Seems like the kind of thing risk management should have asked about. The story needed telling, but when who tells the story becomes a story in itself, you're in the dictum "no news about journalists themselves is good news"

I think there's a possibility in a modern broadcaster, where you "pitch" expensive ideas, this one would have been both expensive and demanding contacts into a murky community. He had the connections, for sure. Maybe for a commissioning editor that took care of one kind of risk?