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Reed added: “That piece wasn’t interested in informing readers with the truth. “If I was still dabbling in investigative journalism I would pursue it, ask why she stuck to that opinion,” Syed said.

It is hard to understand this act of bad faith journalism. Even worse than knee-jerk responses based on unthinking prejudice is the fact that Reed and Syed provided a response to the Observer article before it was published, refuting with detailed evidence many of the author’s points, yet Sodha chose to go ahead with her version - that the real threat is the Muslim community and to defend the podcast with cries of “Islamophobia” is to let down the victims of conservative forces.

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None of the messages from the series have been taken on board by the journalists and officials who responded. Sodha’s article wheels out the same excuses to justify the excessively heavy-handed responses by the press and the authorities to a conspiracy-laden letter. Despite the letter being labeled “bogus” very quickly, it still triggered a response at the very highest levels of government and a wholesale revision of counterextremism laws – which until today is defended as a legitimate response, despite the entire lack of evidence of this “plot”. The scandal at the heart of the podcast is a letter, purportedly giving evidence of an Islamist plot to infiltrate and take over schools to spread extremist messaging: the so-called “Trojan Horse letter”. The response Syed is referring to was an article by Sonia Sodha in The Guardian’s Sunday edition, The Observer, and stands as a case study in the very themes that the podcast explores about structural Islamophobia in the UK. That’s the reality of journalism, that someone can read a single article written in a few hours and use it to dismiss years of research and investigation.” “What really burns me,” added his co-host Hamza Syed, “is that four and half years of investigative reporting is worth one opinion piece. “I find it truly bewildering,” said Brian Reed, after searching for words, “that after a deeply reported investigative series that lays out in detail how officials in all levels of government used a document they knew was bogus to make sweeping changes to counter-extremism laws, and there’s just been … nothing.” There have been few follow-up questions directed toward the officials involved, many of whom remain in their positions and have even been promoted.

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Petulant, disgraceful, bewildering: These are the words that the hosts of The New York Times and Serial Productions podcast series The Trojan Horse Affair use to describe the responses to their in-depth investigation.

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