and when he sued his accuser for libel, he lost. the manic, wealthy funnyman of the 70s died alone in a small flat in spain. freddie starr who has died at the age of 76. now it's time for newswatch, with samira ahmed. this week, was there just too much about the royal baby on bbc news? hello and welcome to newswatch with me, samira ahmed. a cause for celebration for the duke and duchess of sussex, but the queue for complaints from some. that bbc coverage of the new baby was excessive and sycophantic. and did bbc news give too much currency to the tweet sent by danny baker which resulted in his being sacked by

radio five live? this time there were no cameras waiting for days outside a hospital, as there had been for the birth of the duke and duchess of cambridges‘ three children. by the time the media were reporting that the duchess of sussex had gone into labour early on monday afternoon, her much anticipated child was already a few hours old and it was his father who broke the news live on television. i'm very excited to announce that meghan and myself had a baby boy early this morning. a very healthy boy. mother and baby are doing incredibly well. it's been the most amazing experience i could ever have possibly imagined. bbc news caught up quickly, devoting much of its output on monday afternoon to the new arrival. david buckton turned on the news channel at 6:00pm. the lead item, lasting,

i think about 35 minutes was a report on the birth of a royal baby. and the next item was also about a report, this time on the urgent need for action on climate change. ijust wonder which the bbc really thinks is the more important? i am sure the young family are delightful and i hope they have a good life, but isn't that really more of a tail end, human interest story than a really vital lead? over the next few days and particularly on wednesday when the first pictures of the baby, now revealed to be named archie, was shown, viewers continue to contact us about the tone as well as the extent of the coverage. here is nigel greensit and first, ben adams. the bbc went from reporting the news to its default position of speculation. we still don't know the name, of course.

we are waiting. lots of speculation... you are running a news channel. you are not running the tv equivalent of hello or 0k magazines. was it really necessary to go into so much coverage of a child that is, let's face it, seventh in line to the throne and very unlikely to succeed. with me here at windsor is our correspondence... correspondence are stood outside windsor castle over ever, buckingham palace and commenting on nothing happening or speculation. speculation isn't news so why do they continue to do it? sojoining me now from our tunbridge wells studio is another viewer who got in touch with us this week, john. and here with me is the executive editor of the bbc news channel, sam taylor. john, you contacted us,

saying you'd watched about four and a half hours worth of the news channel from 2:00pm on monday. what was on? well, i was watching the bbc baby channel, wasn't i? the announcements that she'd gone into labour i think was about 2pm. but we got nothing else. i actually don't mind coverage of royal events, but i thought, on what is supposed to be the bbc news channel, they might at least have had reports on the hour of what else was going on in the world. russian air crash, war in israel, trade talks, everything. there weren't even any headlines. lets take that one first, this specific point, sam. the sheer quantity, why was there no other news for such a long stretch on the news channel? obviously, the bbc news channel's most important role among all the bbc services in the end is to provide live and breaking news coverage. so we do, it's fair to say, clear the schedule when we

get a big breaking story and we will suspend normal programming while we are doing it. this was a bank holiday monday so part of the programme we drop when we got news of the royal baby and meghan going into labour was actually recorded programming, documentaries and things that we'd scheduled, a bit like a weekend because it was a bank holiday. so we removed some of those when we had a breaking story. but that is ourjob when there is a breaking story, to work out how long shall we continue with the coverage of a rolling story. we do it partly because we get people tuning in all the time as the story develops and they first learn to hear of it. 0k. so that, if you like, the context in which we will sometimes clear the schedules. right, there is a second part that follows from thatjohn, which is how much new information did you get over the course of those four hours? yes, that was my other main complaint. it became fairly evident fairly soon, they weren't actually going to tell as much. mother and baby doing well. a gender or sex of baby, i think we got the weight of the baby.

that was about it. let me put this to sam. because one can feel a bit sorry for you in the news team. three pieces of information repeated all afternoon and then what are you filling the rest of that airtime with? there is a little bit more to it than that, we had some interesting conversations with people that responded to the news. the story itself took a while to come through, didn't it? so we had the news first of all of the labour and then we had confirmation of the birth and then we heard from prince harry and that, as a story took up the first hour and a half of the coverage john is talking about. i want to reassure john that we do think quite a lot about this balance that we need to strike between our regular viewers who are tuning and often use the news channel to get a summary of the day's news stories. and then the quite significantly increased numbers of people from elsewhere who tune in when a big story breaks. but you were not doing the summaries, that's a big part of it. why couldn't you have had proper summaries of world news instead of just rolling with this? i think that's what i am saying. we think quite a lot about how long

to roll on a story for and i came in that afternoon to help the team with that issue. we certainly, as we got further along the period of which we were rolling and it did stop in the end. we stopped and went back to our normal programming schedule. we weighed that up quite a lot. we were aware there were some other stories around. the interesting thing for us, just to sort of explain the dilemma in a way, when we got round to 5pm and 6pm our audience went up more and more people tuned in than would normally tune in at those hours. we think because more people had been out and had heard the news on an alert and then came back to watch all the footage. we are balancing two different user groups, if you like. sometimes when we are rolling the story we need to compensate by people picking up that news elsewhere. so there was a bbc one bulletin at 6:30pm that had a range of the day's news. our website lead and had a big splash on this story, but then had the other stories underneath. i guess i want to reassure you that i understand what you are saying and the whole judgment call about when have you

had enough rolling coverage, versus when have you met the needs of the people who really need to see the rolling coverage, is always going to be a bit of a judgment. 0k, john you know it is a rare good news story. it was for one day, as sam said, it was all over eventually. what would you have done differently, what would you have liked the news channel to run at that period? is itjust interrupting it with more bulletins? interrupting it with bulletins, yes. 0k, they planned a big outside broadcast from windsor so might as well make the most of that. so even most of the coverage from windsor, but not all of it for four and three quarters of an hour. i think that's a really useful feedback. i suppose i am trying to say, i understand what you are saying, john, and i am trying to explain, we try to balance two competing demands, often when there is a story like this. you know, the process sometimes of getting back out of your rolling coverage into something more structured can itself take a bit of time to organise, because everybody is working on that story and they are really going for it and they are rolling with it for a period of time. so i think this is interesting

for us to get your feedback about the point at which some people have had enough and how we balance out with people who want more. that's a good place to end. john, you have been heard. john and sam taylor, thank you both. three days after the birth of archie harrison mountbatten windsor, the bbc found itself reporting on the behaviour of one of its own radio stars. here is david sillitoe. as the press arrived at danny ba ker‘s house this morning, he opened the door to reveal he had just been sacked. the conversation had not been cordial. by mutual agreement it was terminated. the reason, this tweets. a couple and between them a chimpanzee ina a couple and between them a chimpanzee in a coat and a bowler hat and a reference to the royal baby. the showing of the tweet even

in that truncated form offended some news watch viewers including philip who e—mailed... paul hayden had this to say. we asked bbc news about how they handled this and they told us. it has been an exciting week to be a

football fan in england. having four english teams in the two european finals and particularly the dramatic comebacks by liverpool and tottenham hotspur were widely reported this week on bbc news. two widely for some like jan who wrote... and finally, bbc news programme sometimes ask viewers to look away now before they report the results of sports matches but should those spoiler alerts be extended to other events such as the finale of the hit drama series line of duty. that was shown on bbc one on friday night.

thank you for all your comments this week. please do get in touch with your opinions about what you see on tv news, online or on social media. you may even appear on the programme. you you may even appear on the programme. you can you may even appear on the programme. you can e—mail us orfind us on programme. you can e—mail us orfind us on twitter. you can call us and you can watch previous interviews on our website. that's all from us. we will be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again in the next week. goodbye. still a few showers around from earlier on. we had some thunderstorms too in the last few hours. the weekend? drier and brighter, but drier implying that it's not

going to be completely dry, there will be some showers around on saturday, not too many, hopefully. here's the forecast through the night so a lot of clear weather out there. some showers around across eastern counties, for example lincolnshire into east anglia and pretty nippy. there will almost certainly be a touch of grass frost around some northern areas outside of town and pretty chilly in south, only 5 degrees in cardiff first thing. so tomorrow starts off sunny in many areas and then the clouds will bubble up and we are expecting showers anywhere from north—eastern england, parts of yorkshire down towards the midlands, but certainly not as many of them compared to what we had today. and 17 the high in cardiff. those temperatures will gradually rise through the course of the weekend. in fact, next week we could see temperatures in the high teens widely across the uk.

this is bbc news i'm martine croxall. the headlines at eight. america's trade war with china intensifies as president trump more than doubles tariffs on many imported goods — from furniture to car parts. the uk economy gets a boost from stockpiling ahead of brexit — with gdp figures showing a rise of 0.5% in the first quarter. the inquest into the london bridge attacks hears the scene was like a war zone. tyler ferguson's fiancee christine archibald died after she was struck by the van. uber has floated on the new york stock exchange, but shares fell in early trading. less time to play — how schoolchildren are in lessons for up to an hour more than pupils 20 years ago. there is nothing more compelling to them and then a vulnerable woman.