Reality show contestant sues BBC for libel

A contestant on the BBC reality show Castaway is suing the broadcasting corporation and the production company Lion TV, claiming that they libeled him by editing scenes in the shows so that he would appear to be “aggressive and temperamental,” the London Sunday Observer reported. Ron Copsey told the newspaper that the producers “dishonestly painted me as a villain to boost ratings. … They showed a completely different me from the real me.” Copsey’s lawyer, David Price, observed that in one scene Copsey appears to throw a chair across a room at another contestant. “The footage was fabricated,” Price told the newspaper. “Ron Copsey did not throw a chair at anyone. But viewers would have have thought that he had not only thrown the chair, he had directed it at Julie Low.
Castaway was supposed to be reality TV but they generated an incident that did not happen and, we argue, created a false impression that Ron Copsey was a violent man who had assaulted a woman.”