17/07/2014 The Papers

place in Gaza tonight as Israel launched a major ground offensive

against Palestinian militants. It follows nine days of air strikes by

Israel, which they insist are necessary to halt rocket attacks by

Hamas militants. More than 200 Palestinians and one Israeli have

died since this latest conflict began.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be bringing

us tomorrow. With me here in London is Oliver Wright, the Whitehall

Editor of The Independent and in our Glasgow studio, Kevin McKenna,

Scottish Columnist for The Observer. Tomorrow's front pages are dominated

by the plane crash in Ukraine. The Independent shows burnt out

fuselage on the ground and describes bodies scattered over fields.

A rescuer is pictured amid the wreckage on the front of the Metro.

The Telegraph says that wreckage was strewn over an area nine miles wide.

A pro`Russian militant is shown standing over the scene in The

Times. It reports 154 Dutch people and six Britons are among the dead.

"Murder in the Sky" is the headline on the Guardian.

The Mirror describes "Slaughter at 33,000 Feet".

There's a stark message on the front of the Mail: there'll be hell to pay

if it emerges Russia is involved. And finally 'Putin's missile' is

behind the disaster according to the Sun, blaming pro`Russian

separatists. There are many different strands to the stories.

Let's look at the Independent. Pro` Russian rebels are suspected of the

attack. There are a lot of pictures to choose from. It gives you a sense

of how or promote this part of Ukraine was, which will make

it tricky to investigate. I think the Independent can be proud of its

story. It is a very dramatic picture. There is a separatist

investigating the wreckage. I am being told that the Malaysians

will take quite a long time to get to the crash site. There are reports

that Ukrainian government forces are finding it difficult to get to the

crash site because it is being groomed over by the separatists. ``

combed. There is an inference that if they locate the black box, it

will go straight to Moscow. Then the narrative will start to be dictated

by the Russians and President Putin. There are a lot of

nationalities involved. We have the story about slaughter at 33,000 feet

in The Mirror. We have most of the people on board are from the

Netherlands. It is an international tragedy. The front page is grimly

compelling. The wreckage is still smouldering. There are a lot of

images on the Internet that are far worse. You need to pick one that can

convey the gravity of the situation, without showing all the awfulness.

It is a difficult place to investigate. There were reports from

the United States with Joe Biden saying that American satellites,

which have been monitoring that part of the world carefully before this

happened, had picked up evidence of a surface to air missiles. It

probably won't take them long to identify where that came from.

Whether they can get people on the ground to find out where that

missile launcher is now will be difficult. Let's look at the Sun.

They talk about whether the separatists had the weaponry to

bring an ally no down at 30,000 feet. `` an airliner down. No one is

admitting the blame at the moment. There are claims and counterclaims.

The Sun is doing what it does best. There is no equivocation. They are

making a lot of the fact of the altitude of the plane was such that

only a serious piece of military hardware could have brought it down.

They then pointed straight out Putin. That is just like them. They

don't sit on the fence. The Daily Mail is looking at the darker

consequences. They say that this has very serious implications for the

geopolitical situation. Ukraine 's President Petro Poroshenko quoted on

Reuters that this was a terrorist attack that is a challenge to the

whole world. There were so many people on board, it took off from

the Netherlands, it inevitably draws in other countries. Of course it

does. This is a very serious problem for Putin. It implicates Russian

involvement will stop I think it is too early to say it came from

Russian troops. It could have been a missile that was once controlled by

the Ukraine that was then seized by the rebels. It is a very complicated

situation. A simplistic headline might sell newspapers, but it

doesn't always get to the truth. Putin has supported the pro` Russian

Ukrainian rebels. It is a very popular course in Russia. `` cause.

This is not just about Ukraine now. There are a whole number of

nationalities. This is a game changer. That has been said a lot.

What will happen? Will there be sanctions? There was evidence over

the last few weeks that from the outset of this crisis, Putin had

begun to move back and visa restrictions and trade sanctions

were beginning to bite and serious negotiations were beginning to

occur. Putin must've been taken greatly by surprise by this. He will

have immediately gathered his senior ministers. He will not need to be

told the implications of this. He will have a short time to come up

with a narrative to distance himself. Very few people will

believe it. It also poses a dilemma for America. The President is

halfway through a second term. He could conceivably say this as

someone else 's problem. `` is. In two years, he won't be seeking

offers. `` office. But then he could also take action because he won't be

around for the consequences. President Obama has had a

conversation with Secretary of State John Kerry and his security team

about what is happening. We imagine there are Americans on board. It is

curious that we had a press conference area and most of the

nationalities were announced. By far the largest number of nationalities

was from the Netherlands. There are about 60 unaccounted for

nationalities on the plane. I wonder if quite a few were Americans and

the summer reason, the Americans have asked details to be revealed so

that the the authorities can get a clear idea of what happened. If

there were a large number of Americans, that would put a lot of

pressure on the White House. They would want to know what is happening

before they are put under domestic pressure. John McCain said there

would be hell to pay. That is very much shooting from the hip. It makes

you grateful that he didn't win in 2008. While we are hearing about the

nationalities, 295 people died. For Malaysia, this is the second time

one of their planes has gone down. There was criticism of the way that

relatives were not kept informed when MH 370 went down. The

government will want to do everything they can to keep families

in the loop. In the passing of time since the downing of the first

Malaysian airline, the government, you could have sympathy for them.

Since then, nothing of any detail has emerged about the reasons it has

come down. One of the more horrific things I have been told earlier was

that the first witnesses on the scene in the Ukraine were beginning

to take pictures on their iPhones and posting the pitches to Twitter.

`` pictures. Some of the images were of passports that were fully intact.

You must think that some of the relatives would have been the images

inadvertently. That takes the implications of horror even further.

It is they 21st`century way of finding out news. Let's move away

from the horror. We will go to the Times. It is about the Israel

offensive against Gaza. 18,000 reserve soldiers have been called up

overnight to try to get Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel. If

it wasn't for the flight, this story would be all over the front pages.

It has been pushed inside. The editors will have had their work cut

out for them. These are both important stories. I think this will

carry on for several days. We don't know what Israel has planned. The

operation may be more extensive than we thought and could go on for

several days. You think it may have been planned for a while, but I do

wonder about the exact timing. I wonder whether it was a cool

incidents that while the eyes of the world are facing on the Ukraine,

Israel are doing what they were going to do anyway. The timing may

be something other than call incidental. There is a sense that it

is an escalation when it moves from artillery fire and missiles being

sent in overhead to something at ground level. Attention ground

troops going in. `` potentially. The figure of 18,000 going in is

important because it is 10% of the population of Gaza. This latest

escalation centres on the fact, Israel said, that Hamas have been

extremely angry and desperate about border restrictions imposed by

Egypt. This has led to even further economic difficulties and hardship

for the citizens of Gaza. Hamas itself has been unable to pay any of

its employees recently. They also have a stark and poignant image of

three of the children who were killed on a beach yesterday. Three

of them were running away before they were killed by the Israeli 's.

The explanation was that they killed the first child in a mistake. They

were aiming for rape military police nearby. The children they thought

were running away they thought were Hamas militants. We must stop

talking about it here and move on to the Herald.

A matter of weeks until the Scottish referendum for independence. The yes

campaign is getting some traction. Yes, they are leading on a pole

which says that 28% of Labour voters now intend to vote yes on September

the 18th and that is up in one month by 7%. The deputy leader of the SNP

and the deputy first minister was actively wooing Labour voters when

she challenged them to reclaim the party and this is obviously having

some kind of affect. As part of a story that I was researching, I was

out with some volunteers who were going to vote yes in a very working

class area and the message coming from the doorsteps in this very big

area for Labour was almost blanket support in favour. If this poll is

to be believed, Gordon Brown has been epicenter of the pro` union

campaign and this will be uncomfortable reading for him `` at

the centre. This referendum will be won by those who don't know what

they want yet. It has got into such that it is easier for people to say

that they support the yes campaign and it is for them to say that they

support the no campaign and they say that when they go and talk to

people, people who say they don't know are actually not in favour of

independence and don't feel that they can say it. Clearly, we are

only a couple of months now and this will cause quite a lot of

consternation. They could surprise us all on the day when they enter

the ballot box and leave their mark. They could be confused. The

other thing that conflict takes this `` complicates this is estimating

privately anything between 80 or 90% of voters are undecided and if that

transpires, it will break all records on European democracy for

the percentage of turnout. I take the point that has been made about

people finding it easier to say yes but on the other hand, the pattern

of newspaper coverage in Scotland on the referendum campaign, probably

nine out of ten newspapers in Scotland have by varying degrees

supported the no campaign and this poll, as well as talking about the

heavy support amongst Weber Mac supporters for yes `` Labour, have

put it at 45% which is the highest it has been. Nine weeks before

September the 18th, that puts the yes campaign in a position that can

be a springboard for victory. That is where we must leave it for

tonight. Thank you to my guests. We are going to retain to the