the debate has been particularly impassioned since saturday's air strikes by the us, the uk and france in retaliation for the suspected chemical weapons attack two weeks ago by president assad's forces. and part of the discussion has focused on how the bbc has reported that alleged attack, and the military response to it. brian tickle described himself as... max retallack agreed, e—mailing us to say... well, one guest who did provide a sceptical perspective was former

head of the royal navy, lord west. speaking to annita mcveigh on the news channel on monday, he said the sources for the supposed chemical attack were not neutral, warned that we have had some bad experiences on intelligence before, and added the idea of president assad unleashing a chemical attack on douma seemed extraordinary. he'd had a long, long, hard slog, slowly capturing the whole area of the city. and then just before he goes in and takes it all over, apparently he decides to have a chemical attack. itjust doesn't ring true. we know that the russian foreign minister, sergey lavrov, said on friday, or accused a western state on friday of perhaps fabricating evidence in douma or somehow being involved with what happened in douma, given that we are in an information war with russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it is inadvisable to be stating this publicly, given your position and your profile?

isn't there a danger that you're muddying the waters? that question was considered inappropriate by some of those watching, with caitlinjohnstone reacting like this. and others agreed. harry carson tweeted. .. well, we put those points to bbc news, and they told us... well, one of those with the task of providing some clarity on syria's civil war through reports from the region, or, as he's been doing this week, through analysis from here in london, is the bbc‘s middle east editorjeremy bowen. and hejoins me now.

welcome back to newswatch. the last time we spoke it was also about syria. how hard is it now to get to the truth of what has been happening in syria? well, it is always hard, it has always been hard, to be honest. it was pretty hard before the war as well because of the nature of the regime. but since the war started, it's always difficult. if you are working in daily news, or sometimes when i'm in syria we might spend a week putting together one piece that runs, you've just got to do your best. dig through things as much as you can, use basicjournalistic tools like your eyes and your ears to try to find out what is going on. but, no, it's not easy, it's hard. one of the other things that seems to have changed over the last few years is the role of social media. there are concerns about governments using it as a way of asserting their version of events. what impact does it have on you reporting? well, you know... maybe i shouldn't admit this, i don't look at social media that much.

i keep an eye on twitter. i put things on twitter. but i think that social media has changed our job. things fly around the world much more quickly, and social media is a big part of that. but i don't think that the essence of journalism has changed. you still need to find out what's been going on, you still need to be accurate, you still need to be timely. you still need to be fair. your colleague, lyse doucet, is out there now in syria. you have, of course, been many times as well. when you are on the ground, inevitably, you probably find yourself embedded with either the syrian government or the rebels. is it possible to get the whole picture that way? well, when you do syria, you basically either do the rebels or you do the government. because to do the government's side you need a visa, issued in beirut, at the syrian embassy. if they find out that you have been working on the rebel‘s side, you will get blacklisted and you will not get another visa. the thing about daily news is that it's a snapshot of what's going on.

you really do your best to try to make that snapshot as sharp and as true as possible. but it's sometimes not the last word, because if it is a breaking story, we might have very little time to put it together. so the key thing is to be accurate. don't say things you don't know. try to give people a flavour of what it is like to be there. but, most of all, it's got to be real, it's got to be true. there has been, or there have been, some significant voices, including lord west, former head of the royal navy, who said that there is some doubt about the chemical attack. what would you say? well, until there are definitive scientific tests from the site,

saying, yes, we found traces of whatever it may be, chlorine or sarin, or nothing, then we don't know. up to now, it's been governments saying, "yeah, we've got intelligence, we've got information." and i must say, they must have very efficient intelligence services if they can get stuff out of eastern ghouta that quickly and get it analysed. but maybe they have men on the inside, who knows? as well as that, there's the evidence of testimony from people. and there's also the pictures. i've seen lots of them, i've seen all of them that i could, which showed lots and lots of dead people, lots of children dead as well, with foam all around their mouths, which tends to be a sign of having used chemical weapons. those scenes were so realistic that i would find it very hard to believe they could be faked. now, maybe something else caused that. but no, that is why we have been quite careful to use phrases like "suspected chemical attack". we haven't been saying, yeah, it's a chemical attack. because some viewers feel that the bbc has been too quick to treat it from the british

government's assertions? i don't think we are treating from the british government's assertions. i think that if you get reports and testimony from people that there are possibly dozens dead because of an attack, and there were clouds of some kind of white smoke, people were dying foaming at the mouth, you've got to take those kinds of things seriously. considering the track record in that particular country. we are very sceptical, i am very sceptical, about what governments say. really, believe me. if viewers look at our scripts, we are careful with the language we use. do you have any frustrations about the coverage of syria? yeah, of course. access is one. sometimes it's very hard to get visas to get in. sometimes we wait months. i see people on twitter saying, "why isn'tjeremy bowen in syria?" answer — i haven't got a visa! so, yeah, access, visas, ability to move around when you're there. and there are other kinds of frustrations as well. i get frustrated. i have an ongoing dialogue here, a long—running dialogue in this building between myself and programme editors, which frankly has been going on in different versions for about 30 years.

which is, i think we should show more of the horror. because i think people need to see that realism. the policy here, though, is that we should be a lot more considerate of people's feelings and not upset them. my argument is, you know, and it's an amiable argument that we have here, but my argument is that you see people watching video games, and there's a lot of shooting going on and it's completely unrealistic because it's a video game. and you see people watching tv dramas, shooting and killing, and it's completely unrealistic because it's a tv drama. but if you see real shooting, and real killing, and the effect sometimes high explosives have on humans, and the suffering that it causes, then you get closer to the essence of what being in a war is. and i actually do think that if people have a better idea of that, they might be even more... they might find it even more abhorrent than they already do. jeremy bowen, thank you.

just time before we go to mention some reaction to the bbc‘s coverage of a story it's very much involved in itself. sir cliff richard has been in the high court this week, suing the bbc after it named him and broadcast helicopter footage of police searching his flat in august 2014. that footage has been shown again, several times, over the past few days — prompting angela dillon to write... and david metcalf echoed that. thank you very much for all your comments this week. if you would like to tell us your opinions about bbc news and current affairs output, or even appear on the programme,

please do ring us on 0370 010 6676, or e—mail newswatch@bbc. co. uk. you can also post your thoughts on twitter, @newswatchbbc, and do have a look at previous interviews we've recorded on our website — 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 again. it was another glorious day of weather yesterday, wasn't it? for most of us, we had the sunshine, and the hot spot was in kent, 27 degrees celsius recorded underneath skies like these. and just as we were getting used to all that heat, it looks like temperatures are going to come crashing down as we look at the forecast into next week. so take a look at london this weekend — about 26 celsius. we'll come down to about 17 degrees on monday, the weather turning much more unsettled as well.

before we get there, a few mist patches to watch out for this morning. quite chilly air in the north. not too cold further south. and this is what the weather has got in store for us this weekend. we'll all see spells of warm sunshine but temperatures will be easing through the weekend and we will start to see thunderstorms breaking out. now, the initial batch of storms will be with us this afternoon and will continue to rumble away as we head through the this evening and overnight as well. so, here's the forecast. a dry start to the day for most of us. a few mist patches towards south—east england, around the chilterns, there are a few for sussex and kent as well, but these should tend will clear away. most of us will then get some sunny spells. it will feel warm in the sunshine as well with temperatures climbing to 26 degrees towards south—east england but we will start to see showers developing later in the day. now, initially, the showers might not have too much in the way of heavy rain, but big raindrops. but later on, as those showers continue to move in across parts of eastern england, maybe the midlands too, well, the showers will turn increasingly heavy with a greater risk of thunder overnight.

so there are those thunderstorms, clearing the way eastwards through saturday night. temperature wise, still into double figures for much of inland wales, we've still got that slightly cooler air further north for scotland and for northern ireland as well. further changes in the weather picture as we head through sunday. this cold front is going to be sweeping its way eastwards and it is this that will be bringing a cooler, fresher feel to the weather across north—western areas. outbreaks of rain to start the day as well in scotland and northern ireland, swinging eastwards. and as our cold front reaches parts of east anglia, south—east england, it will tend to turn more showery, so there could be further heavy, thundery showers dotted along as that front moves through. a cooler, fresher feel to the weather for the north—west. temperatures 22—23 degrees across parts of eastern england but, of course, that will make it pretty uncomfortable for the runners running the london marathon. it will get quite warm with temperatures pushing on into the low 20s for the finishers during the afternoon. it will turn cooler, then,

as we head towards next week. instead of southerly winds, we've got the winds coming in from the atlantic, bringing a significant drop in temperatures. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. our top stories: kim jong—un announces the immediate suspension of north korea's nuclear and missile tests and closes down a test site. remembering columbine. thousands of american students walk out of classes on the anniversary of the high school massacre. the british prime minister theresa may promises compensation to long—settled immigrants from the caribbean who were unfairly threatened with deportation. the superstar swedish dj, avicii, dies at the age of 28, tributes pour in from the pop world.