What good did it do?

I happened to catch a BBC advert yesterday. Panorama was outing a couple who had dumped used tyres instead of recycling them and shot off to Mallorca with £15,000 profit. We were expected to be impressed by some clown of a reporter and his cameraman harassing the male perpetrator, who just ignored them and shot off in his car. So how was that not a total waste of licence-payers’ cash?