the broadcaster is widely regarded as a mouthpiece for the kremlin, which made the choice of one of the panellists on bbc one's question time a surprise to some people. a broadcaster with the russian—funded tv channel rt, and presenter of a weekly current affairs programme on that channel, afshin rattansi. that guest booking was already causing concern before the programme went out on thursday, with matthew holbert tweeting... and dan watched the programme and wondered... it's not the first time journalists from russia today have appeared on bbc news, and we asked the bbc whether it was appropriate for them to do so. they told us... the russian theme continued that

evening, as newsnight on bbc two ran an item which irked some viewers, not so much for its content as for the studio background. did jeremy corbyn misread the mood of his party in the commons yesterday when he refused to point the finger at russia? last night, a group of labour backbenchers said it unequivocally. they accept the russian state's culpability for the spy poisoning. some people felt the photograph ofjeremy corbyn in a russian—style hat surrounded by a red picture of the kremlin portrayed the labour leader as a collaborator with moscow. susan was one of them, and recorded this video for us. i felt compelled to contact you regarding the newsnight programme last night. and the portrayal ofjeremy corbyn in some kind of a russian hat next to a portrayal of the kremlin.

i feel that this is a very biased depiction of the man, and those more gullible in society will absolutely associate jeremy corbyn with russia and russians. i'm only interested injustice and honesty, and i don't see any of that here. very disappointed. now, last weekend, the sunday mirror said it had uncovered britain's worst ever child grooming scandal, with claims that up to 1,000 girls had been abused since the 1980s. over the next two days, other newspapers followed that up extensively. but there was only limited mentions on bbc news. scores of people wondered why, with one of them, david, leaving us this phone message on tuesday morning. hi, i woke up this morning to the horrific stories

about the child abuse in telford, so i thought i'd go on to the bbc app, which i use regularly. and, lo and behold, there was nothing about it. your top five stories in the website — there's one about pork pies and one about the danger of chinese takeaways. are you going to cover this scandal? the bbc was accused in the press of ignoring the story, and adam paulson agreed, writing... andrew e—mailed... well, on tuesday, the victoria derbyshire show interviewed a victim of child exploitation in telford. but it wasn't until wednesday that bbc one bulletins ran a report on the subject, from sima kotecher. night—time in telford.

recent reports say up to 1,000 girls could have been sexually abused in the town over the last four decades. the police here say at the moment they are dealing with less than 50 cases. for many, though, the bbc‘s reaction was to little, too late. trevor bell thought... and robert leather tweeted this question... well, let's put that to james stevenson, the bbc‘s news editor, whojoins me now. can we start with... the story broke in the sunday mirror. when did the bbc national news think it worth reporting? so immediately we could see that it was a good and strong piece ofjournalism by the sunday mirror. and it was widely covered in our paper review on the sunday.

and we saw it was a story that we needed to follow up, and we began to do that. so, as early as monday morning, the victoria derbyshire programme was leading its output on this story. and later that day, the world at one interviewed the leader of telford council to challenge him about what was going on. which is radio. so we quickly saw that it was a story that needed to be covered, and that it needed our original reporting effort to follow up, and that's what we did. i was wondering, when did the story appear on the front page of the website? so there was a story on the website on monday. that was on the england index. and then as the story — there were various developments in the story as the week's gone on, i'm sure you've seen and the viewers have seen how the story has developed. so, the initial suggestion was that possibly 1,000 victims. that was based not on hard information, but on an extrapolation based on work with an academic. so we pursued it, and

we weighted the story. we look at it in—depth. it's probably worth saying, to address your point directly, that we're in the middle of this huge spy drama and scandal, and poisoning scandal in salisbury, and that's consumed a huge amount of our airtime, as has the death of ken dodd, and then later in the week stephen hawking. so, even in a busy news period, this has been an exceptionally busy news week, and we've tried to cover the telford story in the mix amongst all the other things that we've been doing. i suppose audiences would say, in a really busy news week, this is a really important new story. that's certainly true. and i'd like to sort of challenge an idea that i think probably viewers might be left with by the sequence they've just seen. this is a scandal that's been unfolding in telford over many years, and we have been covering it in great depth and with great prominence during that time. so the operation chalice brought to life the scale of abusing in telford.

there was then the criminal prosecution, which saw seven men being sent to prison a few years ago. so we have consistently been reporting this story as it's gone along, and we've done so again this week. the tv bulletins are where millions of people go expecting to be told what are the big, important stories, and it wasn't till wednesday, three days later, that there was a report about telford on the national bulletins. why? so it was covered in brief on the news at ten on tuesday night. a 15—second read... well, we have — as i've already explained, we've got a very busy news period and there's a limited number of stories we can cover. the reason it became a network tv bulletin story on wednesday was because of partly our journalism. so we interviewed the police in telford, we interviewed a social worker in telford, it was raised at prime minister's question time, and the prime minister reacted to it. so even, as i say, in this busy period, that obviously deserved the attention that it got

on the main tv bulletins that day. you will know what bbc viewers are saying, and we've had hundreds of complaints into the bbc. it's that it looked like the bbc felt awkward giving this story prominence because it was about white victims and pakistani—heritage abuses. i know that's a view that some people hold. i really don't think it's the case. we've done a great deal of coverage of this area of abuse, both in — and this terrible story in telford, but also elsewhere in the country. the bbc has just won a royal television society award for the excellent documentary, incredible documentary, about abuse in the north—east of england, based around newcastle. that was the second story in the tv news three weeks ago. so we've done a great deal of work on rotherham, where a lot of this stuff initially — this terrible situation came more fully to light. so we've certainly committed to covering what is a harrowing and terrible story, and we've done it consistently over time. you will know, because newswatch has debated it before,

that coverage of the previous grooming scandals with this racial element, viewers every time feel the bbc runs shy of reporting these stories prominently. do you think the bbc needs to have a rethink about how it runs and reports on these stories? no, i think we are doing the right thing, and i think we are very determined to get to these terrible and dark and difficult stories, notjust this one, but across the whole range. what i do think is true to say is that before the full nature and scale of what was going on in rotherham and rochdale and oxford and other places came out, there was not as great an understanding of how, you know, profound a problem and how deep this ran. and i think — so if you go back a decade, i think you can definitely say that the story or the issue didn't get the attention it probably deserved at that point, that is something everyone has had to reflect on.

james stevenson, thank you. thanks for your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions on bbc news, current affairs, or even appear on the programme, you can call us. or you can e—mail newswatch. you can find us on twitter, @newswatchbbc. and do have a look at our website. that's all from us. we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again next week. goodbye. hello there. step outside this weekend and you may well have a bit of a shock to the system, particularly if you got to enjoy some sunshine during friday, because in southern areas, that lifted temperatures all the way up to 1a degrees. forget about that for saturday. two or three degrees will be much more typical, and not only will it be cold through the weekend, we'll see some snow and some ice, which brings the potential for some disruption. so here's how the early part of saturday shapes up. this band of snow drifting southwards and westwards,

perhaps still some rain and sleet into the far south—west. but these showers following on from the east will all be falling as snow, because there is some very cold air racing towards us. i say racing — we'll have a really strong easterly wind blowing, and that will make it feel extremely cold. now, i've taken the cloud off the charts to allow us to focus on the snow. you can see this band of snow moving across southern areas. that could give a covering in places, then these showers feeding in across the east, particularly in parts of northern england. all the while, for northern ireland and scotland, not as many showers. there will be some sunshine here, but wherever you are, a cold day. and then, when we add on the strength of the wind and factor that into the equation, well, it will feel like it is sub—zero across many parts of the country. and then, as we go into saturday night, we have met office amber "be prepared" warnings in force, initially across parts of eastern england, into the north midlands, also parts of the south—east, including the london area,

and then into sunday, parts of south—west england and south wales. these are the areas most prone to disruptive snowfall as we head through saturday night and into sunday. lots of showers pushing in from the east, as you can see. and then later in the night, through the early hours, there is the potential for an area of more persistent snow to develop across the south—west of england and into the south of wales. temperatures dropping below freezing, so quite a widespread frost and some ice to take us into sunday morning. so on sunday there is the potential for significant and disruptive snow across the south—west of england and the south—west of wales. worth staying in touch with our forecast through the weekend. but notice further east, the showers tend to fade away. more in the way of dry weather, some spells of sunshine. it will, though, still be cold. now, high pressure will be sitting to the north as we go through the weekend. during sunday night, that high drifts a bit further westwards, and eventually that will cut off the feed of easterly winds, giving us something a bit more northerly. still not a very warm wind direction, but things will turn a bit less cold through next week. dry to start, more

unsettled later on. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is lewis vaughanjones. our top stories: as the conflict in syria continues, aid agencies say over 50,000 people have fled afrin in the last few days alone. the british foreign secretary accuses president putin of being behind the nerve—agent attack on sergei skripal and his daughter. we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the uk, the streets of europe, for the first time since the second world war. the fbi‘s deputy is fired by the us attorney general. andrew mccabe is sacked just days before he was due to retire. jumping to safety. a dozen people are injured when a ski—lift goes out of control