we've heard criticisms during the recent election of bias in all directions. steven pullen wrote to us during the campaign, saying... ..whereas gerald freel thought... meanwhile, susie hq this week raised the subject of airtime for nigel farage... well, let's speak to deborah turness, the chief executive of bbc news. thanks for coming on newswatch. the director—general has identified impartiality as the bbc�*s number one priority, and you've heard accusations from viewers of bias during the general election campaign. what was your approach to impartiality during the campaign? well, thank you for inviting me on the programme, samira.

when i came to the bbc, understanding the director—general�*s real focus on impartiality, we did a really big piece of work asking audiences across the uk and around the world what they needed today to trust us, and they told us they wanted fairness and respect. and fairness and respect really come together to form impartiality — fairness in reflecting the fullness of the political conversation and respect in showing that we are listening to them because they pay for us and the bbc is here for everyone. eight in ten uk adults came to the bbc during the election period. they said, when asked, "who would you choose for trusted, "impartial coverage of this election?", four times more chose the bbc than any of our nearest other competitors. so i would say i really am incredibly proud of our output during the election, and i really feel that we stepped up to deliver on our democratic duty as a platform for freedom of speech and to reflect the fullness of the political conversation

that was happening across the uk. lots of the complaints we received during the election — and you heard one earlier — concerned the perception that nigel farage and reform received more coverage than was warranted. did they? we were very, very thoughtful and very careful about this. and first to say, equal numbers of people contacted the bbc to say that there was too much and too little coverage of nigel farage and the reform party. we make very careful determinations and we look at, you know, a sort of cross—section of data and inputs to make those decisions. for example, ofcom has a framework, the bbc charter has a framework. some of it is about past electoral performance and some of it is about polling. and in the end, we came out to a decision whereby nigel farage was interviewed by nick robinson on panorama in peak time, as were the greens and all the other major parties. and i think that was a really important decision that we took because he was scrutinised, like every other major

politician, in peak time. a big reach, important questions were asked. and i think when you look at the reach that reform ended up having, which was 14% share of the vote, ahead of the liberal democrats, i think we got it about right. 0k. the tv audience who were watching the bbc one election night results programme live was down a third, from 6.1 to 4.2 million, compared to 2019. how much does that worry you? i think when you look at the totality of our linear television reach that night and the next day, 25 million people came to bbc news to watch that coverage. but they also went to our audio feed, which was radio 4, radio 5 and sounds. they also went to the newscast all—nighter. the audience is fragmented. they were on our live pages. we had massive reach... so you're not worried? no, because i think that we are part of the story of the fragmentation of the audience. as they are on more and more platforms, looking for different ways to consume news —

through podcasts, through live pages, through digital content — we are there on all these platforms, and what you're seeing is this fragmentation story. so i'm not worried. and the total reach of our total audiences through the election campaign was 45 million people across all of our platforms. that's enormous. 0k. the news channel. so, a lot of viewers were very glad to see that the bbc provided a dedicated domestic service during the election campaign — as, indeed, there had used to be — and they feel the merged news channel for global and uk viewers doesn't serve licence fee payers well. and i'm going to read you a message from a viewer called josh. he says... what's your answer to josh?

well, my answer tojosh, first of all, is thank you for watching, josh, and thank you for caring enough to ask that question. and we were very proud of our dedicated election stream, which did really super—serve our uk audiences with all election, all the time for those weeks. and there was a real appetite for that. and asjosh has pointed out, we do always make sure, with what we call our break—out service, that when there is a moving, developing story in the uk, that we do the break—out and we make sure that our uk audiences are getting the moving, breaking story while the global stream goes off and can serve the global audience. so that is a well—established principle and working... so you're going back to that? that's what we've been doing since the changes to the channel and that has been successful. but what i would say tojosh is this. the break—out streams that we put onto the channel when there's changing, evolving stories in the uk also go on to iplayer, and we're seeing real success with that and that's a real growth area. we also put them into our live pages and our digital platforms, and that is a growth area and an area of investment for us. so he's going to see more single—story live streams in more places in the future, because we can see that the audiences have

an appetite for that. now, the last government's funding reductions for the bbc saw bosses make cuts to the news channel and also to newsnight, local radio and the world service. and this week, your departing director of the world service, liliane landor, said she thought cuts to radio had been made too quickly. have you gone too far, too fast? and will there be more cuts to come? look, we're living in the real world. we have a diminishing licence fee. we've seen successive periods of licence fee renewal which have been below inflation. that's a real impact. we also have been hit by inflation ourselves as a business, as an organisation, and we're having to find the investment in our digital product, our digital infrastructure and to move with the consumers onto digital platforms. so we have to find the cash and the money to invest, so, of course, we have to make difficult choices and trade—offs. we hope to make them always led by audiences. we ask our audiences where their priorities are, what they most care about. you mentioned newsnight there.

we recently made the changes to newsnight, and actually, in the seven weeks that the new newsnight has been on air, it has grown 35%. now, we know younger audiences are deserting news broadcasting in large numbers. that could be an existential challenge for bbc news, couldn't it? it could be, but it's not, and i'll tell you why. a recent data point — on election night alone, double the percentage of audiences that came to us were 18 to 35. we doubled our percentage of 18 to 35 reach on election night. eight in ten young audience members came to us for election news on that night, and that is a really, really positive sign. what we're trying to do, though, is to say, yes, of course, we want those audiences to come to us on our platform, but there's also the world that we live in, the real world. and so we are also investing to find

those audiences on tiktok, on instagram and on those platforms, to tell them about bbc news journalism. and we are targeting ruthlessly under—25s on tiktok. and the aim of that is to bring them back to our platforms, where they can enjoy bbc news content on bbc news platforms. all right. transparency is one of your watchwords. on newswatch, we like to think we embody that. here are a couple of messages we've had from the viewers. noel waller says... thank you, noel. and he goes on... and jayne taylor writes... so, without being too self—serving, could you commit to senior bbc staff coming on the programme more often to respond to licence fee payers,

and perhaps even looking at finding us a longer slot? well, first of all, on transparency, thank you for doing this programme. i truly believe that we must be transparent with our audiences. everybody pays the bbc, the bbc must be for everybody, and they have the right to ask questions and to demand the right answers. i have really enjoyed seeing nick robinson, marianna spring, jonathan munro, my deputy, you know, members of the news team, richard burgess, also head of content, coming on. and i hope that we'll all continue to come on the show and to answer your questions, because they're very important. in terms of... i won't dodge your final points about the length of your programme. i believe in transparency, but i don't think you would expect me to make a programming scheduling decision with a camera in my face. thank you for coming on. thank you. thank you very much for your time. thank you for all your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news, on tv,

radio, online and social media, email newswatch@bbc.co.uk, or you can find us on x — @newswatchbbc. you can call us on 0370 010 6676, and do have a look at previous interviews on our website, bbc.co.uk/newswatch. that's all from us for now. thank you forjoining us. we are off the air now until the first week of september, but do continue to send us your views and join us again then. goodbye. hello. many of us are feeling the humidity today. it's still quite warm but the sunshine in some parts of the country will soon give way to rain clouds, if the rain hasn't reached you already. the weather front is currently across western parts of the uk. you can see the rain earlier on, on the radar across western parts of scotland, moving through ireland, reaching western wales and also

south—western england, but to the east, we have had dry weather. it was a beautiful start to the day. quite murky with all that humidity. this is a picture from norfolk. we'll keep dry weather the further east you are pretty much for the rest of the day. let's zoom into the details. this is what it looks like in the short term. extensive cloud in the south—west of england, outbreaks of rain, some could be heavy, temperatures hovering around 19 or 20 celsius. similarfor wales and the irish sea. but for london, across east anglia, into central england and yorkshire, hazier skies, dry for many, but there will be a few isolated storms so you may see lightning. some sunshine for eastern parts of scotland but for the western isles, fresher conditions coming in after the passage of that cool front — 15 there in stornoway. and it will be relatively fresh in the west of the uk with some clear skies,

but in the east, a lot of humidity, so temperatures in london, norwich and hull will be around 17 or 18 degrees first thing on sunday. not quite so warm and humid out towards the west. that means lots of sunshine towards the west early in the day. but then this little weather front moves in and drifts in cloud and some outbreaks of rain to northern ireland. the rest of the uk should have a fine day. just the odd shower. and pleasant temperatures. high teens into the low 20s. how about early next week? weather fronts are moving in but then we have a ridge of high pressure, so that means more settled conditions. any weather fronts will be generally weak and brushing north—western parts of the uk, so it is a bit of a mixed bag depending on where you are, but overall, it's actually not looking bad at all and those temperatures are around average for the time of year. that's it from me. bye—bye.

live from london, this is bbc news. warnings that criminals may try to exploit friday's global tech outage, with concerns

over the vulnerability of it systems worldwide. should he stay or should he go? joe biden insists he won't quit the race for the white house despite growing pressure from democrats. the bangladesh government imposes a nationwide curfew following the deaths of more than 100 people in violent protests. and members of the refugee olympic team arrive in paris just days before the games are due to start. hello, welcome to the programme. there are warnings that cyber criminals looking to exploit friday's global it outage could cause further disruption. australia has issued alerts that hackers are sending out fake software fixes. in total, more than 8,000 flights have been cancelled since friday, with the potential for more delays on saturday.

here in the uk, airports, which saw severe disruption,