16/09/2016 Newswatch

featured in a sex video. Now time for Newswatch.

Welcome to the programme. Coming up on this programme, it may be a

national institution but was the move of the great British big up to

Channel 4 really worthy of extended coverage on national news? As the

go-ahead is given off, we speak to the China editor about the

challenges of her job. One story this week was headlined on

BBC One bulletins on Monday and Tuesday with breaking news alerts on

the BBC News app and news channel but this is one reviewer put it to

us was not so much breaking news as the King years. Just to bring you an

update, the great British big of is moving to Channel 4 next year and we

are just hearing that it has been confirmed that super guns and Mel

will not be going to Channel 4. Sue and Mel will be stepping down as

hosts of the programme. Scores of viewers felt the BBC lost its sense

of proportion in its coverage. Some putting it down to a celebrity

obsession. Two of them recorded their views for us. I would like to

make a point about the big off and its domination of the news coverage

on the BBC this week. I know it is a popular programme but surely it is

not news of the fact it is moving channels? If it was moving to

satellite, I could understand there may be a few people worried that at

the end of the day, it is only three hops on the channel change and I

don't see why that should be national news. The winner of the

2015 rate British bacon off. I was watching the news bulletin on Monday

when Fiona Bruce announced summer breaking news, anticipating a major

event such as a terrorist attack or plane crash or possibly the death of

a national leader, I was left speechless when the news turned out

to be nothing more than the loss of a programme from the BBC to Channel

4. You are to be ashamed of yourselves for giving such a trivial

event so much publicity. In more weighty matter is the US

presidential election and the main event in that campaign this week was

the revelation that Hillary Clinton had been suffering from pneumonia

and prodded by footage of her stumbling as she got into a car last

Sunday. Did her illness and her failure to divulge it earlier won

the attention it received? Not according to poll who wrote on

Monday. All morning, the BBC will continue to make a full of itself.

Thursday's announcement that the Hinkley point move your station will

go ahead was a reminder of the increasing commercial importance of

China in the UK, added to its growing significance, it is clear

what prodded BBC News to appoint its first China editor in 2013. Since

she took up the post she has ported on such stories as the President's

state visit to the UK, the G20 meeting earlier this month and last

Sunday, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Two years ago, no one

here was demanding independence. When they brought the heart of the

city to a standstill, they were only asking to choose Hong Kong's

leaders. Beijing refused to give ground and now they are demanding

more, the right to decide whether Hong Kong should be part of China at

all. The Michael the sad reveals growing mistrust between China and

its guests. Its neighbours in Asia complain about not getting a level

playing field in business and America increasingly sees China as a

dangerous rival. The protesters were penned a find police barriers and

deliberately drowned out by symbols and drums. A leader who likes to see

himself as a mild of the people was off to the Palace. A golden carriage

for the golden mirror in relations that both governments now want to

embark on. Official censorship of the media is ingrained in China. The

Internet is heavily restricted and BBC News broadcasts have been

blacked out on occasion while treading on sensitive areas.

Journalists face obstruction, repression and worse. Not an easy

place to report from then and the woman with the task of doing so is

with me now. China is so prominent in UK News, partly through things

like Hinkley Point C but it does not feel I can we understand the country

as much as one would expect., choose your job about explaining time to

British audiences? It is about that. Our cultures are so different, it is

5,000 miles away, is enormous and complex so a lot of the stories we

hear about China are about explaining but I have to say, I find

them difficult to understand slice of those with the audience China is

so very complex. In terms of understanding, winds a story about

reports such as the Queen making comments about rude officials, is

there something we don't understand about how that is viewed in China

and how it matters because we saw it as the Chinese blocking out our

reporting putt anything that doesn't fit the template of how the Chinese

state wants to report any event or any piece of news, they will blacked

out on our screens, on CNN, they will blacked out the print media

coverage. That is a problem which has grown worse in China, rather

than better. Under the President, the tendency of the state to behave

in an increasingly autocratic and controlling way about information is

very noticeable and that makes the job of reporters even harder but

something like that, those comments about the rudeness of Chinese

officials, I can understand what would have happened there. Every

official at every level who was trying to organise the smooth visit

and trying to cover that visit, I came across that, they are very

tense. Their jobs are dependent on that going well so they are very

anxious as individuals that everything should go according to

plan. Restrictions have a chilly got worse over the last few years, what

sort have restrictions have you faced and how do you deal with that

when you are reporting? We face a range of restrictions. For example,

quite strict constraints on 1's actions -- access to the country. If

you are a reporter, you have to have a Visa so that is one way of control

but at every level, there is intense control of what we do and there is

intense surveillance of what we do so that is just something that as a

reporter in China, you know goes with the territory. Has it affected

what you have put into a report because you are treading of whether

it is worth offending the Chinese or more important to put that

information out there? Never because at the end of the day, it is very

important to stand your ground and do the job that you are there to do

so for me, even though sometimes you are faced with a situation where you

may be threatened or someone will be displeased by this might have

consequences for you or for the BBC, you just have to see to the person

who is making that threat, well, I must do my job and I will do it the

way I see fit. Campaigners say the situation in China is getting much

worse. Forced public confessions of journalists on TV, does it affect

the way you can operate? It does. One of the more nuanced ways in

which it affect the way we operate, it affects our relationship with

Chinese journalists and it affects our relationships with Chinese

individuals. It is very, very hard for Chinese individuals now to feel

safe appearing on BBC TV for online or in any other western media. The

fear of Chinese individuals, are they going to be presented as

somehow colluding with foreign hostile forces if they appear or if

they talk in any way to the Western media, especially for Chinese

journalists. That has become a significant danger. Do you think

that you should be reminding viewers more in the course of your

day-to-day reporting about the scale of censorship? It is very difficult

because we do need to do that and there's a certain amount of that but

we do in our coverage but at the end of the story of an enormous,

complicated, turbulence the transformative China is a much

bigger story than the one of how it deals with Western media so there is

always the balance to be made between sometimes we will do the

story about how our lives were made hard and it was made almost

impossible in some cases for us to get to the story. Example we can

never go to Tibet and we constantly ask and we do not get given. We do

have to say, our ability to report is heavily constrained but at the

same time, we also have to say that the Chinese state and the Communist

Party or the thin crust on a mighty Chinese civilisation with all the

21st-century turmoil that the rest of the world is going through and

then some. Finally, back to the great British

baked off and its connection to the decision to go ahead with the

Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, but connection you might ask but someone

at the BBC has conceded that the new power station would produce another

lecture city to a 58,181,818 people to watch the programme. Gary spotted

that and e-mails. 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.

That's all from us. We will be back to hear your thoughts about BBC

coverage again next week.