15/11/2013 Newswatch

in the studio. Now it's time for Newswatch, with Samira Ahmed. This

week, have BBC staff in the Philippines been diverting valuable

resources away from survivors of the typhoon?

Welcome to Newswatch with me. An influx of BBC presenters and

reporters in the Philippines and an uncomfortable watch for some viewers

concerned about survivors of the typhoon.

The two`minute silence which was not actually silent. And a 75`year`old

broadcaster gets a tattooed, but is it news? More than a week after the

typhoon`hit the Philippines the death toll is rising and there are

difficulties in getting food and supplies out to the survivors. It is

a huge challenge to broadcasters to cover the story and in a moment we

will explore some of the issues for journalists with the BBC's foreign

editor. First some of your reactions to the coverage. I would really like

to know why George Allah gaer is fronting the news from Manila. We

have had perfectly good reporters in the last 48 hours and it is a

complete and utter waste of money to complete `` to persist in doing it.

There is no reason. He is doing nothing that he could not do from

the studio in Britain. There that he is wasting. It is ridiculous. That

concern was picked up by Phil who messaged us on Thursday.

Well, with me now to respond to those points is the foreign editor

for BBC News. Can you start with the issue of sending in the big news

anchors. Viewers do not see why people are standing in Manila and

just reading introduction is. The main anchors that we sent out there

do not just read introductions. They are presenting some of the BBC One

programmes but they are also on our continuous networks and our radio

networks. They go out as reporters. We had some very experienced

presenters in these locations and we do not have a bureau in the

Philippines and it happened that George Alec I was one of the closest

people we could send this disaster he was in shrill anchor. `` Shri

Lancaster. Srii Lanka. The people we send their carried everything they

could on their backs. They take a tent and they operate out of the

tent and they take their own food and water and power. The conditions

are very difficult for them but we are not there to be any burden on

the aid agencies all the people who are trying to survive after the

disaster. What about the dilemma when the BBC crews have got through

and no aid has got through. What about the thought that they should

have taken food supplies with them if they could get through and it was

awful for people to see them arrive and just report on their misery.

There were no situations where we were the only ones to arrive there.

The reality is that we are going in as very small teams. The first team

that got that had backpacks. Everything they had to support

themselves were in their backpacks. We were not coming in in big convoy

is full of vehicles loaded with food just for ourselves. That is not the

reality on the ground. You would have seen from the pictures that

there was nothing in the locations that we we are sending in very small

teams and we so how have events like this tsunami affected how we cover

situations like this? We try and limit the number of people going

in. We cannot have large crews travelling around everywhere because

the crews on that side of the world are having to gather news all day

and file it all night. People can only operate like that for a 24 or

48 hours at the most before you have to get them out of the region or

give them some sort of break so we have very small crews in a lot of

different locations and we are accessing them in rotation. I know

some people have asked why we had George Alagiah and also Tim Wilcox

but they did not see that one was broadcasting throughout the day and

the other was broadcasting throughout the night. This was the

situation in the early days when no one understood the scale of it but

now having had criticism put to you is there something you would say

about the BBC's responsibility on getting word out on what was going

on and have you had any feedback about whether it affected aid

donations? Aid agencies want us to be there and telling the story.

Governments want the wider world to know about what has happened,

especially as was acknowledged by the Filipino government, they are

not coping. If you look at things like the DEC appeal which raised in

a short period of time ?30 million. This is clearly a story of

international interest and huge interest to people in the UK and it

was the sort of story that we had to be there and we had to tell the

world about it. Thank you very much. Monday was Armistice Day,

traditionally marks by a two`minute silence. At the 11th hour of the

11th day and the 11th month BBC One and BBC Two joined with the news

channel to broadcast this. `` BIG BEN CHIMES.

Silence, not really, and there were locations. The locations were great

but two minutes silence not exactly that.

Another caller agreed. This is BBC News ` coming up in the

next few minutes: to answer that question I am joined

by the man in charge. What did happen? Well, you saw and heard what

happened. The intention was to go to a number of places around the

country to see how people were commemorating Armistice Day and in

one respect we did that. You saw, but you also heard and clearly what

you did not get was silence. That disappointed a significant number of

viewers and it did upset viewers and I would apologise to them because I

know how important the anniversary is to millions of people. I am very

sorry that it did not go as we would wish. The BBC covers Armistice Day

every year with this two`minute silence so what happened this year,

did you try to do some indifferent that went wrong? Not particularly.

The main commemoration on Remembrance Sunday is on the

cenotaph. On Armistice Day itself we try to reflect the whole of the UK

and get to as many places as possible. What that means is that

the BBC is an observer at a number of locally organised and vents. ``

events. Our teams did what they could to ensure that all of our

watches were synchronised and 11am he was 11am there and we checked

with the organisers that the two`minute silence was going to be

observed and what actually happens in three of our locations was that

the timing of the events slipped so that at the National Arboretum where

you heard the singing, very shortly afterwards they went quiet for two

minutes. With hindsight is there anything you can do differently

about how to treat the occasion? I think we will emphasise even more

strongly to the local organisers that they have two, in order for us

to be able to fill the silence successfully, we have to make sure

that the two minutes starts at 11 and finishes two minutes afterwards,

with a bit of a buff # with a bit of a buffer either side. Should we just

stick to one location? No, because we are the national broadcaster and

the whole point of Armistice Day is to see how all of the nations of the

big `` one of the nations of the united kingdom come together and how

we do it all over. Thank you. Finally the news at six on Tuesday

featured this. David Dimbleby says he has fulfilled

a lifetimes ambition by getting a tad too at the age of 75. He has had

it done as part of a BBC series he has made and he chose the design

because it features his star sign. He said it did not hurt, but it just

zinged a bit. Thank you for all of your comments

this week. Do share all of your opinions by calling us. Or you can

send us an e`mail. You can also contact us on Twitter or through the

website. That is all from us and we will hear your thoughts about BBC

News coverage next week. Good evening. Temperatures are

already close to freezing across southern England. We have clearer

skies and there will be missed and folk forming later. Further north we

have more clout. Underneath the cloud it will be mild but you can

see in the frosty weather that we have across rural areas of southern

England tonight. The mist and fog could be dense in places and will

linger well into the morning in some places. It will only lift as the

cloud moves to the south. Some