01/04/2016 Newswatch

at ten o'clock a full round-up of the day 's news. But first,

Coming up on the programme, insensitive and inadequate?

Reviewers criticise coverage of last Sunday's bomb attack in Lahore.

And why news headlines about Sunday's

University boat races were at odds with the gender equality

On Easter Sunday more than 70 people were killed by a suicide bomb

of the hospitals where the victims had been taken to.

As the casualties arrived at the city's main

hospitals, so, too, did relatives desperate for news.

She had lost her two daughters in the blast.

My two girls were in the park, she says.

That brought this response from Peter Hudson in Herefordshire.

We asked BBC News for a response to that criticism and they told us...

Although we are aware of the risk of offending some people again,

we decided to show that clip to demonstrate what was being

We're now going to show a piece to camera first

broadcast on Monday over which the charge of insensitivity

The body of the 16-year-old has just been brought

outside his family home for final prayers and goodbyes.

He is just one victim among the dozens killed in yesterday's

blast and many families across Lahore will be mourning

A number of viewers objected to that on webcam.

Why would you stand less than three foot away from a teenager's Coffin

Would you do that in this country, in England?

I think the same could have been achieved had

the reporter been further away and got more the picture.

We also asked BBC News about that point and they

Joining us now to make a different point about the BBC's

coverage of those bombings in Lahore is the word Jeff Richmond

Can you tell us what you are concerned about with

My concern was it was not about the Lahore coverage,

So much as the fact that the events of a week

earlier approximately in Brussels received such huge coverage

and there were a lot of similarities between the two events.

They both occurred in foreign countries, the loss of life

in Lahore was almost twice that of the loss of life in Brussels

but it received a tiny fraction of the coverage.

And I began to wonder why on earth this

Let me read you what the BBC have told us.

This is a statement they have given in response to your

I suppose the first thing is that it was the lead story

after it broke through the rest of the evening and the whole

of the next day, but also that Brussels is closer

and there is a more obvious concern for people

I accept that, I still think it was entirely out of proportion

and to say that something is the lead story when the one I am

drawing a comparison with was not only the lead story,

but a saturation story, is slightly missing the point,

The point about distance is, frankly, it relevant.

The BBC on an entirely different topic have found

themselves very ready to send many people crisscrossing America

if there is even the lsightest suggestion that Donald

I don't think the geographic distance has

I think it is a case of further away and a bit more

And I ask what you would expect to see if the BBC

I would imagine the Pakistani police had suspects in mind,

I seem to recall seeing they had arrested some 200

We wouldn't expect the same sort of have you seen this man type

coverage as we got for our friend with the trolley and the hat.

Because that would be unrealistic as an

expectation if they got 200 or 300 people they are looking out.

But there was much more that could...

It left, I have to say, a slightly unpleasant taste

the whole coverage throughout that week to me.

It seemed, well, further away and much

more foreign than that other foreign country called Belgium.

On Sunday we were in the city centre as police dispersed far right

protesters who were caught on camera acting aggressively

Some protesters were confronting Muslim women paying

Officers here are overstretched already by the terror alerts.

The riot squad move in and there were

One word used their attracted the attention of Robert

On Thursday, the death of Ronnie Corbett was extensively

reported on BBC News but less so, the death of the acclaimed British

Several viewers criticised the lack of any mention

Sunday saw the boat race, or should I say, boat races,

the Oxford and Cambridge University's women's

crew compete on the same stretch of the Thames on the same day.

The headline on BBC One's early evening

news that day seemed to forget about the latter.

And Cambridge make it look easy, comfortably beating

Roz was one of those unimpressed saying

And Anna noticed the same permission elsewhere in the BBC's output.

It seems TV news editors took notice of the complaints

because by the News at ten the headlines had

Cambridge make it look easy completely beating Oxford

in the men's boat race, but it is Oxford's women

Perhaps a sign that an error had been spotted and corrected.

Finally, sticking between the relationship between the sexes,

you may remember that a couple of weeks ago we raised the thorny

side of the screen when there is one male and one female presenter.

This followed a controversy over seating

arrangements on Breakfast when new presenter Dan

Walker sits sits on the sofa on the right side of the more

experienced Louise Minchin, following a gender

pattern set by almost every television programme, bue why?

Michael was one of several viewers giving us

Christine thought it reflected a sexist power

But Bonnie McIntosh was less concerned...

Let's leave the last word to another viewer...

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That is all from us, we'll be back next week.