The current furore over the misleading editing of TV clips involving the Queen and Gordon Brown reminds me of something that I became aware of when working for another TV company.
About 25 years ago a producer with that company who specialised in making environmental programmes persuaded his employers that farm pollution was killing wildfowl on the Norfolk Broads and that this justified an expose film. The fact that there was a drought at the time and that water levels were very low was, in his view, coincidental.
He made his film, full of arty shots through reeds, over the course of several weeks but failed totally to find any dead wildfowl to include in his footage. This, clearly, would undermine his thesis somewhat. So, he went to the local game dealer and purchased three brace of mallard, still in feather. He took them to one of the broads, rolled them around in the mud on the edge of the water, filmed them, and they became the justification for a commentary that condemned farming practices in east Norfolk for the botulism that he claimed was the cause of the problem.
When I found out what had happened, many months later and after the programme had been shown, I accused him of dishonesty.
His reply, accompanied by a broad grin, was the old cliche that you should never let the truth spoil a good story and that, in any case, he had got away with it.
There seemed little point in exposing what had happened so long after the event. I was not confident, in any case, that his employers would have been much bothered. The maximisation of shock/horror in order to attract the most viewers is the name of the game for many broadcasters. Sadly it has been for several years now and I suspect the BBC is more concerned about being found out than by the misrepresentation it perpetrated