Samantha Poling

Samantha Poling is a Scottish investigative journalist working for BBC Scotland and BBC Panorama.

In 2018 she interviewed Iain Packer for a documentary on the BBC Scotland program Disclosure, Packer denied the murder of Emma Caldwell and stated that he had never been violent towards women. Within days of the documentary being broadcast, one of his former partners went to the police to complain that Packer had pushed her onto a bed, put his hands around her throat, choked her to her injury, and to danger of life. In February 2024 Packer was eventually found guilty of the murder of Caldwell, and of 33 other charges against 22 women. Packer was sentenced to a minimum term of 36 years before he would be able to apply for parole, the second longest sentence in Scottish legal history after Angus Sinclair.

BBC Panorama In 2008 she joined BBC Panorama and made the programme Britain's Protection Racket, which exposed the Security Industry Authority as being deeply flawed. In 2010, she wrote, filmed and created Can I Sack Teacher?, about the fact that only 18 UK teachers had been struck off for incompetence in the previous 40 years.

In 2011, she exposed petrol-laundering gangs in Northern Ireland, and exposed the quality issues within the surgical instrument manufacturing industry in Pakistan that were supplying in bulk to the National Health Service. In Smoking and the Bandits, she exposed the UK's counterfeit cigarette gangs, was attacked while filming in Barras market, and discovered record levels of toxins in the products.

Other programmes In 2015, she presented The Dog Factory, a one-off programme about the puppy farm industry for BBC One.