The modern news cycle is brutally quick. On Thursday and Friday, the 90-minute special episode of Channel 4’s investigative documentary strand, Dispatches, which was to air on Saturday night, was trending on social media because of the mystery around it: Channel 4 had declined to offer any information about what it contained. But by the time it did air, we knew exactly what it contained.
The programme is a collaboration between Dispatches and the Sunday Times and, as happens often when a TV show and a newspaper mount a joint investigation, the newspaper went public first. With the online print version published a few hours before broadcast, many viewers found themselves in the unusual position of watching a documentary having already read its key allegations.
