Radio Times poll provokes online battle for Baftas

Fierce opposition to al-Jazeera's Bahrain documentary generates a million votes

Vanessa Thorpe  Sunday 6 May 2012

An excerpt from Shouting in the Dark by May Ying Welsh. Photograph: al-Jazeera

An excerpt from Shouting in the Dark by May Ying Welsh. Photograph: al-Jazeera

This year's Bafta award for the best current affairs television programme, to be awarded later this month, has provoked an international struggle to undermine the content of at least one of the four powerful documentaries on the shortlist – a film about the uprising in Bahrain last spring.

A fortnight ago the Radio Times magazine launched an online poll to allow readers to vote for their favourite Bafta nominees. There are no prizes on offer, but the current affairs category has now registered an incredible one million votes, even though participants will not decide the final outcome. While fans of Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes or of Dominic West's role as Fred West have together clocked up only 4,000 votes in the best leading actor poll, more than half a million voters across the world have backed the film Shouting in the Dark, made in Bahrain by journalist May Ying Welsh for al-Jazeera. Another half a million have voted for Channel 4's film Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, fronted by Jon Snow.         Full Story>>>