14/10/2016

Download Subtitles

Transcript

:00:00. > :00:00.travel between the two countries. More news at the top of the hour,

:00:00. > :00:16.but first, here is News watch. Hello and welcome to News watch.

:00:17. > :00:19.More than five years into the destruction and suffering of the

:00:20. > :00:25.Syrian civil war, are we getting a full picture of the conflict? We

:00:26. > :00:34.speak to the BBC Middle East editor about the challenges of reporting on

:00:35. > :00:38.such a harrowing conflict. He is a contemporary chronicler. It was the

:00:39. > :00:45.voice of a new Nobel laureate for literature or a bad impersonator?

:00:46. > :00:49.First, it was surprising to hear on Thursday that the top story on many

:00:50. > :00:56.bulletins was about Marmite. At least it until it became clear

:00:57. > :01:00.was... Brexit was the real story. The spread was one of the number of

:01:01. > :01:04.brands withdrawn from the Tesco online site after a dispute over

:01:05. > :01:09.prices with a supplier, pointing to the sharp drop in the Valley of the

:01:10. > :01:14.pound which many attributed to the government permitted that Britain

:01:15. > :01:18.would leave the EU. The story the BBC brook which disclosed

:01:19. > :01:22.negotiations between Unilever and Tesco caused a significant drop in

:01:23. > :01:34.shares of both companies. There was panic buying of goods in a certain

:01:35. > :01:38.stories. The news last week and was dominated by the release of the

:01:39. > :01:42.video in which Donald Trump boasted that his fame meant he could do

:01:43. > :01:55.anything to women. Other comments made by the US presidential...

:01:56. > :01:58.Comments were summarised. News reports used the term is groping and

:01:59. > :02:04.lewd behaviour. What Donald Trump did was to claim he repeatedly uses

:02:05. > :02:06.his powerful position to harass and assault women. He said he just

:02:07. > :02:12.walked up to them and kissed them were grabbed them. If this were

:02:13. > :02:18.true, it would constitute sexual assault. To say that trouble boasted

:02:19. > :02:22.of sexual assault would certainly enrage him. But that is what he has

:02:23. > :02:32.done. To refrain from describing it in those terms is to commit an act

:02:33. > :02:35.of cowardice. It is to accept a misogynistic linguistic framing and

:02:36. > :02:40.it is to betray victims who need to hear that there is recourse in law

:02:41. > :02:43.for this kind of behaviour. The announcement on Thursday that Bob

:02:44. > :02:48.Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for literature caused much discussion.

:02:49. > :02:52.Art is their exquisite literature? After watching the news at six, some

:02:53. > :02:58.viewers were wondering if Bob Dylan was really Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan,

:02:59. > :03:03.like Shakespeare, has the knack for coin a phrase which becomes part of

:03:04. > :03:10.everyday speech. He has his own sense of meter and rhyme, metaphor

:03:11. > :03:13.and meaning. He is a contemporary chronicler, storyteller, moralist

:03:14. > :03:21.and poet whose work and words have changed attitudes and lives. Now,

:03:22. > :03:27.his vocal style is not exactly classical but those who sing as

:03:28. > :03:31.badly as that? No, because as one person on Twitter product, the last

:03:32. > :03:38.20 seconds on the Nobel Prize featured footage of not the man

:03:39. > :03:42.himself but a Dylan impersonator. Keith added, what a shame that the

:03:43. > :03:48.film footage concluded with someone doing a third rate impression of the

:03:49. > :03:52.great man. BBC News held their hands up to the mystic to us at the end of

:03:53. > :03:56.the Bob Dylan package some archive footage which had been incorrectly

:03:57. > :04:06.labelled as him was used. This was a production error which was rectified

:04:07. > :04:09.for the ten o'clock news. Now, since the ceasefire as stored in Syria

:04:10. > :04:13.broke down, the second city, a level, has been under intense

:04:14. > :04:17.bombardment. Political and diplomatic arguments have raged for

:04:18. > :04:21.whom there is responsibility and how it might be resolved. After five

:04:22. > :04:25.years of war, a solution seems further away than ever. During the

:04:26. > :04:32.recent deposit fighting, our Middle East editor, reported from Aleppo. I

:04:33. > :04:37.couldn't cross into eastern Aleppo. This was close to the front line in

:04:38. > :04:45.the old city, a tangle of medieval alleys that used to be the greatest

:04:46. > :04:53.souk in the Levant. The old city was an extraordinary human creation, now

:04:54. > :04:56.it is empty and dead. Nature of child was leaving hospital for his

:04:57. > :05:06.new life. It will be without his arm and without his four cousins who

:05:07. > :05:10.were killed when he was wounded. For reasons of logistics and 70, media

:05:11. > :05:14.access to Syria has been irregular and difficult and some viewers have

:05:15. > :05:20.told us they are concerned that the BBC is providing an incomplete or

:05:21. > :05:24.even distorted view of the conflict. There is much reporting on the

:05:25. > :05:28.terrible bombing in Aleppo in rebel held areas, but I am also interested

:05:29. > :05:33.in what is happening to civilians on the Syrian army side. What people on

:05:34. > :05:36.the opposite side think of their government's actions and what

:05:37. > :05:40.attacks rebels and terrorist groups are making on the Syrian army held

:05:41. > :05:43.areas. A more rounded reporting of the situation from different

:05:44. > :05:48.perspectives is needed to better understand the crisis. And Clive put

:05:49. > :05:51.it like this, the footage shown is almost exclusively from the eastern

:05:52. > :05:55.Aleppo rebel side without a mention that there are government areas with

:05:56. > :06:00.civilian victims of shelling or suicide bombing on a regular basis,

:06:01. > :06:03.mainly children are selected for maximum emotional effect when the

:06:04. > :06:09.majority of casualties are adults, including many Cine jihadists. Well,

:06:10. > :06:14.to discuss the challenges of reporting from Syria, Jeremie Boga

:06:15. > :06:18.joins us now from Cardiff. Most reports that we get here tend to be

:06:19. > :06:23.from the rebel side. How far do you try to get access to the government

:06:24. > :06:26.side? Most of the reporting I have done since I went after the war

:06:27. > :06:35.started has been from the government side. They are basically two ways of

:06:36. > :06:40.getting into Syria since the war began. One is with the Visa and

:06:41. > :06:44.reporting from the government side in the main and the other way in and

:06:45. > :06:49.was mainly over the Turkish border without a visa onto the rebel side.

:06:50. > :06:54.That access is almost ceased because it is too dangerous. The chances of

:06:55. > :07:02.running into jihadists Pujara journalists are very great. They

:07:03. > :07:08.kidnap rate is enormous. When I report from Syria, I am reporting

:07:09. > :07:12.from the government side. The worry I have had is that I have not been

:07:13. > :07:18.able to report from the rebel held side and that when we use pictures

:07:19. > :07:20.from the rebel side it is pictures we have sourced ourselves rather

:07:21. > :07:26.than directly filming them ourselves. Those are some of the

:07:27. > :07:30.most distressing images. Some viewers are concerned that we are

:07:31. > :07:35.getting a distorted view of the conflict. We get this footage coming

:07:36. > :07:37.from the rebel side of casualties. The message being the bombs are

:07:38. > :07:42.being dropped by Russians and Syrians. What is your view? There

:07:43. > :07:47.are distressing pictures from both sides. In that clip of mine, the

:07:48. > :07:54.wounded boy, he lived in government-held territory and was

:07:55. > :08:01.hurt by a shell that, his family said, came from a place held by the

:08:02. > :08:04.jihadists of Islamic State. It is representative, I think, to use

:08:05. > :08:12.pictures of children. They can be more shocking, but war is shocking.

:08:13. > :08:15.War is barbaric. There is a difficult issue about what we

:08:16. > :08:21.should. There is also a concern of when you shall such distressing

:08:22. > :08:25.images, of viewers feeling hopeless about it, also a fear of the

:08:26. > :08:32.desensitising with this torrent of distressing images. I think it is up

:08:33. > :08:37.to people like myself to report in such a way that people don't get

:08:38. > :08:46.desensitised. The argument about how much blood and gore reality to show

:08:47. > :08:50.is one we have constantly. It is a constant discussion and I have had

:08:51. > :08:55.many discussions over many years from many waters with programme

:08:56. > :08:59.editors about how much we show. Generally speaking, the people in

:09:00. > :09:03.the field want to show more than the people who edit the programmes are

:09:04. > :09:10.prepared to show and in an ideal world you get some sort of a happy

:09:11. > :09:15.medium between the two. Yes, it is shocking, but it is real. One other

:09:16. > :09:19.concern we have heard, and I have heard it expressed by former

:09:20. > :09:23.diplomats, is that the introductions to news items about Syria often

:09:24. > :09:28.oversimplify and they talk about rebels versus Assad and Russia, but

:09:29. > :09:32.the reality is more conjugated with many jihadists groups on the ground.

:09:33. > :09:38.How does it look to you? The news should not be about good people

:09:39. > :09:42.versus bad people. An injury gives you a flavour and it is not the

:09:43. > :09:51.whole story. You have to take the hole. We have to take the whole in

:09:52. > :09:56.more than one piece because I try to look at the number of pieces I have

:09:57. > :09:59.done from one reporting trip rather than one individual report. That is

:10:00. > :10:04.difficult because not everybody watches the news with the same

:10:05. > :10:11.obsessive seems that journalists do, but you cannot get everything in

:10:12. > :10:17.every piece. What I try to do and this is the challenge of TV

:10:18. > :10:22.reporting, I tried to do a story which has got something in it with

:10:23. > :10:28.someone who is interested but doesn't know much will get and learn

:10:29. > :10:34.something and come away a bit wiser. It will also, at the same time, have

:10:35. > :10:37.something in it that the top diplomat at the Foreign Office who

:10:38. > :10:41.deals with the Middle East might get and find interesting as well. It

:10:42. > :10:46.needs to be like a layer cake. That is not an easy thing to do. You need

:10:47. > :10:50.good material. He have to be careful with your words and good interviews

:10:51. > :10:58.and sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don't. Finally, when

:10:59. > :11:02.presenters read the headlines on a busy news programme that open assume

:11:03. > :11:05.that the pictures being run by the studio Gallery their relation to the

:11:06. > :11:12.words they are saying. It doesn't always work out like that. This is

:11:13. > :11:18.breakfast. It is half six, it is Friday the 14th of October. We will

:11:19. > :11:23.be joined by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and we will talk to

:11:24. > :11:26.her about plans for a second referendum on independence. We have

:11:27. > :11:30.clearly run at the wrong pictures over that particular sequence. My

:11:31. > :11:37.apologies. Restore it we will be talking about later is about the

:11:38. > :11:42.escaped gorilla at London zoo. Many of those who spotted that trip to

:11:43. > :11:47.Twitter with Sean posting this. The sturgeon gorilla gaffe must be

:11:48. > :11:51.irrefutable evidence of BBC bias. Thank you for all of your comments.

:11:52. > :12:02.If you want to share your opinions on BBC News and current affairs you

:12:03. > :12:06.can call us on... You can find us on Twitter and to have a look at our

:12:07. > :12:13.website. The address is on the screen. We will be back to hear your

:12:14. > :12:24.thoughts about BBC News coverage again next week.