Never go out on a limb unless you are sure it will bear your weight

The spat between the BBC and the British Government over the Iraq arms dossier brings to mind the image of a whole lot of people up a too small tree.

It didn’t look safe to me when Andrew Gilligan was up there on his own but when the rest of them climbed up to join him: I watched in silent disbelief. This is not one of those situations where there’s safety in numbers.

Now we’ve got Gilligan, Richard Sambrook and Greg Dyke along with Gavyn Davies and the rest of the BBC’s board of governors all sitting on a single anonymous source.

Maybe the rules are different for the BBC these days but I always thought one of the cardinal principles of good journalism was the bigger the story, the stronger and more numerous the sources you needed to back it up. And most times, no matter how big the story might be, if you can’t corroborate it you don’t run with it.

No matter how much you want to.