Conor Dignam on Broadcasting

This is turning out to be the "annus horribilis" of British television, with the industry in the dock and countless national newspaper headlines asking whether we can now believe anything we see on the box.

The crisis of trust – and it is without question a crisis – has come about because of a number of different scandals and controversies that have combined to create arguably the most difficult period in British television's history. The premium-rate phone line scandals, the Celebrity Big Brother racism row, the Blue Peter winner that wasn't, and the BBC and RDF's "Queengate" scandal – and then, last month, the BBC's shamed confession that some of its production staff pretended to be winning callers on Red Nose Day and Sport Relief.

The sense of shame and disappointment within the BBC was palpable. Suspensions of some executives involved in these decisions have followed, but the damage has been done. Both the BBC and commercial television have now pledged to put their houses in order.

Last week, TV's credibility took another blow with front-page reports in the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers that an ITV documentary – Malcolm and Barbara: Love's Farewell – had set out to mislead viewers into thinking they were witnessing the dying moments of Malcolm Pointon, an Alzheimer's patient, when in fact he passed away three days after the scene with his family at his bedside was recorded.

The story had greater impact because the programme's director was the acclaimed film-maker Paul Watson – a fierce critic of "reality TV" shows – who said the deception was contained in an ITV press release about his programme rather than in the programme itself. I'll come back to Watson and his film in a bit, but for those seeking to destroy what is left of TV's reputation, it was more fuel to add to the fire.

So, at the moment, it's hard to move without finding another columnist piling into the debate by denouncing the world of falsehood and fabrication that is television. Some of these columnists and newspapers are settling old scores or continuing political agendas by groups such as News International or Associated Newspapers, which are revelling in the damage done to the BBC.

British television certainly has some tough questions to answer over the next few months, but there's a mood of media McCarthyism abroad in which producers are asked: "Are you now, or have you ever been, involved in the dark arts of editing?"

Paul Watson is an obstinate, sometimes difficult programme-maker, but he is no fraud. He has earned a reputation for controversy because of the quality of his work in programmes such as Sylvania Waters. It is ludicrous to suggest that he would seek to "fake" a death scene. Malcolm Pointon's widow Barbara last week insisted that the programme did not mislead and that for her this was the last moment of her husband's living existence as he then went into a coma and died three days later.

Watson has in the past insisted that of course he "manipulates" the programmes he works on and what viewers see. That is the art of editing, he says. The big question is whether in doing so they distort the essential truth of the story they tell. Watson does not, and that is one of the reasons he has such a reputation.

There will, of course, be more to come on the ITV story, with executive chairman Michael Grade now promising (yet another) investigation. But the point here is that this episode, in its own right, did not warrant front-page splashes in the Daily Mail and other papers. Some producers and executives have displayed an astonishingly casual contempt for viewers, but equally there have been clear signs of over-reaction.

It made sense for the BBC to suspend all future commissions from RDF Media until the "Queengate" inquiry is completed – but why should Michael Grade over at ITV do the same? It smacked of ITV's management getting wobbly and failing to support a production company that in the past it has been keen to work with.

It's time for TV to start fighting back on the question of overall editorial performance. Thousands of hours of TV are produced each year, and fine programmes made by committed, honest teams. If TV is in the dock, it's worth asking whether the national press has the right to be self-appointed judge, jury and, if it has its way, executioner.

The Daily Mail would love to kill the BBC. So would Rupert Murdoch's News International titles. There are some juicy political points being scored in the newspaper coverage of TV's fall from grace, particularly around the publicly funded BBC.

It's worth asking whether these same newspapers are the models of editorial virtue that they expect all television to be. Have they ever taken a quote out of context – or made it up completely? Have any ever doctored or cropped a photograph to fit a headline? Or made errors of identification, saying someone in a picture was a wanted man or had a criminal record, only to apologise for the error and pay out later? Of course they have. All editorial organisations make mistakes and have to carry "corrections". It is the nature of editorial businesses and journalism that sometimes mistakes will be made – the critical thing is how they are dealt with, and that they are isolated mistakes rather than a systemic failing.

Ultimately, it must not be the country's national newspapers that decide whether TV has lost all trust, but the viewers.

The television industry has to hold its nerve now and defend the creative role of programme-makers and editors in doing what they have always done – creating outstanding television.

Q: Where do you find television's best quizzes? A: Children's channels

In this season of media mea culpa, I've a confession of my own to make.

I've just returned from two weeks in Porta Pollensa, Majorca. On arriving at our holiday apartment, I was delighted to find a TV that received almost all the BBC's channels, excluding for some reason BBC2 and News 24. Quite early in the holiday, my wife and I succumbed and allowed our sons Daniel and Joseph, three and six years old, to watch CBBC in the late afternoon after we'd returned from a day at the beach or poolside.

We justified our sense of guilt about this by arguing that they were tired, we had to prepare supper and run their baths, and it gave everyone an hour of relaxing before going out for the evening. But soon I was hooked on sitting down with them to watch some of the great programmes on CBBC, including Tracy Beaker and our particular favourites Raven and Get 100.

In fact, after two weeks of watching it – and competing with my six-year-old to get the answers – I'd go so far as to say that Get 100 could easily make the move to a daytime or even peak-time programme for a grown-up audience. It's a beautifully simple format, in which four young friends have to compete with each other to answer questions that all have numerical answers between 1 and 99. So, for example, what number do you get if you take the number of letters in Manchester, times it by the number of Premiership football teams in that city, and then add 17? The player who gets the answer wins the points and can add them to their tally, or give them to one of the other players, or take them off another player's total.

It's one of the best quiz formats I've seen for a long time. The presenter has an easy rapport with the kids and could easily front a peak-time version.

Anyway, a spell watching CBBC reminded me again of the strength of children's output in British television, particularly from the BBC, and why CBeebies and CBBC are by themselves worth the licence fee for parents with young children.

Oh; and the answer to the question, if you haven't worked it out, is 37.

Conor Dignam is publishing director of Broadcast