A Search For Truth’ Slammed By Victims

On December 21, 1988, Mary Lou Ciulla was cooking dinner with one eye on a TV soap opera. The ordinary domestic scene would have quickly evaporated from memory had it not been for the intrusion of a news flash that changed the New Jersey resident’s life. Reports were coming in of a Pan Am flight crashing in the southwest of Scotland and terror soon dawned on Ciulla that the plane could be carrying her husband, Frank.

Her daughter, Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, was 17 at the time and was called home from school as the family began a search for answers. She walked into scenes of her sister phoning Pan Am in a frantic attempt to establish if Frank made the flight. At 3am, 12 hours after the plane had come down over Lockerbie, they got the news they dreaded: Frank had checked in. He was among the 270 passengers killed that night.

Fast forward 36 years and Ciulla Lipkin and her Mom sat together to confront the worst moment of their lives in Sky and Peacock’s Colin Firth series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, the first major TV dramatization of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. Ciulla Lipkin, a spokesperson for the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group, had been liaising closely with producers at Carnival about the historical accuracy of the drama, but had given little thought to the recreation of the crash. It meant that Lockerbie’s graphic depiction of the disaster was a shock.

In its opening scenes, the series imagines passengers joining together in a singalong of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer before an explosion rips through the cabin. Debris reigns down on Lockerbie residents who scramble to assess what has fallen from the night sky. They find the bodies of passengers, gruesomely lit under the glare of their torches.

“I looked at my Mom and I was like, ‘It’s tragedy porn. This is disgusting,’” Ciulla Lipkin tells Deadline. “They’re literally representing the worst moments of our life … The amount of bodies they showed and the egregious nature of it becoming like an action movie with things coming out of the sky. You don’t need to do that.”

Ciulla Lipkin says Sky and Peacock made a “very deliberate choice” to dramatize the crash and, although producers were honest and transparent about their intentions, the “re-traumatization” of these scenes was troubling. In a memo sent to other victims, she recommended skipping the first episode and later recaps. Did Carnival ignore their feedback? “We had lots of good conversations, but it was too late to address anything,” she replies.

A Sky spokesperson says: “We recognize that this is a deeply sensitive matter for many and approached the storytelling with the utmost care and respect. We engaged with victims’ families and support groups throughout production and in the lead-up to the series launch and all episodes are signposted for any potentially distressing content.”

For Ciulla Lipkin — who has channeled her grief into a career in media literacy education — the grizzly recreation of the Pan Am bombing represents just one element of the victims’ concerns about Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. The group also questions the drama’s source material: the book The Lockerbie Bombing – A Father’s Search for Justice by Jim Swire, the indefatigable doctor portrayed by Firth. The drama follows Swire’s pursuit of the authorities in his attempt to establish the truth behind the death of his daughter, Flora. Ciulla Lipkin has a natural empathy for Swire, but believes his account distorts reality.

The Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group argues that Lockerbie: A Search for Truth sows doubt about who is responsible for the terror attack and portrays Abdulbasset Al Megrahi, the only person convicted in connection with the disaster, as being an “innocent man that should be empathized with.” The group was unsettled by scenes of Swire visiting Libya where he pins a victims’ badge on Colonel Gaddafi, who accepted responsibility for the bombing and paid compensation to families in 2003. The group believes that the trial of Megrahi is misrepresented and that Swire is wrongly heroed as the only family member consistently speaking out in the fight for justice. 

Executive producer Gareth Neame has addressed these concerns in press interviews, telling The Daily Mail that consultant Faisal A. Qureshi carried out extensive research for the series, including creating a database of 7,000 documents about the crash. “It’s important to point out Jim’s belief that there was a miscarriage of justice isn’t the sole belief and we acknowledge many families hold a completely different opinion,” Neame said. A source close to Lockerbie added that the original scripts were changed to excise some falsehoods.

The drama’s opening title card states that it is “based on the events and aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing,” is inspired by Swire’s work, and “characters and scenes have been changed or fictionalized for dramatic purposes.” Still, Ciulla Lipkin believes that Sky and Peacock have not done enough to make clear that Swire’s account is his truth rather than the truth. She explains: “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is an example of how ‘based on a true story,’ is an egregious genre if you’re really trying to get the truth out there. Because ultimately, this series is fictional. It’s entertainment. It should have no bearing on how people understand the truth about the bombing of Pan Am 103.”

She has found examples of NBC promotional materials that refer to Lockerbie: A Search for Truth as a “true story.” She says NBC changed the language after she requested edits. In the UK, a Q&A about the show on the Sky website asks: “Is the TV series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth a true story?” The written answer is an unequivocal “yes.” The article has not been updated despite Deadline pointing out the concerns of victims to a Sky spokesperson. 

Ciulla Lipkin thinks this could have real-life consequences. She is anxious that the series may shape public perceptions about the disaster and seed doubt ahead of this year’s jury trial of Abu Agila Masud, the man accused of making the bomb. Ciulla Lipkin argues that Sky and Peacock should explain to viewers where creative license has been applied: “They should tell people why they made their choices and they should fact-check them.”

A Sky spokesperson says: “We understand there are opposing opinions on the Lockerbie disaster and the programme does not attempt to tell the definitive version or present a conclusion. We chose to tell this story as we believe that drama is an accessible medium that can shine a light on difficult and thought-provoking subjects.”

Lockerbie’s post-script makes clear that Megrahi is “the only person to have been convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103,” but caveats this by saying that Swire remains convinced of his innocence and continues to believe that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, supported by Iran, was responsible for the atrocity. The end cards only fueled Ciulla Lipkin’s anger, who argues that they amplify falsehoods and wrongly suggest that “we’ll never know the truth.”

The Lockerbie disaster’s victims are bracing for a second dramatization later this year, a co-production from the BBC and Netflix. Lockerbie stars Patrick J. Adams, Connor Swindells, and Merritt Wever and focuses on the joint Scottish-U.S. investigation. Victims are attending a private screening in the coming weeks and Ciulla Lipkin is hopeful that it will paint a more comprehensive picture of the fight for justice. They have also been assured by producers at World Productions that the crash will not be “part of their story,” according to Ciulla Lipkin. “At the core of the story of Lockerbie is collaboration and the collective,” she adds. “They [the BBC and Netflix] wanted to tell that story and that makes me feel optimistic.”

The interventions of Ciulla Lipkin, who serves as executive director of America’s National Association for Media Literacy Education, represent a life’s work. “When the death of your loved ones comes to you from the screen, when the details are revealed through a news anchor’s voice, when you are constantly surprised by when it shows up as a breaking news story, this is profound and life-altering,” she said at a Pan Am 103 memorial last month. “I will continue to call attention to how we need to empathize with the very real people affected by the tragedies we see in the news.”