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Dispatches provoked controversy this week with a film offering a platform to an Islamic extremist who said he would be happy to be labelled a terrorist, and called on fellow Muslims to arm themselves against non-believers. “Abu Muhammed” claimed British Muslims were “at war” with the Government, and said that the July 7 bombings were “very justified.”

Abu Usamah, preacher at the Green Lane Mosque, said: “To try and demonise the efforts of these people by taking their comments out of context was shocking.”

Scotland Yard said they were looking into the edition of Dispatches broadcast on Monday night. Dispatches: Britain Under Attack explored the roots of Islamic extremism in the UK. It featured a man known as “Abu Muhammed”, his face disguised by a scarf, who told British Muslims they were “in a state of war” and said the July 7 bombings were “justified”.

“It was very justified. Because Allah says if someone committed an aggression against you, you commit aggression against them. If somebody transgresses against you, transgress against them the same way,” he said.

According to the programme, Muhammed is banned from entering Britain but broadcasts to British Muslims via the internet.

A Met spokesman said: “We are assessing the content of a Dispatches programme broadcast on August 6 to determine if any offences may have been disclosed. We will also be liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service in due course.”

The row is the latest in a series of controversies over "faking" scenes in television.

An ITV1 documentary shot by Paul Watson - to be broadcast tonight - was billed as showing the death of Alzheimer’s sufferer Malcolm Pointon. But Mr Pointon’s brother Graham came forward on Times Online to say that the final scenes were actually filmed three days before he died. ITV has called in a team of media lawyers to investigate whether there was any deliberate deceit.

A BBC investigation aims to find out why journalists were shown a trailer for a forthcoming documentary about the Queen which wrongly claimed that she stormed out of a photoshoot. The BBC had to apologise to the Queen after admitting that the trailer had been edited misleadingly. Production company RDF took the blame for the editing.

The Channel 4 series Born Survivor featured adventurer Bear Grylls coping with “perilous situations” in the wild. But far from sleeping outside in the great outdoors, Grylls actually spent nights in comfortable hotels, according to a crew member on the show.

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