The BBC’s Springwatch presenter Chris Packham has found himself in hot water once again after spending the day with convicted bomb maker Mel Broughton while livestreaming an outing with the Northants Hunt Sabs.
On Saturday 28th December, Packham joined the Northants Hunt Sabs to disrupt a meeting of the Cottesmore Hunt in Leicestershire. Along with his stepdaughter Megan McCubbin, Packham livestreamed their escapades to his X (formerly Twitter) account in a broadcast riddled with technical difficulties.
The livestream featured contributions from Mel Broughton, a longtime ringleader of the Northants Sabs who in 2010 was jailed for placing firebomb devices under a portable cabin at Green Templeton College and near a cricket pavilion at Queen’s College in Oxford. The explosion at the cricket pavilion caused an estimated £14,000 worth of damage, though fortunately no one was hurt. Broughton was jailed for ten years for conspiracy to commit arson.
In 2022 Broughton was again remanded in prison for charges relating to his campaign against the use of beagles in medical research. While in prison he was supported by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a group which was flagged by the FBI as a “serious domestic terrorist threat” in 2004.
During their X livestream, Packham and McCubbin ironically spoke to Broughton about alleged violence against hunt saboteurs. This is despite a string of high-profile assaults carried out by hunt saboteurs in recent years, including the infamous Paul Allman, who in August 2023 was sentenced to 20 weeks in custody for violently attacking two members of the Wynnstay Hunt in Cuddlington. More recently, in November, Mark Forthergill of the East Yorkshire Coast Hunt Sabs was arrested for allegedly assaulting a member of the Derwent Hunt.
The Northants Hunt Saboteurs has harboured various unsavoury characters within its ranks over the years, including vaccine conspiracy theorist Neal Buckoke, the death threat hurling Marc Shaw, criminal trespasser Agnieszka Grabowicz, and Grand National disrupter Bernadette Green.
Packham’s livestream also featured Northants leader Luke Tucker, who earlier this month received a £1,000 fine from Northampton Magistrates Court for aggravated trespass while bothering the Cottesmore.
Speaking to McCubbin, Tucker said his group’s aim was to “really shut this hunt down”. He also told the presenter that “Even though they’ve [the Cottesmore] got a very, very slim chance. they’ll still go out and give it a try … to find, chase, and – in their heads – hopefully kill a fox.”
Tucker admits that the chances of actually finding a fox on a foggy day such as Saturday were slim, betraying the fact that hunt sabs are fully aware that groups like the Cottesmore are engaging in lawful trail hunting.
Nevertheless, throughout the livestream, Packham repeats the lie propagated by groups like Protect the Wild that trail hunting is a “smokescreen” for the illegal killing of foxes.
“They’re gonna call it trail hunting at some point but of course we know that that is a smokescreen, a ruse for fox hunting,” he says to McCubbin.
As anyone who has attended a trail hunt knows, this assertion is wildly inaccurate and far beneath the standards of truth and impartiality expected of a BBC presenter. According to official figures from the British Hound Sports Association (BHSA), since the Hunting Act came into force in 2005, there have been just 23 criminal convictions for hunts illegally killing foxes across more than 228,000 trail hunting days. Far from being a smokescreen, this means that 99.99% of trail hunts follow the rules.
Although Packham is technically a freelance presenter, the BBC’s guidelines on social media explicitly state that “Everyone who works for the BBC should ensure their activity on social media platforms does not compromise the perception of or undermine the impartiality and reputation of the BBC, nor their own professional impartiality or reputation and/or otherwise undermine trust in the BBC”
Moreover, the BBC maintains higher standards for presenters of “factual journalism”. While there is no official list of which programmes constitute factual journalism, the BBC’s website lists Countryfile as one such example.
As a presenter of the similar and (mostly) factual Springwatch Packham is therefore expected to “have a particular responsibility to uphold the BBC’s impartiality through their actions on social media”. Criticising enthusiasts of a legal pastime and denigrating a law that has been on the statute books for nearly 20 years with no opposing point of view seems to fall well short of this mark.
However, Packham is no stranger to controversy, regularly upsetting licence-fee payers with his highly political campaigning.
In 2019, the BBC faced calls to sack Packham after his campaign group Wild Justice convinced Natural England to ban farmers from shooting pest birds on their own land. Furthermore, in 2017 he was forced to issue an apology after suggesting – without evidence – that game shooting was responsible for a downturn in the population of Lapwing.
Most recently, in October 2024, Packham was forced to pay £196,008 in damages to 70-year-old proofreader Paul Read after part of his libel case against the magazine Country Squire was thrown out by the High Court.
BTM encourages readers to complain to the BBC and Ofcom about Mr Packham’s actions. You can do this by following this link on the BBC website or by visiting Ofcom’s website.