:00:13. > :00:19.Hello, welcome to Newswatch. This week, does BBC News treat politics
:00:19. > :00:23.as a sort of soap opera? Of the hearing enough about the party's
:00:23. > :00:28.policies or his conference season a circus dominated by personalities
:00:28. > :00:34.like him? Foulkes, thank you very much. I will see more later. Come
:00:34. > :00:37.to the thing, which every tears tonight. Also tonight, as more and
:00:37. > :00:45.more allegations have emerged of historic Abbey's by Jimmy Savile,
:00:45. > :00:52.has the BBC been open about about what was known in the operation?
:00:52. > :00:55.And a BBC Scotland news bulletin is disrupted by insect.
:00:55. > :00:59.Because of budget cuts, the past three weeks of party conferences
:00:59. > :01:03.have not been broadcast as extensively as previous years. What
:01:03. > :01:07.do you remember of what has been shown? Chances are, it is not
:01:07. > :01:11.policies or debates, but how our elected representatives perform in
:01:11. > :01:16.front of the party faithful, especially the leaders and future
:01:16. > :01:19.leaders. They were cheered still further by another rousing
:01:19. > :01:26.performance from the London mayor, who has been stealing the limelight
:01:27. > :01:31.here. He brushed aside yet more questions about his own leadership
:01:31. > :01:39.ambitions and lavished praise on the Prime Minister. I was police to
:01:39. > :01:42.seek he called me a blonde-haired mob. -- mop.
:01:43. > :01:46.There is something approaching a personality cult here, and some are
:01:46. > :01:51.already fantasising about what cabinet he will choose if he walks
:01:51. > :02:00.through the doors of Number Ten. If Boris is a cult -- poll --
:02:00. > :02:10.personality cult, is that the doing of BBC? Some Newswatch viewers see
:02:10. > :02:17.
:02:17. > :02:22.an emphasis on gossip rather than One person who has been living and
:02:22. > :02:24.breathing the party conferences for the past three weeks is the chief
:02:24. > :02:29.political correspondent for BBC News Norman Smith. He joins me now
:02:29. > :02:35.from Westminster. Can you see why viewers get concerned that they
:02:35. > :02:39.have been -- you have been running around after Boris Johnson and
:02:39. > :02:44.turning him into the story? It is very hard to disentangle
:02:44. > :02:47.personalities from policies. And just raw politics. Because
:02:48. > :02:55.personalities help to show up politics. It has always been the
:02:55. > :03:01.way. -- shape politics. If you could previous conferences, big
:03:01. > :03:04.figures have dominated, it is impossible to strip out
:03:04. > :03:08.personalities from politics -- politics. I would say with Boris
:03:08. > :03:15.Johnson, there is a danger that within the BBC and other news
:03:15. > :03:19.organisations, we take him on his own field, that is, as the jovial
:03:19. > :03:23.character rather than challenging him necessarily as robustly as we
:03:23. > :03:27.do other politicians. Because when it comes down to detailed and
:03:27. > :03:33.specific policies, Boris Johnson tends to be a much less sure footed
:03:33. > :03:36.politician. There is nothing wrong in emphasising his personal
:03:36. > :03:41.attractiveness to the electorate. What I would suggest is, we need to
:03:41. > :03:47.engage as well more robustly with the sort of policies he espouses.
:03:47. > :03:51.You say people have always been interested in personality, that is
:03:51. > :03:56.true. There is a sense, they you while, you are standing outside
:03:56. > :04:00.Number Ten and the talk is like gossip. Who is in, who is out. Who
:04:00. > :04:03.has fallen out of favour, who is rowing. Do you not accept that
:04:03. > :04:07.there is something about the tone of rolling news in particular that
:04:08. > :04:12.it is fed up too much interest in to bat so proper and not enough
:04:12. > :04:16.interest in what's happened in conference, what the debates were?
:04:16. > :04:18.What happened in conference was very little. That is partly the
:04:18. > :04:24.reason why there is this drawing back more into personalities. If
:04:24. > :04:30.you look at the conference,... is not an excuse. Your job is to
:04:30. > :04:35.say that. That is possible. The difficulty is, there is a lack of
:04:35. > :04:40.policy being given to the journalists, up to report on. If
:04:40. > :04:43.you take, for example, the Conservative conference, we had one
:04:43. > :04:46.policy allowing people to take an aggressive stance towards policy.
:04:46. > :04:51.You scratch your head when the others. At the Labour conference,
:04:51. > :04:54.they had a promise to spend the money from the 4G sell-off to build
:04:54. > :04:59.100,000 council houses, that was not even a pledge for the next
:04:59. > :05:03.election. We are in a policy desert at conference. Michael Gove, he
:05:03. > :05:08.said to one of my colleagues, if you've read by speed and you think
:05:08. > :05:13.you see a policy or a new announcement, you are wrong, there
:05:13. > :05:16.is nothing in it. That is part of the problem. We inflate conference
:05:16. > :05:21.is to a hugely important significance in the political
:05:21. > :05:27.calendar which frankly they do not merit any more. We are looking
:05:27. > :05:32.ahead to the continuation of plebs- date, viewers were concerned about
:05:32. > :05:37.Andrew Mitchell, journalists were feeding it and trying to generate
:05:37. > :05:40.news out of it, can be forced him to resign as. -- resigned. Do you
:05:40. > :05:44.think there is a responsibility that political journalists do not
:05:44. > :05:52.take responsibility enough? accept that a pack mentality direct
:05:52. > :05:55.-- develops around winded ministers. I can recall numerous occasions
:05:55. > :05:59.when ministers are teetering and they have to go partly because the
:05:59. > :06:05.media pressure is unsustainable. That is part of the reality of
:06:05. > :06:12.modern politics. I do not see how you this invent that. In terms of
:06:12. > :06:17.the plebs-date specifically, there is a personality and 98, but it is
:06:17. > :06:21.a bigger story because it resonates that at the top of the government,
:06:21. > :06:24.there are people at the background who do not few people at a lower
:06:24. > :06:27.social order as quite what they should be. There is a perception
:06:27. > :06:35.that they take lower -- a lofty view of people down the lower
:06:35. > :06:41.social change. So it has broader political significance.
:06:41. > :06:45.Now for some other topics you have been contacting us about, starting
:06:45. > :06:48.with this her a highly distressing story of April Jones. On Wednesday,
:06:48. > :06:52.Mark Bridger appeared in court charged with the abduction and
:06:52. > :06:56.murder of the five year-old. It is normal for news organisations to
:06:56. > :06:59.run images once a person is charged, but given the fact that Capel has
:06:59. > :07:09.not been found and the scale of the coverage about her disappearance,
:07:09. > :07:39.
:07:39. > :07:43.some dealers were concerned. -- On last week's programme, the head
:07:43. > :07:47.of editorial policy at the BBC baby Jordan discussed the BBC's news
:07:48. > :07:50.coverage of Jimmy Savile and the row will not go away. This week,
:07:50. > :07:55.the corporation said it is commissioning an independent
:07:55. > :07:59.inquiry into historic sexual harassment and alleged abuse on BBC
:07:59. > :08:07.premises, as well as an informal investigation into Newsnight
:08:07. > :08:12.Scotland's decision to drop a report on him last year.
:08:12. > :08:16.Newsnight decided not to run the story, for editorial reasons. The
:08:16. > :08:20.BBC is under pressure to explain why the story was not broadcast.
:08:20. > :08:27.And whether any influence was brought to bear by senior
:08:27. > :08:31.executives ahead of the Christmas tribute programmes for Savile.
:08:31. > :08:34.senior executives at the BBC knew there was an investigation into
:08:34. > :08:37.Jimmy Savile, and they could see their Christmas schedules and they
:08:37. > :08:42.could see celebratory programmes about Jimmy Savile, it is
:08:42. > :08:45.absolutely the first thing you do, is, can I see the item before I do
:08:45. > :08:55.anything else? Many viewers to share a sense of
:08:55. > :09:22.
:09:22. > :09:25.unease about how the story is being On Thursday, one of the headlines
:09:25. > :09:29.on the news at six concerned Lance Armstrong who was found in a report
:09:29. > :09:33.this week to have lied in court about taking performance-enhancing
:09:33. > :09:38.drugs. Fallen idol, the cycling legend
:09:38. > :09:48.Lance Armstrong is labelled a serial cheat. A report from
:09:48. > :10:08.
:10:08. > :10:14.America's emit -- America's anti- Finally, you have heard of flies
:10:14. > :10:17.disrupting a picnic, but it is not often they get on the wake of a
:10:17. > :10:27.news reader. Jackie Bird already had to deal with the loss of sound
:10:27. > :10:37.on the weather presenter's) and her own,... What is that flickering
:10:37. > :11:05.
:11:05. > :11:09.We asked BBC Scotland for an On that very painful note, we have
:11:09. > :11:19.to end! If you want to share your opinions on BBC News and current
:11:19. > :11:24.
:11:24. > :11:34.affairs or appear on the programme, We are all also on Twitter. We will
:11:34. > :11:39.
:11:39. > :11:48.Hopefully the London studio here it will remain a fly free zone, and
:11:48. > :11:51.the microphone is working! The rain today has been fairly persistent
:11:51. > :11:54.across the north-east of Scotland. A blanket of cloud across Scotland
:11:54. > :11:58.during the day. Sharp showers in the south-west as we speak. There
:11:58. > :12:03.is an amber warning out for a few more hours to come back rainfall in
:12:03. > :12:10.the far north-east of Scotland. -- covert that rainfall. This has been
:12:10. > :12:13.the story today, sharp showers in the south-west. There is the odd
:12:14. > :12:17.rumble of thunder there as well. They will push west to east through
:12:18. > :12:25.the night. The weather front associated with that bloke sit in
:12:25. > :12:31.the far north of Scotland, it will continue to ease. A touch of
:12:31. > :12:34.mistiness. Saturday morning starts with a brisk easterly breeze and a
:12:34. > :12:39.fair amount of cloud and rain in Scotland. That drifts southwards,
:12:39. > :12:43.patchy rain pushing into the south- west. Perhaps as far as the Lake
:12:43. > :12:47.District. Sunshine and showers elsewhere. By the afternoon, there
:12:47. > :12:57.will be not much sunshine for Scotland. It will be a rather grey
:12:57. > :13:03.afternoon, drizzly rain and a brisk easterly breeze. More rain four
:13:03. > :13:06.across the far south-west Scotland. The highest temperatures will be
:13:06. > :13:11.across England and Wales. The showers, it is a case of dodging
:13:11. > :13:16.them as we push further south and west. They should not be too many
:13:16. > :13:20.showers. We keep the sunny spells coming through as well in between
:13:20. > :13:23.them. Lighter winds than today say it will feel a little better.
:13:23. > :13:27.Northern Ireland will have cloud and drizzle the rain for the north
:13:27. > :13:31.coast, tied into that were the front. There has been some
:13:32. > :13:35.uncertainty about the forecasts for Sunday, it seems like the low
:13:35. > :13:39.pressure will keep to the near Continent. Still the risk of some
:13:39. > :13:43.sharper showers into the south-west. We need to keep a close eye on that
:13:43. > :13:49.as river levels are pretty high. Decent spells a sometime across