:00:12. > :00:20.The headlines... A police officer in Philadelphia has been shot and
:00:21. > :00:25.wounded as he shot in his -- sat in his cool cat, the gunman pledged
:00:26. > :00:30.allegiance to Islamic State as he was shooting. Police in -- a police
:00:31. > :00:34.officer in Cologne has been suspended after his handling of it
:00:35. > :00:39.with a crime during New Year celebrations. He is accused of
:00:40. > :00:46.withholding information about the attacks. Gunmen in Egypt have opened
:00:47. > :00:49.fire at a hotel on the red Sea. At least two foreign tourists are said
:00:50. > :00:54.to have been wounded and it is said one of the attackers has been
:00:55. > :00:59.killed. They boasted Toryism drug lord in Mexico has been recaptured.
:01:00. > :01:08.Guzman was recaptured following the shoot out with Marines in the
:01:09. > :01:21.coastal city in his home state. Now, at ten o'clock will have a full
:01:22. > :01:23.round-up of the news. Before that... It is Newswatch.
:01:24. > :01:26.Hello, and welcome to the first Newswatch of the year.
:01:27. > :01:28.In this programme, a masked British murderer and a child featured
:01:29. > :01:32.in the latest video released by so-called Islamic State.
:01:33. > :01:34.Did the BBC fail to show enough of it for viewers
:01:35. > :01:40.Did the Corporation underplay the race of the men who attacked
:01:41. > :01:43.women in Germany on New Year's Eve for reasons of political
:01:44. > :01:53.And a politician resigns live on air.
:01:54. > :01:55.But did the Daily Politics engineer its timing for maximum
:01:56. > :01:58.embarrassment to the Labour leadership?
:01:59. > :02:01.The BBC has for some time been very careful about showing any footage
:02:02. > :02:04.from propaganda videos made by so-called Islamic State
:02:05. > :02:06.but the latest high-profile film released last Sunday posed
:02:07. > :02:15.It named David Cameron and showed a British maked man carrying out
:02:16. > :02:17.murders and a British child chanting propaganda.
:02:18. > :02:19.Here is how it was reported on the News at Ten.
:02:20. > :02:22.Islamic State militants in Syria have released a video claiming
:02:23. > :02:26.to show the execution of five men accused of spying for Britain.
:02:27. > :02:29.The video, which we're not showing, features a masked man speaking
:02:30. > :02:33.English with a British accent who threatens the UK.
:02:34. > :02:35.Our security correspondent, Gordon Correra, is with me
:02:36. > :02:39.There are a lot of these propaganda videos released by IS.
:02:40. > :02:45.There followed a brief description of the contents of the video but no
:02:46. > :02:50.Given that it set off many investigations into the identity
:02:51. > :02:53.of the man and child, the omission greatly annoyed
:02:54. > :02:56.John Webster, who left this phone message.
:02:57. > :02:59.I am disgusted that this country will not allow us to see
:03:00. > :03:06.We didn't even get to hear most of the audio, let alone the video.
:03:07. > :03:09.By the following evening, BBC News was showing a short clip
:03:10. > :03:12.from the video as the search stepped up for the identity
:03:13. > :03:18.The latest propaganda video from the group calling itself
:03:19. > :03:28.A masked killer taunting Britain and addressing its Prime Minister,
:03:29. > :03:35.How strange it is that a leader of a small island threatens us.
:03:36. > :03:39.Some viewers felt that was not enough to get a sense of the video
:03:40. > :03:42.and regretted the BBC's apparent lack of interest in the identity
:03:43. > :04:10.Here is Christine Page from Ringwood in Hampshire.
:04:11. > :04:13.To talk about this issue, I'm joined by James Stephenson,
:04:14. > :04:22.In the past, we have had complaints that the BBC was giving any oxygen
:04:23. > :04:25.of publicity to these terrorists by showing videos.
:04:26. > :04:28.It seems that the BBC policy for a while has been to use
:04:29. > :04:31.as little as possible, but what is the BBC's policy now
:04:32. > :04:37.We recognise that the great difficulties that we have in dealing
:04:38. > :04:45.with this material, on the one hand, it is clearly propaganda,
:04:46. > :04:49.It has an effect through its shock value.
:04:50. > :04:51.That makes us disinclined to want to run it.
:04:52. > :04:54.On the other hand, it is clearly news and it is clearly something
:04:55. > :04:56.of public interest and something we have to report.
:04:57. > :04:59.What we try to do is report as much as we need to,
:05:00. > :05:03.to do our job, which is to report the news and give the context
:05:04. > :05:06.But not to do the propaganda job for them.
:05:07. > :05:11.And that is the balance we seek to strike.
:05:12. > :05:35.And the next night we got that very short clip.
:05:36. > :05:37.at the forefront of trying to establish the identity
:05:38. > :05:40.and by Monday night we were reporting that he was
:05:41. > :05:43.The reason we took the approach, we used, as you saw,
:05:44. > :05:45.the still image, as you saw, the masked perpetrator.
:05:46. > :05:49.But we wanted to be as restrained as possible so we did not
:05:50. > :05:52.want to use any more material and we felt we needed to to explain
:05:53. > :05:56.the story to our audience and that was the judgment we took.
:05:57. > :05:59.And as the story developed on Monday and more detail emerged
:06:00. > :06:01.about the likely suspect, the likely culprit, we began to use
:06:02. > :06:05.We felt we needed to, again, for editorial reasons,
:06:06. > :06:16.to flesh out that he was British, he appeared to be British,
:06:17. > :06:26.using more than we felt we needed to do to do our job.
:06:27. > :06:32.Well, we have, again, a difficult balance to strike and it
:06:33. > :06:36.to a child because as well as editorial considerations
:06:37. > :06:51.and the things I have already touched on, we have very serious
:06:52. > :06:55.that we, again, had an even higher bar in using imagery
:06:56. > :07:06.there when the interests of the child are at play
:07:07. > :07:11.given the circumstances, this is clearly an exceptional situation.
:07:12. > :07:14.The child is out there and really to find out who these people
:07:15. > :07:16.are and we do such things with children.
:07:17. > :07:16.Was it misguided, this idea about child protection,
:07:17. > :07:24.given that we're dealing with a major terrorist threat?
:07:25. > :07:40.As you can imagine, there was a lot of editorial discussion and a lot
:07:41. > :07:42.that our continuing obligation to the interests of the child meant
:07:43. > :07:47.that even if lots of other media showed him, either blobbed
:07:48. > :07:53.or unblobbed, we had a responsibility that continued.
:07:54. > :07:59.So it was not that we thought our audience would not find
:08:00. > :08:02.them if they chose to, it was a judgment about what we felt
:08:03. > :08:04.was our responsibility in our own output.
:08:05. > :08:06.One other issue, people were concerned that the murders
:08:07. > :08:09.of the five men did not get enough attention in the end.
:08:10. > :08:13.Do you think we got the full horror of what had been done to these men?
:08:14. > :08:17.It depends what you mean by the full horror.
:08:18. > :08:20.We described the full horror, it is definitely the case
:08:21. > :08:21.that we did not show the full horror.
:08:22. > :08:31.We did not feel either that we were able to do that,
:08:32. > :08:34.judgments but also what our audience expectation would be but it is no
:08:35. > :08:36.doubt a horrendous video and our reporting, the scale
:08:37. > :08:40.and nature of our reporting, did justice to that.
:08:41. > :08:44.James Stephenson, thank you very much.
:08:45. > :08:52.Thank you for continuing to contact us while we have been off air over
:08:53. > :08:56.One subject which got your attention was news reports that emerged
:08:57. > :08:58.from Cologne in Germany about an apparently co-ordinated
:08:59. > :09:04.Around 1000 men described as being of Arabic or North African
:09:05. > :09:07.appearance attacked over 100 women, with news reports of robberies
:09:08. > :09:10.and sexual assault, including two alleged rapes.
:09:11. > :09:13.Some viewers complained that until at least the middle of this
:09:14. > :09:18.week, the apparent immigrant background of the attackers did not
:09:19. > :09:20.receive due attention on BBC News, though it was covered briefly
:09:21. > :09:27.In Germany tonight, protesters gathered outside the cathedral
:09:28. > :09:30.in Cologne after around 80 women reported being robbed,
:09:31. > :09:35.threatened or sexually assaulted by groups of men on New Year's Eve.
:09:36. > :09:37.Police suspect that as many as 1000 young males,
:09:38. > :09:39.many of them drunk, carried out the attacks.
:09:40. > :09:41.Chancellor Merkel has called for the perpetrators to be
:09:42. > :09:49.Not mentioned in that report was the ethnicity of the attackers.
:09:50. > :09:53.The issue did feature on the TV news the following night,
:09:54. > :09:55.thanks to Germany correspondent, Jenny Hill, when she filed
:09:56. > :09:59.At this point the story had already become major international news.
:10:00. > :10:01.Scores of BBC viewers felt there had been a significant omission
:10:02. > :10:07.Here is Paul from Wrexham, who recorded his
:10:08. > :10:16.The appearance of the men involved in this incident had been widely
:10:17. > :10:18.publicised in all other media sources.
:10:19. > :10:27.In fact, the BBC's own website included this information.
:10:28. > :10:31.So why on earth the decision was taken to suppress
:10:32. > :10:35.the information from the news bulletins is beyond me.
:10:36. > :10:42.It is political correctness taken to the extreme.
:10:43. > :10:47.And brings into question the BBC's claim of impartiality.
:10:48. > :10:50.And also, I feel, it plays into the hands of those
:10:51. > :10:57.Finally, the ongoing dispute about how the news media treats
:10:58. > :11:00.Jeremy Corbyn got a new focus in the New Year with coverage
:11:01. > :11:04.of his controversial Shadow Cabinet reshuffle that lasted three days.
:11:05. > :11:06.By Wednesday, changes were still being made
:11:07. > :11:08.following the sacking of Shadow Europe Minister Pat
:11:09. > :11:11.Laura Kuenssberg was on the BBC's Daily Politics along
:11:12. > :11:13.with Stephen Doughty, who until that moment had been
:11:14. > :11:29.It has also led others to consider walking out the door and one of them
:11:30. > :11:34.I have written to Jeremy Corbyn to resign from the front bench.
:11:35. > :11:37.I agreed to serve on Jeremy's front bench for a number of reasons,
:11:38. > :11:39.I had very well publicised differences with him on foreign
:11:40. > :11:41.policy and defence and national security.
:11:42. > :11:49.When an individual like that, my own colleague in a team,
:11:50. > :11:52.is singled out for views that I also hold myself,
:11:53. > :11:54.I think it is only honourable for myself also to leave
:11:55. > :11:58.Journalists might say that an on-air resignation is a bit of a coup
:11:59. > :12:01.for any news programme, in this case the Daily Politics
:12:02. > :12:04.But many viewers were concerned about how it came about.
:12:05. > :13:02.If you want to share your opinions on BBC news and current affairs,
:13:03. > :13:06.You can find us on Twitter and you can watch previous
:13:07. > :13:18.We will be back to hear your thoughts about BBC News coverage