Why did Simpson do it? Many journalists believe that the BBC was determined to undermine its rivals at ITN. The reporting of the trial by Nick Higham, the BBC media's correspondent, was so biased against ITN that the Broadcasting Standards Council reprimanded him. Meanwhile Claire Fox of the RCP has gone on to become a panellist on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze. The BBC lets her get away with this: nobody questions the morality of whitewashing the worst crimes Europe has seen since Stalin.

But it's no use meeting one conspiracy theory with another. Ideological deformations rather than the commercial interests of the BBC were at heart of the affair. When massacres happen, many want to resist calls from liberal interventionists for the West to send troops. Their "little England" argument that we should mind our own business is respectable and coherent. But they can rarely stop there. They have to go on to minimise or deny massacres, and when they do they merge with the far-Left and become just as cranky and as debased.

Vulliamy asked Idriz Merdzanic, a doctor interned in the camp, what he thought of the far-leftists and anti-interventionist opinion formers. "On the one hand, we are trying to survive what happened," Merdzanic replied. "On the other, we have these people telling us that it is a lie, that it did not happen. It is hard enough to find words to describe the camps, but there are no words to describe what these people do."