The big story - Ian Taylor

A new editor has arrived at the BBC's current affairs programme Worldweek with a brief to take it down market and up ratings. Meanwhile one of his journalists has been abducted by rebels on the remote Philippine island of Mindanao. Self-regarding reporter, Damien Street is despatched in the company of his beautiful researcher Olivia to try to track him down. But so too is former colleague Gerry Harris, now freelancing for Channel 4. But when Damien also goes missing, Gerry and Olivia find themselves thrown together and their joint investigations begin to take a wholly different turn. A perverse form of trafficking is taking place in exactly the area where their colleagues disappeared. It's a big story and the trafficker is aware they're on to him. But he knows journalists.Suppose he could buy them off with an even bigger one. Suppose he let them into his secret of the rainforest. Suppose he showed them ...paradise. Now that would be a big story. "The Big Story" takes the lid off the world of factual programme-making in a fast paced and witty satire. It's a tale of truth, temptation and the journalist's eternal willingness to compromise principle in pursuit of a good story. Never let the facts get in the way.