Training to remind staff about the importance of telling viewers the truth will cost the BBC more than £1 million in staff time and expenses.

About 17,000 BBC staff have to attend a two-hour course, in which employees are invited to discuss where the line should be drawn between artifice and deception in the wake of a series of scandals.

Vin Ray, the director of the BBC's college of journalism, said that the direct cost of the course would be "a maximum of £500,000", but the cost of taking each employee out for a half day more than doubled that figure.

Mark Thompson, the Director-General, introduced the scheme after the corporation admitted a series of faked broadcasts, including made-up winners to phone-ins for Children in Need and Comic Relief and a misleading edit of a promotional video for a documentary about the Queen