29/06/2012 Newswatch

week, as the BBC's coverage -- has the BBC's coverage of the Arab

Welcome to NewsWatch. Later in the programme, Jeremy Paxman is known

as a combative interviewer, but has he gone too far? That is rightly

what we seek to use for the credibility... Is this some sort of

joke? Before that, we have almost become used to a state of political

turmoil in countries such as Egypt, Libya and Syria, since the first

spark of revolution at the under 2010, did the Arab Spring, this

series of popular uprisings has proved a uniquely difficult for

broadcasters to cover. Nobody saw it coming and -- on quite the scale,

the unpredictability has been one challenge come away to deploy

limited journalistic resources when events have moved so quickly in

different locations? Another difficulty has been safety. How to

get close enough to the story without putting yourself in danger.

Correspondents have taken significant risks to get the

reports out come as such as Paul Wood's pieces from Homs in Syria

and this week's dispatches from Ian Pannell also in Syria. The risks,

logistical and editorial challenge has come a will clearly remain for

while, but has the BBC given as full and balanced picture of

possible of the Arab Spring? On Monday, the BBC Trust published a

review of the coverage of the Arab Spring following a report written

by Middle East expert Edward Mortimer. Fran O'Brien has seen --

overseen the report for the Trust and joins me now. What did the

Trust find as a result of this research in this report? I think

the overwhelming point the trustees want to make the first instances

that the coverage is remarkable. The BBC were covering random events

happening in for a huge geographical area and volunteers

were going in from the BBC into places of great danger and risking

their lives. Having said that, things can be improved. There were

countries where they did not get much coverage and these were

interesting countries because full uprisings did not happen. Why?

Jordan, Morocco. There are other big countries, Saudi Arabia, where

it is very difficult to get in and yet did it get the coverage it

deserves? And then you look at the countries where there were

uprisings, take Egypt. What happened between the spring and the

autumn, Edward Mortimer would say at the BBC management would

recognise that they could have done more in between to explain what was

going on, so when events flared up again in November people knew why.

Is there a danger that journalists go off chasing the next big

important story it sometimes forget the last but one? There is always a

risk when there are really big, dramatic events aren't there are

great pictures and we know that the audiences loved dramatic pictures

and they like getting engaged with real people, that when these things

are happening it is very difficult to remember to stand back and do

those contextual items, which might be more boring and dull, but

everybody recognises the need to do them and that is one of the other

findings of the report, which is that it is going to be helpful if

news division can stand back and take a strategic look and every now

and again on these big running stories just check that gaps are

not emerging. Is there a problem in that historically the BBC has

believed that its editors have individual programmes should have

the freedom to editor and there is an obvious tension between that

freedom to edit and the executive, standing back and perhaps sometimes

and theory? I think that is a general problem. At the BBC

management recognise it. You really want editors to have the freedom to

express the individuality of their own programme on behalf of their

own audiences and yet if everybody is doing the amazing protest that

is happening today in the streets of Syria, but not a single one of

them is saying who was making up the opposition and Syria and are

they arming than themselves and are they part of the violence, these

trends emerge but did they emerge early enough? That is one of the

questions. That is where you would expect the stand back look with the

management and the editors and Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East

editor having a look and saying, actually, there is something we are

missing. That is a continuing process, in a way, of editorial

advice from senior executives? think it will affect not just the

Arab Spring, it would impact on all the big stories, yes. Many of the

points raised in the trust's review have an echoing comments made by

NewsWatch FE was. That the height of the coverage of Libya last

autumn, Paul Smith e-mailed with some sarcasm. I was watching BBC

One on Thursday evening and was surprised to see five minutes of

none Libyan news. Could you please keep UK news to a minimum oblique

Libyan news? I need to see more coverage of rebels firing weapons

India. Viewers have complained of insufficient reporting over the

last 18 months, such as Bahrain. With me to discuss this is the

BBC's deputy director of news, Steve Mitchell. We have heard from

Fran O'Brien that the BBC Trust completely admires the remarkable

coverage of the Arab Spring, says it was largely impartial and

salutes the courage of BBC journalists in getting it but they

say it can be improved and one complaint is that there was a

tendency to go from one big story to another and forgetting maybe

what has happened in some of the others. Is that fair? I think we

have looked at the report and we probably think that is a fair

criticism in part. Edward Mortimer was able to reveal a lot of power a

book but not all of our output and we did return to the Egyptian story

after the fall of Mubarak. There was a period of some weeks where we

did not? There were periods when we did not an especially periods when

what was going on in Egypt did not appear on the main TV bulletins,

that is not to say that it was not being reported elsewhere on

Newsnight, for instance, but it is true that we were very focused on

other, major breaking stories including a war in which we were

involved in Libya, including an earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

That is our problem, always, of course, to try to get the balance

right between major breaking events, which news bulletin by definition

has to tell the audience about and returning to stories which reached

a peak earlier but are obviously continuing to unfold. Could you, as

the Trust implies, perhaps have given more context on the main

bulletins, where most people receive the news? Again, the issue

is largely about space rather than intent. Our bulletins a

distinguished by the amount of context and background that we try

to give the audiences but they are of limited duration and the

logistics of that means that sometimes we haven't the space to

do as much context as we would like but personally I think we probably

could have done more to explain some of the more nuanced issues

around all of the events in the Middle East and we will learn from

what Edward Mortimer has found. Just occasionally perhaps too much

enthusiasm from the camp of the rebels, which is understandable

because that is where often the reporters were when covering a

story? Well, I think benefit -- by definition there was a lot of

enthusiasm on the streets and the Middle East and our reporters on

the ground were reflecting and reporting on that but I don't think

any of our people were carried away by that and they don't think our

journalism as it was edited in London over emphasised that. We

will always making it quite clear that what the viewers were seeing

was for instance events in one square in Cairo, but there is a

huge country out there with the vast range of opinions and I think

looking back at our coverage we were careful to make that point

throughout. Do you accept that another suggestion from the Trust,

that senior executives such as yourself should have built into the

system stand back moments to review, to see whether the context has been

properly explained or what? Yes, I do accept that. I can accept it on

my own behalf. I think that is part of what I should be doing, as I am

responsible for a range of programmes which are not all

subject to the constraints of space that I have described on the main

television bulletins, so probably someone like me probably me

personally should have been saying to Newsnight or two programmes on

radio or two online, maybe we should go back to the stories,

maybe we should do a little more context. Inconsistent of the use of

the word regime, which viewers have talked about. We have agreed to

take that word to one side and think about its impact on different

audiences but it will be difficult because for some it is a neutral

term, for others as a pejorative term, so we need to be careful

about where we come to one this. Steve Mitchell, thank you. Time for

one more comment and it relates to interview conducted on Tuesday's

Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman. The guest, in some people's eyes, the

victim, was junior Treasury minister Chloe Smith, there to

defend the deferral of the planned rise in fuel duty. You are coming

to defend a change of policy and you can't even tell me when you

were told what a change of policy was? I am not going to give you a

running commentary on... I am not asking for a running commentary, I

am asking for facts about when you were told? You would hold some time

today, clearly? Was it before lunch or after lunch? Is it hard for you

to defend the policy you don't agree with? Which depart it is it

going to come from? Phase four cross and in different ways and

that figure will progress... Name me departments. I won't do that.

You don't know? Are you waiting to be told that as well? Do you were

the wake up in the morning and think, my God, what am I going to

be talking -- told today? Do you think you are incompetent?

Chancellor and Tory party spin doctors were attacked for putting

Chloe Smith up front of you put the blame lay elsewhere according to

this viewer, who described it as Jeremy Paxman bullying a junior