12/10/2012 Newswatch

Hello, welcome to Newswatch. This week, does BBC News treat politics

as a sort of soap opera? Of the hearing enough about the party's

policies or his conference season a circus dominated by personalities

like him? Foulkes, thank you very much. I will see more later. Come

to the thing, which every tears tonight. Also tonight, as more and

more allegations have emerged of historic Abbey's by Jimmy Savile,

has the BBC been open about about what was known in the operation?

And a BBC Scotland news bulletin is disrupted by insect.

Because of budget cuts, the past three weeks of party conferences

have not been broadcast as extensively as previous years. What

do you remember of what has been shown? Chances are, it is not

policies or debates, but how our elected representatives perform in

front of the party faithful, especially the leaders and future

leaders. They were cheered still further by another rousing

performance from the London mayor, who has been stealing the limelight

here. He brushed aside yet more questions about his own leadership

ambitions and lavished praise on the Prime Minister. I was police to

seek he called me a blonde-haired mob. -- mop.

There is something approaching a personality cult here, and some are

already fantasising about what cabinet he will choose if he walks

through the doors of Number Ten. If Boris is a cult -- poll --

personality cult, is that the doing of BBC? Some Newswatch viewers see

an emphasis on gossip rather than One person who has been living and

breathing the party conferences for the past three weeks is the chief

political correspondent for BBC News Norman Smith. He joins me now

from Westminster. Can you see why viewers get concerned that they

have been -- you have been running around after Boris Johnson and

turning him into the story? It is very hard to disentangle

personalities from policies. And just raw politics. Because

personalities help to show up politics. It has always been the

way. -- shape politics. If you could previous conferences, big

figures have dominated, it is impossible to strip out

personalities from politics -- politics. I would say with Boris

Johnson, there is a danger that within the BBC and other news

organisations, we take him on his own field, that is, as the jovial

character rather than challenging him necessarily as robustly as we

do other politicians. Because when it comes down to detailed and

specific policies, Boris Johnson tends to be a much less sure footed

politician. There is nothing wrong in emphasising his personal

attractiveness to the electorate. What I would suggest is, we need to

engage as well more robustly with the sort of policies he espouses.

You say people have always been interested in personality, that is

true. There is a sense, they you while, you are standing outside

Number Ten and the talk is like gossip. Who is in, who is out. Who

has fallen out of favour, who is rowing. Do you not accept that

there is something about the tone of rolling news in particular that

it is fed up too much interest in to bat so proper and not enough

interest in what's happened in conference, what the debates were?

What happened in conference was very little. That is partly the

reason why there is this drawing back more into personalities. If

you look at the conference,... is not an excuse. Your job is to

say that. That is possible. The difficulty is, there is a lack of

policy being given to the journalists, up to report on. If

you take, for example, the Conservative conference, we had one

policy allowing people to take an aggressive stance towards policy.

You scratch your head when the others. At the Labour conference,

they had a promise to spend the money from the 4G sell-off to build

100,000 council houses, that was not even a pledge for the next

election. We are in a policy desert at conference. Michael Gove, he

said to one of my colleagues, if you've read by speed and you think

you see a policy or a new announcement, you are wrong, there

is nothing in it. That is part of the problem. We inflate conference

is to a hugely important significance in the political

calendar which frankly they do not merit any more. We are looking

ahead to the continuation of plebs- date, viewers were concerned about

Andrew Mitchell, journalists were feeding it and trying to generate

news out of it, can be forced him to resign as. -- resigned. Do you

think there is a responsibility that political journalists do not

take responsibility enough? accept that a pack mentality direct

-- develops around winded ministers. I can recall numerous occasions

when ministers are teetering and they have to go partly because the

media pressure is unsustainable. That is part of the reality of

modern politics. I do not see how you this invent that. In terms of

the plebs-date specifically, there is a personality and 98, but it is

a bigger story because it resonates that at the top of the government,

there are people at the background who do not few people at a lower

social order as quite what they should be. There is a perception

that they take lower -- a lofty view of people down the lower

social change. So it has broader political significance.

Now for some other topics you have been contacting us about, starting

with this her a highly distressing story of April Jones. On Wednesday,

Mark Bridger appeared in court charged with the abduction and

murder of the five year-old. It is normal for news organisations to

run images once a person is charged, but given the fact that Capel has

not been found and the scale of the coverage about her disappearance,

some dealers were concerned. -- On last week's programme, the head

of editorial policy at the BBC baby Jordan discussed the BBC's news

coverage of Jimmy Savile and the row will not go away. This week,

the corporation said it is commissioning an independent

inquiry into historic sexual harassment and alleged abuse on BBC

premises, as well as an informal investigation into Newsnight

Scotland's decision to drop a report on him last year.

Newsnight decided not to run the story, for editorial reasons. The

BBC is under pressure to explain why the story was not broadcast.

And whether any influence was brought to bear by senior

executives ahead of the Christmas tribute programmes for Savile.

senior executives at the BBC knew there was an investigation into

Jimmy Savile, and they could see their Christmas schedules and they

could see celebratory programmes about Jimmy Savile, it is

absolutely the first thing you do, is, can I see the item before I do

anything else? Many viewers to share a sense of

unease about how the story is being On Thursday, one of the headlines

on the news at six concerned Lance Armstrong who was found in a report

this week to have lied in court about taking performance-enhancing

drugs. Fallen idol, the cycling legend

Lance Armstrong is labelled a serial cheat. A report from

America's emit -- America's anti- Finally, you have heard of flies

disrupting a picnic, but it is not often they get on the wake of a

news reader. Jackie Bird already had to deal with the loss of sound

on the weather presenter's) and her own,... What is that flickering

We asked BBC Scotland for an On that very painful note, we have

to end! If you want to share your opinions on BBC News and current

affairs or appear on the programme, We are all also on Twitter. We will

Hopefully the London studio here it will remain a fly free zone, and

the microphone is working! The rain today has been fairly persistent

across the north-east of Scotland. A blanket of cloud across Scotland

during the day. Sharp showers in the south-west as we speak. There

is an amber warning out for a few more hours to come back rainfall in

the far north-east of Scotland. -- covert that rainfall. This has been

the story today, sharp showers in the south-west. There is the odd

rumble of thunder there as well. They will push west to east through

the night. The weather front associated with that bloke sit in

the far north of Scotland, it will continue to ease. A touch of

mistiness. Saturday morning starts with a brisk easterly breeze and a

fair amount of cloud and rain in Scotland. That drifts southwards,

patchy rain pushing into the south- west. Perhaps as far as the Lake

District. Sunshine and showers elsewhere. By the afternoon, there

will be not much sunshine for Scotland. It will be a rather grey

afternoon, drizzly rain and a brisk easterly breeze. More rain four

across the far south-west Scotland. The highest temperatures will be

across England and Wales. The showers, it is a case of dodging

them as we push further south and west. They should not be too many

showers. We keep the sunny spells coming through as well in between

them. Lighter winds than today say it will feel a little better.

Northern Ireland will have cloud and drizzle the rain for the north

coast, tied into that were the front. There has been some

uncertainty about the forecasts for Sunday, it seems like the low

pressure will keep to the near Continent. Still the risk of some

sharper showers into the south-west. We need to keep a close eye on that

as river levels are pretty high. Decent spells a sometime across