10/02/2017 Newswatch

Those are the headlines and this is BBC News. At ten o'clock Fiona Bruce

will be here with a full round-up of the news. First, it is time for

Newswatch. Hello and welcome to Newswatch

with me Samira Ahmed. Vital insight or just

demoralising coverage? The BBC's special NHS reporting

is in the spotlight. Is it ever justified

to show an image of a child who has just been killed,

as Newsnight did in a report Reports about the National Health

Service have been especially frequent on television news

bulletins over the last few weeks of winter,

but this week more so than ever. The BBC was running a week

of special programmes and reports, which they branded as Health Check,

about the state of the NHS, including Monday's Panorama

and lengthy items on the 6pm and 10pm bulletins on Monday,

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Seven years ago this council spent

about a third of its budget providing care and support to people

who are older and disabled. But now the cost of adult

social care is heading towards half of its budget,

with demand still increasing and that is at the heart

of the problems they are wrestling The BBC was given unrestricted

access to witness the We have had patients

here for 6-9 hours and we cannot We were in the corridor

for five hours. It isn't what you expect

from a country like ours. Hospitals like this one are running

at 95% capacity which means they are nearly full so with more

emergency cases coming in and difficulty discharging some

patients back into the community some of those needing surgery

are having to wait longer. Our health editor and special

correspondent and social affairs No question about the

comprehensive nature viewers told us by telephone

and webcam that they were concerned

about the effect of that coverage and that the BBC had

an axe to grind. Every night this week we have seen

the BBC 6pm and 10pm news leading with the story on the current state

of the NHS. We all know there are many

problems in the NHS, and there are many reasons for this

including bed blocking, immigration, lifestyles,

health tourism, waste, bad procurement, trivial A visits

and so on. And yet BBC news would rather have

us believe the problems are all due to so-called Tory cuts

and that throwing more money at the problem

will solve everything. Please, BBC, get your house

in order and start reporting This campaign should be

reserved for a Panorama I understand there are serious

problems in the NHS and I understand that things have got worse by some

measures, however, BBC News seems We have better health

care than most. Please try and help us to feel

grateful for what we have and try to help us make things

better rather than constantly I am not newsworthy because I am one

of the thousands of people who have received treatment from the NHS over

the last few months who have I only have praise for

the dedicated, professional staff who have carried out treatment

on their behalf. This week we have been bombarded

by the news on all channels telling us what is wrong

with our National Health Service. What you have as the BBC

is responsibility in terms of making sure we do not demoralise the staff

any more than they already are. I asked a nurse if she was impacted

by the adverse publicity seen She looked at me as if it

was a silly question. The BBC has spent the last week

with intensive wall-to-wall coverage of bad news about the NHS and some

important things are needed to be However, the effect

of that is to produce a downwards Come on BBC, it is not that we don't

need to know about these bad things and they do need addressing,

but I think that the benefit of the NHS and our appreciation

of it we should hear some Well, the health editor

for BBC News has been on the news for much of this

week and is here now. Viewers, as you can see

from looking at those clips, have felt there's been so much

coverage focusing on the negative things, waiting times

and cancellations, they wonder whether the BBC is hyping

up a sense of crisis? There have been several strong

newsline is which we would want to cover as part of our BBC

News output. We did some research on waiting

times, patients who were waiting longer than 18 weeks in England

to get surgery. That is the target, they should

be seen for a routine We discovered from our data that

nine out of ten hospitals are running at levels that

are deemed to be above what is Institute for Fiscal Studies has

said that health spending in England has gone up but per person it

will start bawling. On Thursday, very bleak figures

from NHS England on how the performance in December

was the worst since records began and looked like it was going to get

worse in January after documents I think it is our job to report

on facts and figures In terms of staff morale,

I take on board what people were saying there about staff

feeling downtrodden because of this. Equally we have had contact,

e-mails and calls, from staff who said it is really good

that the BBC is focusing on what is really going on,

from senior consultants to junior This is what the BBC should be

doing and it has not done It is finding that balance. One

viewer said that they felt the coverage felt like a downward spiral

of despondency and that was so overwhelming that perhaps it needs

to be balanced with some coverage that shows the more positive side.

There has been quite a lot of positive side. There was a big

debate on health involving patients and staff and other health experts,

including some patient testimony on the positives they found with the

NHS. We have had coverage throughout the week on different aspects of how

GPs are coming to terms with the different challenges. The news

challenge has reports on innovative schemes to link up care homes with

GP practices. There using technology. We tried to emphasise

the positives. We had a Yeovil Hospital scheme that aims to look

after older patients in their autumn this book facility away from

accident and emergency. We tried hard to talk about the positives

possible solutions, but equally we have two state the facts which are

straightforward. It is a difficult balance and we are holding an

important institution to account, and it should be about providing the

best possible patient care and the government should make sure it is

funded adequately and it is making efficient use of taxpayers' money.

Some complaints have been but it is felt the BBC is politically

campaigning and saying it is about more funding for the NHS. There is

the opinion that the NHS should have more funding, but health spending in

the UK as a whole as a share of national income is below France and

Germany, it is falling, the ISS during the week have made clear that

spending will fall in a way it has never done before in terms of

spending per head of population. We have taken those arguments and put

them forward. We have been accused in the past of not addressing lack

of funding. We are not being political, we're stating facts.

Equally, we have been very clear that there are some who feel the NHS

could name more efficient use of their resources and we have

reflected that argument, it is not just about money it is about better

ways of joining up care, better ways of spending money. It is an

important debate and think it is only right to address the issue of

funding. Thank you. When is it justified to broadcast close-up

images of someone who has recently died? The question was raised after

the Newsnight report on Wednesday from a village in Yemen where US

special forces attacked and Al-Qaeda compound. Several civilians were

killed, including a boy who was showing. This viewer said that :

we put that point to BBC News and they told us:

Finally, we have almost managed to get through an additional Newswatch

without mentioning Donald Trump, but not quite. A programme has been

running about his first hundred days in office. Even some of his fans are

not happy with this. One viewer wrote:

Thank you for all your comments this week. If you want to share your

opinions on BBC News or appeared on the programme you can call us or

e-mail us using the details on screen. You can find this on Twitter

and do look at our website for previous discussions. That is all

from us, we will be back to hear your thoughts about BBC News

coverage again next week.