16/12/2016 Newswatch

At 10pm we will have a full round-up of the day's news but first it is

time the Newswatch. Hello and welcome to Newswatch

with me, Samira Ahmed. Coming up on the programme,

amid reports of atrocities in the battle for Aleppo,

how is the BBC verifying claims And, subtitles are leaving

some viewers baffled Lots of viewers have been in touch

questioning why the BBC devoted so much coverage to a story that

only affected the Here's the BBC's transport

correspondent Richard Wescott reporting on the first day

of the strike. All of Southern's 2000

services cancelled today. Southern wants its drivers to take

over closing the train doors. It's a job currently done

by the on-board guard. The unions say it's less safe

and threatens jobs in the long run. Well, we asked BBC News

for a response, and they told us... The war in Syria and the battle

for control of Aleppo has prompted several viewers to contact

Newswatch. After controlling the eastern half

of Aleppo for four years, rebel groups seeking to overthrow

President Bashar al-Assad this week lost almost

all of their strongholds Eastern Aleppo's recapture

by government forces came These scenes were filmed on a mobile

phone, after a Syrian army attack. There's been, says the UN,

a complete meltdown of humanity. Not everyone was happy

with the BBC's coverage. Over the past year we've heard

from a number of Newswatch viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing,

who are sometimes left So we decided to look

into how it works. Hi, I'm Suzy, I'm a live

subtitling team leader. A deaf or hard of hearing person

should be able to experience and get the same amount of enjoyment out

of a programme as a hearing person. Normally these days,

its voice recognition. So, I use my voice,

I have a microphone, These stakes are huge for us full

stop but comma our boys Which is much faster to stop

the delay in live subtitles. On BBC One, we can join the BBC's

News teams where you are. I'm listening to whatever

the person is saying, repeating it exactly,

adding punctuation, changing colours, and I'm

reading it on screen. You have to concentrate really hard,

because you're listening, you're speaking, you're reading,

and sometimes you're writing, I'm joined now by the BBC's head

of broadcast operations Simon Smith. So, an insight there into how hard

the work is of doing news But a number of viewers have got

in touch because they find the issue Nicholas Green says "I do not find

contemporaneous subtitles helpful, more of a distraction really,

because of the delay." Eileen Baxter says "We can go

to the moon and elsewhere, but TV programmers can never get

the subtitles right. They are either running behind

or they are put on so fast, We've seen that obviously

it is tricky doing it live. Live subtitling

is done in real time. The first time that the subtitler

hears what they've then got to turn into a text subtitle is exactly

the same moment that the audience are hearing that

interview or report. Inaccuracies are another huge

frustration for viewers. And Malcolm Crowe recorded a video

for us to highlight a mistake in the reporting of the recent fatal

Croydon tram crash. There was a boy in the clip

talking about he'd been on the tram, and he survived,

but his friend did not. And some of the words

which appeared on screen to explain what he was saying

were really wrong. We should be able to

have something better. That is a particularly unfortunate

one, because obviously But people do sometimes wonder why

they are so weird, I don't know, When you have a fast

breaking news story, quite often the subtitling team,

like the rest of the operation, We are constantly trying to improve

the speech text software. But occasionally, words will be

misheard by the automation And that's why sometimes words

come out and they look Usually, the reason

for that is that the word that the software has put out sounds

a little bit like the one In a live environment it's very

difficult to go back and change that because it's such

a fast-moving situation. A related issue is new terms that

then become a regular part of news. Alan Haleston has sent us a screen

grab from the Andrew Marr show. Theresa May was talking

about "Brexit" but it was How long does it take to get

a word like that right? I would expect that "Brexit" now

is in such common usage, that I would expect that

automatically to come out correct. But it's a good example of how

the software often can mishear and misinterpret words

that are spoken. The "rex" of "Brexit" and "Wrexham",

it's got confused there. Is there a sense of going

through a list, and thinking, these are the words that

are emerging, and actually putting So what happens is that a subtitler

will go through the expected running order and identify unusual words,

and they will train the software to use the right word

when they re-speak it on air. The challenge is that there is only

a limited amount of vocabulary that Sometimes if a word isn't expected,

you will get that mistake. I have to say, within that example,

an interview with the Prime Minister at the moment in the current

situation, I would have expected that to be correct

and we will certainly take that away Viewer Malcolm Crowe

who we heard from earlier, obviously uses subtitles a lot,

has said he has started to watch Sky News now instead

of BBC News, here's why. We find that the subtitles

on Sky are more reliable It's not so much a matter of choice

but it's a matter of necessity if we want to get the proper sense

of what's going on. So is the BBC using the most

up-to-date technology as perhaps That's a very interesting

observation, because I can absolutely guarantee

that the technology which is used for Sky is the same technology

which is used for the BBC, because they use the same system

that was developed for the BBC Subtitling, I'm afraid,

of that form, live subtitling I fully accept there

is further to go. But equally we have had some

significant improvements Simon Smith, thank you so much

for coming on Newswatch. Do let us know your thoughts on

that, or on any aspect of BBC News. Details of how to contact us

at the end of the programme. Now, a few people contacted

Newswatch about the BBC's coverage of the Nobel Prize ceremony

in Stockholm, concerned that the BBC focused too much

on Bob Dylan's non-appearance. TRANSLATION: Bob Dylan came

to literature through the beauty With his work, Bob Dylan changed

the way we understand poetry. He may not have been

there to receive his award, but fellow singer Patti Smith

did turn up. She performed one of his most

famous songs, eventually. Thank you so much for

all your comments this week. If you want to share your opinions

on BBC News or current affairs, or even appear on the programme,

you can call us on 0370 010 6676, You can find us on

Twitter @NewswatchBBC. Do have a look at our website,

bbc.co.uk/newswatch. We'll be back in the New Year

on January 6th to hear your thoughts Until then, from all of us

on the programme, have a very happy