Wag TV

Martin Richard Durkin (born 23 January 1962, in UK) as a television producer and director, most prominently of television documentaries for Channel 4 in Britain. He is managing director of Wag TV, an independent television production company.

He has produced, directed and executive-produced a wide variety of programmes covering the arts, science, history, entertainment, features and social documentaries. Closely connected with the defunct Revolutionary Communist Party, a number of his documentaries have caused controversies, most notably those critical of environmentalism. He has been described as "the scourge of the greens" and "one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures".

In 1997, Channel 4 broadcast Durkin's documentary series Against Nature, which criticized the environmental movement for being a threat to personal freedom and for crippling economic development.

The UK's then broadcasting regulator the Independent Television Commission received 151 complaints from viewers and interviewees featured in the programme with four complaints upheld. In its report on the series, the ITC rejected 147 complaints that mainly were concerned with fairness and misrepresentation, stating that "the programmes' line that green ideologies were, at least in some respects, open to criticism on both scientific and humanitarian grounds, was a legitimate approach". It stated that environmentalists had been permitted a fair chance to air their side of the story in the televised debates that followed the broadcast.

The ITC stated that four complaints were upheld because: "the programmes breached the Programme Code in respect of the failure to make the four interviewees adequately aware of the nature of the programmes, and the way their contributions were edited." For these reasons, Channel 4 later issued a public apology on prime time television. According to The Independent, Durkin "accepts the charge of misleading contributors, but describes the verdict of distortion as 'complete tosh'".

Durkin also produced 2 documentaries for Channel 4's science strand Equinox. In 1998 he produced "Storm in a D-Cup", which argued - before some national health authorities- that the medical dangers of silicone breast implants had been exaggerated for political reasons and highlighting evidence that implants may even carry medical benefits; and in 2000 he produced The Rise and Fall of GM.

...
Wikipedia