16/05/2014 Newswatch

to govern for all Indians. Time now for Newswatch and this week, a

warhorse of BBC current affairs comes under the spotlight. Hello and

welcome to Newswatch with me, Samir Ahmed. Coming up: After to Malta as

couple of years for the BBC flagship programme, where next for Newsnight?

`` tumultuous couple of years. The editor is here to talk about its

mixture of political and international coverage and its

future without long serving presenter Jeremy Paxman.

Ian took over Newsnight editor last September. In a moment we have the

first broadcast interview with him since then but before we talk, here

is a reminder of some of the issues he faces on a programme with a long

familiar, that back in 1980 the idea familiar, that back in 1980 the idea

of mixing news and current affairs, along with an occasional taste for

the unexpected and quirky, was radical. Good evening and welcome at

last to Newsnight. That has remained through the years, as has its

capacity to arouse controversy, but it was the Government accusing Peter

Snow of being patriotic in the way the Falklands law was covered, that

interview with Michael Howard... Did you threaten to overrule him? Or

more recently the highly damaging rows over its failure to broadcast

an investigation into Jimmy Savile, following the calamitous error of

the McAlpine report which led to the resignation of BBC Director General

George Entwistle. Ian was hired a year ago from the Guardian, with a

brief to revitalise the programme, which had lost a third of its

audience in a year. He revitalised with things like this interview with

Russell brand and this dance with Kirsty Wark. But there have been

critics of this with out Nelson writing to us about the dumbing down

and intellectual castration of Newsnight. And:

Audience figures have stabilised but the challenge remains. How can

Newsnight provide a distinctive offering which will make it

compulsory viewing in a multichannel world with lots of news sources?

This point was raised by viewers: One of the programme's raison d'etre

has always been its in`depth coverage of politics. The task here

is to make the subject compelling, a challenge exposed by Ian's in the

mist wheat following this interview with Labour frontbencher Rachel

Reeves, who he described as boring snoring. `` Ian's tweet. But viewers

also found it revealing: Part of the mix is still lengthy

films on serious subjects such as last week's 15 minute report on a

slum skyscraper in Venezuela, made by the film`making residence at

Newsnight. It also has a team that implies that serious journalism

following the Jimmy Savile scandal is back. Jeremy Paxman is leaving

next month, so how will the man many regard as the grand Inquisitor be

replaced? Ian joins me now. Thank you for coming on Newswatch. When

you got the job, Newsnight was in a state of crisis so what have your

priorities being? There was an initial task of revitalising the

show and bringing back the energy levels. There was a staff of

fantastically talented journalists who had been through a tough year or

so and just needed the energy and confidence back. That was the first

thing. The second was to identify what was the formula for Newsnight

that made it for so many years, I think, one of the most wonderful

things on television anywhere in the world, and also to work out what was

missing in the application of that formula and I think it was the

breaking of original news, a classy analysis of the day that has just

happened and the day to come, and an air of jeopardy and excitement about

what might happen in the live show. Those other things I have worked on

bringing back in the last six months or so. Jeopardy is an interesting

word when a lot of what you know you are doing about rebuilding trust. I

would say it is absolutely the case that when it comes to the reporting

that Newsnight does, there was absolutely a task of re`establishing

trust after McAlpine and Jimmy Savile. What you want with Newsnight

is the sense that something exciting might happen during the live show.

You want viewers to think that they might miss something that could

happen live tonight that people will talk about later or tomorrow. Can

you give me an example of something like that that you think has

worked? Things like Matthew Perry arguing about drugs. Friends actor?

Yes, arguing with Peter Hitchens, which we all watched with our faces

in our hands in the gallery. We thought somebody might dump somebody

during the interview. That was one of those moments. `` thump

somebody. But also the interview with Terry Pratchett about his

Alzheimer's, that was one of the most extraordinary arresting

interviews, partly because we were not sure if it would work live.

Investigations are back on the agenda and he took on some

controversial stories, the Edward Snowden revelations and WikiLeaks.

We can't do that at the BBC, can we? I have left the Guardian so I

can't speak about that. I think Newsnight is in a fabulous position

to tackle complex and controversial investigations. We have hired a team

of really strong investigative reporters and we can give them the

time and space and support to do difficult investigations. I would

hope there is not a subject that we can't investigate. One of the

subjects that we got a lot of emails about whether a jokey pay`outs.

People can understand the idea of drawing in an audience, but they

feel the juxtaposition with a serious story can make them feel

uncomfortable. Is there a danger of trying to attract new and younger

viewers and alienating the loyal older Newsnight viewers? Not

everybody will love everything you do, which is an iron law, and when I

look at the Twitter response to an individual Newsnight programme, if

the response is running at 70`34 and against, that is broadly right.

Humour has always been a strand of the Newsnight identity and it is

true that I have tried to dial it up a bit, partly to answer the question

of what Newsnight office at the end of this very long cycle, when people

have been exposed to hours of news bulletins, and I think a humorous

and distinctive take on the day is part of that answer. The key

question is really whether it is at the expense of the seriousness of

the show and I say emphatically that it isn't. Adding more fun to the

show was not the same as dumbing down and you only have to look at

our running orders over the last month to see that we are serious as

ever. This challenge about how to make political news compelling is

critical. That boring snoring comment, some people thought it was

revealing that television should be about confrontation and

illumination. How do you answer that? I make no apology for trying

not to produce a boring show, which is something we try to do every

night, or try not to do. There is a really interesting discussion to be

had and I hope I have tried to have it about the balance between heat

and light in interviewing, particularly political interviewing,

and I think it is a really interesting question to ask, whether

we have strayed in that balance too far towards the heat. I think what

the Rachel Reeves affaire really pointed to was, frankly, an arid

state of affairs in political interviewing. A lot of politicians

come into a studio and their primary objective is not to move by a

millimetre from the line that their party has taken. And we collectively

go out to move them by one millimetre from that line. I think

there is a moment now when it would be interesting to have a public

conversation about how we collectively feel about these

encounters, and to ask whether there is a more productive way of doing

them, both for viewers and for journalists and politicians. Viewing

figures are always going to be brought up and they are not great

compared to five years ago, which is a long`term trend. What will you do

about that and how far can you expect to reverse the decline? I

would be very cheerful about the viewing figures at the moment. As

you say, we have seen a 30% or 40% fall in viewing figures over five or

six years. If you look at this year, which is really when my what kicked

in and my new people arrived on the show, the audiences have been very

stable. Two out of three months, we have been up on last year. Jeremy

Paxman has been the most dominant face of Newsnight. How are you

replacing him? You might have to ask me back to talk about that. You

obviously thinking about it now because you know he is going at the

end of June. I am thinking about it, that is right, but I cannot give you

an answer because I don't have one. We are in an incredibly lucky

position by having three strong presenters after Jeremy has gone,

all of whom are brilliant at presenting the show. I think there

are many other wonderful presenters in the BBC. We are in an incredibly

lucky position. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments this

week. You can call us with more thoughts on:

Join us again next week. Until then, goodbye.

In the last few days we have been advertising some very warm weather

heading our way for the weekend, which has already arrived. Deadline

for the weekend is very warm with fluffy Fairweather clouds. `` the