:00:11. > :00:19.Welcome to NewsWatch. On this programme. What priority should BBC
:00:20. > :00:25.News be giving to foreign stories such as the activities of Boko Haram
:00:26. > :00:36.militants in Nigeria? We are walking into capital city. John Simpson, who
:00:37. > :00:40.has business is viewed. And he looks back at what has
:00:41. > :00:51.changed, better or worse, since BBC television news started.
:00:52. > :00:53.The range of the BBC's International journalist is unrivalled among
:00:54. > :00:56.British media organisations. How often they appear on our screens
:00:57. > :01:02.reporting from far`flung countries is a question that divides viewers.
:01:03. > :01:08.Putting as top stories and African union campaign to eradicate child
:01:09. > :01:33.marriage results in both bouquets and bats.
:01:34. > :01:43.We will be talking about that in a moment. But he will also be giving
:01:44. > :01:48.us his perspective on some of the changes BBC has undergone since its
:01:49. > :01:56.first transmission 60 years ago. This is what it looked like on the
:01:57. > :02:01.5th of July 1954. Moving pictures were at a premium
:02:02. > :02:04.and the graphics have rather it craft feel about them. At first
:02:05. > :02:09.Richard Baker was just a disembodied voice for fear that his appearance
:02:10. > :02:14.might give away his views and threaten the impression of
:02:15. > :02:21.neutrality. After a few weeks, the BBC did allow a presenter to be seen
:02:22. > :02:24.on screen, starting a process of personality presenting which for
:02:25. > :02:30.some has gone too far. For some time, the style remained stiff and
:02:31. > :02:37.deferential. We will show you a film of some of the main stages in this
:02:38. > :02:38.great day. The relationship between broadcasters and politicians have
:02:39. > :02:41.gotten a whole lot spikier since then. Not everybody is in favour of
:02:42. > :03:07.that. Princess Margaret... There was not
:03:08. > :03:11.much of the visual about television news back in the 1950s. Now the
:03:12. > :03:17.output is at least partly driven by the availability of good pictures,
:03:18. > :03:37.which for some has been taken to extremes.
:03:38. > :03:44.What else has changed? To cover international events, like the
:03:45. > :03:48.Hungarian uprising of 1956, a film crew might have had to disappear for
:03:49. > :03:54.weeks before returning home without a day of footage. This did not deter
:03:55. > :04:00.foreign correspondence from taking considerable risks, as he did in
:04:01. > :04:07.Vietnam's. I cannot think of a more modest way to say it. By the time
:04:08. > :04:10.John Simson reported from Cavill in 2001, technological advances have
:04:11. > :04:16.made newsgathering and broadcasting much more liberating, if not
:04:17. > :04:20.necessarily safer. Those developments on the particularly in
:04:21. > :04:27.light which filming, have continued. Making possible last month's trip to
:04:28. > :04:33.the extreme north`east Nigeria. It has come a long way in the past
:04:34. > :04:39.years. What has been gained and lost in the process? John Simson is with
:04:40. > :04:44.me now. We get complaints from those who feel there is too much news from
:04:45. > :04:48.abroad, but also feel we do not get enough of regions like Latin
:04:49. > :04:56.America. How do you feel it has changed? People always complain
:04:57. > :05:00.about exactly the same things in my experience. That goes back 50 years.
:05:01. > :05:07.Too much foreign news, as though it has got nothing to do with us. That
:05:08. > :05:13.seems to me to be dopey in a world as interconnected as ours. Too much
:05:14. > :05:24.political news as though politics do not affect us. I believe in use. It
:05:25. > :05:26.is my raison d'etre. Some people are nostalgic for the old web news
:05:27. > :05:35.writing when everything was neutral and differential to politicians. My
:05:36. > :05:41.first day as a reporter, I got punched in the stomach for daring,
:05:42. > :05:44.by Harold Wilson, by daring to ask him a question of when he was going
:05:45. > :05:51.to call an election. He punched me in the stomach, trying to get the
:05:52. > :05:56.microphone out of my hand. The world press were there, because they were
:05:57. > :06:00.waiting for an announcement. Nobody, not one of the newspapers,
:06:01. > :06:08.not one of the television cameras used these pictures. I looked at my
:06:09. > :06:12.watch and thought, I have lost my job, I have been physically
:06:13. > :06:19.assaulted by the Prime Minister. It was my first morning at work. What
:06:20. > :06:23.changes do think LG has made? People used to go with the Congress and two
:06:24. > :06:31.out of touch for weeks and had to come back and start editing. You can
:06:32. > :06:34.come back and start broadcasting almost immediately. Is that for the
:06:35. > :06:39.better? It has been for the different. There is no doubt that in
:06:40. > :06:44.times of the actuality of telling people what is going on things are
:06:45. > :06:48.file better now. By the time you have worked your way to a place
:06:49. > :06:56.where you can get to a film processed and sent back by plane to
:06:57. > :07:01.London, everything had changed by the time it was broadcast. Now you
:07:02. > :07:06.can be right up with events as they come along. But you do not know
:07:07. > :07:13.where the events are going. You are in as much of a quandary about what
:07:14. > :07:17.is happening and what is going to happen as everyone else. I wonder
:07:18. > :07:24.what you would think of the impact of 24`hour news. Perhaps it is a lot
:07:25. > :07:29.of chatter and not always in sight. You feel there is a lot of pressure
:07:30. > :07:36.on journalists to start talking the moment they hand? Yes. I do not do
:07:37. > :07:42.it. I am old enough and ugly enough to say, no, I am sorry. I am going
:07:43. > :07:49.to find out what the name of the place I am going to find out what
:07:50. > :07:54.the name of the place they then is before full top I think we have got
:07:55. > :08:02.a lot of gains from being able to have instant news. It has opened the
:08:03. > :08:08.world up to people. It has changed our politics, it has changed a lot
:08:09. > :08:12.of things. I am a little bit nostalgic for the times when you
:08:13. > :08:17.could think about what you were saying. Do you feel that reporters
:08:18. > :08:25.are under pressure? Precisely that. They are under huge pressure. There
:08:26. > :08:33.is a big cost. The cost is simply not being able to think about what
:08:34. > :08:38.you are saying. Just to get it out. That wonderful in Private eye called
:08:39. > :08:44.fill their time, the 24`hour news correspondent. We are talking a few
:08:45. > :08:51.days after the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I
:08:52. > :08:55.wonder if anything has changed and how that feels for a correspondent
:08:56. > :08:59.who tried to report what you saw. We would not have been thinking about
:09:00. > :09:05.Tiananmen Square after 25 years if it was not for the reporting. I am
:09:06. > :09:12.proud of the stuff my colleagues and I did there, the shots of the man
:09:13. > :09:16.standing in front of the tank, people would not have seen them if
:09:17. > :09:21.it were not for the BBC. It is a reality check that authorities are
:09:22. > :09:28.not always enthusiastic about. John Simson, thank you for coming news
:09:29. > :09:34.watch. `` coming on NewsWatch. A couple of the comments of what you
:09:35. > :09:38.have seen. The commemorations of the D`Day landings 70 years ago. On
:09:39. > :09:42.Thursday, the eve of the anniversary, the news channel
:09:43. > :09:45.broadcast from the Pegasus Bridge, the strategic crossing point of the
:09:46. > :09:57.French coast. Not everything went smoothly.
:09:58. > :10:02.What a key moment you are just watching. Disappearing briefly
:10:03. > :10:12.behind a tent. Later that day, French soil with the help of the Web
:10:13. > :10:27.devil. Some viewers were dissatisfied with what they saw.
:10:28. > :10:42.Finally, numbers, what are they. The expression has been coined for news
:10:43. > :10:47.plugs. Here were two examples. An item about Jimmy Savile derived from
:10:48. > :10:53.a panorama investigation followed by a trailer. Then a report about David
:10:54. > :11:09.Beckham's journey into the Amazon had the same treatment.
:11:10. > :11:15.Thank you for all your comments this week. If you want to share your
:11:16. > :11:16.opinions on BBC News and current affairs or even appear on the
:11:17. > :11:36.programme, you can call us. You can find us on Twitter and have
:11:37. > :11:40.a look at our website. We will be back to heal foot about BBC News
:11:41. > :11:48.coverage again next week. Goodbye. `` hear your thoughts.
:11:49. > :11:55.A lively start to the weekend as far as the weather is concerned. We have
:11:56. > :11:58.been flagging the potential for some heavy and thundery downpours. That
:11:59. > :12:02.is still on the cards. Difficult to pin down exactly where the heavy
:12:03. > :12:04.rain will be. You can see this wave across England and Wales running
:12:05. > :12:07.into Northern Ireland, pushing northwards through the day. Northern
:12:08. > :12:09.Scotland hangs on to dry and sunny weather. It brightens nicely from
:12:10. > :12:10.the south through