:00:20. > :00:25.hour, now it is time for Newswatch. Welcome to Putin, Russia And The
:00:25. > :00:30.West. Later in the programme, has BBC Two's series about Russia and
:00:30. > :00:33.the West been too favourable to Vladimir Putin? If you're not
:00:33. > :00:38.interested in football, this may not have been the best week to
:00:38. > :00:42.watch the news. Wednesday saw the acquittal of Harry Redknapp on
:00:42. > :00:44.charges of tax evasion. This led to the news channel abandoning its
:00:44. > :00:54.coverage of Prime Minister's Questions, much to the annoyance of
:00:54. > :01:01.
:01:01. > :01:11.Worse was to follow in the eyes of many viewers with the resignation
:01:11. > :01:35.
:01:35. > :01:38.that evening of England football There was more sporting controversy
:01:38. > :01:42.after Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, was told by the BBC
:01:42. > :01:45.that he was not welcome to appear on the panel discussing Saturday's
:01:45. > :01:49.rugby international between Scotland and England. Given the
:01:49. > :01:52.nature, it said, of political debate around Scotland's future and
:01:52. > :01:56.the proximity of local government elections, it would be
:01:56. > :02:00.inappropriate to give undue prominence to any single political
:02:00. > :02:04.leader. Mr Salmond insisted he just wanted to talk about the rugby and
:02:04. > :02:14.later compared the man who made the decision, the BBC's chief political
:02:14. > :02:19.
:02:19. > :02:22.adviser, with a Nazi official. One Meanwhile, another apparent BBC tic
:02:22. > :02:32.that hit the news with reports that BBC journalists have been told a
:02:32. > :02:38.
:02:38. > :02:41.meeting not to describe the cleric Well, in a statement, the BBC said,
:02:41. > :02:46.it is not uncommon for us to discuss how we cover stories
:02:46. > :02:49.impartially, and we think very carefully about the language we use.
:02:49. > :02:53.The notes are a reflection of a live editorial discussion about how
:02:53. > :02:57.to report a story. There will be plenty of attention
:02:58. > :03:01.in Russia over the next month or so, in the build-up to the presidential
:03:01. > :03:05.election. The man everyone assumes will win the election, Vladimir
:03:05. > :03:09.Putin, has been the subject of a documentary series shown on BBC Two
:03:09. > :03:14.over the past four weeks from the award-winning makers of the Death
:03:14. > :03:24.of Yugoslavia and other acclaimed series. Putin, Russia And The West
:03:24. > :03:25.
:03:25. > :03:32.has garnered good reviews, too, but What I was very upset by was that
:03:32. > :03:38.the film only concentrated on showing on the Russian side, people
:03:38. > :03:42.from the Kremlin and people from their propaganda unit. There were
:03:42. > :03:48.no ordinary people, no journalists, no critics of the regime. Basically,
:03:48. > :03:53.the film was made within the framework of Russian official
:03:53. > :03:56.propaganda. They a few days after they wandered through the Kremlin,
:03:56. > :03:59.Russian soldiers in Chechnya carried out a routine raid on a
:03:59. > :04:03.village. Although Russia's involvement in
:04:03. > :04:07.Chechnya does feature, some observers feel it is not addressed
:04:07. > :04:12.sufficiently. Eight years later, this young man's remains were dug
:04:12. > :04:15.up at a Russian base. They had been shot twice in their head. For more
:04:15. > :04:22.than a decade, Russia has been bombing and shelling its own
:04:22. > :04:26.civilians in Chechnya. Western leaders have tried as hard as they
:04:26. > :04:33.could to ignore this war, and unfortunately the film does the
:04:33. > :04:40.same. It glosses over the worst atrocities committed by the Russian
:04:40. > :04:44.army. Once you from the series was the admission by Jonathan Powell
:04:44. > :04:49.that the UK had used surveillance equipment hidden in a fake rock in
:04:49. > :04:52.a Moscow street to spy on Russia. It was embarrassing, they had us
:04:52. > :04:56.bang to rights. Clearly they had known about it for some time and
:04:56. > :04:59.had been saving it for a political purpose. The claim was first made
:04:59. > :05:02.on a programme on Russian television which link the rock with
:05:02. > :05:09.allegations that British security services were making covert
:05:09. > :05:12.payments to human rights groups in Russia. Baldly ruction -- all the
:05:12. > :05:16.Russian channels were saying, Britain has admitted they were
:05:16. > :05:23.spying, and it basically proved that everything that was set in the
:05:23. > :05:30.propaganda film was right. That is how the FSB to it. It provoked a
:05:30. > :05:35.new wave of attacks on human rights activists. He spent many years in
:05:35. > :05:38.the KGB... The consultants are the series was former BBC Moscow
:05:38. > :05:43.correspondent and author Angus Roxburgh. -- the consultant on the
:05:43. > :05:48.series. Another recent job of his has caused concern. Angus Roxburgh
:05:48. > :05:53.was employed by an American PR firm which received at one stage from
:05:53. > :06:00.the Kremlin about $1 million per month for the same purpose, to
:06:00. > :06:09.improve the image are pressure in the West. Now, I think that taking
:06:09. > :06:14.on board a man who had been taking money from the Kremlin basically
:06:14. > :06:18.colours the narrative of the film. So did Putin, Russia And The West
:06:18. > :06:22.paint too favourable a picture of Russia's past and probable future
:06:22. > :06:30.President? And joined now by the programme makers, series producer
:06:30. > :06:34.Norma Percy and series director Paul Mitchell. You clearly referred
:06:34. > :06:40.to Chechnya in this series, but critics say not enough, not enough
:06:40. > :06:44.impact. I just do not think that is true. There Park, in the first
:06:44. > :06:48.programme alone, three distinct sequences which deal with Chechnya.
:06:48. > :06:53.-- there are. The old expression, one million deaths is a statistic,
:06:53. > :06:58.one death is a tragedy. And I believe, and I think on the
:06:58. > :07:01.evidence of how people have reacted to the film, that the fact that we
:07:01. > :07:04.show one person being trapped away to his death by Russian soldiers
:07:04. > :07:09.after what we call a routine raid, making the point that this sort of
:07:09. > :07:14.thing happened all the time, I think it has enormous impact.
:07:14. > :07:18.spy rock, you got a bit of a scoop, it really existed, at least
:07:18. > :07:24.according to the former British chief-of-staff. But Russian
:07:24. > :07:27.television initially linked it with Western payments to human rights
:07:27. > :07:33.groups, and they have used it apparently, Russian television has
:07:33. > :07:37.used this as almost propaganda, and you did not apparently set the rot
:07:37. > :07:41.into the context. I think it is surprising to say that we did not
:07:41. > :07:45.put it in context. Jonathan Powell's point was that the
:07:45. > :07:50.Russians knew about the spy rock for a long time and was saving it
:07:50. > :07:54.up for a political purpose. Putin wanted to bring in a tough law
:07:54. > :07:59.against NGOs, and he tried to make the discovery of the spy rock prove
:07:59. > :08:04.that the British were clandestinely... Now they are
:08:04. > :08:09.actually using that film, does that concern you? Sorry, but the film
:08:09. > :08:14.went on to say that it had nothing to do with NGOs. The interview with
:08:14. > :08:17.Jonathan Powell was recorded something like one year ago. It was
:08:17. > :08:23.recorded at a time when politics in Russia had essentially gone dormant.
:08:23. > :08:27.The NGOs barely played any real role. Unfortunately, they had been
:08:27. > :08:31.cut out. In a last few months, suddenly Russia has got incredibly
:08:31. > :08:34.interesting, the NGOs have become interesting, and the people who
:08:34. > :08:37.have been saying, you should not have included that, I do not
:08:37. > :08:42.understand what they are asking for. Should we have censored our
:08:42. > :08:47.material? We knew this fact, an interesting fact, should we have
:08:47. > :08:50.not broadcast it? We cannot control what Putin does. Isn't it
:08:50. > :08:53.unfortunate that you were being advised by someone who has been
:08:53. > :08:58.involved a PR exercise for a number of years to improve the reputation
:08:58. > :09:02.of the Kremlin? Angus was a Sunday Times correspondent who was
:09:02. > :09:05.expelled out of Russia during Soviet times in one of the spy
:09:05. > :09:09.scandals. He was a BBC correspondent. He did his job for
:09:09. > :09:13.an American PR company, and like a lot of people who worked for the
:09:13. > :09:19.Kremlin, he got disillusioned and let, and that is when we picked him
:09:19. > :09:25.up to work on a series. Did he have any editorial control on your film?
:09:25. > :09:28.The way we did the series, the series consultant, he helps with
:09:28. > :09:32.research, helps with the farming, but when we go to edit the
:09:32. > :09:35.programmes, he goes off and write the book and we make the programmes.
:09:35. > :09:42.All the time we were making the programmes, he was away writing the
:09:42. > :09:47.book. No links to the editing. was not physically possible. But we
:09:47. > :09:52.do this for the time. I mean, you cannot get access to top government
:09:52. > :10:01.officials by turning up and saying, look at me, I am making a good and
:10:01. > :10:05.objective programme. You have to find somebody who understands what
:10:05. > :10:09.you do and distrusted by the Kremlin's. In the programmes, are
:10:09. > :10:13.they biased? Are they saying that Vladimir Putin was some sort of
:10:13. > :10:17.hero? That we were all wrong about him? They do not say that. Critics
:10:17. > :10:23.say that there is not enough representation of the opposition to
:10:23. > :10:26.Putin. What we do is try to get right inside to show the view of
:10:27. > :10:31.what it is like pins and the room, in the really big political
:10:31. > :10:34.decisions. -- what it is like inside the room. We do not
:10:34. > :10:37.interview pundits, we cannot interview journalists. We only
:10:37. > :10:41.interview people who were inside the room taking the decision. Those
:10:41. > :10:45.people tend to the presidents, prime ministers, their top aides.
:10:45. > :10:49.You clearly got extraordinary access, particularly to senior
:10:49. > :10:53.people in the Kremlin. To what extent did you have to make
:10:53. > :10:57.compromises to get that? compromises at all. We used the
:10:57. > :11:01.same method we have been using with governments for 30 years. What we
:11:01. > :11:05.do is we say we are going to produce a truly multi- sided
:11:05. > :11:10.account. We ask you what happened, we ask the Americans what happened,
:11:10. > :11:16.and we put it together. What we do is try to present the evidence and
:11:16. > :11:19.let the viewer make up their own mind. Thank you very much indeed.
:11:19. > :11:26.And thank you for your comments this week. If you want to share