Cruise Ship Expels
AU Channel 7 Today Tonight Film Crew
P & O Pacific Star - October 29, 2006
Date: October 29, 2006
Bruise: Expelled From Ship
Bruise Location: Vila, Vanuatu
Cruise Line: P & O
Ship: Pacific Star
Details:
An undercover film crew from Today Tonight, an Australian current affairs TV program, were discovered secretly filming onboard for a news story.
Cruise Line: P & O Cruises
Ship: Pacific Star
Built: 1982 (Tropicale)
Refurbished: 2001
Registry: Great Britian
Size: 35,190 Gross Tons
Length: 669 feet
Passengers: 1,022
Crew: 550
Bow Webcam: > Here
The group consisting of journalist Colin Chapman, his two-man crew and an underage girl, was removed from the Pacific Star after being caught filming without permission.
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.
This is the second time this year this film crew has been caught filming onboard a P & O Cruises ship.
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.
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.
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 has been under the watchful eye of the public and the media, after damaging testimony was presented at the Dianne Brimble inquest into her death onboard, aboard a ship where sex and drugs in public areas were the norm.
The Pacific Star, which left Brisbane October 25th on a 10-day voyage of the South Pacific, were "disembarked" at Port Vila, Vanuatu.
The CEO of local P&O booking agent South Seas Shipping, Captain Claes Bjornum, says "We were instructed by the master to arrange their repatriation back to Australia, to Brisbane, which we did. We took them out to the airport, bought the tickets for them. They then said they didn't want to go at that time. They said they would prefer to have a couple days holiday so they bought their own tickets and they went to look at a Hotel."
