of footage filmed over the course of a week—allowed the series to still retain a patina of “liveness,” while alleviating some of the risks associated with live broadcasts. Coupled with the familiar appeal of the docusoap format, this made it more attractive to coproducers. ²

As Fothergill (2003) recalled, “What we were trying to do with Big Cat Diary was to give it the ‘liveness’ and the ‘eventness’ but control it more.” This point of difference formed the basis for Simon King’s claim in the opening narration to the series (reproduced at the beginning of this article) that it would look at Africa’s big cats, some of the most overexposed of wildlife subjects, in “an entirely new way.” At the same time, the BBC were also careful to safeguard the unique ethical claim instilled in the series, by differentiating the “scientific” content of its narration and its production practices from those of other purely commercial ventures.

Framing the Mara: New Technologies, Production Practices, and Ethics

The format of Big Cat Diary combined a number of strategies that had earlier been used in Livewatch series, human-centered docusoaps, and personality presenter-led series, but together they constituted two distinct ethical approaches that were largely new to wildlife programming. First, the production team strove to maintain the continuity of events (where possible) and to only use footage of the big cats named in the series. This approach to dealing with “named animals” was central to the ethical practices that have developed over the years at the BBC NHU. As Hellier (2003) pointed out,

We are very careful when we are naming animals that we don’t use other animals to create a sequence. If you are not naming, it is acceptable in secondary shots to build in other animals in order to make it work filmically. But if you are doing a diary of animals, like Big Cat Diary, that no longer applies. There is an assumption that whichever animal you are looking at will always be a specific individual . . . Sometimes it would be very tempting to lift something out and slot it in at another time in the week, because it would make it more entertaining or because you could control the pace better, but we decided that we shouldn’t do it.

These practices ensured that the actual lives of individual named lions, leopards, and cheetahs were faithfully recorded, without the use of “composite animals,” or the splicing together of footage of different animals to represent the actions of a single individual, marking a significant change in wildlife documentary practice. During the time Big Cat Diary was in production, these practices were informally negotiated among NHU staff. But in the wake of the documentary fakery scandals in the late-1990s, lengthy Editorial Guidelines were drawn up and made available to BBC staff (BBC 2011). ³

The second ethical practice used by the producers of Big Cat Diary was a new level of reflexivity. Echoing the production methods of Cinéma Vérité, in which practitioners openly declared their interventionist and subjective approach by including themselves in their own films, the producers interwove the story of how the footage was obtained with explanations of the big cats’ behavior. A scene featuring Fundi the cheetah and her cubs from the first episode of the series demonstrates this. Simon King’s narration begins over a shot of an impala in front of dense scrubland: “Even from my position on top of the vehicle, I could barely see her as she stalked through the trees to the right of the impala.” A few shots later, Fundi and her cubs have caught and killed the impala, and King slides his jeep into the background of the shot, just a few meters away from where the cheetahs are feeding. In this classic “two shot,” with a presenter and wild animals in the same frame—a device long used as a means of authenticating wildlife footage—King restrained the volume of his voice and delivered his narration directly to the camera:

They have just managed to kill, in the very last light, an impala. From my position with the camera, it was a little bit unfortunate, they had all disappeared behind very thick cover. But this is a problem too for the cheetahs. When they make their kill in this sort of habitat, they are very likely to lose part or all of it to another predator. They can’t see a lion or a hyena coming and as a result they are going to have to eat as quickly as they can to get as much as possible in their stomachs in the shortest space of time. [Switching to voice over] And sure enough, that night they did indeed lose most of this kill to hyenas.

In sequences such as this, Big Cat Diary zeroed in on scenes of predation—those staple elements of traditional wildlife series, but it furnished them with a reflexive commentary that emphasized the difficulty of filming individual wild animals. The narration and footage illustrating these events were in stark contrast to the beautifully framed and edited footage in conventional blue chip programs: the videoed footage was shaky and it did not capture all the action, cameras were visible on screen, and King’s narration interwove an explanation of the difficulties involved in filming the sequence with reflections on the dangers the cheetahs faced in this habitat. In this way, the producers of the series attempted to be more open with audiences about how the series was actually made. This was in keeping with the ethical approaches to wildlife documentary making endorsed by Boswall (1989, 1998) and later refined by Palmer (2010), who together advocated the idea that wildlife filmmakers should be more candid with audiences about the production practices they use.

The unique ethical approaches used in Big Cat Diary—its choice to stick with individual named animals, which avoided the practice of using composite animals and its reflexivity—helped to differentiate it from other commercial personality presenter-led wildlife programs and added to its soft public service credentials. This demonstrated the BBC’s capacity to innovate its wildlife programming, and to do this in a public service direction attuned to the ethics of wildlife documentary. At the same time, the decision to focus on individual “animal stars,” whose lives could be exploited for their dramatic potential, was also a crucial device used to hook audiences. It proved immensely successful in terms of ratings. The series attracted average audiences in the United Kingdom of 6.24 million or a 27 percent average share of the audience. It also drew in high numbers of viewers under the age of fifty-five, meaning that it was hitting its target market of children and young families. Both the BBC and Animal Planet wanted more of the same. At first, the producers scanned about, looking for other species to which they could apply the same “wildlife diary” format. It was eventually decided that the production team should return to the Masai Mara to track some of the same big cats and introduce some new animal stars to the show. As I will demonstrate in the following section, however, the huge popularity of the series did not last. Subsequent changes to the format, designed to increase its ratings, affected the unique ethical approaches to production that had guided the first series.

“Science and Jeopardy”: Editing the Lives of Big Cats

Big Cat Diary was recommissioned for a further eight series (1996–2008), but as it progressed, a number of changes were made to the format and style of the programs. ⁴ In the third series produced in 2000, digital video camera operators were placed alongside the presenters in the camera cars, in an effort to record their reactions to events as they happened, strengthening its ties to observational documentary. In the fourth series in 2002, a third presenter, Saba Douglas-Hamilton (the daughter of famous zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton), was added, so that each species of big cat had its own presenter. However, the biggest change to the ethical approach of the series came in 2004, when, in response to falling ratings and changing scheduling trends, commissioners at the BBC renamed the series Big Cat Week, dropping both the weekly diary format and the commitment to broadcast each episode of the series as quickly as possible. ⁵ The series was filmed in the Masai Mara over the course of six weeks, as it had been in the past. But whereas, in previous series, each program was quickly edited and voice-overs were recorded on location before being dispatched back to the United Kingdom (for the fine-cut edit and the addition of the title sequence and credits) and promptly broadcast, the post-production of Big Cat Week was undertaken over a period of months rather than weeks.

This worked in opposition to the ethical stance of the first series, particularly the claim, contained in the opening narration, to portray the everyday lives of big cats using “a weekly report, a diary of their hardships, and good fortunes as they happen.” The lengthy production time meant that the producers were now better able to shape the narrative arc of each episode and the narrative progression of the entire series. It was a liberty with which the producers took full advantage. For example, during production for Big Cat Week (2004), the producers spoke of the need to create “cliff-hangers”—“will the cubs make it or won’t they?”—leaving elements of the story unresolved at the end of each episode in the manner of a soap opera. They also repeatedly referred to the balance of “science” and “jeopardy” contained in the narration, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the BBC’s need to justify its programming in public service terms, embellishing each program with informative or educational values.

In contrast to Big Cat Week, the blue chip programs that historically populated the BBC’s flagship wildlife strands, The World about Us (1967–83), The Natural World (1984 to the present), and Wildlife On One (1977–2005), were mostly built around slowly accruing scientific arguments on broad topics such as evolutionary biology or animal behavior. These broader scientific narratives offered tiny vignettes of animal life, incorporating moments of drama and suspense. Whereas, in Big Cat Week, “science” was only cursorily referenced by details of the animals’ anatomy or behavior, while elements of “jeopardy” included displays of emotion by the presenters and scenes in which the big cats were in potential danger. An excerpt from the author’s observational diary demonstrates how, as the series progressed, some of its claims to accurately portray the lives of individual animals in the wild were eroded:

It’s late: after a day of watching Colin, a producer, and Giles, an editor, putting together the third programme of Big Cat Week, we are joined by Nigel, the series producer, in an editing suite to watch the programme through from beginning to end. Neil Nightingale, the head of the NHU, has already reviewed the first two programmes in the series: the received view is that Neil wants more “science” in the programmes. Nigel makes sporadic comments throughout, suggesting minor changes. He likes the changes that have been made to a snippet of voiceover (VO) saying the cheetah cubs look very thin and will need to feed again soon—this introduces an element of “jeopardy” that works to draw the audience in. At another point, the VO refers to a Thompson’s gazelle, rather than simply a gazelle, and Nigel joking says: “there’s a bit of science.” It becomes a game and Nigel and Colin compete to find the scraps of “science” included in the VO and sync-sound. Every time a particular animal’s anatomy, size, or hunting tactics are mentioned this is seized upon as an element of “science”—provoking laughter. (Richards, November 2004)

The shift to five programs stripped across a week meant that the producers had to ensure that similar events were not depicted in successive programs; more variety was needed and this meant that the continuity of events was not always upheld. In effect, the series was becoming more crafted or shaped, more like a drama or a soap opera. These changes were also accompanied by a subtle shift in the aesthetics of the series. Where sequences were once juddery and evocative of a kind of gritty “liveness,” the footage was now more polished and less raw. Editing was used to erase any gaps in the footage and the narration evinced the desire to simplify and rationalize events. Having designed an innovative format, with an interesting set of possibilities, it became, over the course of a decade, more standardized and formatted. In this sense, a new aesthetic imperative, playing on the aesthetics of “liveness” without recourse to the ethics of particular production practices, took hold. This new regime was best evidenced by the cynicism with which the producers addressed the BBC’s public service values.

By 2004, the gap between the BBC and Animal Planet’s programming requirements was beginning to widen. After lengthy negotiations failed, Animal Planet finally withdrew its funding for the Big Cat franchise in 2006, having coproduced seven series. A number of those involved with the series suggested that Animal Planet believed the Big Cat brand had become tired and a little outdated (Richards, August 2004). Undeterred, the BBC acquired additional funds from BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm of the BBC), making a further two series, and an additional series of live broadcasts, Big Cat Live (2008).

Big Cat Live represented a return to the Livewatch series that had, in part, provided the inspiration for Big Cat Diary. It differed from earlier series in its inclusion of local Masai guide, Jackson Looseyia, as a presenter, who appeared throughout in traditional dress. Saba Douglas-Hamilton was also replaced by the well-known BBC presenter Kate Silverton in this series. But despite this attempt at a more inclusive approach to wildlife programming, which included voices other than the white, middle-class, and (usually) male perspective that dominates the history of BBC wildlife programming, there were many other aspects of the environment that were still subject to erasure, just as they were in traditional blue chip programs. Richard Matthews an independent wildlife filmmaker and the cofounder of independent production company Zebra Films who shot footage for a number of series of Big Cat Diary commented,

What we are doing in Big Cat Diary is focusing in a very blinkered way on a few big cats in an area which is under great external pressure from the people around and also from tourism. And, of course, we studiously take that stuff out. We ignore all that to the extent that we frame these big cats as through they are in a beautiful Eden, which is completely untrue. (Matthews 2003)

In 1996, the makers of Big Cat Diary had set out to frame the lives of Africa’s big cats in a new way. But in doing so, they repeated the almost constant generic refrain of the wildlife genre by ignoring the complexities of life, in all its forms, in the Masai Mara. The more complex “realities” of environmental degradation, encroaching tourism and the competing interests of native pastoralists (like the Masai), tour operators, field naturalists, Western environmental activists, impoverished African communities, African leaders, and the leaders of industrialized nations were carefully excluded, just as they had been in the majority of blue chip documentaries prior to 2000. ⁶ This somewhat undermined the series’ claim to explore new ethical production practices.

A New Ethical Practice for Wildlife Documentary?

Throughout the 1990s, the wildlife genre was transformed from a relatively predictable, even staid genre, to one of the most dynamic and hybrid television forms. This period of dramatic change and evolution resulted in the rise of a new style of personality presenter-led wildlife programming, which, in turn, raised questions over the ethics of wildlife documentary. In response, a number of producers working in the context of the BBC NHU developed new production practices, and with them a new set of ethical standards for the treatment of individual named animals, which were designed to more accurately reflect the everyday lives of big cats. The unique ethical approaches used in Big Cat Diary—its reflexivity and its choice to use only footage of individual named animals—went against the established production methods of wildlife programming. In particular, they worked in stark opposition with the practice, common to blue chip programming, of using composite animals, or editing together footage of different individual animals and events. As the first wildlife docusoap, Big Cat Diary constituted an ambitious—if still limited—attempt to carve a new ethical practice for the representation of individual animals in the wild.

As the series evolved in the context of a highly competitive and internationalizing marketplace, however, its ethical treatment of individual animals became somewhat eroded. The unique production practices, which underscored its claim to look at wildlife in “an entirely new way,” became harder to distinguish from traditional wildlife filmmaking techniques. In any case, although the producers of Big Cat Diary believed that their ethical production practices were sufficiently explained and demonstrated on screen, they may not always have been entirely clear to viewers. The fact that the production processes associated with different styles and approaches to wildlife programming are, largely, hidden behind the scenes at the point of reception, serves to elide their differences.

The example of Big Cat Diary demonstrates that, far from being immutable, the ethics of wildlife documentary are produced and negotiated as new technologies are incorporated and new production practices evolve within the wider context of the wildlife television industry. The ethics of wildlife documentary are, therefore, subject to change and adaptation in line with Simon Cottle’s concept of the changing “production ecology” of wildlife programming. Through close empirical analysis of how questions about ethics are actively negotiated and implemented in practice by wildlife documentary makers (who are themselves subject to wider technical, economic, and organizational forces of change), we can begin to better understand how the ethics of wildlife are being redefined.

Conclusion: Evolution, Ethics, and Wildlife Documentary

In view of all this, how can we understand recent changes to the ethics of wildlife documentary? Construction or “creative treatment,” to use John Grierson’s words, has always been a consummate part of documentary. Brian Winston has consistently argued that the creative freedom bequeathed to documentary by Grierson is necessary for contemporary documentary practices to survive, even though, as he makes clear, the director’s creative impulse must be balanced against a finely tuned sense of documentary ethics (1995, 251–58; 2000, 9–39; 2010, 221–90). In particular, he argues,

The real difficulties of ethical documentary production turn on the degree and nature of intervention not on its absence or presence; and they rest far more on the relationship between documentarist and participant than between documentarist and audience. (Winston 2000, 1)

In other words, wildlife documentary makers should focus on conveying an accurate portrait of wild animals and the issues they face, rather than on the precise level of construction involved.

The obsession with audience deception, which is evident in previous work on the ethics of wildlife documentary (Boswall 1989, 1998; Bousé 2000; Palmer 2010), obscures the fact that documentary, not just wildlife documentary, has always necessitated a large degree of creative license, not to mention staging and reconstruction. Building on Winston’s call to rebalance the ethics of documentary in terms of the relationship between documentary makers and their participants, I would like to suggest that, in addition to good animal welfare practices, wildlife documentary makers have a responsibility to accurately and truthfully convey the realities of wild animals and the issues they face. It is this ethical responsibility that wildlife documentary makers owe animals first, over issues of audience deception.