clive myrie was sent to australia to report on the country's bushfire crisis. is his presence there worth the financial and environmental cost? and remember election night last month? if you saw some of the results online rather than finding them out from the tv, chances are the articles you read were written partly by a computer. first, wednesday's surprise announcement from the duke and duchess of sussex that they would be stepping back from their roles as senior royals clearly caused some consternation among other members of their family and prompted a raft of royal commentators and plenty of airtime on bbc news, including a point raised by royal correspondent nicholas witchell on thursday's news at six in conversation with george. remember that for the royal family,

there is the spectre of another royal duke and duchess. the windsors, the former king edward, the eighth, and his american bride, wallis simpson, who turned his back on duty and went off to america and elsewhere, and who, of course, never really found happiness. as ever, with this topic, audience reaction to what they saw was sharply divided. bruce white picked up on that analogy made by nicholas witchell writing... it is so disappointing to see the bbc engaging in such blatant tabloid television around this young couple. for example, making comparisons with wallis simpson is simply ludicrous. for heaven's sake, surely we're better than that. more widely, carolyn clay thought. the media are behaving like wolves tearing into a vulnerable young deer. i would have expected the bbc to have been a lot stronger in supporting harry. but from another — gossip mavens, spokesmen for the palace sycophants outraged fellow authority

figures, news reporters. what are the bbc exactly when it comes to harry and meghan? time for some objectivity. and brownwyn benham felt harry and meghan stepping down should not be a lead story in a bulletin, especially on the day of iranian missile strikes in iraq and a plane crash in iran. they should be treated like any other celebrities. bushfires have been raging in australia since september, and this week the crisis developed with fires out of control across large swathes of the country. the story featured in the headlines of sunday's news at ten. australians are warned of the bushfires emergency could last for months as more homes are destroyed. the fire season here is the worst of modern times, killing more than 20 people, forcing thousands to flee their homes and traumatising a whole nation. the presence on location there of clive myrie, who continue to present and report from australia throughout the week, raised objections of a nature which will be familiar to any regular news. —— to any regular news which views.

here's brian chambers and first, hugh robson. so i'm baffled why suddenly i see clive myrie being parachuted in to report on this. it's a real slap in the face for the local reporters, a sort of "move over, serious talent coming in." but it's worse than that because what does it add and what cost financially to get clive and whatever team supports him across the world and back again is extraordinary when the bbc budgets are so tight. but in the story itself, it's about climate change and how the conditions that are leading to this are seriously affected by carbon in the atmosphere. and here we have reporters being jetted halfway around the world and back again. so it doesn't make sense. come on, bbc, let's have responsible news—gathering. i feel that is a complete waste of time and money when there are already correspondents within those countries covering the same news items, doing exactly the same job in an equally professional manner as the news

readers would be doing. well, we put those points to bbc news. they told us that clive myrie was sent to australia to support the team based there locally, who'd done many long days coverage of the bushfires before he arrived. a spokesman added... monday's news at six led with the highly distressing news of reynhard sinaga, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for no fewer than 136 offences of rape. claire was watching and recorded her response for us on camera. on monday night, i watched the early

evening news with great concern. there was a report about a serial rapist, which in my opinion went into unnecessary detail, and i was very concerned that it was being shown at a time when my seven—year—old granddaughter would be able to see it. i certainly felt that we didn't need to see a photograph of the mattress where the attacks took place, along with graphic detail. although children do need to be aware of what's going on in the world, ifeel that that this was not appropriate for the early evening news. it would have been better on the late news. there is a watershed in place for a reason. mps returned to parliament this week after their christmas and new year break, entering a political landscape completely changed by last month's general election results. here's a reminder of how huw edwards began his marathon broadcasting stint on the night

of december the 12th. our exit poll is suggesting that there will be a conservative majority when all the votes are counted after this election of december 2019. the conservatives on 368 seats and laboour way down on 191. now, on those figures we are looking at a conservative majority of 86. over the next few hours, bbc news reported the results as they came in on television and also online. but articles on the bbc news website like these were generated in a whole new way through automated journalism. with me to explain is robert mackenzie, the editor of bbc news labs, which leads innovation across bbc news. thank you for coming on newswatch. how did you use automation in the general election then? so what the viewers will have seen is they will have seen stories that were compiled by a computer but written by a human being. so it all started months ago. we sat down and we tried to work out

what possible combinations of stories might come out of every single constituency. so large majorities, smaller majorities, changing from one party to another, independents winning, independents losing — all the possible permutations we could think of. right. all of those into a piece of software that allows you to go to huge day number crunch not. yes, exactly. so you you have sent different sentences or phrases will appear according to the results. so what you do is you write it in advance. and then as the results come in, the results then control which stories get written. and then it's manually checked by you? exactly. yes. everything manually checked. there's always a a human in the loop, as they say in computer speak. so we can see how it would make sense in elections. it shows a lot about numbers and possible projections. what other types of stories have

you been experimenting with or are you thinking about using it? for about a year ago, we did an experiment with our colleagues in the east of england where we used it for a&e waiting times. so same thing. think of all the possible versions of the story and then use the a&e waiting times data to produce a report for every single hospital trust in the east of england. so you could look and see what your hospital trust was doing compared to the targets which seem to go down very well. and we did an experiment last summer again with our colleagues across england where we were looking at levels of government—supported or council—supported tree planting. so, again, we generated a story for every local council about how many trees have been planted in your area by your council. now, i noticed on the website with the election stories, they had a label to say they'd been created through automation. will you always label stories that way? yeah, we think it's really important that we're really clear with our users about how the stories have been created. so they are written by humans, checked by humans, but the machine has compiled them in the middle. could automation — one can't help asking help avoid some of the human errors that happened with

like wrong images. for example, when you know the wrong photograph is used in the obituary of screen actors only? i think your facial recognition technology, it's a possibility. and again, it you do tend to find that human beings make mistakes. computers make mistakes when human beings programmed them incorrectly. so they're not fail—safe either, i'm afraid. and indeed, you know, just thinking of errors on archive footage more broadly, you know, there was a very specific issue with archive footage of borisjohnson used laying a wreath. and i wonder if computers could check dates and things and avoid that in future? yes. and that's actually one of the projects for news labs is looking at, is how we can use face recognition, how we can use the metadata that comes with pictures like when it was filmed, when it was retrieved from the archives to help journalists avoid those kind of mistakes when they're in a hurry. some people might also be wondering, at a time when there's lots of talk about budget cuts, if the bbc might be using automation in news writing to get rid ofjournalists? i would say that's absolutely not the case. so if you even take the election stories, the bbc has never, ever written a story about every

single constituency. so we are at 650 stories in english plus a0 in welsh for the welsh constituencies and thatjust would not have been possible without human beings. so as far as i'm concerned, what automation is here for is to add to the range of bbc journalism, not to substitute forjournalists doing journalism. obviously, yourjob is partly looking medium and long term. do you have a view of where in five years automation might be in terms of its use and bbc news? well, nothing is certain with technology, but certainly our hope is that we will be in a situation where we can provide much more coverage to our audiences about everything from local traffic accidents, local crime figures and education outcomes, ofsted reports and so forth. you should be able to get a much more personalized view of what's going on in your neighborhood as a result of data driven journalism like this. robert mackenzie, thank you.

thank you for all your comments this week, if you want to share your opinion. please e—mail. you can call us on 03700106676. and do have a look at our website we will be back to have your view of bbc news coverage next week. goodbye. friday offered a quieter spell of weather, brightness dry with a good deal of sun around. we're seeing the next system working in, this bank of cloud feeding in from the atlantic introducing wet and windy conditions. as we head through this evening, we already see gusts of 60 mph per parts of the western isles. the winds will strengthen across the board and some of this rain will be

heavy at times. the further south, any heavy at times. the further south, a ny early heavy at times. the further south, any early frost will give way to murk out and the temperatures will actually buys. as we begin to grow up actually buys. as we begin to grow up milderairona actually buys. as we begin to grow up milder air on a south—westerly flow. you can sit nicely here. it is being put up by this area of low pressure, which is going to be driving our weather as we head into the start of the weekend. i read that, we had this weather front, this trailing weather front, which means that that rain is going to outstay its welcome by many areas as we headed to a saturday. heavy pulses of rain, gradually working their way further south and east through the day. strong winds across the board, but particular parts of scotland, northern england and north wales. i had at the event is north they try, behind the way it is certain to brighten up. the shares could be winter of a higher ground and it will feel fresher by the far north of scotland. away from there, it is going to be out there, widely we are looking at temperatures in double digits. and to saturday

evening and are a band of rain slowly sinks a little further south and eastwards. behind it, we will have clear skies. temperatures will drop that little bit further, but where we hang on to the cloud, the wet and windy weather down toward the south and east, temperatures will hold up. quite a contrast in oui’ will hold up. quite a contrast in our temperatures to start sunday morning. they wet and windy weather well clear at the south—east, behind it it will start to brighten up. some good spells of such an amount and a blustery day through the day on sunday. not as windy as saturday. some any forecast, which could be wintry over the hills of scotland. temperatures noticeably done on where they are on saturday, but given some sunshine, it should feel quite pleasant. looking ahead to next week. it is going to remain u nsettled. next week. it is going to remain unsettled. further spells of wet and windy weather, which at times could be disruptive.

this is bbc news. the headlines at 8pm. after three years of deadlock, power—sharing ball return to northern ireland, a deal aimed at restoring devolved government has been agreed by sinn fein and the dup. i believe that power-sharing can work. that requires everyone to step up. sinn fein‘s commitment is to do all in our power to make this happen. we believe there is a firm, balance deal, we believe it can be the basis of us going back into government and deal with all the issues. videos are held in canada for some of the victims of the ukrainian plane crash that killed 176