25/01/2013 Newswatch

Now on BBC News, it's time for Newswatch, with Samira Ahmed.

Welcome to The Nolan Show. This week: -- news watch.

Why is he talking while she is singing?

It is very hard... Did this discussion get out of control?

And so cut -- and stuck in the snow, does his reporter not watch the

news? Monday saw a big set-piece occasion

in Washington, the inauguration of Barack Obama for his second term as

President. It was a serious speech without some of the lofty idealism

of his original address. He will be dealing dramatically with domestic

policy. Scores of view was contacted the BBC object into the

commentary and interviews you heard going on during the ceremony. The

I am joined by two of the viewers who contacted us. Richard Gerver

and Maureen Phillips. Richard, first sum up what you did not like

about the coverage? I think the tone was set right at the start. I

sat down with my 16-year-old daughter who is really interested

in American history at the moment, to watch the inauguration. We were

greeted by an interview with a Barack Obama impersonator, which

kind of summed up when things were going I think. As the inauguration

ceremony began there seemed to be and over a mound of commentary and

punditry. It was not about the inauguration and what was happening

but more about the challenges Barack Obama would face in his

second term and the fact that this punditry was going on over the

beautiful sound of a choir, over the introductions from the chair of

the inauguration ceremony, and most of what was being said was really

repeated commentary from all of the coverage we had heard before the

election, during the election and after the election. Maureen, the

BBC have said they tried to get a balance between analysis to inform

the audience and letting the event it right. The ceremony itself was a

relatively small part of all of the coverage and the talking over key

events, the choir, James Taylor... It is very interesting. America the

beautiful is a very short song and to talk over its seems to miss the

point. Absolutely. I would really like to know from the BBC who made

the decision that the British viewer was not going to be privy to

that celebration. Because I was so dismayed by it and so embarrassed I

channel hop to and I found that Sky News were not doing that and, to my

horror, when I channel hop and saw that Sky News were taking the

viewer into the president's rumour for the signing of the oath, the

BBC had not captured that at all which I think is a very important

historic occasion. She did not get anything out of the analysis?

Richard said, it was repetitive. It was repeating a lot of what had

gone on through the election coverage anyway and I think it is

important to have the context actually for the moment of the

inauguration you should have been allowed to see that in a full, a

relatively short ceremony, and I think the contextual punditry, as

Richard calls it, should have been confined to moments when generally

something - that nothing was going on and it was intrusive and rude.

What would you say, Richard, if you can advise the BBC on coverage of

events like this in the future? I agree totally with what has just

been said. What concerns me most about the BBC's coverage of these

kinds of events, I have to say it reminded me a little bit of the

criticisms that were levelled at the BBC during the river pageant

during the Queen's Jubilee. That does not seem to be enough faith in

that history of the moment and the quality of the production of these

ceremonies in themselves. Also, I wonder whether they think that the

attention span of the viewer, they miscalculate there. They must have

quite a patronising perception of the viewers of these moments in

history. Thank you very much. There has been a bit of a storm brewing

in Northern Ireland over last week's edition of The Nolan Show.

It is known for its provocative tome. This particular edition got

livelier than most. Do you agree? did not say that. Let me say this,

in fairness to you it is very hard... Those are the photographs.

I want to get a lot out of this programme tonight. Listen to him.

will answer the question. Before I go any further, what ever equality

impact was done, that was the audience. The programme, shown only

in Northern Ireland, created a volume of reaction, much of it

along the lines of this e-mail we To discuss this I am joined from

Belfast by Jeremy Adams, editor of their programme and head of current

affairs at BBC Northern Ireland. What happened, it clearly went

wrong and you had an audience that were overwhelmingly Unionist and

quite disruptive. Absolutely and from a media watch point of view

the thing is important to say and others disappointed you did not say

was that what happened here is that we had a very large demonstration

outside the BBC. A lot of people did not feel able to come in

because they were deterred by the protesters outside. We had known

beforehand there would be a demonstration and we knew some

people did not want the debate to go ahead. But you'd made the

decision to let the programme go ahead when you had an audience that

was biased and you have their knowledge that. No, I am sorry, let

me finish, I did not acknowledge the audience was biased. What I

acknowledged was that the normal audience for the programme was

organised and people came to the programme and there was a balanced

panel to discuss this but unfortunately people were

organising a demonstration outside which deterred a set number of

people from coming in. What we achieved in this programme, and it

is important to understand this, is that we took the dispute that is

taking place on the streets, which has been spilling over into

violence, we took it into the studio and for all the shouting in

the clip, what happened is that we change the wall to talk. That has

had a salmon packed a lot of people. People complained and we know that

have felt intimidated and B Platt aim could have felt intimidated.

Why did you not rethink the decision to go ahead with the

audience when people were intimidated from walking into the

studio. The question I asked was could be safely go ahead with a

discussion to discuss these issues and they would be discussed in a

way that people could hear the issues rather than allowing

demonstrations and violence to stop the discussion. I concluded we

could do and we could do so safely. The key question is a whether the

tone of the programme is appropriate for an issue like this,

given the violence that was going on in the streets, the Nolan show

is known for being provocative and it sets itself up as somewhere with

a bit of argy-bargy and perhaps it was wrong to go ahead with what she

did. I think that all the evidence is a, and it was set the following

day by a number of commentators, that the programme acts as a bit of

a safety valve. They did not escalate into violence. It would be

wrong, you are talking about the atmosphere of the programme, nobody

has been interviewed as much -- interrupted as much as you are

interrupting me! It was a discussion in which people felt

very strongly. The question was did we stop the debate or have the

debate? We had the debate and there has been an exchange of views but

the programme had a huge audience amongst the people of Northern

Ireland and almost half of the television audience washed it and

the vast majority of them, according to our figures, in terms

of their appreciation of the programme, the appreciation was

high. Tunnel for speaking to us. Finally, viewers sometimes complain

about irresponsible reporters take risks when covering severe weather.

This week Jon Kay got into a pickle. When reporting on heavy snow in

Bristol he and his crew got stuck there for the night and they were

put up by a local family the we spoke to the next morning.

Good morning, did you not hear the forecast? That so for sounds very

comfortable this morning. Be honest, what do you think of idiots like us

who get stuck and make foolish mistakes like this and you have to

help them out? I suppose it is your job but, if you don't need to

travel, it is quite mad, really. Jeremy Bolton was equally

Thank you for all of your comments this week. If you want to share