11/01/2017 The Papers

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

With me are barrister and broadcaster Sophia Cannon

and political commentator, Lance Price.

The FT leads with Donald Trump's first press conference

as President-elect in which he criticised the intelligence

agencies and the media for spreading what he called fake news.

The President-elect also features on the cover of the Metro

after he denied claims Russia has compromising information on him.

The Times leads with the accusations by Donald Trump that spy chiefs

acted like Nazis by leaking reports about him.

The Daily Express cites new research claiming arthritis pain can be

relieved by 45 minutes of exercise a week.

The Telegraph leads with a clash between the head of the NHS

and Number ten over hospital funding as the number of A patients

The Sun follows the latest trial of Rolf Harris as he faces accusations

of sexual assault from seven new victims. Where else can we start but

with the tramp? -- the Trump. He gave his first press conference for

six months, the first since he won the election and a lot of it focused

on allegations that he is in bed with the Russians. Literally. I

didn't think I would be spending my time reviewing the depth and the

discussed of the scatological references of a president elect of

the United States. This is, dare I use the word, unprecedented. His

first election he is in the mire, he is in the dirt and yet again I

cannot discuss with my children what is happening. We don't need to go

too deeply into the allegations. Essentially, a lot of information

has come out concerning possible ties between Donald Trump and Russia

and the suggestion is that the Russians have stuff on Mr Trump that

colours his view of Moscow, perhaps suggesting for explaining his

favourable view, some might say, of Vladimir Putin. It is even worse

than that. The central allegation is that the Russians have stopped on

him that could make an subject to blackmail and therefore subject to

the influence, even though he is president of the United States and

that is an extraordinary allegation. That he could be under the thumb of

the Russians because of activities he is alleged to have participated

in. He says all of that is untrue. It really was the most extraordinary

press conference. We have got used to saying we cannot believe he said

that, we cannot believe he did this, we can't believe that has happened.

We will have an awful lot of this over the next four years, but that

was so much in the press conference, lashing at the media and that is a

spy agencies. That is the sort of thing we have come to expect from

Donald Trump, but to accuse the FBI and the CIA of Nazi style tactics,

which is effectively what he said at this press conference, he has got to

work with these guys. That is the front page of the Times. You are

acting like Nazis, Trump tells spy chiefs. He expresses anger at lurid

document click. It is an ex-MI6 agent who drew up certain claims in

this dossier. We have got to be clear for our viewers that this was

not put together by the FBI or CIA, this is allegations and information

that would lead by a private detective, effectively, in the pay

of the Democratic party, or a big Democratic party donor and this

detective agency is run by an ex-MI6 agent and he has got all this

information concerning allegations relating to Mr Trump and Moscow. In

the case of nominative determinism, it is Christopher Steen have to

thank for this. He was deep undercover and had worked with the

assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and he had an idea that

there was something going on, a relationship between Trump and Putin

way before we had any idea that he was even thinking of standing for

the presidency. What he did, it seems to be that he did a

reconnaissance of this situation at the time and has put this together.

In one memo dated June 2016 it claims that the Kremlin has been

cultivating Trump for at least five years. It is something of a

dystopian spy novel. When we hear about spies of old and Kim Sotheby,

sorry, Kim Philby, these stories, they must be literally true. Donald

Trump completely denies them all. Having said that, it is not just

some sort of story, not just some freelance guy put this together, it

was presented to the intelligence agencies and they looked at it and

they examined it and they had to make an assessment and determine

whether to go forward with it. They saw enough in it that was credible

that they believe was consistent with other information they had and

the BBC is reporting there is more than one source, to put it on the

desk of President Obama and to put it to Donald Trump himself. They

have looked at it and they think there is nothing there. It is not

sufficient with that to ensure that the outgoing president should be

aware that under the incoming president should be told of the

allegations. One seems now that the FBI and CIA have got to look into

all of this. This man will be the commander-in-chief, privy to

intelligence briefings every couple of days or so. His finger on the

bottom of the nuclear arsenal. We have to see this for what it is, if

he has been cultivated for five years and the level of fear that

must be rippling now through the Republican party itself, but they

have been outplayed by Putin in the game of chess that they always

thought they had won to this level, that he has actually got his own man

in the White House. It will be there for four years. The other important

point is this has an impact on American public opinion. Their

willingness to rely on what the CIA and FBI say in future because you

already have a lot of Democrats who think the FBI handed the election to

trump the bringing of the e-mail stuff in the last couple of weeks.

You now have the guy he won turning on the FBI and CIA turning on them.

You can say it is just the FBI and CIA, the court did last time round.

The way in which he is undermining all the institutions of American

democracy that he approve of, is a very dangerous precedent. The fear

is, from my point of view, for the first time in history we have got

the cyber world, the world of espionage contrasted so easily with

this open source journalism, social media, all happening at the same

time. We cannot even checked our facts. How can we do this? What

really annoyed him in the press conference, we can go to the front

page of the Telegraph actually, trump defined as MI6 officer fears

Moscow retribution, what really annoyed him was CNN. CNN put

together their own report on this dossier and the report, I

understand, was partly put together by Carl Bernstein no less, of

Watergate fame, but does feed put the whole unredacted thing out there

on the internet and when Trump was asked a question by CNN, Trump went

completely berserk. He conflated CNN carefully, judiciously going through

this dossier and taking out what it felt would the right elements and

getting elements from its own sources as well, as I say partly

written by Carl Bernstein, so old, legitimate media some might argue

and conflating that with Buzz feed chucking absolutely everything out

there with no filter whatsoever. Donald Trump talking about the good

news, he made it clear that he believed that CNN was a fake news

organisation because it got involved in this, yet he has profited from

the news over the last year through the whole campaign. As a former

communications director at yourself, how would you have varied, the you

think, in this completely new, incredibly difficult media world? I

look at it and I think back to the days when I worked for Tony Blair

and Alistair Campbell in Downing Street and we had our own war

against the media, even though the media was more benign toward Tony

Blair than it is toward Donald Trump in America and it occurred to me, we

would have loved to undermine the media in the wake Donald Trump has

succeeded in undermining it. Our objective was to turn and when it

was a bad story and said that was just the media, you can trust them.

That is what he is trying to do. Before I worked there and was a

journalist and I was very conscious of the distinction between the two

and it was a very important job that the media had fully power to

account. It is one of the checks and balances in every democracy. You and

your colleagues understood, even Alistair Campbell, understood the

importance of the media in a democracy. Of course, but we were

doing a different job. We were promoting the interests of the

person in power and so you take off your journalist had and put on a

different hat. We were undermining an institution which I hold very

dear. You would have loved to have twitter. Whether we would have had

that... Whether we would have used it in the wake Donald Trump does,

they don't think so. What is interesting is that the whole debate

about Russia and antics in bedrooms and whatever has completely

deflected from the substance, the real substance that many people say

should have been discussed and that is his interests, his own business

interests and conflict of interest that might exist as a result of him

being the CEO of a great multinational company and being

president of the United States. All these pictures of Trump today, it is

the right... It is the biggest distraction to what is really going

on. It is the fact that a president, he is not quickly have the normal

checks and balances of his team, he has not released his business

interests, so we can fact check what the conflict are, we can only guess.

These issues are side issues to what we really need to do, which is find

out who this man is, what is he doing and what will he do in the

future? If, even before he has started, he is kicking the legs out,

burning down what we have fought so hard for... It occurred to me in one

of my worst moments, there be Donald Trump wanted all this stuff out

there because it gives them an opportunity to talk about something

else. The public, frankly, when it comes to sexual peccadilloes, they

have heard it all and signal from Mr Trump and factored it in. They voted

for him anyway. A possible conflict of interest could be more

problematic for him. Let's move on. We have a couple of minutes left.

Simon Stevens, head of the NHS in England, front page of the

Telegraph, he is in a bit of a battle with number ten. He is in a

real battle. He is a very well respected civil servant. I worked

with them when I was in at number ten, he was working for the Health

Secretary, Alan Milburn, but the Tories loved him as well. People

live as -- listened to Simon Stephens because he is a serious guy

and he has gone out on a limb in effectively saying that Theresa May

has not been honest in terms of the work of money going into the NHS and

that she is stretching the truth, in effect, to claim that the NHS has

been given money more than they asked for. It is clear we have a

serious crisis in the NHS. Even given the fact that we have had a

very mild winter so far. What would it be like if we had a harsh winter?

There is colder weather on the way. We went through a period when a lot

of money was going into the NHS, it really was a lot of money going into

the NHS and we didn't have this winter crisis but they are back. I

can see Theresa May shelving who will rid me of this troublesome man?

Like Thomas Becket saying if we have problems with our major services,

they beat somebody else is in the way. It is not our fault. It is the

way it is managed, but the funding. It is the same austerity issues that

have been rising since 2010. Theresa May is suggesting some hospitals are

not being managed well enough. That is partly why A departments are in

crisis. One of the reasons Simon Stephens reacted the way he did was

at number ten was briefing as if they were getting ready to blame him

rather than the lack of funding. Rather than deal with the issue,

rather than deal with the issue you blame someone else. That is

definitely not something he would have done. Our style at all. Press

regulation. Page two of the times. Here we go. 140,000 views have been

given and press recognition. The suggestion is newspaper groups

should be heavily fined and pay the legal costs of any court action if

they did not sign up to an accredited, what the press

regulation -- regulator that has been put forward. Section 40 is a

new way to ensure that there is access to justice for the smaller

guy, the little man who has his name or her name brought out into the

press in a way they can never seek redress. They don't have the hundred

and ?40,000 and this is the whole idea, that we must see it for what

it is. It is not telling the press what to do, it is holding their feet

to the flame. Newspapers have fought an effective campaign against it. We

don't know what these 140,000 people think, but the implication is a lot

of them disagree with that. On the face of it, we don't know what the

views are of the majority of these people, but one suspects that, given

the fact that if you will take the Daily Mail with the times to court

you need deep pockets, then the idea that they will have to pay the legal

fees suggests that he may be able to get some redress. When The Papers,

the simple view is we have to pay the costs win or lose, that a of

people's sense of natural justice. I understand the argument, but given

The Papers and easy way to attack the proposals. Many thanks. That's

it for The Papers tonight. You can see the front pages of all of them

online on the BBC News website. It is therefore you seven days a week.

If you missed the programme on an evening you can watch it later on I

player. Thanks to Sofia and lands a game and to you for watching.