01/12/2017 Newswatch

of a certain royal announcement.

Hello and welcome to Newswatch.

Everyone loves a wedding, but the

BBC News go into overdrive over

Harry and Meghan? And...

My

congratulations to Harry and

Meghan...

Jeremy Corbyn

congratulates the happy couple. What

could possibly go wrong with BBC

subtitling? First row involving

Donald Trump's Twitter account is

not a new thing, but this week was

the first time Theresa May got

involved so directly. The US

president had retweeted three videos

from the far right group Britain

first, alleging to show violent acts

by Muslims. They shall felt the wide

coverage given to the story was

unhelpful. E-mailing... At the start

of the week the Government handed

over a document detailing how it

felt the UK's departure from the

European Union would affect 58

sectors of the economy. But some

sections of the so-called Brexit

impact studies were blacked out to

the fury of opposition parties.

There was little about this and BBC

News on Monday or Tuesday, which

prompted Chris Hill to write...

One reason why that story received

less attention than it might have

done was a certain engagement

announced this week which we think

you might just have noticed. Toure

Derbyshire was on their won the

long-awaited and much predicted news

broke on Monday morning.

Clarence

House have just announced in the

last few seconds Prince Harry is to

marry his American girlfriend Meghan

Michael.

But the rest of the day the

BBC News operation went into

overdrive with presenters and

reporters deployed to getting ten

pals, Bolton is devoting more than

at that time to the engagement,

scheduled addition of Panorama

changed to a special programme on

the Royal News and extensive

coverage of the new Tom online. The

response of Sarah Louise Ellis...

Ian Holton told us...

Of their viewers had another

objection, articulated here.

I was

quite amazed a heard the new --

newsreaders say Ms Merkel who is of

mixed race, and then the news of the

arrangements that were going to take

place. Why does she have to say

that? Why does it make a difference?

I feel that I'm making these

statements, the BBC is being

divisive and actually setting up

barriers were there and then eat.

They don't exist. I know she herself

says she is mixed race and has used

this to her own benefit and to

others benefit and I think that is

great, but to actually say it in the

factory line, I don't think that is

right.

Another viewer who contacted

us about this week about the Royal

engagement was Bob Davey and he

joins us from Sheffield. With me

here is Richard Burgess the UK news

editor from BBC News. Bob, what did

you feel about the garbage?

I just

thought that with other events

happening in the world, far more

significance and importance to the

-- you feel about the coverage? To

waste more than half of the six

o'clock News bulletin to coverage of

the engagement which everyone knew

about already, I thought was

absolutely pointless.

This is the

issue, isn't it? It is the excess.

It is a simple fact, most people

knew it was coming and more than

half the bulletin.

It was announced

that morning so we didn't know it

was definitely happening that day.

Six o'clock it was the first time we

had the chance to hear from both

Harry and Meghan in the interview

they did with Michelle the same. I

think there were a lot of

interesting issues to get into, held

their relationship developed, how he

proposed. All the stuff we found out

that the first time in the six

o'clock news bulletin. I appreciate

the point that there was a bit of

time devoted to it, but as far as we

can tell, a lot of the audience was

really engaged with the story and

really enjoyed the coverage.

Bob,

did you feel a lot of other stories

got squeezed out?

Yes. The

announcement of the engagement

matters not the slightest. It does

not making the slightest difference

to anyone in this country's life.

And yet events that are happening in

Parliament are going to affect

people in this country for decades

to come. Surely we should be paying

more attention to that than the

fripperies of the Royals get to.

Look at what was on the news, the

Pope in Burma, the redacted Brexit

impact studies which the Government

released. Chennai six. We needed to

have these properly explained and

other stories get dropped off to

find out how he proposed?

I think we

covered all the stories and have

done over the course of the week. We

lead with the Muslim situation on

Monday when the Pope didn't mention

the Rohingya by name.

Chennai six

would have been your lead, wouldn't

it?

Maybe, but the interest in the

Harry, Meghan engagement was

extraordinary. 5.6 million watched

the news on Monday at six o'clock.

That is the biggest audience all

week. The most popular story on the

website by a long distance, nearly 7

million people read the main story.

There is interest therein it. We

continue to cover other stories in

depth.

They also had concern about

the tone of the coverage of the

engagement, didn't you?

It seems as

though the Royal reporters are

bonding and sycophantic. I don't

know how they -- forming. I thought

Nicholas Witchell was quite a good

reporter until he became a royal

reporter and seems to have gone the

way of Jennie Bond.

To be fair, do

you have an issue that you

personally don't care for a royal

coverage?

Not really, no. It was

perhaps worth a mention and would be

in at the bottom of page eight of

the Guardian or something like that,

but apart from that, no.

Richard, it

is a happy occasion, but a lot of

viewers do detect what they see as a

fawning tome, don't they?

We were

reporting it as a happy story and

most people saw it as a positive

story. You often reflect that on the

tone of your coverage but we also

reflected the issues the issues have

-- the Royal family have had in the

past about marriage, and the fact

she is a divorcee, but ostensibly it

was a happy story, and the audience

clearly enjoyed it.

Richard we had

one viewer on webcam there dealing

uncomfortable about the amount of

discussion of Meghan Marco's

mixed-race background, into an

introductory line, did the BBC

perhaps misjudge how to discuss that

and make too much of it?

No, it was

one story, one element of the story.

We are telling the audience about

who she is. She is also raised at

her -- raised at herself. She and

Prince Harry raised the equipment

about it. -- a statement about it.

She talked of pride about ethnicity.

It was an element of the story and

it was important we were like.

Do

you think you got anything wrong in

the coverage?

Quite clearly people

have enjoyed the coverage and we had

a lot of positive feedback but I

know there are people like Bob who

will always think actually too much.

There are people in my family who

think that. It divides people. This

was a good news story but a lot of

our audience and they think they

enjoyed the positive news.

Final

word to you, Bob, the wedding is in

May, how would you like to see BBC

News handle the story of the next

six months?

I think it will be

interesting to some people, I don't

know if OK or hello magazine will

cover it but I think it would be cis

-- sufficient. Those who are

interested will buy hello magazine

and the rest of us will get on with

our lives.

Bob Davey, thank you so

much, and Richard Burgess. Finally

the BBC to come the season W one

they presented a satirical but not

unfamiliar view of either the BBC.

One observed in the last series

dealt with in a suit we have

addressed on this programme.

It has

been live for 24 hours and we are

looking at 93% accuracy.

12 errors.

The new version of the BBC in-house

operating system has just gone live,

including a major upgrade of the

automatic live subtitling software.

Can we talk about the other 7%.

Although it is already doing better

than its predecessors in many areas,

the area it is least accurate as the

area of proper names.

The medically

it is pretty close to stop but

politically and every other way it

is a disaster.

Subtitling blunders

like that couldn't happen in fact

like that could they? Jeremy Corbyn

was congratulating Prince Harry and

Meghan Markle, saying I admired that

they have drawn attention to medical

conditions. This is what they saw.

It was a particularly unfortunate

error considering the criticism he

has faced for referring to his

friends in Hezbollah. Some viewers

were not impressed... The BBC said

the voice recognition use when

subtitling live news broadcasts and

recognised his brother. That was not

the only on-screen oddity on Monday.

Not the subtitling issue but it will

have come sub to surprised that it

will have led to crisis talks

between the two main parties. If

they want to share anything you can

call us. Or e-mail us. You can find

us on Twitter. Have a look at our

website. More next week.