07/06/2014 Newswatch

Welcome to NewsWatch. On this programme. What priority should BBC

News be giving to foreign stories such as the activities of Boko Haram

militants in Nigeria? We are walking into capital city. John Simpson, who

has business is viewed. And he looks back at what has

changed, better or worse, since BBC television news started.

The range of the BBC's International journalist is unrivalled among

British media organisations. How often they appear on our screens

reporting from far`flung countries is a question that divides viewers.

Putting as top stories and African union campaign to eradicate child

marriage results in both bouquets and bats.

We will be talking about that in a moment. But he will also be giving

us his perspective on some of the changes BBC has undergone since its

first transmission 60 years ago. This is what it looked like on the

5th of July 1954. Moving pictures were at a premium

and the graphics have rather it craft feel about them. At first

Richard Baker was just a disembodied voice for fear that his appearance

might give away his views and threaten the impression of

neutrality. After a few weeks, the BBC did allow a presenter to be seen

on screen, starting a process of personality presenting which for

some has gone too far. For some time, the style remained stiff and

deferential. We will show you a film of some of the main stages in this

great day. The relationship between broadcasters and politicians have

gotten a whole lot spikier since then. Not everybody is in favour of

that. Princess Margaret... There was not

much of the visual about television news back in the 1950s. Now the

output is at least partly driven by the availability of good pictures,

which for some has been taken to extremes.

What else has changed? To cover international events, like the

Hungarian uprising of 1956, a film crew might have had to disappear for

weeks before returning home without a day of footage. This did not deter

foreign correspondence from taking considerable risks, as he did in

Vietnam's. I cannot think of a more modest way to say it. By the time

John Simson reported from Cavill in 2001, technological advances have

made newsgathering and broadcasting much more liberating, if not

necessarily safer. Those developments on the particularly in

light which filming, have continued. Making possible last month's trip to

the extreme north`east Nigeria. It has come a long way in the past

years. What has been gained and lost in the process? John Simson is with

me now. We get complaints from those who feel there is too much news from

abroad, but also feel we do not get enough of regions like Latin

America. How do you feel it has changed? People always complain

about exactly the same things in my experience. That goes back 50 years.

Too much foreign news, as though it has got nothing to do with us. That

seems to me to be dopey in a world as interconnected as ours. Too much

political news as though politics do not affect us. I believe in use. It

is my raison d'etre. Some people are nostalgic for the old web news

writing when everything was neutral and differential to politicians. My

first day as a reporter, I got punched in the stomach for daring,

by Harold Wilson, by daring to ask him a question of when he was going

to call an election. He punched me in the stomach, trying to get the

microphone out of my hand. The world press were there, because they were

waiting for an announcement. Nobody, not one of the newspapers,

not one of the television cameras used these pictures. I looked at my

watch and thought, I have lost my job, I have been physically

assaulted by the Prime Minister. It was my first morning at work. What

changes do think LG has made? People used to go with the Congress and two

out of touch for weeks and had to come back and start editing. You can

come back and start broadcasting almost immediately. Is that for the

better? It has been for the different. There is no doubt that in

times of the actuality of telling people what is going on things are

file better now. By the time you have worked your way to a place

where you can get to a film processed and sent back by plane to

London, everything had changed by the time it was broadcast. Now you

can be right up with events as they come along. But you do not know

where the events are going. You are in as much of a quandary about what

is happening and what is going to happen as everyone else. I wonder

what you would think of the impact of 24`hour news. Perhaps it is a lot

of chatter and not always in sight. You feel there is a lot of pressure

on journalists to start talking the moment they hand? Yes. I do not do

it. I am old enough and ugly enough to say, no, I am sorry. I am going

to find out what the name of the place I am going to find out what

the name of the place they then is before full top I think we have got

a lot of gains from being able to have instant news. It has opened the

world up to people. It has changed our politics, it has changed a lot

of things. I am a little bit nostalgic for the times when you

could think about what you were saying. Do you feel that reporters

are under pressure? Precisely that. They are under huge pressure. There

is a big cost. The cost is simply not being able to think about what

you are saying. Just to get it out. That wonderful in Private eye called

fill their time, the 24`hour news correspondent. We are talking a few

days after the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I

wonder if anything has changed and how that feels for a correspondent

who tried to report what you saw. We would not have been thinking about

Tiananmen Square after 25 years if it was not for the reporting. I am

proud of the stuff my colleagues and I did there, the shots of the man

standing in front of the tank, people would not have seen them if

it were not for the BBC. It is a reality check that authorities are

not always enthusiastic about. John Simson, thank you for coming news

watch. `` coming on NewsWatch. A couple of the comments of what you

have seen. The commemorations of the D`Day landings 70 years ago. On

Thursday, the eve of the anniversary, the news channel

broadcast from the Pegasus Bridge, the strategic crossing point of the

French coast. Not everything went smoothly.

What a key moment you are just watching. Disappearing briefly

behind a tent. Later that day, French soil with the help of the Web

devil. Some viewers were dissatisfied with what they saw.

Finally, numbers, what are they. The expression has been coined for news

plugs. Here were two examples. An item about Jimmy Savile derived from

a panorama investigation followed by a trailer. Then a report about David

Beckham's journey into the Amazon had the same treatment.

Thank you for all your comments this week. If you want to share your

opinions on BBC News and current affairs or even appear on the

programme, you can call us. You can find us on Twitter and have

a look at our website. We will be back to heal foot about BBC News

coverage again next week. Goodbye. `` hear your thoughts.

A lively start to the weekend as far as the weather is concerned. We have

been flagging the potential for some heavy and thundery downpours. That

is still on the cards. Difficult to pin down exactly where the heavy

rain will be. You can see this wave across England and Wales running

into Northern Ireland, pushing northwards through the day. Northern

Scotland hangs on to dry and sunny weather. It brightens nicely from

the south through