this sigwili news. the headlines. president trump has war the sacked fbi director not to speak to the press about their conversations. in a string of twitter messages he suggested there might be tapes of their exchanges. hospitals around england are being affected by what is believed to be a major cyber attack. some have been forced to divert emergencies as organisations in other countries are affected. the highest court in italy has upheld the 16 yearjail sentence imposed on the 16 yearjail sentence imposed on the captain of the cruise ship costa concordia. 32 people aboard died when the ship capsized off the italian coast. pope francis has embarked on a pilgrimage to fatima in central portugal. at ten o'clock in bruce will be here with a full round—up of the news. first, here is news watch.

hello and welcome to newswatch with me, samira ahmed. she won't take part in a televised leaders debate. if she won't, then he won't. will the bbc do more to make a head—to—head happen? and are the green party being given a fair share of airtime on the bbc‘s special election programmes. there has been a bit of a phoney war feel to the election campaign so far. before the parties began publishing their manifestos. many questions had been fobbed off with this answer, given to laura kuenssberg byjeremy corbyn on tuesday. well, you will have to wait for the manifesto for the details. you were expecting that answer. those manifestos will be officially unveiled next week, but on wednesday night we got a sneak preview of what labour's might contain. somehow, an earlier version had ended up in the hands of chris mason. i can't claim i've read it all, but here it is. stamped right through the middle of the document, about 20,000 words

in total, draft, confidential. in other words, they hadn't quite anticipated me waving it around on the telly. but i can do, because we've received this leaked draft. well, he could leave it around on the telly, but should he have done? tim grant was among several newswatch viewers who thought not, asking, if it's got confidential written on it, is it right to pasted all over the news? and david gregory elaborated on that. one report explained how the word draft was on every page and that this report was not meant for public viewing. why, then, do the bbc take the opportunity to make a moral stand here and not report on what was in the manifesto? this is, in effect, a stolen document, and therefore should have not been used in the way that it was. we didn't discover much about the conservative party's policy plans on tuesday night's one show, but we did get a few insights into the personalities and marriage of mr and mrs may. i get to decide when i take the bins out.

not if i take the bins out. there's boyjobs and girljobs, you see. eurovision. now, we're not leaving that as well, are we? no. i'm tempted to say in current circumstances i'm not sure how many votes we'll get. alison norcross found that a stomach churning interview, it made uncomfortable viewing on many fronts, not the least of which is the absolute obsequiousness of the presenters. and one twitter user wondered, how can this propaganda be allowed when may runs from a face—to—face debate? yes, the television debates. the format in which senior politicians appear in the set piece election programmes only started in 2010, but has since become a battle ground with broadcasters. in 2015 david cameron refused to follow the example of his predecessor as prime minister, gordon brown, and take part in a head—to—head discussion on the bbc with other party leaders. five of whom appeared without him in a so—called challengers debate. theresa may has followed his example

and jeremy corbyn has said he won't take part in such a programme either, if she doesn't. so this time round we were told this week the bbc will be showing a debate featuring senior representatives from labour, the conservatives, the liberal democrats, the snp, plaid cymru, ukip and the green party. the press release also announced question time specials and election questions programmes featuring separately the leaders of six of those parties, but not the green party, to the annoyance of many viewers, including christopher corey. i understand that the bbc in their forthcoming election specials have invited ukip to take part and have excluded the green party. i think this is unfair and ludicrous, to be honest. i am not a green party supporter, and i am certainly not a ukip supporter, however,

i do think that the green party should qualify far above ukip to have their voice heard in these election specials. 0ther viewers were annoyed about the absence of a televised debate between the two main candidates to lead the next government. some comparing it to the long established tradition of american presidential hopefuls squaring up to each other, a debate in march between the two leading candidates to become prime minister of the netherlands, and the tv discussions before the recent presidential election in france. if those countries can do it, wondered terry pearson, why should our potential leaders avoid that sort of scrutiny? isn't it about time the bbc took on the clearly prepared conservative strategy of not letting may face searching political questions? the one show "who takes out the bins?" does not count. i still don't understand why we will not see may versus corbyn in a tv debate.

if the bbc had seriously threatened to empty chair her, she would have had little choice. well, let's discuss some of those issues with the bbc‘s head of news gathering, jonathan monroe. jonathan, let's start with whether the bbc should have done more to try to get theresa may to take part in a leaders debate by threatening to go ahead with her seat empty. well, we're really disappointed the prime minister's not doing the leaders debate, we would have liked to have done a leaders debate featuring the party leaders themselves. the day after the easter weekend the prime minister announced basically two things. number one, there would be a general election. and number two, she would not take part in television debates. and ourjudgment was that wasn't a negotiating position, she wasn't going to change her mind. so threatening to empty chair would have led to an empty chair. ultimately, the viewer doesn't learn anything from an empty chair. she has paid no price for refusing the leaders debate. in fact, there she is on the one show sofa, and viewers have said, whatever you say, they feel that's wrong, and maybe she would have given in. but she hasn't paid a price for saying no. we don't know she's

not paid a price. some viewers may decide that they're going to change their vote as a result of the strategy of the leaders of the election. so that's not really ourjudgment. but it doesn't help anybody to say that because the prime minister is going to appear in one format she can't therefore appear in other programmes, whether it's question time or election questions or andrew neil interviews. or the one show orjeremy vine or any of the other programmes that are interviewing the prime minister. it's only since 2010 that we've actually had leader debates, and people thought we were going to get them every time. what has happened since then? why is it proving so difficult? it's a shame that we're not getting them. basically what happened in 2010 is that all the main party leaders at the time, by which i mean just three of them, we didn't include the seven in 2010, they all felt, for whatever reason, it was in their interest, it was the right moment to say yes to these invitations. that changed by 2015 with, as you say, david cameron not accepting a head—to—head. a very complicated negotiation then followed about exposure of parties relative to their size.

we didn't have nick clegg in the tv debate either. and it has changed again this time round with the prime minister deciding she's not going to do it. let's hope we can get them back again in future elections. the bbc is going to run these special question time format programmes with individual party leaders and studio audience. at the start of this week the bbc said the greens wouldn't be part of this. a lot of viewers complained to newswatch. why? and they complained to us, too, and i've heard the comments your viewers have made about the greens. let me explain the formula we use, not in too much detail. we are obliged by our regulations to take into account the electoral support over two election cycles, that means two general elections, in other words back to 2010, and all the elections that happened in the meantime. lots of local elections in that time, obviously, and some european elections. if you take all those figures, the ukip support over that period is significantly greater than the greens. the greens have been stable but very low. you could have been up and down. we saw, as you know,

a week or so ago, they didn't do so well in the local elections. but over the seven—year period we are obliged to count, there is a big, big difference. but when you apply that format to the schedule, the programmes we are actually going to make, we do think in retrospect, actually, that the gap between what ukip is getting and what the greens are getting is too great, so we're going to make a change and we've invited the green party in the last 2a hours to take part in an extra programme in the elections questions format in the last weekend of the campaign, onjune the 4th. they've accepted that and we're really pleased to have that extra programme going into the bbc one schedule. so you've either caved in to pressure or you got it wrong. we've not caved in to pressure. we're not going to cave in to pressure from political parties. we looked at the schedule in retrospect, what we'd lined up, and the differences between the parties. there were two differences, effectively, that the greens were not included in. one was the question time elections questions programmes, which go out on the last weekend. the other was the series of andrew neil interviews, which are going out the week after next on bbc one.

so what we've done is we said to the green party, we think the gaps too great at the moment, but you can't have equivalents to the other parties because of that electoral support issue. so we've given them, we hope, a good compromise and an offer i'm really pleased to say they've accepted. jonathan monroe, thank you. away from the election, shock were created this week by president trump's sacking of the fbi directorjames comey. the white house has said he was fired because he'd mishandled the investigation into hillary clinton's e—mail server. here'sjon sopel on wednesday night's news at ten. but if it really is all about the way the fbi conducted the hillary clinton investigation, why sack him now? why this intervention? why not do it when donald trump first came to office? and how do you reconcile it with the praise that was heaped upon james comey? roger witt from poole felt there was a lack of balance in the reporting of mr comey‘s sacking. writing... i'm struggling to understand why the bbc should imply that the reason behind it is the fact

that the bureau were closing in on trump's links with russia. yes, it's what the democrats say, but without any evidence. in months of investigation, comey has produced no evidence either, so i'm curious as to what facts the bbc is privy to. or is the corporation merely reporting selective rumour? finally, alexander blackman, known as marine a, was freed two weeks ago after serving three years in prison for killing a wounded taliban insurgents in afghanistan. an incident recorded on a helmet camera. on tuesday, clinton rogers met the former royal marine sergeant and his wife. to be fair, you can put quite a few different spins on what's said. and unless you were actually there, you don't know the full story. obviously, i told my version of events when i was at trial. hindsight is a wonderful thing, and given especially what's happened to us in our life, if you could go back, you would change it. 0ne viewer was watching that and the her response for us on camera. i have absolutely no sympathy

with the allegiances of his taliban victim, but allowing the man who breached the geneva convention and killed and injured prisoner of war to justify himself in this way is disgusting. he was provided with a platform and allowed to minimise his actions and suggest there was justification not known to the general public. thanks for all your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions on bbc news and current affairs, or even appear on the programme, you can call us... you can find us on twitter. do have a look at our website for previous discussions. bbc.co.uk/newswatch. that's all from us. we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again next week. goodbye. hello and welcome to the film review

on bbc news. 50, we have a political thriller on bbc news. so, we have a political thriller called miss sloan. we have alien: covenant, the latest in the ongoing alien franchise. and jawbone, written by and starring johnny harris. miss sloan and even you looking at the poster, i wanted to like this, because you think it is washington, it is the west wing. you are in with the intrigue. the story is thatjessica is a lobbyist becomes embroiled in a battle between people who want controls on guns and people who want to sell more guns. she is enlisted by people who say we are trying to make guns

seem more popular and we want to get guns to appeal to women and she laughs out of the ring. the next thing is she is approached by the other side fighting for restrictions and she decides that she will throw in her lot with them and they want her because of her very powerful, and that has to be said, cynical, we have lobbying. it has to be said, cynical, we have lobbying. here's a clip. what is the best indicator of voting intention? grassroots action aimed squarely at soliciting donations. that means any petition, not clicks in cyberspace. nonprofits have to report on their findings. while you are out there hustling, i was work influential senators who can deliver votes. that is our second prong.