:00:02. > :00:06.open enough about what was known inside the corporation?
:00:06. > :00:12.There is a fly in my studio. A BBC Scotland news bulletin is disrupted
:00:12. > :00:15.by intact. Because of budget cuts, the past
:00:16. > :00:20.three weeks of party conferences have not been broadcast as
:00:20. > :00:25.extensively as in previous years. But what you member of what has
:00:25. > :00:27.been shown? Chances are it is not policy announcements and debates,
:00:27. > :00:34.but how error that give representatives performed,
:00:34. > :00:37.especially the party leaders. They were cheered still further by
:00:37. > :00:41.another rousing performance from the London mayor, who has been
:00:41. > :00:44.stealing the limelight here. He brushed aside yet more questions
:00:44. > :00:51.about his own leadership ambitions and lavished praise on his old
:00:51. > :00:56.friends at, the Prime Minister. was pleased to seek you Corby a
:00:56. > :00:59.blond-haired pop in the pages of the papers. -- called me.
:00:59. > :01:07.Here are the conference there is something approaching a personality
:01:07. > :01:10.cult. Some are already fed to it -- fantasising about what portfolio he
:01:10. > :01:15.would choose. If he is a personality cult, is
:01:15. > :01:22.that the doing of the media? Some news which viewers to detect an
:01:22. > :01:32.emphasis on people not policies. One duet decried the tendency to
:01:32. > :01:36.
:01:36. > :01:39.create a hype and entertainment. Well, one person who has been
:01:39. > :01:42.living and breathing the party conferences for the past three
:01:42. > :01:52.weeks is the chief political conference -- correspondent for BBC
:01:52. > :01:54.
:01:54. > :02:02.News, Norman's -- Norman Smith. TUC why viewers can get concerned?
:02:02. > :02:06.is very hard to disentangle personalities from policies and
:02:06. > :02:11.will politics because personalities help to shape politics. It has
:02:11. > :02:16.always been that way. If you look two previous conferences through
:02:16. > :02:21.history, big figures have dominated them. It is absolutely impossible
:02:21. > :02:28.to strip out personalities from politics. One thing I would say
:02:28. > :02:35.with regard to Boris Johnson is I think there is a danger in the
:02:35. > :02:41.regard of taking him on in his own field. Rather than challenging him
:02:41. > :02:47.as robustly as we do other politicians. When it comes down to
:02:47. > :02:50.detail, in specific policies, Boris Johnson tends to be a much less
:02:50. > :02:54.sure-footed politician. I think there is nothing wrong in
:02:54. > :02:58.emphasising his personal attractiveness to the electorate.
:02:58. > :03:03.What I would suggest is we need to engage more robustly with the sort
:03:03. > :03:12.of policies he espouses. You say people have always been interested
:03:12. > :03:18.in personality, which is true, but there's a sense of the people
:03:18. > :03:23.watching that it is almost like gossip. Dear not accept that there
:03:23. > :03:29.is something about the time that is fed too much interest in that sort
:03:29. > :03:35.of soap opera and not enough interest in what actually happened?
:03:35. > :03:39.-- do you not. I will tell you what happened, very little. That is part
:03:39. > :03:47.of the reason why perhaps there is destroying back into poll of --
:03:47. > :03:51.personalities. That is an excuse, isn't it? That is possible, but I
:03:51. > :03:59.tell you the difficulty is there is a lack of policy being given to
:03:59. > :04:01.journalists to report on. If you take, for example, the last
:04:01. > :04:06.conference there was one posse allowing people to take a more
:04:06. > :04:11.aggressive stance towards burglars. The Labour conference had a promise
:04:11. > :04:15.to spend the money from the 4G sell-off to build 100,000 council
:04:15. > :04:21.houses. That was not even a pledge for the next election. We are in a
:04:21. > :04:26.policy desert. Michael Gove said to one of my colleagues, if you read
:04:26. > :04:32.my speech and you think you see any policy or new announcement, you are
:04:32. > :04:38.wrong. There is nothing in it. That is part of the problem. We inflate
:04:38. > :04:44.conferences to a hugely significant importance. They do not merit it.
:04:44. > :04:49.Very briefly we are looking ahead to the continuation of the Drew
:04:49. > :04:54.Mitchell comments. People were concerned that people were feeding
:04:54. > :04:57.it and trying to generate news out of it. Do you accept that there is
:04:57. > :05:02.a responsibility there that political journalists do not take
:05:02. > :05:07.seriously enough? I accept that a pack mentality develops around
:05:07. > :05:11.wounded ministers. That is absolutely the case. I can recall
:05:11. > :05:14.numerous occasions when ministers have been teetering and part of the
:05:14. > :05:20.reason they are meant to go is because the media pressure becomes
:05:20. > :05:25.unsustainable. That is part of the reality of modern politics. I do
:05:25. > :05:29.not quite see how you do is invent that. In terms of this incident
:05:29. > :05:32.specifically, yes of course there is a personality element to it, but
:05:32. > :05:35.adding there is a bigger story to it because I think it resonates
:05:35. > :05:39.with a broader perception that at the top of the Government there are
:05:39. > :05:44.people from a background who do not the people of a lower social order
:05:44. > :05:54.as quite what they should. There's a perception may take a lofty view
:05:54. > :06:00.
:06:00. > :06:04.topics we have been contacted about, starting with the ongoing story of
:06:04. > :06:08.April Jones. On Wednesday, Mark Bridger egg heat -- appeared in
:06:08. > :06:13.court charged with the abduction and murder of the five-year-old
:06:13. > :06:15.girl. It is normal for the media organisations to run pictures once
:06:15. > :06:25.the person has been charged, but given the fact that she has not
:06:25. > :06:34.
:06:34. > :06:44.been found, some dealers were Another shed that sentiment,
:06:44. > :07:00.
:07:00. > :07:04.On last week's programme the head of editorial policy at the BBC
:07:04. > :07:10.discussed the BBC's news coverage of Jimmy Saville. It is clear the
:07:10. > :07:17.row will not go away. This week the BBC said it is commissioning an
:07:17. > :07:20.independent inquiry into the allegations. There will also be an
:07:21. > :07:24.informal investigation into news by its decision to drop its report
:07:24. > :07:29.into Jimmy Saville last year. On Thursday evening the programme put
:07:29. > :07:32.itself under the spotlight. We decided not to run the story for
:07:32. > :07:42.editorial reasons. The BBC is under pressure to
:07:42. > :07:46.
:07:46. > :07:50.explain why the story was not broadcast. One senior to -- once
:07:50. > :07:53.senior executives knew that there was an inve was an inve into Jimmy
:07:53. > :07:58.Saville and they could see the Christmas schedules and they could
:07:58. > :08:04.see celebratory programmes about Jimmy Saville it is absolutely the
:08:04. > :08:14.first thing you do. They would want anything else. Many dealers share a
:08:14. > :08:45.
:08:45. > :08:52.at the news at 6pm concerned Lance Armstrong, who was down to have
:08:52. > :08:56.lied in court about taking Fallen idol - the cycling legend of
:08:56. > :09:01.Lance Armstrong is labelled a serial cheat. A report from
:09:01. > :09:11.America's Eddie doping agency. Spot the mistake? Check-in she did,
:09:11. > :09:28.
:09:29. > :09:32.disrupting a picnic but it is not often they get in the way of a news
:09:32. > :09:37.reader. On a troublesome edition of Reporting Scotland this week, the
:09:37. > :09:42.reader was already having to dig -- deal with the loss of sound on the
:09:42. > :09:47.microphone. We will get a full weather forecast... But what is
:09:47. > :09:57.that flicking and flitting around the screen? This the were thought
:09:57. > :10:12.
:10:12. > :10:15.We asked BBC Scotland for an explanation and they told us there
:10:15. > :10:21.was a temporary problem with the sand and a couple of flies seemed
:10:22. > :10:26.intent on getting in on the action. This is live broadcasting and you
:10:26. > :10:30.occasionally get the occasion -- get blips but this one ended in a