This week’s BBC Newsnight/McAlpine omnishambles has not just been a masterclass in getting it wrong. It’s been several masterclasses, all rolled into one.

So spectacular have the failings been, it’s hard to rank them in order of seriousness. But here goes:

1=. Failure to put its allegations of abuse of care home teenagers directly to Lord McAlpine. Even though the programme did not name the senior Thatcher era Tory at the heart of the allegations, Newsnight journalists knew who abuse victim Steve Messham was talking about. It’s a fundamental journalism principle that I hope all of our students have already noted: if you’re making allegations in print or on air, you put them to the subject first. 

1=. Failure to put the George Entwhistle, or at the very least a senior executive, on last night’s Newsnight to apologise. When you get something catastrophically wrong, your apology must be swift and unmistakable. Messham apologised on camera, but no BBC boss felt the need to do the same. The result is to make a very vulnerable individual appear more culpable than the corporation. Every single BBC journalist will have noted this. Remember, the DG is also the corporation’s editor-in-chief. In football parlance, he’s ‘lost the dressing room’.  His appearances this morning are too little, too late. His position is surely untenable. 

3. Failure to ask the obvious question. How did Messham know the identity of his abuser? Another fundamental journalism principle: if your mother says she loves you, check.

4. Failure to understand the power of social media. The editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which had carried out much of the work on the McApline story for Newsnight, had tweeted prior to its broadcast hinting that a senior Tory would be named. It shouldn’t have been any surpise that the same networks would be used to try to establish that identity when no name was broadcast.

5. Failure to read the newspapers. As every CfJ student knows, you fail to read the papers before conference at your peril. Yet Entwhistle admitted this morning he hadn’t seen yesterday’s Guardian suggesting Newsnight had a mistaken identity problem. Scarcely credible.

I can’t separate my top two. Others may have more to add.