14 DAY TRIAL // Ed Wardle, a documentary maker, was supposed to survive twelve weeks in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a rifle, a fishing rod and a camera, but had to be emergency airlifted after only seven weeks after he sent a distress call, on the brink of starvation. As of now, Channel 4, the network for which Wardle was making Alone in the Wild, is being accused of exploitation and recklessness, the Telegraph informs.
Wardle is an experimented documentary maker and has, so far, survived in the most hostile places, the British publication says, but he was not prepared and / or trained enough to survive this particular expedition. Because of this, the network, which initially simply wanted to stretch the limits of reality television to “where no man has ever gone before” stands to be accused of wanting to do so regardless of the person on whom it centers its shows – in this case, Wardle.
“This is a pretty foolish enterprise. If Channel 4 are going to send people on this kind of expedition, they really must make sure they are up to it and have the skills necessary to survive. If they first of all did not check that Ed Wardle was competent, then that is the height of irresponsibility on the part of Channel 4, to do that merely to provide entertainment for us all back home to watch this man steadily deteriorate.” John Beyer, director of Media Watch, tells the British media.
Channel 4 has yet to respond to the allegations or, for that matter, to issue a statement on Wardle’s condition. As far as the public knows, the documentary maker was taken to a London hospital on Monday after being rescued by a team from the network, nearly dead from starvation halfway through the expedition. However, the signs had already been there before Wardle made the distress call, as he was allowed to post one single message on Twitter a day.
In his latest Tweets, reports in the media say, the outdoor explorer complained that his muscles were fading away and he was losing weight at a worrying speed. Towards the end, he wrote about talking to insects and having hallucinations, which prompted people back home following his Tweets to worry about his mental state. For the entire seven-week period, he had no contact with civilization, living off berries and the animals he could catch or hunt.