us media are reporting that president trump told russian officials that firing fbi director james comey eased great pressure on him. he also reportedly described james comey as a nutjob. these fresh revelations come as mr trump sets off on his first overseas trip since becoming president. his first stop will be saudi arabia. his eight—day trip will take on israel, the palestinian territories, brussels, the vatican city and sicily. julian assange says it is a personal victory that sweden has shelved a rape investigation. he says his legal conflict with britain in the us continues. those voters in iran's presidential elections will be pleased they have been extended. more than a0 million votes have been cast. coming up at ten, a full round—up of the day's news. first, it's

newswatch. hello and welcome to newswatch with me samira ahmed. coming up: the party manifestos are all out. how well has the bbc done on explaining their policies fairly and impartially? and, are we hearing too many random opinions from not always well—informed voters? with the main parties publishing their offers to voters, this week has seen the general election campaign in full swing. the bbc‘s political editor laura kuenssberg was on hand and on air with her analysis. here she is on thursday reporting on the conservatives‘ proposals, and first on tuesday reacting to labour's manifesto. and remember not so long ago in 2015 ed miliband made a few little tiptoes to the left of where labour had been and he lost that election. jeremy corbyn is making a much

bigger step in the same direct of middle england are really ready for the policies that he believes will be popular. and, of course, the complications of brexit means whatever else she is promising could be derailed by that becoming extremely difficult, and notjust hard to deliver but also potentially very nasty. so, broadly, though, as with any political idea leader for the mainstream, easier to say than to prove. some viewers object to what they see as a running commentary on what politicians are saying and doing during the campaign, with david jowett putting it like this. "it seems the news bulletins are becoming the laura kuenssberg show. her pieces to camera and the questioning of political figures are not the broad unbiased approach that one should expect from the bbc but come across as the presentation of personal opinion and approach. the bbc should be providing a broader approach with

a considerably higher factual content." allegations of bias, as we've mentioned before in recent weeks, have been rife with some viewers feeling the bbc has given the lion's share of screen time and prominence to the labour party. tom and jan borland profess themselves, "bemused and somewhat annoyed, to say the least, by the total airtime given over to the labour party, and tojeremy corbyn in particular, who is the lead story every time you switch on the television news. this amount of press coverage is, to my mind, highly disproportionate, biased towards a single person and his party and not conducive to a level political playing field." for the majority of those contacting the bbc, though, the bias is in the other direction with rav dhillon speaking for many who feel, "there is a sneering and condescending tone in the interviewing and reporting of labour policies. " elsewhere, the bbc‘s economics editor kamal ahmed also came under attack after his piece on labour's manifesto on tuesday's news at six.

those earning above £80,000 will pay a tax rate of a5p in the pound. if you earn above that amount the loss will be around £a00. for those earning £123,000 the rate rises to 50p. that could leave some with a loss of up to £23,000. many viewers took to their calculators and then to social media to point out that those sums were wrong as the bbc later acknowledged, though not on—air, those earning £123,000 under labour's plans would actually pay an extra £2150 in income tax, not 23,000. you'd have to earn £500,000 to be taxed that much more. so was that cock—up or conspiracy? philipjones told us, "i will assume this was a genuine error, albeit a gross one, and not a deliberate ploy to mislead potential voters into mistrusting the labour party." but louis mendee spoke for many when he posted, "this

is a complete and utter outrage. it is wildly unacceptable for the bbc to be reporting falsehoods about the opposition‘s manifesto." later that night there were several examples of the bbc‘s efforts to get out and about during this election campaign and hear the views of so—called ordinary voters. here's deputy political editorjohn pienaar soliciting opinions in a gym in bradford. labour underjeremy corbyn, what do you think? well, i quite like his policies but i don't think they're doable. you don't think they're doable? what do you think? i agree, yeah, i don't think they're doable myself. why not? i just don't think they are. kenny watt was watching that and thought the views of the gentlemen exercising there, and more generally vox pops like that, did not add greatly to the sum of human knowledge. he's got a journalist coming in when he's in the middle of his work—out asking him questions when he's probablyjust thinking, "oh my god, when‘s this hill climb going to end?" and that's the problem

with vox pops, because basically you're not getting a true representation of the population. this is how we get into the position of sound bites winning elections. stick to having trained journalists telling us about the facts in a story rather than the opinions of the ill informed. well, let's discuss some of those issues with the bbc‘s editor of political news katy searle who's in our westminster studio. katy, let's start with the allegations of bias, mostly claiming that the bbc has an anti—corbyn bias and it's quite a personal one. you've seen the examples that viewers have raised. what would you say? well, i wouldn't accept them. we have very strong and clear guidelines that we follow, editorial guidelines, and they're in line with the 0fcom code of conduct as well, which show that we have strict rules to abide to across the election period and to reflect all parties‘ positions and policies. and that's something we do absolutely and we take that very seriously.

labour supporters are complaining that too much coverage is attacking the party. tory supporters are saying labour get more air time, so how is bbc news approaching that whole issue of balance and fairness? well, it is a challenge every day. what we have to do is take our editorial judgments and that's always going to have to guide our coverage. and that's why programme editors across the bbc and correspondents on air, as well as laura, the political editor, have long and careful discussions about what stories we're going to cover, what are the values in the news terms of those stories, and then how do they fit in line with the guidelines that i've just talked about? what's noticeable already in this election campaign is that perceived errors, and indeed some factual ones, amplified on social media when people try to build a campaign around them saying, look, the bbc‘s being unfair. how should the bbc deal with those examples?

look, we're all human, we do make mistakes. look, you know, we're working to tight deadlines with lots of information coming in all the time and sometimes we do get it wrong. in those circumstances you just have to look and see where you can correct it as quickly as possible. and just on the detail i think it's worth adding that sometimes graphics actually can not be as clear. you are trying to sum up quite a lot of detail in one simple picture of numbers and figures. what we need to do is be very clear that our scripting goes around that and tells the full story. we have seen a particularly vocal campaign online against laura kuenssberg alleging anti—labour bias. what's the bbc‘s response? laura kuenssberg is a first—class political editor who has worked incredibly hard to get herjob right. laura does the daily analysis

of all of the political parties and, of course, no personal views are reflected in any sense on any party, and that's true notjust of laura but across the bbc. so laura's doing herjob and she's doing that brilliantly. more broadly, though, viewers do complain that there's too much personal commentary from political correspondents who are kind of filling airtime and it is not fact—based, it's not objective. wouldn't the bbc be better, as at least one of our viewers has suggested, just sticking to factual reporting? well, i think analysis is really important actually, as part of our coverage. certainly in elections, and as we saw in the referendum last year, parties and campaigns have their own positions to push and they will do that and they will give us figures. and really, an important part of ourjob is to try and analyse and say to the viewer, well, on balance this is what it looks like to ask. that's why we have very experienced people from laura down across the bbc working on that and trying to give the audience something that means something and notjust slogans and numbers.

we have to talk about vox pops because they come up every election and the charge is two things, one is if they are too gimmicky you're not going to get much of an answer if people are in the gym, or whatever. but also that they're not informed and are representative, and shouldn't the bbc be more careful about using them ? —— but also that they're not informed and are not representative, and shouldn't the bbc be more careful about using them ? yeah, vox pops are tricky actually because i have a bit of sympathy for that view. however, if we're doing a lot of politicians, and we are at the moment, and it's a very formalised way of presenting their views and opinions, i think vox pops gives us a bit of colour. it also does the most important thing which is to reflect the public‘s view. and in this campaign which goes on for several weeks we want to hearfrom our audience as well and try and, if you like, road—test some of the policies. vox pop is an unscientific way of doing that but it's the best way that we can do when we're dealing with tight news agenda and is.

katy searle, thank you. thank you. away from the cut and thrust of the election but not entirely unconnected to it was the coverage of last friday's cyber—attack which use ransomware to lock files in 150 different countries demanding payment to allow access. some viewers were unhappy with the way the story was reported and one of them alex mcgill recorded this video to explain why. clearly the real story was that businesses large and small across the world had been attacked and damaged done. but from the initial reports one could easily have concluded that only the nhs was affected. this unbalanced reporting is particularly bad in the middle of an election campaign and can only heighten the perception of editorial bias within the bbc. finally, the moors murderer ian brady died on tuesday. the 79—year—old had tortured and killed five children in the 1960s with his partner myra hindley and buried them on saddleworth moor.

some viewers objected to the prominence given to the news. here's one of them, sonia hales. why was it necessary for it to be in the number one spot, to have so much time given to this story, for the bbc to then try and find people that they could interview on this story? by doing this all they were actually doing was causing yet more distress to the families of these children, who have to live with this day in day out for the rest of their lives. this could have been dealt with with a simple one—liner at the end of the news report. thank you 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 on 0370 010 6676, or e—mail newswatch@bbc. co. uk. you can find us on twitter @newswatchbbc, and do have a look at our website. the address for that is

bbc.co.uk/newswatch. that's all from us. we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc coverage again next week. goodbye. a plenty of rugby union action, including cardiff blues beaten. stade francais came from behind. it means cardiff will play in the challenge cup next season. we also have football and tennis news, all

in sportsday, at 10:a5pm, now on bbc news it is time for the film review. hello and welcome to the film review on bbc news. to take us through this week's cinema releases is mark kermode. mark, what do we have this week? it's the definition of a mixed bag. we have king arthur, guy ritchie's take on the legend. we have a drama set in tehran, called inversion. and colossal, anne hathaway meets godzilla. well, we start with king arthur. we saw in the brief clip there one david beckham. we better start and just say is he an eric cantona? he isn't. this is guy ritchie taking

on the legend, if you are old enough to remember 1980s novelty records, king arthur is not all right. charlie is the young hero whose wicked uncle jude law has seized power, leaving him to grow up ducking and diving and he is keeping a low profile until david beckham no less tells him to and i quote, he says, "put ten fingers around the blunt end of that sword and give ita tug." he does, blimey, wouldn't you know it, it comes out. next thing he is having to be answerable because it turns out he might be the rightful heir, here is a clip. you've got the wrong man, sire.