Journalistic Groundhog Day

Ok, put yourself in this situation. You're the BBC, and you've just been forced to retreat from the arena by the barrage of criticism that your execrable Newsnight report on Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun has attracted. What do you do? Apologise humbly? Re-investigate the issue and do a better report? Tell Glen Jenvey and Dominic Whiteman to go fight the Evil-World on their own time, and thus stop wasting resources on a pair of wazzocks who think that hanging around in a Paltalk chatroom amounts to serious espionage? Any of the above?

Noooo, don't be silly. If you're the BBC then you get the same pillock who did the initial report, to rehash the same stuff and pad it out into a longer broadcast. Then, not content with having demeaned journalistic standards on BBC2, you drag Radio 4 into the mire by broadcasting the whole dog's dinner as this week's File on 4. Highlights of which included such damning evidence as an official from Croydon Mosque saying that although they "have no evidence" that H-T are orchestrating any violence, you do always see "the same faces" when there's a ruck. Oh, and let's not forget Richard "Brains" Watson, the author of the report, concluding by saying that he cannot even be sure whether Hizb's leadership knew anything about any of the incidents described in his report.

For God's sake, when will one of you morons at Broadcasting House realise that you're making fools of yourselves? Or at least make some attempt to check your sources before you do another report like this one? I'll even help you get on the right track. Here's a little link, to the complex wonder that is a Google Search, that may be of assistance to you when filtering out dodgy informants from genuine experts.

Now pull yourselves together and try to recover some professional self-respect... please.