BBC criticised over assisted suicide film

Campaigners have criticised the BBC over a documentary on assisted death fronted by Sir Terry Pratchett, due to air tonight on BBC Two.

In Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die, the renowned author follows a British motor neurone disease sufferer as he carries out an assisted death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

At the first screening of the hour-long documentary, anti-euthanasia campaigners claimed that the BBC had put forward an idealised picture of assisted death, rather than provoking an "honest debate" on the issue, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Geoff Morris, of the Care Not Killing (CNK) pressure group, told the BBC's acting controller of knowledge commissioning Emma Swain that the film lacked objectivity.

He said that the programme offered an unbalanced view of assisted death, as only one of the people interviewed by Pratchett was opposed to euthanasia.

"I felt more and more angry as I watched the programme. I was just watching it and thinking, 'This is not reality'," said Morris.

"It was just too beautiful, the only thing missing at the end was angels coming down and taking the man off to heaven."

In a statement last week, CNK campaign director Dr Peter Saunders claimed that the BBC was "actively fuelling" the move to impose assisted suicide on the UK with the documentary, and "flouting" its own guidelines on suicide portrayal and impartiality.

For the programme, millionaire hotel owner Peter Smedley agreed to be filmed at the moment he ended his life just before Christmas last year.

Pratchett, who was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease in 2007, also compares the legal stances across Europe to assisted death and asks what the future holds for terminally ill people in the UK.

When the programme was announced in April, Pratchett said: "I am a firm believer in assisted death. I believe everybody possessed of a debilitating and incurable disease should be allowed to pick the hour of their death. And I wanted to know more about Dignitas in case I ever wanted to go there myself."

Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die will air on BBC Two tonight, followed by a Newsnight debate exploring a "wide spectrum of views" on the issue.