ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Over the past fortnight there have been many commemorative events around the country and abroad to mark the bi-centenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire and the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has given extensive coverage to them both in news and documentary programmes.

This has not been universally popular with audiences - there have been accusations that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has taken a position on issues such as whether there should be an apology - though it's not clear who would apologise to who - or whether descendents of slaves should be paid reparations in some form.

A lot of the audience were telling us slavery is in the past and should stay there, that there is no need for apologies or reparations and some told us to stop flagellating ourselves. Here are a couple of examples.

So the self-loathers at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ are having a great time this week. It seems the dg's idea of heaven is to be horse whipped by a black man… The Europeans simply cashed in on a trade which was well established in Africa.

There's been very little coverage about Africa's involvement with the slave trade… Total PC nonsense.

The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has had a lot of programming around this anniversary both in news programmes such as The World Tonight and there have been seasons of programmes on networks like Radio 4.

Few would argue that it was not an important moment in the history of Britain, and also that it marked the beginning of the end of the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and Americans; it was also an important moment in the development of what are known today as human rights.

In this sense, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ did make an editorial judgement that it was an important anniversary to mark, but it is important to remember that the commemorative events by governments, local authorities, museums, etc, were not been run by the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ and we were - along with other broadcasters and newspapers - covering them as news events.

On The World Tonight, our coverage has focussed not on the history of slavery, but on the survival of practices today which are basically forms of enslavement, such as bonded child labour in India.

Indeed a report by our Delhi Correspondent, Damian Grammaticas, this Wednesday (listen here) provoked an interesting debate in our editorial meetings. His report, which focussed on a boy who was working as a bonded labourer ended with the boy being freed from that bonded labour, but faced with an uncertain future, because it was unclear how his family would make ends meet without the low wages he was paid.

Some of us believe we had become too involved in the story and our reporting had led to significant changes in this boy's life and we should have stuck to traditional neutral reporting.

The dilemma faced by our correspondent was that once the boy's case was brought to the attention of the authorities in the course of his investigation into what under Indian law is illegal, the boy could not continue working in the workshop he was bonded to, and the alternative to continuing with the investigation would have been to drop it.

So what would have been more honourable? To not report on an illegal practice that enslaves many children, or to report on it and cause a change in a child's life that leaves him with an uncertain future.

Our correspondent will also follow up on the story, partly out of human interest, but also to see if the local authorities fulfil their responsibility to help his rehabilitation.

It seems there is no consensus on this among journalists on the ethics of this and I'm not sure what the audience think, although we had some e-mails offering to help the boy featured in the report.

Those of us who inhabit the world of old media have learned the hard way to respect the power of the blogger. Over the past couple of years many an error, example of hypocrisy or attempted cover-up has been searingly exposed by the bloggers, and a few careers sunk.

This week, however, we learned that when it comes to making and breaking reputations there's life in the old media dog yet.

We'd asked the fearless political blogger Guido Fawkes to make a film for Newsnight on what he sees as the failings of mainstream political reporting.

It was a thought-provoking piece (watch it here) and as soon as we saw it we decided we'd like to debate the issues with Guido and a Westminster lobby journalist.

This was no trick, but at that point Guido was in a corner. His film had been an exhortation to programmes like Newsnight aggressively to empty-chair politicians who refuse to debate. While he himself prefers to operate in the shadows he could therefore hardly refuse, and a poll of his site's readers urged him overwhelmingly to appear.

The result, as many of the comments on his quickly pointed out, was a bit of car crash. Guido's keyboard-orientated pyrotechnics were no match for Michael White of the Guardian's verbal swordsmanship.

But hats off to Guido for entering our world. He'll be back.

There are lots of new media types who snigger and mock as we old media types stumble around trying to make sense of newfangled ways of communicating. Many confidently predict our slow demise. I am not so sure.

In evidence, I would cite the success of the PM blog. It has already spawned a , there is even a song.

It really has established itself as of the web rather than just on the web. You do not have to take my word for it. Ask the .

It works because it has given some of the 3.65 million people who listen to PM a platform to meet each other and has made listening a shared community experience. It is something radio, with its natural intimacy, is uniquely positioned to deliver.

I read in the that some of the most successful blogs are becoming businesses or are being assimilated into the established media and that some bloggers are forming associations with ethics codes and standards of conduct to bolster their credibility. Who's catching up with who here?

Daily Telegraph: "Sir Michael Lyons emerged last night as the favourite to be the new ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ chairman." ()

The Independent: Reports that the whereabouts of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalist Alan Johnston, who has been missing in Gaza for 18 days, are still unknown. ()

One of the jobs of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ College of Journalism is to ask difficult questions - often, they're questions to which no-one has a definitive answer or to which the answer isn't simple. One of those questions is; why do some stories make it onto the national news while others don't?

OK... editing a programme is an art not a science and there are many reasons why an editor will decide one way on a Monday and a different way on a Tuesday. I know, I've been there. Plus, programmes aren't edited in hindsight by paragons of omniscience. But think about this.

If you listen to or watch the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ outside the Midlands, you almost certainly won't know the name Jason Spencer.

17-year-old was stabbed in the chest on 6 March. A single wound. He died. Eight days later, 16-year-old was stabbed in the chest. A single wound. He died.

Both boys' families were distraught. Both ruled out the possibility that they were involved with gangs or drugs.

Jason Spencer's murder did not make network news... except in a stabbings roundup on News 24 on 19 March. Kodjo Yenga's did; about 170 times on network radio, 14 times on terrestrial bulletins and over 200 times on News 24 between 14 March and 21 March.

Jason Spencer was stabbed in Nottingham; Kodjo Yenga in Hammersmith.

On Radio Five Live this week, Jason's mother and stepfather said they felt they'd been failed by organisations they expected to help. They had in mind organisations like Victim Support.

Does the list end there?

Last month on Breakfast, we asked people watching at home to get in touch if they were interested in being part of our 'Audience Panel'.

I'm not quite sure what we expected, but we were surprised by the level of response. More than three thousand people emailed us, to say they'd like to take part. Yes, when you consider that five million people watch Breakfast every day, then it's a small percentage of our viewers. But we're absolutely delighted that it's aroused the interest that it has.

We've spent the last four weeks going through those expressions of interest, trying to select a panel that's as representative as possible of our audience demographic. This has been tricky because we haven't really asked for that much detail from our viewers. It's basically been name, age, location and profession. That said, what we're setting out to achieve here is not precise market research, but has much more to do with identifying the things that work for our audience.

We've already had some initial feedback on the programme from those three thousand people who responded. Perhaps unsurprisingly (as they are already Breakfast viewers), most were generally positive (and sometimes very kind) about what they watch every morning. Most value their news briefing, many want the programme to feel "warm" or "friendly", there was particular praise for Declan's ability to communicate some of the complexities around business and finance, there was a desire to understand what stories mean "for me" and there was an appetite for international stories and perspectives.

The next step, having decided on our panel, is to send out our first batch of questions. We're working on them right now, but we intend to have a couple of programme specific questions and at least one supplementary enquiry pegged to an 'issue' of some kind.

There are two real tests for us. One is making sure that we don't annoy those people who have agreed to be on our panel. The second is making it all mean something. If we can't prove that we have responded to some thing or some theme that has emerged from the Panel, then we will have failed.

Our commercial 24-hour global news channel is now available in over 280 million homes with a weekly audience of 65 million. But it's nearly all been for an English-speaking audience, up till now.

I've just spent a couple of days in Athens promoting a new deal between World and , a major broadcaster in Greece which reaches every home in the country. It's an amazing arrangement.

They take two World bulletins everyday and have a team of producers, editors and translators to dub our bulletins into Greek and re-broadcast them within three hours.

They have a state of the art newsroom, plush editing suites and frankly, studio facilities we would kill for.

Best of all, SKAI is anxious to practice the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's journalistic values which are well known in the country thanks to the World Service radio's Greek Service which closed a few years ago.

It's fair to say that Greek broadcast media has played by 'Australian rules' up till now, ie anything goes. Legal and editorial guidelines are something for academic study only. SKAI want to change that.

They do occasionally have problems with the translation though. Last week they spotted at the last minute that 'tourist' attacks in Iraq should have been 'terrorist' attacks.

The Times: Reports on Channel 4β€˜s bid to run ten new digital radio stations to provide "public service competition” to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. ()

The Guardian: Reports that it looks likely that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has won its High Court action concerning Freedom of Information requests to publish a review into the corporation’s coverage of the Middle East. ()

The of the British sailors and Marines have obviously raised a number of issues for us.

We had discussed the way we would handle such a situation a couple of days previously and decided we wouldn't show the pictures without trying to give the families of those held as much notice as we could. We also wouldn't show them if the British captives looked to be in undue distress or injured. The pictures would inevitably become a major part of the story and be shown around the world.

Today we actually had a few hours notice that the pictures were likely to appear as they were trailed by the TV station involved. When we found this out, firstly, we spoke to the Ministry of Defence to ask them to inform the families that this was likely to happen. We also explained the circumstances in which we would use them - and those in which we wouldn't. We liaised with Sky News, who agreed with our thinking.

When the pictures came in, we watched them all and although the British personnel looked strained and were almost certainly acting under duress, they looked in good health and said they had been treated well. The Ministry of Defence said that it hoped that this would be some comfort to the families and Naval colleagues at the moment - a sentiment we share.

One of the worst jobs for any reporter has got to be when they are asked to try to make contact with the relatives of someone who's just died. They may be a victim of an accident, a crime, killed by a terrorist attack or died in military service. Whatever the reason, that knock on the door is a particularly hard thing to do.

The reaction is normally predictable. Most people, understandably, don’t want to talk. But, for some relatives, the chance to share their thoughts about a lost loved one can seem something of a release.

And in recent weeks on Five Live we've found people actually coming to us. This morning we featured the story of a family from Nottingham whose son was murdered outside their home. They wanted to speak publicly because they were unhappy about various aspects of the way they've been treated since their son's death. (You can listen to the interview here.)

Also this week we had exclusive audio with Jane Bowden, the fiancΓ©e of Peter Woodhams who was also killed outside his home. She'd come into contact with us during our investigations into the collapse of the Christmas club Farepak. Given the chance, she wanted to tell people how unhappy she'd been with the original police investigation into an earlier attack on Peter.

Instances like these don’t mean reporters will never have to knock on doors again. But it does show again how quickly the relationship between us and our audience is changing - and, maybe, how some people see parts of the media that they used to keep at an arm's length as a potentially useful ally in getting their message across.

The Independent: Reports that nominations for the Sony radio awards have been announced, including a "broadcasters' broadcaster" category to mark 25 years of the awards. ()

The Guardian: Reports that a High Court hearing relating to the Freedom of Information requests to publish a review into the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's Middle East coverage is under way. ()

On Monday, Mark Thompson, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ director general, spoke to a rally of colleagues of Alan Johnston, our reporter in Gaza who we believe has been abducted. Palestinian journalists in Gaza also staged a one-day strike in support of Alan.

Mark said this to the rally: "Exactly two weeks, at 2:15pm on a Monday afternoon, Alan Johnston left the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's bureau in Gaza to go home. He said goodbye to his colleagues, got into his car, and promised to phone them when he reached his flat. He never rang. His car was found abandoned. We believe he was abducted. No one from the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has seen or heard from Alan since, though we're told by others that he is safe, and being looked after.

"Alan is one of those rather amazing ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ people, who make extraordinary sacrifices and take considerable risks because they believe a story needs to be told... We continue to talk to the people in the Middle East, and in the UK, to try and secure Alan's release. But two weeks after he was abducted, all of us, in London and in Gaza, want him home."

You can hear Mark Thompson's full speech here.

Martin Rosenbaum, who writes the Open Secrets blog, here writes about the hearing at the High Court starting on Tuesday concerning Freedom of Information applications to publish a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ internal review of the corporation's Middle East coverage.

Daily Telegraph: Gillian Reynolds comments on the anger evoked by the subject of slavery on various ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ radio programmes to mark the 200th anniversary of the trade's abolition. ()

The Independent: Reports on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Director General Mark Thompson's appeal for the release of missing Gaza journalist Alan Johnston. ()

On this week's Newswatch, the programme which discusses viewers' complaints about ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ TV News, Amanda Bruckshaw, duty weekend editor, responds to accusations that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ weekend news bulletins ignored a protest staged by 12,000 doctors.

Controller of News 24, Kevin Bakhurst, defends the channel’s use of the term "Breaking News". You can watch the programme by clicking here.

The Guardian: Article on the , and his understanding of the risks involved in reporting from Gaza. ()

Daily Mail: Columnist Richard Kay comments on claims that newsreader Moira Stuart has been dropped from presenting news bulletins on Sunday AM because she is too old ()

It's a matter of dispute as to who produced Michael Crick's first ever piece for Newsnight back in 1992. Newsnight's 's partner Lucy thinks she did, whereas I think it was me. Certainly I remember producing a very early film with Michael - a profile about a little-known US presidential hopeful called Bill Clinton.

The film centred on the time Clinton had spent as a Rhodes scholar in Oxford and involved a run-in with the official photographers at the college Clinton had attended. They wouldn't let us film a contemporary year photograph being taken, so we improvised by climbing a wall and shooting over it, giving me an early metaphor of Michael's approach to journalism.

In one of those odd coincidences that Michael so enjoys and seems to attract, his last film for Newsnight before taking up his new post involved a run-in with the same photographic company. They had just withdrawn an embarrassing photo of David Cameron posing as a member of Oxford's notorious Bullingdon club. Again Michael improvised by commissioning an artist to paint a reproduction of the photograph, thus getting round the copyright rules.

And during the course of making that film he remembered a college chaplain had once showed him another photograph of a young Tony Blair making a rude gesture, but wouldn't allow him to film it. Might he have changed his mind more than a decade on? This time .

As Michael told me on that very first assignment, his aim is to find out everything there is to know about a subject, and then find out some more.

The Guardian: "Less than half of regular ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ1 and ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ2 viewers think they show enough new programmes made in the UK" was one of the findings of Ofcom's first annual report. ()

Daily Telegraph: Reports that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ is to televise Alistair Campbell's diaries. ()

Daily Mail: Reports that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ is going to the High Court to block a freedom of information request about the Balen report which reviewed the corporation's reporting in the Middle East. ()

Professor Frank Stewart attacked ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic in the . He says ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic is β€œas anti-western as anything that comes out of the Gulf if not more so.”

I wonder in which direction Mr Stewart’s receiver is pointing. Possibly his agenda interferes with reception. Professor Stewart has written to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ at great length about his views. Recently he wrote a nine page critique of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic Service’s coverage of the conflict in Lebanon, claiming among other things that we were anti-Israeli. We were able to respond in great detail showing that his highly selective and misleading account of our coverage was unfair and showed no knowledge of the brave and comprehensive coverage that had in fact been broadcast and which included clear and impartial accounts of Israeli views and experiences during the war. Having failed to substantiate his detailed criticism he now resorts to a generalised attack in the New York Times.

It’s clear from his original letter to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, that what really upsets him is that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ does not overtly push an American or British government line to the exclusion of other views. He seems to find it hard to understand that an institution can be committed to impartiality and mean it.

In the New York Times he says a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ programme in Arabic only focused on views critical of the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, whereas in fact the presenter consistently put the American view and the programme had a contributor who put the US government’s argument for imprisoning combatants in this way. ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic has also interviewed the commander of the prison complex. So the American view has consistently been represented in our output.

Professor Stewart asserts that ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic is sympathetic with dictators and poor governance in the Middle East. However, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic covered Saddam Hussein’s atrocities when others ignored them and holds leaders to account in a way rarely seen in Arab media. This week we reported the opposition arrests in Egypt and before that we were getting the Egyptian transport minister to answer criticisms of the way he handled the ferry disaster.

Recently we interviewed the deputy president of Sudan about his government’s behaviour in Darfur. Again, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Arabic covered Darfur long before other media houses picked up the current tragic story. So what is Professor Stewart listening to? I would suggest it is his own desire to see and hear only one side of the story and one view asserted: the one he agrees with.

Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph: Michael Crick appointed new political editor for Newsnight. ()

Daily Mail: Controller of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Children's, Richard Deverell, on the Blue Peter phone-in story. (No link)

Guardian: Feature on file-sharing and implications for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's iPlayer project. ()

Nerve-wracking doesn't come into it. I've deployed thousands of news reporters, with no previous experience, to cover the stories of their choice - and given them hours of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ airtime to do it in.

Thursday 22 March is News Day for the School Report project.

Over the past few months ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalists and other news specialists have been working with 12-13-year-olds in more than 100 schools throughout the UK to help them get ready to broadcast their own news simultaneously to a 1400 deadline.

There are teams of students interviewing the full set of five political party leaders including the PM in Downing St.

Other students are reporting live on News 24, Five Live and every local radio station - as well as for ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

And on top of that we’ve created the first news channel dedicated to schools for the day via a webcast – School Report LIVE - to showcase everything the school reporters are doing.

But will it work? Will the students meet their 1400 deadline? Will the forecast for snow in some areas of the country mean I’ve suddenly lost half my staff? Will their news be legal and decent? But, most of all, will it be interesting?

I’ve been really engaged by the reports that have already been filed on crime, and friendship and the environment and even pensions – but will a wider audience feel the same? Tune in and see.

The Times: Columnist Michael Gove on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s coverage in the Middle East and the Syrian ambassador’s appearance on Newsnight. (link)

The Independent: Reports on Margaret Beckett’s comments in Parliament about the missing ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalist, Alan Johnston. ()

It’s not often at Westminster that you run up against the law. In normal times, covering politics is both important and exciting without the need to dodge bullets or jail. Which is why the Westminster team investigating cash for honours found itself swimming – or at least paddling – in uncharted waters, when the police asked the Attorney General to get an injunction to gag us from broadcasting our story.

It started on a Thursday morning – Thursday 1 March - when Reeta Chakrabarti rang me with a good story from an excellent source. It took us six days to get our full story out; and another six to broadcast the story of the gagging. So 12 busy, frustrating and challenging days. Here’s how it felt from the inside:

β€’ Day 1. Reeta gets the story. It’s a significant new development – one of Tony Blair’s top aides (Ruth Turner) has claimed that Lord Levy, the PM’s chief fundraiser, put to her a version of events about his role in the drawing up of the honours list which she felt was untrue. With Nick Robinson on board, we go in search of a second source. Late in the day we get that, and begin discussions with our News bosses and the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ lawyers about putting it on air. But there isn’t time to approach the various people at the centre of the story. So we put the story on hold and go to the pub, where we studiously avoid saying anything about what we’ve been working on so frantically – the walls of the Marquis of Granby have ears…

β€’ Day 2. Start asking for reaction from the people involved. Lord Levy denies any wrongdoing. More talks with News bosses and lawyers. Police tell us they don’t want us to broadcast. We tell them we intend to broadcast. Police go to the Attorney General to seek injunction. At 2130 the news comes through that we’ve been gagged. So instead of Nick leading the Ten O'Clock News with our cash for honours story, he has to restrict himself to a brief account of the injunction, which must have been tantalising to the viewers – β€œWe’ve got a good story but we can’t tell you what it is….”

β€’ Day 3. Rumours grow this Saturday that the Sunday papers are on to our story. How do they know? Reeta and Carole Walker try to find out what they have. From home, I spend the evening on the phone (while my wife parties at a Fratellis concert in Brixton, and my house is wrecked by seven children - my four plus three sleepover friends.) Get the newspaper first editions in Television Centre about 9pm. Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday have parts of our story. Discuss with lawyers what we can broadcast, which ends up as another tease: ”The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ can now reveal some details….”

β€’ Day 4. Frustration. Lots of detail in various Sunday papers – we know more but our injunction prevents us from broadcasting that, or the detail of what’s in the papers.

β€’ Day 5. Partial victory. Our lawyers win a β€œvariation” of the injunction allowing us to report who’s involved in the story… Ruth Turner, Lord Levy and Jonathan Powell, the PM’s Chief of Staff…but not what it’s about. Frustration piles on frustration at ten to ten when we get sight of the splash in the Guardian which has more detail than we’re able to broadcast. The Attorney General had attempted to gag them too but a judge ruled there was no point, once it became clear the papers were already printed and in the delivery vans. Many conversations with News bosses and lawyers about what we can report, and whether we can get a judge out of bed to lift our injunction. Eventually agree we can report that the Guardian has a story… but not what’s in it.

β€’ Day 6. Victory! Our lawyers go back to court again – with Nick Robinson in tow. We are allowed to broadcast our original story – Nick goes live on N24 from the back of a taxi on return journey to Westminster.

β€’ Day 7. All the papers run our story. Attorney General says β€œje ne regrette rien” (sort of). Denies he has acted for political reasons

β€’ Day 8. ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ lawyers back in court to argue for the right to report the original reasons for our injunction. Decision delayed till next day.

β€’ Day 9. Judge rules against us.

β€’ Days 10, 11. Weekend respite.

β€’ Day 12. ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ lawyers take our case to the Appeal Court and - finally - win the right to broadcast the reasons why the injunction was sought and granted in the first place… that the police believed that broadcasting details of the document we’d learned about could hamper their inquiry. Some interesting detail of what was said in court also revealed.

So those were our 12 days in March, in which we fought for the right to broadcast an important story, and – eventually – won.

At the end of last week, Assistant Commissioner John Yates – the man running the cash for honours inquiry – told MPs it would be unrealistic for him to set a deadline for the end of his investigation. What next, I wonder….

Daily Telegraph: Reports that the father of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalist Alan Johnston, who went missing in Gaza a week ago, has appealed for his son’s release. ()

The Guardian: Reports that the suspension of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s online education service, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Jam, has been condemned by teachers. ()

It has now been a week since our colleague Alan Johnston left this building and headed for his apartment in Gaza City. Although we have not been able to establish exactly what has happened to Alan, it seems certain that he has been abducted and is being held somewhere in the Gaza Strip.

As time passes, we are growing increasingly concerned about Alan's safety.

Over the past week, we have worked intensively with the authorities in Gaza and elsewhere to try to locate Alan and we continue to receive assurances that everything possible is being done.

However, it is disappointing that after seven days there has still been no firm word either about his whereabouts or his condition.

We call on everyone with influence on this situation to redouble their efforts now that Alan has been missing for more than one week.

On this week's Newswatch, the programme which discusses viewers' complaints about ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ TV News, Peter Barron, editor of Newsnight, discusses the reporting of CCTV footage showing a policeman punching a woman and whether race was part of the story.

David Shukman, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s environment and science correspondnet responds to various criticisms of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s coverage of climate change. You can watch the programme by clicking here.

The difficulties and dangers of reporting what’s happening in Iraq are well known. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has done better than most at chronicling events in the four years since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – not least by maintaining a presence in Baghdad throughout that time, something few other media organisations have been prepared to do. But it’s a constant frustration that we can’t travel freely throughout the country, reflecting the different experiences of ordinary Iraqis in their own villages and neighbourhoods.

Carrying out opinion polls in Iraq, like , is an effective way of addressing that problem. This is the third poll we’ve commissioned in partnership with ABC News of America and other media organisations. Like the last two, it’s thrown up a wealth of fascinating detail about the views of the Iraqi people and the circumstances in which they live.

What emerges is a genuine nationwide picture. More than 2,000 people were questioned in more than 450 villages and neighbourhoods in every province of Iraq. Each of them answered more than 50 questions about their personal circumstances and their hopes for the years ahead.

, at the end of 2005, found them generally hopeful about the future – about improved security and the government they were about to vote into office.

The story this time is one of disappointment and disillusion. Most people feel the new government has delivered little in terms of basic essentials like access to electricity, fuel or fresh water, and lacks the will to take the decisions that will make a genuine difference. Security, or lack of it, remains a key concern. Although the presence of coalition forces is detested, most people think they should stay until some of these things have improved.

This time, we’ve been able to break the figures down to compare the responses given by the Sunni and Shia people who took part in the poll. The results are striking. On a whole range of important issues, we see diametrically opposing views.

Attitudes to the execution of Saddam Hussein offer a good example of this polarisation. Asked whether it was appropriate and was helpful to the future of Iraq, opinion was more or less evenly divided. But the breakdown on religious lines shows that almost all Shias think it was helpful and almost all Sunnis think it wasn’t.

There’s some very rich material in the detail of the poll findings. Taken together, they make a significant contribution to our continuing efforts to report this important but uniquely demanding story.

The Independent: Article on whether short video clips will replace longer programmes, including news bulletins and current affairs shows. ()

Daily Mirror: Reports on Director General Mark Thompson's comments that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ needs to restore viewers' trust after the recent TV phone-in scandal. ()

Zimbabwe is one of the biggest stories for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ on the African continent today. It is now public knowledge that we are banned from working inside Zimbabwe.

Just to clarify, for those who may wonder, when exactly did we get banned? In the eccentric former minister of information Professor Jonathan Moyo said in a letter addressed to me, that he is β€œsuspending all accreditation of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ correspondents” who want to work in Zimbabwe.

This was after a report by on Robert Mugabe's speech at the opening of a joint session of parliament on 24 July.

In his speech the president of Zimbabwe vowed to continue with his programme of land 'acquisitions'. We reported that he vowed to continue with 'forcible land acquisitions’. Moyo argued that Mugabe was referring to 'legal' acquisitions.

Since then, it's been really hard to openly obtain material from inside Zimbabwe. We've asked individuals to record their stories. This created a challenge for them when their material was broadcast on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ channels; they were accused by the Zanu-PF led government of spying for the British government and the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ.

We've also been lucky in that the agencies tend to gather material which we have access to under our existing agreements. They've done a fantastic job under very difficult conditions.

For obvious reasons I will not give you a blow by blow account of how we get the material across the Limpopo River into the edit suites and studios here in Johannesburg. However, the system seems to work sometimes, but not always.

I think the biggest credit ought to be directed to those who gather material undercover, specifically for us, risking their lives to record sounds for radio programmes, stills for the website and VT material for our TV programmes.

These are the heroes who keep our coverage from Zimbabwe distinctive.

I take my hat off to those who continue to gather the relevant material, so we can continue to report the story for our audiences around the world. But we should also salute the people of Zimbabwe who agree to be recorded and filmed, often under very perilous conditions - it's their texts, calls and e-mails that give us an insight into what's going on.

Long may they continue. May their gods be with them!

The Times: Columnist Gerard Baker accuses the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ of having an "anti-Western bias", referring to an . ()

The Scotsman: Reports that a serial rapist who was obsessed with female ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ newsreaders was given four life sentences. ()

As you might be aware, we have had no word about the .

My colleague Simon Wilson and Fayed Abu Shamala are making a statement this lunchtime in English and Arabic, thanking those who are helping us find Alan, and asking for information about his disappearance. This is what they are saying:

"The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ continues to be concerned about the welfare of Alan Johnston. We have had no firm information about Alan since he left our bureau in Gaza on Monday afternoon.

This is a difficult time for Alan’s friends and colleagues within the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ β€“ and especially for Alan’s family. They are being kept fully updated and have been very moved by the expressions of support for Alan that have come in from Gaza, the Middle East and around the world.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in Gaza for the help they have been able to offer us so far in trying to resolve the situation. In particular, I would like to thank the offices of President Abbas and of Prime Minister Haniyeh for their assistance at what has obviously been a busy time for them.

Alan Johnston has dedicated the past three years to living and working among the people of Gaza so that their experiences can be reported fairly and accurately to the outside world.

It is clear from the messages we have had that these efforts are valued enormously here in Gaza.

We would therefore urge everyone with influence here to continue their efforts so that Alan may be reunited with his family and colleagues at the earliest opportunity."

The Guardian: Reports that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Trust has decided to suspend the online learning service, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Jam. ()

Daily Telegraph: β€œExecutives from ITV, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, Channel 4 and Five met DTI Minister Margaret Hodge in an eleventh-hour plea for guaranteed spectrum to supply free high-definition (HD) television.” ()

The Times: Comments on Richard Hooper, former deputy chairman of Ofcom, being on the shortlist for the job of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ chairman. ()

The Independent: Reports that Blue Peter has apologised for fixing a phone-in competition. ()

Daily Telegraph: Andrew Marr recounts a story that during the Suez crisis, the British government had troops ready to take over Bush House, the headquarters of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s "external service” (now the World Service) in central London. ()

The Times: Legal report on the lifting of the injunction against the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ over the cash-for-honours story. ()

Daily Mail: β€œFalkands veterans reacted with anger to claims that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ is scaling down its coverage of events to mark the 25th anniversary of the conflict.” ()

One of the things the College of Journalism tries to help ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalists think about is the kind of question raised by the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, David Rowan, on Today recently.

He was invited on last Friday to talk about a written by the rabbi at Lord Levy's local synagogue, Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet. (You have to subscribe to the JC to get more than this summary).

Rabbi Schochet's target was what he called β€œthe blatant nastiness in some of the tabloids and the recent seeming trial by media” of Lord Levy.

He had previously talked about "sinister corners” from where, he argued, the leaks in the cash-for peerages story emanated. And in a TV interview had claimed that β€œthe Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there is one Jew, who has been called the most dynamic Jew in Anglo-Jewry, seemingly being hung out to dry here.”

Readers will make up their own minds about Rabbi Schochet's arguments but David Rowan makes an interesting point - and one that all journalists should think about, whether they agree with his conclusion or not - about how key words in the way stories are reported or framed have a significant effect (intended or otherwise) on the understood meaning... even if the words or facts chosen are not, in themselves, in dispute.

David Rowan doesn't accuse the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ of making such choices in this case - though that doesn't mean ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalists should not be alert to the arguments.

In his interview, David Rowan points to such things as the inclusion of Lord Levy's middle name - Abraham - in articles such as , an inclusion he argues that underlines and emphasises the fact that Michael Levy is Jewish, the son of "devout Jewish" parents.

In the same article, David Rowan points out, we don't learn either the middle name nor the religious affiliation of the two other main players, Ruth Turner and Jonathan Powell.

Rabbi Schochet's article and to some extent David Rowan's appearance - and that of Sir Alan Sugar also on Today - seem prompted by a concern amongst Lord Levy's friends and supporters that he's being turned into the scapegoat for the whole cash-for-peerages affair.

Only time will tell on that. But, David Rowan argues, there is what he calls "a strong tradition" in both British politics and British political fiction of the Jewish "money man" who "comes in from the outside" and makes a convenient scapegoat; in fiction, Trollope's Augustus Melmotte, in history Sir Eric Miller and Joseph Kagan of the Wilson years.

His argument is that these provide a strong pattern into which the media are able to push the Lord Levy story - should they either wish to or unconsciously allow themselves to. And, he hints - though without, it has to be said, explicit evidence - that a guiding hand in the Downing Street "circle" might well be "managing" the story with precisely this in mind.

The US Project for Excellence in Journalism has just published its annual . Always worth a read - trends identified there tend to play back across the rest of the world as well. Headlines this year:

β€’ News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions.

β€’ The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model.

β€’ The key question is whether the investment community sees the news business as a declining industry or an emerging one in transition.

β€’ There are growing questions about whether the dominant ownership model of the last generation, the public corporation, is suited to the transition newsrooms must now make.

β€’ The Argument Culture is giving way to something new, the Answer Culture.

β€’ Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics.

β€’ While journalists are becoming more serious about the web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored.

The detail is worth reading....

All papers: Report that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has been unable to contact reporter Alan Johnston in Gaza. (, , , , )

The Independent: Reports that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ is allowed to broadcast details of the cash-for-honours story as the final injunction was lifted by the Court of Appeal. ()

I've taken over from Amanda Farnsworth as editor of Daytime News on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ One - responsible for the One O'Clock News and Six O'Clock News. They're two of Britain's most watched news programmes - and are broadcast into the heart of the family home. That means we have a special responsibility to be careful over the stories we choose and the language we use.

I recognise that the judgments we take in a newsroom - often a fevered environment - can seem very brutal when you're watching television at home in the kitchen or living room. So a decision on whether to use the word "bastard" on the Six O'Clock News - a decision I had to make last week to - is tough. For some people, this is extremely offensive language.

My first reaction was that we should try to avoid using the word at six o'clock, as I recognise it is a time when families are watching. As editor, I accept that getting that right tone and language is extremely important. There was an extra complication - Mr Mercer used the word three times, and so to report the story fully, it would need us to say it three times.

The more we examined the story, the more we realised that the story itself was about the use of language in the army and that it was impossible to explain why a senior Conservative had been sacked from the Shadow Cabinet without explaining what he had actually said. We did examine whether we could use a graphic with the word BD, but that didn't get around the problem of what our reporter would actually say.

We looked at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ editorial guidelines and discussed the issue with editorial policy and with senior management. I concluded that given the importance of the story - the programme was leading on it - and the impact of the language used on Patrick Mercer's career, the viewer would only have a full understanding of what had happened if we used the full quote in its proper context. We agreed with editorial policy that we would give a warning before the report, telling viewers that it contained offensive language.

Incidentally, I note that most other broadcasters also chose to use the B word in full. But I'd be interested in your thoughts as to whether you think we got it right.

When David Cameron sacked Patrick Mercer from the Tory front bench we didn't need any persuading it was a good story. Politicians and others from the chattering classes lost no time in putting the boot into Mercer.

But some our listeners have experience of the armed forces; they were quick to raise a very different line of argument. 90% of the many texts we received that day supported him - most claiming army links.

One told us that he was glad Mercer was prepared to tell it like it is; another that army people are scared to talk about race because the rest of the country is so PC. Others claimed they'd seen exactly the sort of behaviour Mercer had alleged: laziness and incompetence - and when complaints were raised they were dismissed as racism.

Of course there were other views; that his comments were racist and unacceptable and he should have known better.

But the argument that civilians - especially liberal ones - simply don't understand or empathise with military life came through as loud as a sergeant major's drill commands on the parade ground. Not for the first time. Anyone who is a bit different, redheads for example, the skinny or overweight - can expect to get a ribbing in the military. It's a tough job for tough people and the best can handle it.

We've also heard from senior NCOs (non-commissioned officers) who served with Mercer who leapt to his defence - saying that he'd never been guilty of racist name calling and at one point all his company sergeant majors were black.

So is the Army institutionally racist - or are we far too hyper-sensitive? It's not for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ to say - but it's a debate we'll continue to reflect on Radio 1.

On this week's Newswatch, the programme which discusses viewers' complaints about ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ TV News, Peter Horrocks, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's head of Television News, defends the coverage of the cash for honours story. There is also a discussion with David Liddiment from the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Trust on how the public can have a say on the future of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. You can watch the programme by clicking here.

The Guardian: Interview with Channel 4 Head of News and Current Affairs, Dorothy Byrne, who accuses the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ of being out of date and not making the most of its resources.()

The Times: Reports that there will be a new series of Top Gear, despite comments made by presenter Jeremy Clarkson that there would not be. ()

Daily Telegraph: Interview with ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Security Correspondent Frank Gardner, who is wheelchair-bound after being shot in Saudi Arabia in 2004, on taking up extreme sports. ()

Jim-UK was in no doubt what he thought about the colour of faces we show on screen. In a comment posted on an earlier entry on this blog, he wrote: "If Newsround is anything to go by, then there's not one white child in the country."

I promised a reply; but I also promised to give it some time to monitor our output. What seems to be happening certainly throws up some production challenges.

Jim's comments refer largely to the interviews we show with children - "voxes". We film voxes when we want children to give us their opinions on a news story, or if we've gone to report on an event where children are taking part and we ask them what they've been doing. Quite often, this involves going into a school or going on the streets with a camera and microphone.

The challenge is that, while the UK is ethnically diverse, it is diverse in disproportionate quantities. Let's say that we want children to comment on our lead story today -
. Our normal production process will be to ring up a school, go in and film the interviews and get them on air in time for our first afternoon bulletin at 4.25pm on the CΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Channel.

But let's also consider that Britain has an ethnic minority population of . The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's main production offices are based in urban areas, and we could well end up filming at a school in, say, west London. Chances are that 80% of the children could be from ethnic minorities. So if we were to choose three voxes, you could have two black children and one Asian child.

To counteract this, we very often send a crew to a school in a completely different area of the UK. But then the converse often happens, and we could well film at a primary school with exclusively white faces. It's a poor use of money to send two crews on one story (a camera operator + a someone to ask the questions can cost up to Β£650 a day). Finding the ideal ethnic balance on each and every story, particularly at short notice, continues to be a challenge.

But should we be aiming for an ideal ethnic balance in any case? Yes and no. To me, the key is that, over time, we have a fair reflection of UK society. I haven't actually counted (maybe I should?), but over the past two months the vast majority of children we have interviewed have been white. Perhaps not as high as 92%, but certainly a majority.

And there is another point to be made. What we are actually interested in is children's views and stories. Does it matter what colour they are? If we have three black kids out of three, what's the difference from having three white kids, especially on a story such as X Factor? It might be different if the story somehow related to ethnicity or their background. On our recent high-profile Unicef story into childhood happiness, for instance, all four voxes were from ethnic minorities, and in retrospect it would have been preferable if we'd found some white children to talk to.

This is a very sensitive issue and I've read and re-read this entry while writing it. To me, the most important thing is that, at any point, a child should be able to watch our output and identify with what they see on screen. Reflecting ethnicity is part of the way of achieving that. But we probably need to work harder to make sure that our day-to-day production requirements don't end up setting the on-screen agenda.

I'm sure you'll have views...

Daily Telegraph: β€œThe broadcaster is set to press ahead with the sale and possible break up of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Resources”, [which owns studios, broadcast trucks, costumes, wigs and post-productions suites]. ()

Daily Record: Reports that the licence fee is set to increase to Β£135.50 as of next month. ()

We're doing a lot on climate change this week on The World Tonight with the EU summit over the next couple of days expected to come up with ambitious targets to cut emissions from industry, transport and households.

Earlier in the week, the British environment secretary, David Miliband was on the programme arguing for an end to dependence on oil (listen here). That interview sparked a lively debate in our editorial meeting about whether we - ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalists - are too ready to pose the question to government ministers that they regulate in order to solve problems like climate change.

On Monday, Mr Miliband had made a speech arguing we end our dependence on oil, but was reluctant to commit to - for example - making energy-saving light bulbs compulsory - he argued that such action has to be EU-wide because of the single market.

We also pressed him on whether the new building regulations to ensure new homes are carbon neutral are being enforced.

The question we discussed the next morning was whether there should be a default expectation that governments regulate to solve problems.

There is a body of opinion that argues the market and consumer pressure will drive the economic and environmental policy changes that most scientists agree are needed to arrest climate change and global warming. Others argue that the urgency of the situation is such that governments must regulate - as they did when CFCs were phased out to stop the erosion of the ozone layer.

The question we discussed was whether we - ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalists - give too much prominence to the regulatory argument and not enough to the market argument.

And before people say we don't give enough coverage to the argument that climate change is a myth and is not man-made, I can say we do give airtime to people who argue this, despite the fact that the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion is that climate change is happening and human activity is a major cause - even if it is not the only one.

This raises another issue we are grappling with at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. Namely, that our commitment to air all sides of a debate can sometimes challenge our commitment to accuracy and impartiality. Put crudely, if the overwhelming majority of climatologists believe that climate change is happening and is largely driven by human activity, do we distort the picture of the scientific debate by airing the views of the small number of dissenting scientists too often?

This is not to suggest we stop interviewing people who deny climate change is happening or that it is happening but is a natural phenomenon, but it is to ask whether we interview them too often and our audience can be given a distorted impression of the balance of opinion in the scientific community.

And if that is so are we doing our audience disservice?

Wednesday's piece about the case of Toni Comer. a young Sheffield woman shown on CCTV being repeatedly punched by a policeman, polarised viewers.

Some, like Andrew F, thought it was "a terrible piece of journalism...no story, no controversy, no evidence" Others, like Pauline Campbell, thought it was "one of the most disturbing reports I have ever watched on Newsnight."

The CCTV footage, which showed how South Yorkshire policemen handled a drunk and aggressive 19-year-old during a nightclub fracas, split opinion in our office too.

To reflect both views we introduced the item by asking if the footage was evidence of police brutality or the reasonable use of force, and while we heard from Toni Comer and her supporters, we also heard from the policeman and force in question and the former Flying Squad commander John O'Connor who believed the policeman's actions could be explained.

The item provoked a lively debate - that's what Newsnight does. The alternative suggestion is that we should have viewed the pictures and concluded that there was no issue to pursue. That would I think have constituted bad journalism.

What do you think? (You can watch the piece here.)

Daily Telegraph: β€œLocal newspaper group Johnston Press, which is suffering from an advertising downturn, has criticised ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ proposals for more localised television programmes and websites as β€˜an incorrect use’ of the licence fee.” ()

We've launched the report of the into the deaths of journalists around the world. Killing the Messenger: The Deadly Price of News has been 18 months' work involving regional inquiries in Asia, the Middle East, North and South America, and Europe. It was launched on World Press Freedom Day in 2005 when I was asked to chair it. The School of Journalism at Cardiff University has worked with us to analyse all the available data on the deaths of journalists and support staff going back ten years. The headlines:

β€’ More than a thousand have been killed - an average of two a week.

β€’ Only one in four is killed in armed conflict - the majority are local journalists working on stories in their own countries.

β€’ More than 670 of them have been murdered - and the majority of killers are never identified or brought to justice.

β€’ There is a widespread culture of impunity in many countries where killing a journalist is risk-free.

In addition, the report makes a number of recommendations for greater safety and for taking the issue out to the international community for them to understand the impact on free speech and economic and democratic development. When a journalist is killed we all hear and see a little less.

A PDF of the report is (warning it's over 100 pages long).

Daily Mail: Leader column says that "more and more restrictions are being placed on the freedom of the press", with reference to the recent developments in the cash-for-honours inquiry. ()

I wondered if we were broadcasting nonsense on The Daily Politics this morning. I woke to learn from the Guardian that police were investigating whether Lord Levy, the prime minister's fundraiser, had urged Ruth Turner, the prime minister's director of external relations, to modify information that might have been of interest to Scotland Yard's cash for honours inquiry.

Was this not the story that for three days the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ had been referring to but not allowed to report? Could we not on the programme today at last put some bones and flesh on the story?

I then decided I couldn't. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's senior legal and management teams had some very clear advice. Of course we could say that the Guardian had printed a story, but if we reported the content we would fall foul of the very strict injunction on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. The advice was also not to connect the Guardian story with the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ story for fear of falling foul of the same injunction.

Unfortunately we couldn't explain the terms of our own injunctions. And it would be better not to report that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was, that morning, asking for our injunction to be lifted or varied.

So we said what I thought we could. James Landale told Andrew Neil on air that the Guardian had a jolly good story which it had printed, but that he couldn't tell us about. And then he told Andrew the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ had a separate jolly good story involving Ruth Turner and Lord Levy. And er... that was it, because of all the legal complications. Then James called the whole thing Kafkaesque. My hero.

There were two more turns of the knife. Had you been watching Sky News when James and Andrew were talking, you would have seen Sky merrily reporting the full details of the Guardian allegations, discussing them with all and sundry, and reporting the just released and robust denials from Lord Levy.

And to top it off, the injunction against the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was lifted just as we came off air, allowing Nick Robinson suddenly to report in full his story from Friday on News 24... about 12 hours after the Guardian.

Had I got this completely wrong? Maybe. Did the viewers understand what on earth we were on about? I suspect not. So should we have mentioned the story on the programme at all, given the limitations? Debatable, but I thought so. Was it a great day for the programme? You decide. But hats off to the Guardian.

Did Iranian President Ahmadinejad say Israel should be wiped off the map? There is a body of opinion who argue he did not, and he has been misquoted. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ does attribute the quote to him so I thought it might be useful to set out why.

President Ahmadinejad made the remark at a conference. The comment was picked up and translated from the Farsi by the . Those who challenge the 'wiped off the map' translation argue other translations would be more accurate, among them:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

They argue the President was merely repeating a quote from . They also point out that when subsequently asked about the quote President Ahmadinejad said he had not been advocating practical military action against Israel and that he was saying Israel has no legitimacy as a state.

So why do we continue to use it? The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's experts at the Monitoring advise "there is no direct translation into English of the Farsi phrase used by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Therefore there a number of possible ways of rendering the Farsi original into English. However, in the context of the whole passage we believe our original interpretation is an accurate reflection of the words."

At the end of last year after a complaint from a viewer that Andrew Marr had used the phrase "wiped off the face of the map", the position was investigated by the (before it was replaced by the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Trust). The judgement reads in part:

"The Committee carefully considered the wording of the translation of the speech from a number of sources, including translations from ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Monitoring and from the Middle East Research Institute in Washington. The Committee also reflected on how the speech had been translated in British newspapers and on Al Jazeera Online. The Committee noted the inherent problem with accuracy in translations. It noted that all the translations varied to a greater or lesser degree, and it was difficult to decide which, if any, was the most accurate. None of the various translations provided any evidence for the charge that Andrew Marr had misrepresented what the Iranian President had said.

The Committee felt that the language used by the Iranian President was highly emotive by its nature and had been recognised as such in the international condemnation of what he had said. Andrew Marr had done nothing more than highlight this in his introduction. The Committee was also clear that neither the language nor the tone used by Andrew Marr could be considered as showing bias."

Financial Times: Reports on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Worldwide’s plans to increase revenue by inviting other UK broadcasters to use its new iPlayer as an alternative to Apple's iTunes for downloading audio and video. ()

The Guardian: β€œΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Worldwide's annual sales show for buyers from around the world reflects the broadcaster's need to make a profit from exporting its programmes to close the gap in funding after the recent licence fee settlement.” ()

On this week's Newswatch, the programme which discusses viewers' complaints about ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ TV News, Roger Harrabin, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s environmental analyst, discusses how the subject of climate change is reported and Breakfast editor David Kermode defends this year’s Oscar coverage. You can watch the programme by clicking here.

Michael Crick's piece about the strange disappearance from circulation of the photograph of David Cameron as a member of the Bullingdon Club and the discovery of the uncropped picture of Tony Blair's rude student gesticulation provoked a big reaction from viewers.

Many thought we were wrong to delve into their youthful indiscretions, but that was not really what the item was about. It was about the suppression of photographs which could have proved embarrassing for our political leaders.

The issue is airbrushing from history - a big feature in Orwell and Stalin - and surely one for Newsnight.

Interestingly, it's not at all clear who has done the suppressing in these cases. The photographic company who own the copyright on the Cameron picture are adamant they weren't leant on, but made the decision for commercial reasons. The Conservative party say they didn't ask for it to be withdrawn, though they admit they thought about it when they feared Labour would use it in an election poster.

The unexpurgated picture of Tony Blair has been around for years, but apparently no-one has ever published it. Indeed one version I've seen has the offending gesture blacked out. How odd.

The Times: Reports that police are seeking to gag the media until the cash-for-honours inquiry is over after the attorney general took out an injunction against the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ to stop it broadcasting a report about the investigation. ()

Daily Telegraph: β€œThere was widespread support last night for Jonathan Ross's claim that the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ employs most black people only in low paid jobs.” ()

The Independent: News presenter Nicholas Owen who joins News 24 later this month on β€œMy Life in the Media”. ()

The Guardian: Interview with Newsnight’s Ethical Man, aka reporter Justin Rowlatt who’s spent the last year leading an ethical lifestyle. ()

The Guardian: β€œThe ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has struck a partnership deal with IBM to develop "web 3.0" technology.” ()

So how did the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ report that Building 7 at the World Trade Centre had collapsed around half an hour before it did so? My earlier posting on the subject has attracted a lot of interest so we've been doing more investigating within the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ to put together the sequence of events.

Five and a half years have passed so it's quite difficult to answer every outstanding question. But we do know quite a bit more than we did on Tuesday, as a result of checking the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ archives and what other media were doing at the time. I've also read through some of the reports published after 9/11 to help put together the sequence of events.

Back to 11 September itself. The Twin Towers had collapsed. Other buildings were known to be damaged. Building 7 was on fire. But this was also a very confusing picture - remember we had started the day with reports that a light aircraft had struck the first tower, and at one stage there was talk of ten hijacked jets in the air. It's in the nature of rolling news that events unfold in front of you and confusion turns to clarity. It's important to remember that context when looking more closely at what happened between about 4.10pm (EDT) and 5.20pm when Building 7 finally collapsed.

published at the time confirms they reported the building on fire and a clip from a CNN bulletin, widely available on the web, hears from a reporter at about 4.15pm EDT, 9.15pm in the UK, who says: "We're getting information that one of the other buildings... Building 7... is on fire and has either collapsed or is collapsing... now we're told there is a fire there and that the building may collapse as well."

Other American networks were broadcasting similar reports at this time and the reports from FEMA and NIST both make it clear the building was on fire during the course of the day.

One senior fire officer was quoted in a subsequent interview as saying there was a "bulge" in the building and he was "pretty sure it was going to collapse". During this time, our staff were talking directly to the emergency services and monitoring local and national media… and there was a fairly consistent picture being painted of Building 7 in danger of collapse. Producers in London would have been monitoring the news agency wires - the Associated Press, Reuters, etc - and although we don't routinely keep an archive of agency reports, we're sure they would have been reporting the same as the local media.

At 4.27pm, a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ reporter, Greg Barrow, who is in New York, appears on our radio news channel, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio Five Live, and says: "We are hearing reports from local media that another building may have caught light and is in danger of collapse." He then responds to a follow-up question by saying "I'm not sure if it has yet collapsed but the report we have is talking about Building 7."

At 4.53pm, on the same radio station, the programme's presenter, Fi Glover says "25 minutes ago we had reports from Greg Barrow that another large building has collapsed just over an hour ago."

At 4.54pm, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's domestic television news channel, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News 24, reports the same thing. Presenter Gavin Esler says: "We're now being told that yet another enormous building has collapsed... it is the 47-storey Salomon Brothers building."

And then at 4.57pm on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World (according to the clips available on the web) presenter Phil Hayton says: "We've got some news just coming in actually that the Salomon brothers building in NY right in the heart of Manhattan has also collapsed."

Because three ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ channels were saying this in quick succession, I am inclined to believe that one or more of the news agencies was reporting this, or at least reporting someone saying this.

At 5pm, News 24 repeated the news in its top-of-the-hour headlines sequence and then at about 5.10pm (again according to the clips on the web), Phil Hayton on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World says "More on the latest building collapse in NY - you might have heard I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has... it seems this wasn't the result of a new attack but because the building had been weakened during this morning's attack."

Some of the respondents to my earlier blog have suggested this must mean he had inside knowledge - that not only did he know the building had collapsed, he knew why.

Well in one sense that's true - for about an hour, it had been reported that the building was on fire and in danger of collapse. But he did qualify it by saying "it seems" and once again I think there's a danger of reading too much into what I believe was a presenter merely summarising what everyone had been saying during the previous hour.

Of course, with hindsight we now know that our live shot showed the building still standing in the background. But again I point to that confusing and chaotic situation on the ground - the CNN reporter who had talked about the building "either collapsed or is collapsing" also had it clearly in shot behind him, but he acknowledged he couldn't see very clearly from where he was standing. As we know, the building did collapse at 5.20pm, with the first pictures of that being broadcast on News 24 at about 5.35pm.

So that's what we know we reported. To me it paints a consistent (and reasonably conclusive) picture.

I should also mention the missing tapes. As you'll see from the details above, the absence of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World tapes hasn't made much difference to our ability to look back at what happened. We have all the tapes of other ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ channels (and I now know that quite a few of you have your own copies of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World, which is an interesting discovery... ).

Some of you find it hard to believe we didn't keep the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World tapes... but we had several streams of news output running simultaneously on the day, both on radio and television as well as online and we have kept all the tapes from ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News 24 and Radio Five Live, as well as all the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ One bulletins. Obviously I wish we'd kept hold of the World tapes alongside all the others, but we didn't... and I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid. But as a result of this week's events, I have asked our archivists to get hold of copies of our original material from the organisations which do have them.

And just to be clear, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ policy is to keep every minute of news channel output for 90 days (in line with the Broadcasting Act in the UK). After that we are obliged to keep a representative sample - and we interpret that to mean roughly one third of all our output. We also keep a large amount of individual items (such as packaged reports or "rushes" - ie original unedited material), which we use for operational reasons - such as when we come to broadcast fresh stories on the subject. We do not lack a historical record of the event.

I've spent most of the week investigating this issue, but this is where we have to end the story. I know there are many out there who won't believe our version of events, or will raise further questions. But there was no conspiracy in the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's reporting of the events. Nobody told us what to say. There's no conspiracy involving missing tapes. There's no story here.

Yesterday's exercise was a bit of a revelation.

I asked you (blog readers) about the blogs vs diaries question, while Mark Mardell also the same question of his diary readers. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise, but opinion divided very clearly, with the blog readers agreeing on the merits of this format, and Mark’s regular diary readers urging him to stick with the diary.

Some of you (Richard, Kendrick, and Jonathan) made the extremely sensible point that we can combine the best of both worlds and get the blog advantages (RSS, easy updating, item permalinks etc) along with longer format, considered writing - if that’s what we want to do.

Paul is right when he says the tone of the content is completely independent of the software used (at least I think he is – is he?).

Your comments on the issue of interaction (how much we do or don’t engage with comments and follow them up, or whether there is tumbleweed blowing through) are another interesting issue.

, in common with some of our other features and columns on the site, do carry a comment form and we publish a small range of responses on the story page itself. We don’t tend to then respond to the responses because by that time we are all busy working on the next feature or diary piece. So to that extent they are less interactive than a blog.

But as some have pointed out, this blog doesn’t behave very typically - there’s more than one author, and all those who write in it are also responsible for and busy with lots of other editorial output - the blog is just one bit of their line of communication with you, the audience, so there’s less follow-up comment.

I’m not sure how much of an issue that is, but I think it is probably just the nature of this particular forum. But in any case, there's a lot of illuminating thought in your responses which I will factor in as we proceed - so thank you.

The Herald: Reports that Jack McConnell has criticised a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ documentary which claimed that money sent to Malawi by the Scottish Executive to tackle poverty was being mis-spent. ()

The Guardian: β€œThe ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ has confirmed a deal with YouTube to make programming available via a number of branded channels, including supplying an ad-funded ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News clips service.” ()

ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ viewers - and listeners - led the way yesterday and helped shape our coverage as never before.

It all started with an unusually high number of calls mid-morning to ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Cambridgeshire from people saying they were having big problems with their cars, which prompted our Cambridge TV producer to call some other local radio stations. They were getting similar calls. She tipped off News 24, and our reporter Nicola Pearson began to make her own inquiries. It was clear that the story was growing.

Around 2.30pm, we put out the first flash on the story and presenter Jon Sopel asked viewers to text us on 61124 if they'd had car trouble.

The next few minutes were extraordinary. Within seconds the first few messages were starting to come in and then as we began to read some out, there was an absolute torrent of texts - all reporting the same symptoms: spluttering engines; cars losing power; breaking down, etc.

It seemed as though the problem was affecting a much wider area than we'd thought. By now, our producers were ringing garages and experts - they confirmed that not only was there a serious problem, but that garages were running out of the parts needed to deal with it.

The texts were coming in faster than we'd ever seen before - we rang back some of our texters and put them on the air, which prompted yet more texts and e-mails. We started to throw out other news, and by 3.30 it was clear we had a major story which would lead the bulletins.

We asked the supermarkets for their response, phoned yet more experts to try and find out what the problem was, and how our viewers could fix it, and we put up a map showing the areas over Britain that viewers were texting us from.

For the first time, the top story on News 24 was genuinely β€œYour News" - so thanks!

PS. In the last 24 hours we've already received more than 4,000 e-mails on this.

Last night the Ten O'Clock News broadcast a report revealing that the Ministry of Defence has not completed urgent safety work on its fleet of Hercules aircraft - many of which are now flying in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A few viewers complained that by detailing the fault we were handing crucial information to the enemy. Here's one complaint:

I do not think that the programme should have included a report about how key safety measures have not been introduced on some military aircraft. This is just giving information away to the enemy. This sort of thing should remain secret.

It is true that Paul Wood's report did give very detailed information - however, in no way did this endanger the lives of our troops. An official report into the death of 10 British servicemen in Iraq made clear what the problem was - this was widely reported in many media outlets (including the Ten O'Clock News) at the time.

The point of last night's report was to show that despite the fact that changes to Hercules were considered urgent, the process of making the fleet safe has been incredibly slow - not least because the planes can't be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan because they are so vital to operations. Many of the senior military figures we spoke to in the preparation of the report believe it is the failure to make the planes safe, and not the reporting of the issue, that is endangering British troops.

Should ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ correspondents writing for the News website write in blogs, or in conventional diaries/columns? Not the most burning issue in the world maybe but we've been pondering it nonetheless...

Mark Mardell, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s Europe Editor, whether we should migrate it into a blog template, like the one you’re looking at now. We're wondering about the pros and cons (it's the kind of thing editors do).

At the moment some of our correspondents (for example , , and ) write regular columns or diaries, others write in blogs (Nick Robinson, Evan Davis, Robert Peston). Which is better? Does it matter?

Blogs allow easier updating and comments, permalinking to individual posts, an RSS feed so you can keep track of the new entries and don't have to come to the site to find it... The conventional story template tends to collect together lots of thoughts into one long-ish piece that gets published in one go, which is easier to schedule regularly and therefore promote systematically across the website. Maybe it’s also easier to write - a once-a-week or once-a-fortnight task rather than an ongoing preoccupation.

What do you think?

Daily Mail: Columnist Steven Glover accuses the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ of hypocrisy regarding its environmental record as it is revealed that the corporation’s employees flew 125 million air miles in one year. ()

Daily Telegraph: Letter criticising ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ bulletin newsreaders for using the phrase β€œtop stories”. ()