Vanuatu Post 1st November 2006

[Skyrules]

Film crew kicked off cruise liner in Port Vila (Issue 1865)

A Today Tonight film crew has been booted off a P&O cruise ship in Vanuatu after allegedly covertly filming passengers for a story. P&O Cruises said four people traveling aboard the Pacific Star, which left Brisbane last Wednesday on a 10-day voyage of the South Pacific, were “disembarked” at Port Vila, Vanuatu, yesterday (Monday). It is understood one of those ordered from the boat was a teenage girl and that the film crew had been officially warned not to provide alcohol to a minor. Channel Seven’s director of news and current affairs, Peter Meakin, confirmed that a Today Tonight film crew, led by reporter Colin Chapman, had been removed from the Pacific Star. Mr Meakin said he was not certain about a teenager being removed with the film crew or if the group had been warned not to provide alcohol to someone under 18 years of age. He said the crew were “filming a story about conduct on the liner” but he would not provide further details, including whether the current affairs program would be running a story on the incident. “As I said, we are keeping our powder dry.” The incident comes just over a month since Today Tonight host, Naomi Robson, and her film crew were ordered to leave West Papua during an assignment to film Wa-Wa, a six-year-old boy who was supposedly going to be sacrificed to a cannibal tribe. Robson and her team were travelling in the politically sensitive region on tourist visas rather than the required journalist visas. P&O Cruises said the film crew’s covert operations on the Pacific Star breached passenger privacy and added that the main member of the film crew had been involved in a similar covert operation earlier this year. “We determined that a film crew from the Australian media were traveling on board Pacific Star,” P&O Cruises said in a statement. “The principal member of this film crew has been identified as having covertly filmed on Pacific Star for Channel Seven’s Today Tonight earlier this year. “We believe the disembarked passengers have been filming on board for commercial purposes without permission. “They have been filming without the knowledge and consent of passengers in what we consider to be an invasion of privacy. This practice is against our company policy, and continued despite the captain’s personal requests for them to stop.” The behaviour of passengers on board P&O Cruises, and the policies of the cruise ship company itself, have come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the Dianne Brimble inquest. Mrs Brimble died from an overdose of the date rape drug Fantasy during a 2002 cruise on the Pacific Sky, which, at the time, was owned by P&O Cruises. P&O Cruises has recently taken steps to clean up its image, including dumping its traditional “schoolies” cruises, toughening its code regarding offensive passenger behaviour and boosting onboard security.

 

Posted on 01 Nov 2006