11/02/2013 Newsnight

Tonight, the stunning announcement by the Pope that he is to quit. The

first to do so in almost 600 years. Back in 1415, Pope Gregory didn't

have to deal with the modern media, child abuse scandals, aid or

contraception. Where does Pope Benedict now leave the Roman

Catholic Church? We will ask is it about time we had a Pope not from

Europe. Also tonight:

Britain's age crisis, the Government offers new help on

paying for care. But does it really mean you will not have to sell your

home when you get old? We sold her house pretty early on

in the proceedings. My guess is that we have probably got enough,

but the current rate, for about another two years before she's

penniless. We will hear from the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. And,

who is the Fleet Street Fox? You are about to find out! Good evening,

there is no doubt that Pope Benedict has grown increasingly

frail in recent month. Some say he was acutely aware that the illness

of his charismatic predecessor, John Paul II, left the church

rudderless towards the end. Pope Benedict is widely admired as

theologian and intellectual, there will be some in the church content

to see him go. He was criticised for his apparent slowness to get to

grips with the child abuse scandal, and not modernising the church the

way the critics wanted. We will get to those issues in a moment. We

begin the coverage live in Rome with our correspondent Alan Little.

Have you met anybody there who was not surs priced by this decision?

No, it has stunned the entire city, and the entire Catholic world.

There wasn't a hint of this in advance. Pope Benedict did in his

statement, in Latin, to the cardials he made the announcement

to give a clue. He said having examined his conscience before God.

It is entirely possible that he consulted nobody, that he took this

decision entirely alone, after months of contemplation and prayer.

He also gave some clues as to why he might have done T he said in

today's world subject to so many rapid changes, and shaken by

questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern,

the Barque of St Peter, and proclaim the gospel, both strength

of mind and body are necessary. That is clearly a reference to the

kinds of things you were mentioning in your introduction there, the

child abuse scandal and so on, it needs much more a rigorous person

in charge to meet the challenges of today's world. One thing that

really strike me, for a figure that some people saw as quite a

Conservative figure, this is an extraordinary radical thing to do.

It is great paradox, it may be the most modernising thing he has done

in his entire pontificate. He has broken with 600 years of precedent.

There hasn't been a single time, since before the reformation, when

it has been true that a regining Pope has been alive at the same

time as an ex-Pope. That opens up some real danger. There may be some

in the Catholic fold who will wonder after the new Pope takes

office, what the real Pope thinks, particularly if the successor is

someone who breaks with the conservative policies and

philosophies of Pope Benedict. We can assume he plans to disappear

from public view, and not to make any public statements, for fear of

causing a split in the Channel Tunnel. This is a very radical

thing, -- in the church. This is a very radical thing for a

conservative Pontiff to have done. What is the Benedict legacy, and is

it time for Rome to find a successor, not from increasingly

secular Europe, but from the real powerhouses of modern Catholicism,

Africa and out South America. We have looked at the recent past and

looking into the future of the papacy and the church.

He's a Pope normally known for his caution and conservatism. But the

announcement Benedict XVI made today, is so unusual, it is said to

have bum dumb founded even his closest -- dumb founded even his

closest aides. TRANSLATION: I have had to recognise my incapacity for

fulfiling the ministry entrusted to me. I'm well aware of the

seriousness of this act. With full freedom anouns I step down from the

Bishop of Rome. He is the first Pope to resign, rather than die in

office, since Gregory XII, almost 600 years ago.

Although his physical frailty has become increasingly apparent, and

he hinted in an interview two years ago he might take the step. Few

took the possibility seriously. On the streets of Rome tonight, there

was considerable bewilderment. TRANSLATION: It was a total

surprise. No-one was expecting news like this. TRANSLATION: It's once

in a lifetime news, nothing like this has ever happened before. A

Pope has never stepped down like this. TRANSLATION: I think there

will have been other reasons, but I don't know. I don't know whether it

is internal church matters, or whether it is to do with the

difficult relationships the Pope had with the outside world. I'm

thinking of the problems relating to paedophilia. The Pope has had a

number of issues he has had to confront. As well as the usual

strains of office, heavy on a man of 85, Benedict has had the

additional stress of the scandals that have broken around the church

in recent years. The flood of allegations of abuse of children by

priests. And last year, the conviction of his former butler,

for stealing his private papers and leaking them to a journalist.

documents were very, very confidential ones. They showed huge

tensions and conflicts within the Vatican. And it turned out that the

source of these was a member of the Pope's own household. His butler. I

was told when I was in Rome late last year that this had had really

distressed the Pope. Really had been, perhaps even, I don't know,

the straw that broke the camel's back.

Following John Paul II, his charismatic and often energetic

predecessor, was a hard task for Benedict. The former Cardinal

Ratzinger was a shy, bookish man, passionate about doctrine, who had

been a professor of theology in his native Germany. When he was first

elected, there was some controversy over his membership, aged 14 of the

Hitler youth, though boys of his age were required to join. Far more

serious of the criticism of much later in his life, as the Vatican's

chief enforcer, he failed to deal adequately with the allegations of

abuse by Clergy. I think he will go down in history as the ostrich Pope,

the one who stuck his head in the sand, while the storm was brewing.

From 1981 on wards, he was head of the Vatican body that was in charge

of disciplining earnt priests, and yet, we have --er rent priests, and

yet, we have discovered letters in American mediation, where he wrote

to bishops saying please can we defrock the priest, and he was

saying no, he's old, or he's young, founding reasons not to defrock

priests, who they knew were guilty. He thinks when Benedict now retires,

he may face lawsuits from abuse survivors. While he's Pope, he is

head of state, it is something of a make-believe state, the Vatican,

but it is nonetheless regarded as a state. So he has absolute immunity

against all lawsuits. But as General Pinochet found, when he

became an ex-head of state, that immunity withers away.

I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured.

Pope Benedict made an unprecedented apology to abuse victim, and he

made it easier to defrock guilty priests. But for many, including

many Catholics, that wasn't enough. He spoke at one time about the need

to get rid of the filth in the church, and people believed he was

talking about the child abuse saga. The difficulty for him has been

that throughout his papacy, there have been indications that senior

clerics in the church, who were aware of problems with priests, had

covered them up. Now they might have been historic, but they keep

coming out. There has been a terrible case in America recently,

and so the trust of people in the world at large, let alone Catholics,

is constantly challenged, and has been throughout this papacy.

yet, as Benedict showed on his visit to Britain in 2010, he has

been able to inspire many. There has been opposition to his

traditionalist views on homosexuality, abortion,

contraception and women priests, but those positions are also widely

supported. Particularly in parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Where the church is now stronger than in many European countries.

Might the next Pope, for the first time in history, be a non-European.

It is from west Africa that one of the most likely candidates comes.

myself might be the next Pope, is it possible? Again, this is almost

like saying something I said already in 2009, when I got here to

Rome. If God so wishes, then I will probably say "his will be done".

After the shock of today's news, the church has just a few weeks to

decide. The smoke that signals the election of a new Pope is expected

to rise before Easter. We can discuss all this with Fiona

O'Reilly from Catholic Voices, Lavinia Byrne, a former nun, who

left her religious order over the issue of women priests, Michael

Walsh, a Catholic author and historian, but first, Father

Christopher Jamison a former abbot, and star of the BBC series The

Abbey. A lot of Popes, for hundreds of years have gone through

infirmity and old age and continued in office. Why has it stopped him?

If we take the previous Pope, John Paul II he saw his illness as a

witness to those who are sick and infirm. He wanted people to see him

in his infirmity. He went to the balcony to show himself and say I'm

still a child of God and this is an important witness of the importance

of caring for the sick and infirm and dying. Now, Pope Benedict is

not ill, he's just very old. I think there is a significant

difference. That because people can now live, not so much through

illness, but they can live through old age quite remarkably, for a

very long time, he could live with us for many, many more years. He's

aware that actually the declining years of a person who is just

ageing is quite different to a person who is sick. He feels it is

right, in all humility to admit that and step down. Do you think it

is partly to do with, getting on to the spiritual role in a moment, but

the managerial role in the church, which is very taxing, and that's

where he has run into some trouble, not the spiritual, intellectual,

theological side, but it demands someone who is fitter? It demands

someone who is fit to deal with what is a significant organisation.

I also think what has distressed him, is, for example, I'm told his

doctors told him he shouldn't do any transatlantic travel. One of

the high points of the church's life is World Youth Day, next one

is in Rio deJanuary nary in July, he feels that millions of young

Catholics would be very disappointed to have World Youth

Day without the Pope. That is the Pope's personal invitation to the

world, and he probably feels they deserve to have the Pope there.

you feel in a secular world, we fail to, particularly media, we

fail to recognise the spiritual side, and we treat him as if he's

the head of BP, Microsoft or Apple, and that's where it is the

difference. You have put your finger on T he feels above all, the

role of spiritual head requires energy, to preach, to counsel, to

teach. He's, above all, a teacher, if he feels he can't teach he's not

able to fulfil a key role in the church. You are right, most chief

executives don't have to be teachers, along with being chief

executives. He has been widely praised today as an intellectual

and theologian, was he up to the challenges of the modern media and

the issues, like child abuse, and we heard about the butler which

took a toll on him personally. has shown himself shrewd about the

media, he's the first Pope to tweet. It was a media he could handle. The

challenge to speak in 144 characters is a good challenge for

an intellectual. He did interviews live where he allowed young people

to send him questions. He's not intimidated by that. He's

intimidated by the pace of it, not the reality of it, but the sheer

pace of it. Let me bring in our other guests, I said to our

reporter at the start, this is for somebody often considered to be a

conservative, we can debate that, many people think he is very

conservative on some issues, this was an amazingly radical step for

him to take? It was, but he has been radical in a subdued way on

other issues. For example, he is one of the first Popes we have seen

really provide teaching in the moment, that's relevant to the big

questions that civil society is facing. A good example would be, as

the world was wrestling with the causes of the economic crisis

between 2007-2010, he was the first one to come out and saying everyone

was relying on market forces and reward being enough to make people

do the right thing, that money without an ethical framework around

it gets you into a lot of hot water very quickly. Actually, he has been

a reformer, but perhaps a very understated one. Do you think

people are wrong to see him as a conservative? He's conservative in

one ways, but there is more to him than meets the eye. His work to

reform Vatican finances is another place where he has taken steps to

open up the Vatican, they haven't caught the media attention, or had

the coverage that we will, in the end, realise they may have merited.

Lavinia Byrne, how do you see him, and see this legacy in terms of

reform and change, or otherwise? Well, clearly he was always going

to be a transitional Pope. The Cardinals who elect him knew he was

an old man. They must have envisaged a short period of office

for him. What's intriguing is that he has removed himself, and on

today of all days, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, which is a date

that is supposed to be all about healing, and about health, so, what

this is health-wise, what it means, is still intriguing, I think.

can I put it, are you glad, frankly, that he has decided to go, because

you hope that the future may be more to your liking within the

church? No, I think it would be ungrae gracious to say that I was -

- ungracious to say I was glad. In my lifetime there have been seven

Popes, you know Popes come, Popes go, the church goes on forever. But

I do envisage a future that is more open to addressing the critical

question about how the church inhabits the world. It's no good

just condemning secularism, the church must deal with the questions

that are being raised by contemporary society, and discern

where God's will is. I wonder if he suffers in comparison with his

predecessor. The famous quote was, if John Paul II had chosen another

profession, he would have been a film star, and Pope Benedict would

have been a university professor. There is something in that? He was

a university professor, I don't think that is true about John Paul

II, he would have probably been a footballer! The point is the same?

The point is the same, I take it. One of the things I feel about it,

and I feel about what has already been said, is this managerial role.

I mean the Vatican is a very dysfuntional organisation at the

moment, it was under the last years of his predecessor, probably was

throughout the whole of his time, it really wasn't that he was

interested in that side of things at all. So, you have got the Pope

coming in with a dysfuntional, and a lot of us thought the election of

a ecurial official, a non-Italian, without some of the traditional

ties they have, he was chosen to reform the ecurial, and that hasn't

happened. As all the revelations that came out with the butler's

letters revealed to us. I think it has got much worse. I think the

money thing is an interesting one. You can't really say that he has

reformed the finances. You can't say he has reformed the finances,

you can't reform the Vatican money system, when the European banks

have turned around and said we won't accept credit card

transactions because you haven't got adequate money laundering

structures in place. Hold on a second, that's not true.

European Union's body for dealing with these issues gave the Vatican,

which had only just entered into the system of trying to comply with

the money standards. They said the Vatican City had made great

progress, even though there was more to be done. Everyone was

frankly surprised when bank turned around and withdrew the credit.

That is a little bit of a red herring in this, it is the Money

Val's judgment, the European Union's judgment, which said the

Vatican City is heading in the right way. That was the Pope's

initiative. For some people the legacy of this Pope will be

unfortunately the person on whose watch we all became aware of child

abuse. He didn't do enough to stop it? I think what we have got to

recognise is, he was on a learning curve as much as anybody else in

society. Getting his head round the phenomenon of paedophilia, the

global scale of this issue, and did he learn enough fast enough, did he

act or go far enough, those are all good questions we have to ask. What

is for sure is he is a Pope who was determined to tackle this head-on.

He was one of the first to actually meet repeatedly with victims, at

their request, behind closed doors, away from the glare of the media.

He was the one that reformed Canon Law, so it was easier to expel

priests. One of the criticisms was he was slow and actually at the

start he covered it up, he did get there eventually? It is not fair to

say he covered it up, I think it is fair to say he was grappling to

understand and get the facts on the table to see the scale of the issue.

Has he gone far enough and fast enough, has he dealt with it? No,

is there more to be done, absolutely. I think we will see for

the first time that the church actually said we have a huge

problem, we have got this absolutely wrong, and we have to

act and take steps in the right direction. You left over the issue

of women in the church and the role of women in the church. I'm

wondering what challenges you see for his success so, and whether

that person, perhaps if he comes from Latin America, or Africa, may

just be a greater symbol of the change within the church?

things, the new Pope has to deal with the immediately, one is

internal organisation, we need a man with a big broom, who will go

in and sort out the Vatican. Sort out the curia, but also we need

somebody who is prepared to engage with the questions that really need

addressing. Particularly about the use of power in the church. And

that is why, increasingly, I go back to the role of women. Because,

the church have the idea it would be a good idea to educate girls,

but what does it know, it doesn't seem to know what to do with

educated women. It seems to me all the questions about child abuse as

well, are really about the abuse of power, rather than limit it to a

sexual perspective. Clergy who are accountable for their use of power,

will not abuse so easily. That's the key issue to be addressed.

Clerical power. Do you agree with some of that? I think that some of

what has been said has to be taken very, very seriously, I wouldn't

put it in quite the stark terms that she does. If you take the

issue about a big broom to clean out the Vatican. I think it is one

of the most commonly said things about any in coming Government is

it will have to come to grips with the Civil Service. We have it here

in Britain, everybody complains about the Civil Service. They

always have difficulties internally, any in coming leader has to grapple

with that. To imagine that the Vatican has a monopoly of those

issues is wrong. I know that coming back to the women issue, the role

of women in the church in the exercise of power in the church,

this is a very serious issue. I was very struck that there was an

American Cardinal, Cardinal dole lan, who said the one way -- D

Cardinal Dolan, to say the one way to deal with it is to have a woman

Cardinal. And it was extraordinary, there is no block to that, you

don't have to be ordained to be a Cardinal. You have to be a cleric

to be a Cardinal, you can't have women clerics. In terms of the big

broom, do you think it would be refreshing if this were a non-

European, is that irrelevant? afraid I part company with a lot of

people on this. I'm regarded to be on the liberal side of the church,

most liberals would say we ought to have a Latin American, I don't go

along with that, and for this reason, it is partly the management

issue that you touched upon. In fact, what happens if you choose

the very best man to run the church? From wherever he is in the

world. You have a chief executive, you have got exactly what

Christopher Jamison was saying he doesn't want. That is the notion,

what Rome needs is a bishop, it is about time we got back to having a

Bishop of Rome, rather than a Pontiff or Pope that governs the

whole church in the way he has been doing in fairly recent to the last

couple of centuries. Basically I think it would be a mistake to

choose somebody from outside. word? We have to look at the

pontificate in the round, there is steps Ford and more working to done.

The issue of women and their ordination into the priesthood is a

fascinating one, it is not even to do with this pontificate, John Paul

II came out and said it is not about whether or not we want to

ordain them it is what is in the books, and what Cardinal Ratzinger,

and Benedict XVI as he has done is realise the Laity, male and female

have a huge role to play. It will be to see if if the next Pope

builds on that. Thank you very much. In a moment we

reveal the Fleet Street Fox, why have their blogs and tweets

intrigued and annoyed so many. One definition of surprise is the

dog which walks on two leg, he might not do it perfectly, but the

surprise is he does it at all. You might say the same about care of

the elderly, which for years has been bedevilled Governments who

want us to encourage us to save for our own age, and knowing that the

penalty of it is when we get old and need help we might have to sell

our houses to pay for the care. The Government has taken a step to deal

with the issue. Although there was criticism of the details, there was

recognition that doing it at all in difficult economic times may be an

important step. Diana Golding had enjoyed a

fulfiling old age. Busy with two son, five grandchildren, three

great-grand children. But for the last six years she hasn't been able

to recognise any of them. Dementia has effectively removed her from

her family, and left her dependant on full-time care in Shropshire.

sold her house pretty early on in the proceedings. In 2006, because

we knew we were going to need the money and the house was otherwise

empty and decaying. We subsequently invested that money, but we're

getting a little towards the end of it now. My guess is that we have

probably got enough at the current rate for about another two years,

before she's penniless. Diana has been in a care home since

2005. The cost of �300,000, has been met by the sale of her home.

It's this situation, affecting tens of thousands of elderly people

every year, that has forced the Government to announce what it

calls a new era of support. From April 2017, an individual's

social care costs will be capped at �75,000. Those in nursing homes

will still pay up to �12,000 in bed and board charges. Those with

assets below �123,000 will get financial help. The Health

Secretary told MPs that while people should contribute to care

costs, there had to be a limit. Though it will be greater than the

�25,000-�50,000, recommended by an independent commission. We want our

country to be one of the best places in the world to grow old.

These plans will give certainty and peace of mind about the cost of

care, making sure we can all get the support we need, without facing

unlimited costs, whiels also ensuring the most support goes to

those -- whilst also ensuring the most support goes to those with the

greatest need. This is the sort of active old age everyone hopes for,

in reality an estimated one in ten will face care costs of more than

�100,000. Today's announcement should take the pressure off them.

But Labour believes more is needed. We have seen a doubling in the

number of older people being readmitted to hospital, over the

last ten years. The NHS spends �18 million a month on delayed

discharges from hospital, because people can't get the right care and

support at home. That's not good for elderly people, and it is not

good use of tax-payers' money. We need a much bigger and more radical

transformation, if we are really going to meet the needs of an

ageing population. The Government wants to give this

population certainty, so they can plan and eninsure themselves to

cover the �75,000 worth of care. Campaigners say the changes are

welcome, but don't address the here and now. These proposelias will

only deal with the care problems that arise in the future. They do

nothing to help people -- proposals will only deal with the care

problems that arise in the future. They don't help those already

paying for care, and they won't improve the standards and quality

of care. On their own they don't deal with any of the short-term

problems but they will help put in place a better framework for the

long-term. The reforms that might have spared Mike Golding from

selling his mother's house will cost a billion pounds. This will be

covered by a mixture of national insurance payments, and a new U-

turn, abandoning by the roadside one of the Conservative Party's

more popular pledges. The next Conservative Government will raise

the inheritance tax threshold to �1 million. When George Osborne wowed

the Tories by promising to raise the threshold for interance tax, he

appeared d inheritance tax he appeared to walk on political water.

It left Prime Minister Brown wading through PR accused of snapping the

heels of the election. Now he will put off that decision for another

three years, infuriating his backbenchers. This is the yellow

peril, the Liberal Democrats in the coalition saying well you are not

going to get the social care package. We will veto it unless you

agree to make more people pay inheritance tax, it is clearly a

problem of coalition Government. Clearly if you had a Conservative

Government, and George Osborne was Chancellor of a Conservative

Government, no way would this be the solution to paying for social

care. For such backbenchers it is the curse of coalition politics,

but the Government is putting it down to the reality of an ageing

and needful population. For its plans to be sustainable, attitudes

must change. So we are being told that social care costs must be

planned for, in the same way as pensions.

It is a shift towards greater individual responsibility. As more

of us get older, with greater numbers suffering dementia, such a

change is considered inevitable. Earlier tonight I talked with the

Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, about his proposal, and some of the

criticisms. It is a very big forward, but we have to recognise

that with the financial circumstances as they are, we can't

afford to get that cap quite as low as we might have liked. The fact

that we have got it means for the first time there is certainty in

the system. And people can make provision for their social care

cost, and we can avoid the -- costs, and we can avoid a double tragedy,

that somebody gets a condition like dementia, and they find as well as

having to cope with all the pressures of the debilitating

disease, they also have to sell their house. That is what we are

trying to stop. You are talking about certainty, yet you would

accept there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the cost of

accommodation and food, which is not covered. And people may still

have to sell their homes, but perhaps not as quickly as before?

Not at all, the point of these proposals is no-one has to sell

their homes. The reason for that is because by setting an upper limit,

people can make provision for the maximum amount they will have to

pay. They can include that in their pension plans, just like they plan

for an annuity, a lump sum when they retire, they can make

provision for the amount they might have to pay for their care costs.

If you would like to do a bit more, but we can't afford it as a nation,

why not scrap free bus passes, TV licenses and Winter Fuel Payments

to the richer pensioners to help you along the route, they don't

need the money, and the people you are talking about do need the money.

The Prime Minister made a firm commitment in the run up to the

last election that he would protect pensioner benefits. We looked at

all options when looking at how to fund it, we decided this is the

right way of doing it. If we had done something else that had cost

many billions of pounds more, people would have said how are you

taking on these extra liabilities at a time when we are reducing the

deficit. That would have been the tone of the questions. What I have

announced today is going to cost an extra billion pounds a year by the

end of the next parliament, that is a significant amount of money by

anyone's calculation. It's going to create the certainty we need,

whilst also helping a lot of people, particularly the people who have

worked hard, and saved hard, done the right thing for all their lives,

paid off their mortgage, but then found that everything they have

worked for all their lives is at risk. This allows them a way of

removing that risk, that is why it is a big step. Indeed, but you said,

the Prime Minister made a pretty solemn manifesto commitment about

the bus passes and TV licenses and so on, there was also a commitment

to raise the inheritance tax threshold to �1 million. You won't

meet the commitment in order to pay for it. One commitment is

sacrosanct, and the other isn't? Not at all, first of all that

commitment on inheritance tax was a Conservative manifesto commitment,

it is not in the coalition agreement. There is an important

difference, we are in a coalition. The reason we made that commitment

as Conservatives is because we want to help people, who have worked all

their lives, protect their inheritance. Today's announcement

is about helping people protect that very inheritance, against the

lottery of care costs. 10% of us are going to end up spending more

than �100,000 on our care costs, and we don't know if we are in that

10% or not. It is completely random whether everything you have worked

at for your whole life is going to get wiped out, because you are

unlucky enough to get dementia and to have very high social care costs.

With respect, the acomdaix and food costs are not covered, therefore --

accommodation and food costs are not covered, and therefore there

will always be a covering of those? You have to pay the accommodation

and food costs now any way, you would have had to pay those costs

if you had been living in home and not residential care. It is a lot

more expensive than living in your own home that you have already paid

for? You continue to get your pension and the other things you

need, if you are not getting enough money you will get additional

support. The reason why we have included that provision, we think

it would be wrong to have a system where you are better off going into

residential care than staying at home. That is why I think it is

important that you make a separate provision for accommodation and

food costs. We have done that on the basis of that being around

�1,000 a month, at 2017/18 prices. Do you wish the economy were in

such a state that you could have said the threshold was �50,000?

is up to future Governments to look at these things when we have paid

off the deficit. But I think we have to recognise that in very,

very difficult financial circumstances, we have created

something that will help many, many people. Even the people who don't

get the direct financial help, will get the certainty to plan and make

provision. It is a bold thing, we will be one of the first countries

in the world, perhaps "it" first country in the world to introduce a

reform of this magnitude. But we had the previous Government that

sat on this issue for 13 years, we have acted, and despite the

incredible challenge of that budget deficit, we have found the

resources to fund this properly. I think it is a day that we can all

cheer. She called herself the Fleet Street

Fox, tweeting and blogging anonymously, some would say bitchly,

she found a considerable following on the Internet. Some of her

targets thought she was just awful. That seemed to at to her followers,

now Susie Bonneface has outed herself. We wondered if talking

about her style would talk about the death of traditional newspapers.

The she was the Fleet Street insider that amassed 50,000

followers by blogging tabloid style about the daily news. When she

began it was under the nom de guerre of Fleet Street Fox, some

were loving it and some hated it. She was involved in high-profile

spats that led to her to be nearly identified. As Fleet Street Fox,

she was happy to defend the principle of phone hacking, arguing

it would be justifiable if you heard that Andy Coulson had left a

voicemail for Michael Brooks, in which they admitted they knew about

-- Rebecca Brooks, and admitted they knew about it. It comes down

to personal judgment, but journalists are expected by the

reader as much as their employers to do things no-one else would.

These are tough times for traditional print media, almost all

national newspapers are losing circulation year on year. The

Financial Times editor, recently announced plans to cut jobs at the

paper. As part of a move to focus more resources on-line. Saying from

now on, the digital output came before the newspaper.

There is more upheaval ahead for newspapers this week. Tomorrow,

Conservative minister, Oliver Letwin, will set out his party's

plans to create an independent press regulator, backed by a royal

charter. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats want a tougher

regime, statutory underpinning of press laws, proposed by Lord

Justice Leveson, after his report into media ethic. They will all

meet to thrash out their differences, already it is looking

as though reaching agreement will be tricky.

My guests are here. What intrigues me, who reads you

on-line, who is your market, is it the same people who read the Mirror

or other Sunday newspapers? shouldn't think so. The one thing I

have learned from doing the blogging, which is something I

found out about as you go along, there is an entirely different

audience on-line. It is one of the things facing newspapers today. On-

line you are looking at a market which is 18-35-year-olds, they have

access to smartphones, they are used to instant news and reaction.

Where as in the newspapers you are looking at people who are over 35,

and want things in their hands. It is an entirely different market

place. It is quite interesting with all the hand wringing about the

ethical standards s or lack of them in newspapers, that there is room

for stuff which there is no editor you have to go through, you can do

it anonymously, the press complaints commission have no

leverage on what you write. It is a completely different world? That is

the basic problem that Leveson had, there was a free for all, to some

extent, on-line, but the reason that some people are more trusted

than others, some newspaper websites are more trusted than

others, or some other bloggers, is they have a reputation that has

been built up over time, for whatever it is that they provide

best. People judge things on that basis. Is it liberating for you,

you can do what you want? Yeah, I have been a newspaper reporter

since I was 18 years old. I have not been able to express a personal

opinion about any of the things I see in the news around me or the

amazing people I have met or the things I have seen behind the

scenes knocking on doors, since I was 18, I wanted to write a blog to

tell people all the stuff I'm not able to in a newspaper. Is this

part of the future, and something we will come on to in a moment,

that the newspaper review will be old hat? It has to be. Everyone is

moving to digital. There might still be newspapers, but you only

have to look at the announcement from the FT, we have had the

Guardian, we have our own plans at the Independent, everyone is moving

on-line, and putting more and more resources on-line. It is inevitable

really. Do you think it changes the nature of journalism, and maybe

people, particularly younger people, as Susie suggests, don't want to

think something goes through an editor, a proprietor, some kind of

process, they don't like that. is certainly true. If you look

where people get their news from, a lot of them get it from Twitter and

Facebook. I think we still have brands that people want. There is a

reputation there. There is an element of trust, so there is two

audiences, really, there is some people who want gossip and tittle

tattle, they want a view, what Fleet Street Fox did is give a view.

That is perfectly fine. But if you are reporting factual news, you

want to know that somebody has checked it and had a look at it,

and there is an element of trust there. That is what we do. Do you

think on-line newspapers would lose their influence, because there is

something about the written paper in your hand? That says it is

important. Where as Twitter is here today and gone tomorrow, and some

of the internet stuff is not reliable, you lose your brand

identity? It is a discussion we have all the time, all newspapers

do. They must do, there can't be a newspaper anywhere in the world

that hasn't had this discussion in their offices. What we feel is we

would lose presence, we wouldn't be read out on this programme or the

Today Programme. You just cease to be and move into the ether. That

may be wrong, that things are moving so quickly I might be out of

date. Nobody knows anything, as we discover night after night! It

might be delightful to do it, but it is difficult to make money out

of it T you said you are writing a book, that will make money, you

have outed yourself, that might make you money, but doing tweeting

and blogging don't make money? Neither make money. I have managed

to create it as a shop window, I have got work as a result of it,

and got my book deal as a result of Twitter and the blogging.

Interesting you do lose some of our reputation if you don't have

something substantial in your hand. I'm in my mid-30s, I prefer holding

a newspaper than watch it on-line. You have two different market

places and you can supply both of them, the Internet will make more

money when people start cracking that it will pay for the print

editions. Do you think it increases or decreases the chances of bad

practices, or is Leveson bolting a stable door when nobody cares about

that particular horse. I think Leveson is a reaction to an old

world to an old world problem. There are new problems out there

no-one has redress. We need to find a way to make the Internet pay,

make contempt and behaviour on the Internet be regulated. And getting

people to sue the Internet when they get round to it doesn't make

it a safe place to be. I have talked to a lot of newspaper editor,

they all have the same bemused expression, they all know the

issues and discuss them, nobody knows the answer. Do you have a pay

wall, do you not, do you have a mini version of your newspaper,

what do you do? I think you have to have multiplatform. That is jargon,

you have your paid-for paper, your British paper, we have the "I", you

have your iPad app, the more flat forms you have, the more ways you

can make money on advertising. Something Mike work? Suck it and

see. Let's look at some of the dead That's all from us, in a programme

that touched upon the Bible at the beginning, we thought we might end

with the original writing on the wall from biblical times. "you have

been weighed in the balance and found wanting". Here is what

happened when some modern writing on a ball kept reappearing, despite

the best efforts of someone to paint over it. Since we saw all

this on the Internet, there is at Hello there. A quiet but cold theme

to Tuesday's weather, things will start to change from Wednesday on

wards. Early morning sleet and snow showers across parts of Wales and

up into the north-east, will fizzle away not amounting to too much at

all. Leaving a cloudy grey afternoon in prospect, still the

potential for a few isolated swintry showers on the North Sea

facing coast. Temperatures struggle, maximum of two or three. Milder

further south and west, maybe a bit of brightness if you are lucky. Any

sunny spells will be pretty short lived, and a premium I suspect. Up

into much of Wales, some brightness in the far north. Elsewhere cloudy

and write, with three or four degrees the high. The quiet theme

continues into Northern Ireland. If you are lucky brightness in the

afternoon, a similar story for much of western Scotland. Here the best

chance of seeing any sunshine. Always along the North Sea facing

coasts a few wintery showers. It is a cloudy, quiet, but coolish theme

to the north of the country on Tuesday. All change on Wednesday,

we will have some snow for a and then it turns to rain and a milder

feel starts to move through. Similar for England and Wales,