:00:04. > :00:14.week, as the BBC's coverage -- has the BBC's coverage of the Arab
:00:14. > :00:24.
:00:24. > :00:28.Welcome to NewsWatch. Later in the programme, Jeremy Paxman is known
:00:28. > :00:32.as a combative interviewer, but has he gone too far? That is rightly
:00:32. > :00:37.what we seek to use for the credibility... Is this some sort of
:00:37. > :00:41.joke? Before that, we have almost become used to a state of political
:00:41. > :00:46.turmoil in countries such as Egypt, Libya and Syria, since the first
:00:46. > :00:50.spark of revolution at the under 2010, did the Arab Spring, this
:00:50. > :00:54.series of popular uprisings has proved a uniquely difficult for
:00:54. > :00:58.broadcasters to cover. Nobody saw it coming and -- on quite the scale,
:00:58. > :01:02.the unpredictability has been one challenge come away to deploy
:01:02. > :01:06.limited journalistic resources when events have moved so quickly in
:01:06. > :01:11.different locations? Another difficulty has been safety. How to
:01:11. > :01:15.get close enough to the story without putting yourself in danger.
:01:15. > :01:18.Correspondents have taken significant risks to get the
:01:18. > :01:23.reports out come as such as Paul Wood's pieces from Homs in Syria
:01:23. > :01:26.and this week's dispatches from Ian Pannell also in Syria. The risks,
:01:26. > :01:30.logistical and editorial challenge has come a will clearly remain for
:01:30. > :01:34.while, but has the BBC given as full and balanced picture of
:01:34. > :01:38.possible of the Arab Spring? On Monday, the BBC Trust published a
:01:38. > :01:43.review of the coverage of the Arab Spring following a report written
:01:43. > :01:46.by Middle East expert Edward Mortimer. Fran O'Brien has seen --
:01:46. > :01:50.overseen the report for the Trust and joins me now. What did the
:01:50. > :01:54.Trust find as a result of this research in this report? I think
:01:54. > :02:00.the overwhelming point the trustees want to make the first instances
:02:00. > :02:02.that the coverage is remarkable. The BBC were covering random events
:02:02. > :02:05.happening in for a huge geographical area and volunteers
:02:05. > :02:10.were going in from the BBC into places of great danger and risking
:02:10. > :02:13.their lives. Having said that, things can be improved. There were
:02:13. > :02:18.countries where they did not get much coverage and these were
:02:18. > :02:23.interesting countries because full uprisings did not happen. Why?
:02:23. > :02:27.Jordan, Morocco. There are other big countries, Saudi Arabia, where
:02:27. > :02:30.it is very difficult to get in and yet did it get the coverage it
:02:30. > :02:34.deserves? And then you look at the countries where there were
:02:34. > :02:37.uprisings, take Egypt. What happened between the spring and the
:02:37. > :02:40.autumn, Edward Mortimer would say at the BBC management would
:02:40. > :02:46.recognise that they could have done more in between to explain what was
:02:46. > :02:48.going on, so when events flared up again in November people knew why.
:02:48. > :02:54.Is there a danger that journalists go off chasing the next big
:02:54. > :02:58.important story it sometimes forget the last but one? There is always a
:02:58. > :03:01.risk when there are really big, dramatic events aren't there are
:03:01. > :03:04.great pictures and we know that the audiences loved dramatic pictures
:03:04. > :03:08.and they like getting engaged with real people, that when these things
:03:08. > :03:12.are happening it is very difficult to remember to stand back and do
:03:12. > :03:15.those contextual items, which might be more boring and dull, but
:03:15. > :03:19.everybody recognises the need to do them and that is one of the other
:03:19. > :03:22.findings of the report, which is that it is going to be helpful if
:03:22. > :03:25.news division can stand back and take a strategic look and every now
:03:25. > :03:30.and again on these big running stories just check that gaps are
:03:30. > :03:32.not emerging. Is there a problem in that historically the BBC has
:03:32. > :03:36.believed that its editors have individual programmes should have
:03:36. > :03:41.the freedom to editor and there is an obvious tension between that
:03:41. > :03:45.freedom to edit and the executive, standing back and perhaps sometimes
:03:45. > :03:50.and theory? I think that is a general problem. At the BBC
:03:50. > :03:54.management recognise it. You really want editors to have the freedom to
:03:54. > :04:00.express the individuality of their own programme on behalf of their
:04:00. > :04:03.own audiences and yet if everybody is doing the amazing protest that
:04:03. > :04:07.is happening today in the streets of Syria, but not a single one of
:04:07. > :04:11.them is saying who was making up the opposition and Syria and are
:04:11. > :04:15.they arming than themselves and are they part of the violence, these
:04:15. > :04:19.trends emerge but did they emerge early enough? That is one of the
:04:19. > :04:22.questions. That is where you would expect the stand back look with the
:04:22. > :04:25.management and the editors and Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East
:04:25. > :04:31.editor having a look and saying, actually, there is something we are
:04:31. > :04:35.missing. That is a continuing process, in a way, of editorial
:04:35. > :04:41.advice from senior executives? think it will affect not just the
:04:41. > :04:44.Arab Spring, it would impact on all the big stories, yes. Many of the
:04:45. > :04:47.points raised in the trust's review have an echoing comments made by
:04:47. > :04:52.NewsWatch FE was. That the height of the coverage of Libya last
:04:52. > :04:55.autumn, Paul Smith e-mailed with some sarcasm. I was watching BBC
:04:55. > :05:02.One on Thursday evening and was surprised to see five minutes of
:05:02. > :05:07.none Libyan news. Could you please keep UK news to a minimum oblique
:05:07. > :05:12.Libyan news? I need to see more coverage of rebels firing weapons
:05:12. > :05:22.India. Viewers have complained of insufficient reporting over the
:05:22. > :05:44.
:05:44. > :05:46.last 18 months, such as Bahrain. With me to discuss this is the
:05:46. > :05:52.BBC's deputy director of news, Steve Mitchell. We have heard from
:05:52. > :05:57.Fran O'Brien that the BBC Trust completely admires the remarkable
:05:57. > :06:00.coverage of the Arab Spring, says it was largely impartial and
:06:00. > :06:04.salutes the courage of BBC journalists in getting it but they
:06:04. > :06:08.say it can be improved and one complaint is that there was a
:06:08. > :06:12.tendency to go from one big story to another and forgetting maybe
:06:12. > :06:16.what has happened in some of the others. Is that fair? I think we
:06:16. > :06:24.have looked at the report and we probably think that is a fair
:06:24. > :06:29.criticism in part. Edward Mortimer was able to reveal a lot of power a
:06:29. > :06:33.book but not all of our output and we did return to the Egyptian story
:06:33. > :06:36.after the fall of Mubarak. There was a period of some weeks where we
:06:36. > :06:40.did not? There were periods when we did not an especially periods when
:06:40. > :06:43.what was going on in Egypt did not appear on the main TV bulletins,
:06:43. > :06:50.that is not to say that it was not being reported elsewhere on
:06:50. > :06:55.Newsnight, for instance, but it is true that we were very focused on
:06:55. > :06:59.other, major breaking stories including a war in which we were
:06:59. > :07:03.involved in Libya, including an earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
:07:03. > :07:09.That is our problem, always, of course, to try to get the balance
:07:09. > :07:13.right between major breaking events, which news bulletin by definition
:07:13. > :07:19.has to tell the audience about and returning to stories which reached
:07:19. > :07:23.a peak earlier but are obviously continuing to unfold. Could you, as
:07:23. > :07:27.the Trust implies, perhaps have given more context on the main
:07:27. > :07:32.bulletins, where most people receive the news? Again, the issue
:07:32. > :07:35.is largely about space rather than intent. Our bulletins a
:07:35. > :07:40.distinguished by the amount of context and background that we try
:07:40. > :07:44.to give the audiences but they are of limited duration and the
:07:44. > :07:48.logistics of that means that sometimes we haven't the space to
:07:48. > :07:53.do as much context as we would like but personally I think we probably
:07:53. > :07:57.could have done more to explain some of the more nuanced issues
:07:57. > :08:03.around all of the events in the Middle East and we will learn from
:08:03. > :08:05.what Edward Mortimer has found. Just occasionally perhaps too much
:08:05. > :08:09.enthusiasm from the camp of the rebels, which is understandable
:08:09. > :08:14.because that is where often the reporters were when covering a
:08:14. > :08:18.story? Well, I think benefit -- by definition there was a lot of
:08:18. > :08:20.enthusiasm on the streets and the Middle East and our reporters on
:08:20. > :08:24.the ground were reflecting and reporting on that but I don't think
:08:24. > :08:29.any of our people were carried away by that and they don't think our
:08:29. > :08:33.journalism as it was edited in London over emphasised that. We
:08:33. > :08:38.will always making it quite clear that what the viewers were seeing
:08:38. > :08:41.was for instance events in one square in Cairo, but there is a
:08:42. > :08:45.huge country out there with the vast range of opinions and I think
:08:45. > :08:51.looking back at our coverage we were careful to make that point
:08:51. > :08:56.throughout. Do you accept that another suggestion from the Trust,
:08:56. > :08:59.that senior executives such as yourself should have built into the
:09:00. > :09:06.system stand back moments to review, to see whether the context has been
:09:06. > :09:10.properly explained or what? Yes, I do accept that. I can accept it on
:09:10. > :09:12.my own behalf. I think that is part of what I should be doing, as I am
:09:13. > :09:16.responsible for a range of programmes which are not all
:09:16. > :09:20.subject to the constraints of space that I have described on the main
:09:20. > :09:24.television bulletins, so probably someone like me probably me
:09:25. > :09:29.personally should have been saying to Newsnight or two programmes on
:09:29. > :09:33.radio or two online, maybe we should go back to the stories,
:09:33. > :09:39.maybe we should do a little more context. Inconsistent of the use of
:09:39. > :09:43.the word regime, which viewers have talked about. We have agreed to
:09:43. > :09:46.take that word to one side and think about its impact on different
:09:46. > :09:50.audiences but it will be difficult because for some it is a neutral
:09:50. > :09:54.term, for others as a pejorative term, so we need to be careful
:09:54. > :09:59.about where we come to one this. Steve Mitchell, thank you. Time for
:09:59. > :10:02.one more comment and it relates to interview conducted on Tuesday's
:10:02. > :10:06.Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman. The guest, in some people's eyes, the
:10:06. > :10:09.victim, was junior Treasury minister Chloe Smith, there to
:10:09. > :10:13.defend the deferral of the planned rise in fuel duty. You are coming
:10:13. > :10:17.to defend a change of policy and you can't even tell me when you
:10:17. > :10:21.were told what a change of policy was? I am not going to give you a
:10:21. > :10:25.running commentary on... I am not asking for a running commentary, I
:10:25. > :10:30.am asking for facts about when you were told? You would hold some time
:10:30. > :10:33.today, clearly? Was it before lunch or after lunch? Is it hard for you
:10:33. > :10:37.to defend the policy you don't agree with? Which depart it is it
:10:37. > :10:43.going to come from? Phase four cross and in different ways and
:10:43. > :10:47.that figure will progress... Name me departments. I won't do that.
:10:47. > :10:50.You don't know? Are you waiting to be told that as well? Do you were
:10:50. > :10:56.the wake up in the morning and think, my God, what am I going to
:10:56. > :11:00.be talking -- told today? Do you think you are incompetent?
:11:00. > :11:04.Chancellor and Tory party spin doctors were attacked for putting
:11:04. > :11:09.Chloe Smith up front of you put the blame lay elsewhere according to
:11:09. > :11:17.this viewer, who described it as Jeremy Paxman bullying a junior