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Hello and welcome to Newswatch with me, Samir Ahmed. Coming up: After a | :00:18. | :00:21. | |
tumultuous couple of years for the BBC flagship programme, where next | :00:22. | :00:24. | |
for Newsnight? The editor is here to talk about its mixture of political | :00:25. | :00:27. | |
and international coverage and its future without long serving | :00:28. | :00:46. | |
presenter Jeremy Paxman. Ian Katz took over as Newsnight editor last | :00:47. | :00:49. | |
September. In a moment we have the first broadcast interview with him | :00:50. | :00:52. | |
since then but before we talk, here is a reminder of some of the issues | :00:53. | :00:56. | |
he faces on a programme with a long heritage. | :00:57. | :00:58. | |
The theme tune is familiar, but back in 1980 the idea of mixing news and | :00:59. | :01:01. | |
current affairs, along with an occasional taste for the unexpected | :01:02. | :01:05. | |
and quirky, was radical. Good evening and welcome at last to | :01:06. | :01:11. | |
Newsnight. That has remained through the years, as has its capacity to | :01:12. | :01:14. | |
arouse controversy, but it was the Government accusing Peter Snow of | :01:15. | :01:16. | |
being patriotic in the way the Falklands law was covered, that | :01:17. | :01:23. | |
interview with Michael Howard... ``unpatriotic. Did you threaten to | :01:24. | :01:33. | |
overrule him? Or more recently the highly damaging rows over its | :01:34. | :01:35. | |
failure to broadcast an investigation into Jimmy Savile, | :01:36. | :01:37. | |
following the calamitous error of the McAlpine report which led to the | :01:38. | :01:40. | |
resignation of BBC Director General George Entwistle. Ian was hired a | :01:41. | :01:47. | |
year ago from the Guardian, with a brief to revitalise the programme, | :01:48. | :01:50. | |
which had lost a third of its audience in a year. He revitalised | :01:51. | :01:55. | |
with things like this interview with Russell Brand and this dance with | :01:56. | :02:11. | |
Kirsty Wark. But there have been critics of this with out Nelson | :02:12. | :02:14. | |
writing to us about the dumbing down and intellectual castration of | :02:15. | :02:20. | |
Newsnight. And: Audience figures have stabilised but the challenge | :02:21. | :02:31. | |
remains. How can Newsnight provide a distinctive offering which will make | :02:32. | :02:33. | |
it compulsory viewing in a multichannel world with lots of news | :02:34. | :02:40. | |
sources? This point was raised by viewers... One of the programme's | :02:41. | :02:57. | |
raison d'etre has always been its in`depth coverage of politics. The | :02:58. | :03:08. | |
task here is to make the subject compelling, a challenge exposed by | :03:09. | :03:10. | |
Ian's tweet following this interview with Labour frontbencher Rachel | :03:11. | :03:13. | |
Reeves, who he described as boring snoring. He later apologised. But | :03:14. | :03:39. | |
viewers also found it revealing... Part of the mix is still lengthy | :03:40. | :03:42. | |
films on serious subjects such as last week's 15 minute report on a | :03:43. | :03:45. | |
slum skyscraper in Venezuela, made by the film`making residence at | :03:46. | :03:56. | |
Newsnight. ``film`maker in residence. It also has a team that | :03:57. | :04:08. | |
implies that serious journalism following the Jimmy Savile scandal | :04:09. | :04:10. | |
is back on the agenda. Jeremy Paxman is leaving next month, so how will | :04:11. | :04:14. | |
the man many regard as the Grand Inquisitor be replaced? Ian joins me | :04:15. | :04:17. | |
now. Thank you for coming on Newswatch. When you got the job, | :04:18. | :04:20. | |
Newsnight was in a state of crisis so what have your priorities being? | :04:21. | :04:25. | |
There was an initial task of revitalising the show and bringing | :04:26. | :04:33. | |
back the energy levels. There was a staff of fantastically talented | :04:34. | :04:35. | |
journalists who had been through a tough year or so and just needed the | :04:36. | :04:39. | |
energy and confidence back. That was the first thing. The second was to | :04:40. | :04:50. | |
identify what was the formula for Newsnight that made it for so many | :04:51. | :04:54. | |
years, I think, one of the most wonderful things on television | :04:55. | :04:56. | |
anywhere in the world, and also to work out what was missing in the | :04:57. | :05:00. | |
application of that formula and I think it was the breaking of | :05:01. | :05:03. | |
original news, a classy analysis of the day that has just happened and | :05:04. | :05:06. | |
the day to come, and an air of jeopardy and excitement about what | :05:07. | :05:15. | |
might happen in the live show. Those are the things I have worked on | :05:16. | :05:18. | |
bringing back in the last six months or so. Jeopardy is an interesting | :05:19. | :05:22. | |
word when a lot of what you know you are doing about rebuilding trust. I | :05:23. | :05:25. | |
would say it is absolutely the case that when it comes to the reporting | :05:26. | :05:28. | |
that Newsnight does, there was absolutely a task of re`establishing | :05:29. | :05:31. | |
trust after McAlpine and Jimmy Savile. What you want with Newsnight | :05:32. | :05:34. | |
is the sense that something exciting might happen during the live show. | :05:35. | :05:40. | |
You want viewers to think that they might miss something that could | :05:41. | :05:42. | |
happen live tonight that people will talk about later or tomorrow. Can | :05:43. | :05:47. | |
you give me an example of something like that that you think has worked? | :05:48. | :05:50. | |
Things like Matthew Perry arguing about drugs. Friends actor? Yes, | :05:51. | :05:57. | |
arguing with Peter Hitchens, which we all watched with our faces in our | :05:58. | :06:03. | |
hands in the gallery. We thought somebody might thump somebody during | :06:04. | :06:10. | |
the interview. That was one of those moments. But also the interview with | :06:11. | :06:15. | |
Terry Pratchett about his Alzheimer's, that was one of the | :06:16. | :06:17. | |
most extraordinary arresting interviews, partly because we were | :06:18. | :06:30. | |
not sure if it would work live. Investigations are back on the | :06:31. | :06:33. | |
agenda and you took on some controversial stories, the Edward | :06:34. | :06:35. | |
Snowden revelations and WikiLeaks. We can't do that at the BBC, can we? | :06:36. | :06:39. | |
I have left the Guardian so I can't speak about that. I think Newsnight | :06:40. | :06:43. | |
is in a fabulous position to tackle complex and controversial | :06:44. | :06:46. | |
investigations. We have hired a team of really strong investigative | :06:47. | :06:49. | |
reporters and we can give them the time and space and support to do | :06:50. | :06:59. | |
difficult investigations. I would hope there is not a subject that we | :07:00. | :07:04. | |
can't investigate. One of the subjects that we got a lot of | :07:05. | :07:07. | |
e`mails about were the jokey pay`outs. People can understand the | :07:08. | :07:13. | |
idea of drawing in an audience, but they feel the juxtaposition with a | :07:14. | :07:16. | |
serious story can make them feel uncomfortable. Is there a danger of | :07:17. | :07:19. | |
trying to attract new and younger viewers and alienating the loyal | :07:20. | :07:29. | |
older Newsnight viewers? Not everybody will love everything you | :07:30. | :07:32. | |
do, which is an iron law, and when I look at the Twitter response to an | :07:33. | :07:35. | |
individual Newsnight programme, if the response is running at 70`34 and | :07:36. | :07:50. | |
against, that is broadly right. ``Seven for and three against. | :07:51. | :08:00. | |
Humour has always been a strand of the Newsnight identity and it is | :08:01. | :08:04. | |
true that I have tried to dial it up a bit, partly to answer the question | :08:05. | :08:07. | |
of what Newsnight offers at the end of this very long cycle, when people | :08:08. | :08:11. | |
have been exposed to hours of news bulletins, and I think a humorous | :08:12. | :08:14. | |
and distinctive take on the day is part of that answer. The key | :08:15. | :08:17. | |
question is really whether it is at the expense of the seriousness of | :08:18. | :08:21. | |
the show and I say emphatically that it isn't. Adding more fun to the | :08:22. | :08:24. | |
show was not the same as dumbing down and you only have to look at | :08:25. | :08:28. | |
our running orders over the last month to see that we are serious as | :08:29. | :08:31. | |
ever. This challenge about how to make political news compelling is | :08:32. | :08:33. | |
critical. That boring snoring comment, some people thought it was | :08:34. | :08:36. | |
revealing that television should be about confrontation and | :08:37. | :08:38. | |
illumination. How do you answer that? I make no apology for trying | :08:39. | :08:41. | |
not to produce a boring show, which is something we try to do every | :08:42. | :08:52. | |
night, or try not to do. There is a really interesting discussion to be | :08:53. | :08:56. | |
had and I hope I have tried to have it about the balance between heat | :08:57. | :08:58. | |
and light in interviewing, particularly political interviewing, | :08:59. | :09:01. | |
and I think it is a really interesting question to ask, whether | :09:02. | :09:04. | |
we have strayed in that balance too far towards the heat. I think what | :09:05. | :09:07. | |
the Rachel Reeves affair really pointed to was, frankly, an arid | :09:08. | :09:10. | |
state of affairs in political interviewing. A lot of politicians | :09:11. | :09:19. | |
come into a studio and their primary objective is not to move by a | :09:20. | :09:22. | |
millimetre from the line that their party has taken. And we collectively | :09:23. | :09:26. | |
go out to move them by one millimetre from that line. I think | :09:27. | :09:32. | |
there is a moment now when it would be interesting to have a public | :09:33. | :09:34. | |
conversation about how we collectively feel about these | :09:35. | :09:37. | |
encounters, and to ask whether there is a more productive way of doing | :09:38. | :09:40. | |
them, both for viewers and for journalists and politicians. Viewing | :09:41. | :09:51. | |
figures are always going to be brought up and they are not great | :09:52. | :09:55. | |
compared to five years ago, which is a long`term trend. What will you do | :09:56. | :09:58. | |
about that and how far can you expect to reverse the decline? I | :09:59. | :10:03. | |
would be very cheerful about the viewing figures at the moment. As | :10:04. | :10:08. | |
you say, we have seen a 30% or 40% fall in viewing figures over five or | :10:09. | :10:22. | |
six years. If you look at this year, which is really when my watch kicked | :10:23. | :10:26. | |
in and my new people arrived on the show, the audiences have been very | :10:27. | :10:29. | |
stable. Two out of three months, we have been up on last year. Jeremy | :10:30. | :10:32. | |
Paxman has been the most dominant face of Newsnight. How are you | :10:33. | :10:39. | |
replacing him? You might have to ask me back to talk about that. You | :10:40. | :10:44. | |
obviously thinking about it now because you know he is going at the | :10:45. | :10:48. | |
end of June. I am thinking about it, that is right, but I cannot give you | :10:49. | :10:52. | |
an answer because I don't have one. We are in an incredibly lucky | :10:53. | :10:55. | |
position by having three strong presenters after Jeremy has gone, | :10:56. | :10:57. | |
all of whom are brilliant at presenting the show. I think there | :10:58. | :11:04. | |
are many other wonderful presenters in the BBC. We are in an incredibly | :11:05. | :11:13. | |
lucky position. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments this | :11:14. | :11:24. | |
week. You can call us with more thought. Join us again next week. | :11:25. | :11:31. | |
Until then, goodbye. Friday was the warmest day of the | :11:32. | :11:50. | |
year so far as we got within 24 Celsius. We could beat that in the | :11:51. | :11:53. | |
days ahead. Some very warm weather in the forecast. Our weather is | :11:54. | :12:00. | |
never that straightforward. For some of us, there will be rain over the | :12:01. | :12:01. |