19/04/2013 Newswatch

but now it is time for News watch this week panorama's controversial

It has been a tempestuous six months for BBC News. So how is it

moving on? Last weekend, it emerged that BBC One's Panorama had been

filming inside North Korea. How they got to do so became the

subject of great controversy, with calls for the programme to be

pulled from the schedules. But on Monday, it went out as planned.

With tensions escalating, Panorama spends eight days under cover

inside the most rigidly controlled nation on earth. So, welcome to the

real North Korea. Hundreds of viewers were concerned about the

way in which the reporter, John Sweeney, and his team, used a trip

by a group of London School of Economics students as a cover for

the secret filming. I am joined by the BBC's acting director of news.

What was your main concern about the treatment of the students, as a

viewer? As a teacher, I am concerned about the way students of

any age are treated. It seems to me, there is a kind of double standard.

We are being told that these students are grown-ups and adult,

but on the other hand, they seem to have been treated like children,

because they were not given remain information, they were told there

was one journalists, but there were two. They were not asked to sign

anything. Apparently there was a meeting in a pub. This is not the

way to treat adults. There were those among them who were happy

with what went on. But even if there are one or two, that is

enough for concern, I would say. But I do not think their reaction

is a justification. When you saw the programme, though, did you feel

that what came out of the undercover investigation was

justified? Actually, we were not told much about North Korea which

we did not know. Before, I might well have said yes, show it,

because we have risked people's lives making it, but having watched

it, I would say no. This was a balance between an undercover

operation, to enable the trip to take place, to be balanced against

the safety of the team. Now, actually, I do not agree, apart

from the fact that actually, all the students were over the age of

21, apart from one, who was 18, so therefore, they were adults, and

they were able to make up their own minds, and they were told twice in

London, before the trip went ahead, that there was a journalist

travelling with them, and they were all told this, and it was explained

what the risks of that were. they were told other information

later, in Beijing, which is the concern, that the BBC selectively

gave out the information, so they did not have the opportunity to

give informed consent at the start. What they were told in Beijing was

that this was a BBC team, and that there was an additional person, who

would be operating the camera. I am not convinced that the difference

between a journalist and a BBC journalist is that great. This

could have been a Pulitzer prize- winning New York Times journalist,

who would have given the track just as much publicity as a BBC team.

But the camera... Well, they all had cameras, because that is the

world we live in. And people are wondering, the nature of this trip,

given that it was set up by the wife of John Sweeney, who was being

paid as a producer, is the BBC really happy about that? Well, it

was not filmed with the BBC in mind. One person involved started to

think about this before Christmas, and it so happened that LSE

students applied to go on this trip. Why did the BBC get involved, then?

That was after the students had signed up, and the trip would have

gone ahead anyway, so it was asked whether or not Panorama could be

involved at that point. Thank you both very much. Baroness Thatcher's

death has resulted in a large postbag this week. BBC News

reported -- reported extensively on the build-up to the funeral and

showed the service itself, with contrasting responses from viewers.

James Kay asked... More typical, though, was this, and, from

Now, six months ago today, the Metropolitan Police launched a

formal criminal investigation into alleged sexual abuse by Jimmy

Savile. The BBC had just announced two inquiries of its own, and a

chain of events was in place which, along with the naming of Lord

McAlpine, led to the resignation of the Director-General, George

Entwistle. An internal report found that there had been unacceptable

management failings, and an independent inquiry described BBC

News as going into virtual meltdown. Half a year on, a new Director-

General has just been appointed. Fran Unsworth, we have had a lot of

e-mails about this over the last few months, some of them saying,

the whole culture of the BBC was criticised, and major changes are

needed. Until this happens, it says, no trust will be in existence.

the sackings, I would say that the whole chain of command, from the

Newsnight deputy and a thick, through to the Director-General,

has changed as a consequence. -- from the Newsnight deputy editor.

So, there have been quite a lot of management changes which have taken

place. But in terms of trusting news, which your view it talks

about, I think the best judge of that is our programmes and

audiences. What we saw as a result of the whole Savile meltdown, as it

was described there, this was something which affected about 20

people in the organisation out of a journalistic body of 8,000

journalists. I think what you see is that we have continued during

the course of this time to put up programmes to provide excellent

news coverage on a fairly big range of storage, some of the major ones.

So we must be judged on what we put out on air. -- stories. But the

question remains, how much has really changed, given that several

similar scandals emerged just a few weeks later? This e-mail says, are

you aware of the huge loss of trust? People do not feel that they

were honestly dealt with. Dealing with the loss of trust issue, we

measure trust ratings at the BBC, and what we discovered was that

undoubtedly, during the time of the Savile inquiry, and then the

Pollard report, our trust ratings undoubtedly took a knock. But this

week we discovered that they have recovered to what they were at

around the time just before the Olympics. Does that mean nothing

really needed to change, it was just a matter of time? Pollard

identified things which he felt did need to change in the culture of

the organisation, which is something we are addressing. We

have a new Director-General, who has cumin. As you said, we have

just appointed a new director of news, and we are looking at all of

those Walcott things across the organisation. We are already

starting to put in place some things which might address what we

do. What sort of things?One thing Parlour have looked at was how we

handle investigations. -- Nick Pollard. The Newsnight editor had a

story which he decided not to pursue. In other words, Newsnight

missed a story. They then went on to put out something which was

wrong. So, basically, what we want to do is to look at how we handle

our investigative journalism. If a programme does not want to run it,

maybe it could hand it on to another programme, which might be

able to pursue it further. That's one aspect. Again, there is the

concern that it has been six months, and people have felt they have had

very little communication about what has changed. They do not see

evidence of it. I think it is quite crucial that Newsnight still does

not have a new editor. People are wondering what is the future of

that programme. Some people have suggested that the only way to make

a really fresh start would have been to close that programme down.

I do not agree with that. It is an enormous brand which has been

around for 30 years. It has an extremely good track record. The

programme has served our audiences incredibly well, apart from in this

last few months. To get rid of the whole programme on the basis of a

couple of errors would be a disservice to the audience. But I

come back to what I said, our internal machinations, as it were,

are less important than the product which viewers can assume, and can

they have trust in it, and do they believe it? And I think the