Perhaps it is the impending revelation that people like Emily Maitlis and Luara Kuenssberg (the political reporter who does not understand the difference between Government debt and deficit) are paid telephone numbers salaries that is prompting BBC News to lie about getting scoops. Or perhaps it is just shame that with its enormous overhead it is scooped again and again. Or maybe it is just an innate culture of dishonesty? Whatever the reason with Emily in the hotseat Newsnight was a visible disgrace last night as news emerged that Hinkley Point was to get the go ahead.
The news actually broke well before 9 PM on Bloomberg - its Paris Bureau got the scoop. The BBC happily ignored this until during newsnight we were brealthlessly told that Laura Kuensberg was reporting that a source was telling her that the power station had got the green light. Maybe that source had been watching ITV's News at Ten as it reported the story in full. But Laura's source was first flagged up at 10.52 PM on Newsnight.
It did not end there. At ten past eleven Emily happily revelaed that news of the Hinkley Point green light had "broken while we have been on air". That is just so patently not the case. ITV reported it in full 15 minutes before Newsnight aired and Bloomberg had the scoop more than an houra and a half before that.
It was just dishoinest journalism to claim as a scoop or as breaking news something which patently was not. Emily, Laura et al might think this charade, this pretence that they are ahead of the game, justifies their obscene pay packets, paid by you the grateful taxpayer. An objective commentator would conclude it shows precisely why those pay packets are both obscene and, quite simply, unjustifiable.