Seems like a decent business decision by the BBC for a change. Mark Chapman, for example, does far more work for the BBC at a similar level of quality at 1/5th of the cost.
I am not a communications expert but I would guess that how people learnt of that story and believed it might give some idea of how to fight back. The people who believe these things are unlikely to get their news from normal sources, so maybe truth tellers must infiltrate those sources? It is...