40,000 for the first time. there were 41,385 new cases with 357 more deaths, increasing pressure on hospitals still further. a chinese journalist, zhang zhan, who reported on the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the city of wuhan, has been sentenced to four years in jail over reports that criticised the authorities‘ response to the pandemic. the british government is warning of bumpy moments in the months ahead for travel and for business as people get to grips with the uk's new relationship with the eu. president trump has signed a coronavirus relief and spending package. he'd previously threatened to block the bill, saying parts of it were ‘wasteful‘. democrats have urged the president to follow up the bill with more help for struggling workers. next, amol rajan takes a close look

at 12 months dominated by covid—19, how it accelerated underlying trends and created new ones in the media year. hello. what a year it's been. i hope you and your family are doing 0k. welcome to our look back at the media year in 2020. and if there's one word i don't think we've heard enough of this year, it's unprecedented. when it comes to the media, the pandemic has had a cataclysmic effect. local and national media, especially those funded by advertising, have had one long nightmare. newspapers have faced yet more misery and decline. publishing groups, broadcasters, and advertisers have made big cuts. yet demand for quality news and entertainment has soared.

back in the spring, broadcasters in particularfaced a huge new set of challenges — how to deliver and produce news safely. britain's coronavirus crisis... coronavirus. .. in a crisis... coronavirus. .. it's horrible. the pandemic... especially one in the information age... hand sanitiser. .. trusted news becomes a precious commodity. social distancing. for which there is high demand. coronavirus. .. britain has a range of regulated public service broadcasters doing their best to produce world—class journalism. ratings for news programmes across all channels are soaring, with many presenters broadcasting from home. published data showing that transporting news across the country... but actually producing broadcast news is exceptionally hard in a global pandemic. i am just going to script a line about northern ireland there to put in at this point. innovation is the only solution and there is plenty of it about. the nhs scheme only covers england

and northern ireland... here, correspondentjudith moritz is at home in manchester working on a bbc news piece with her cameraman and editor, rob wood, who is nearly 30 miles away in derbyshire. the nhs scheme only covers england... news reports are the result of teamwork between correspondents, producers, camera operators and studio editors. oh, and children too who can make their presence felt when correspondents work from home. keeping both staff and contributors save is a priority. safe is a priority. video interviews has become the norm as of late. keeping two metres away from interviewees can be hard, but boom mics allow sound to be captured safely in high quality. good morning, it's seven o'clock, the headlines this morning... and it's notjust television, kitchens and lounges have been converted into makeshift radio studios, like those of the today programme. here's the bbc‘s david sillito using a duvet to improve sound quality. furnishings can absorb sound and reduce echo. i am working on a piece

with david hockney. apps such as skype and zoom are replacing face to face daily editorial meetings. what do you think about using that clip we have already laid down? we can do that. broadcasting is always a technical adventure, but right now, more than ever. amol rajan in central london working with producer elizabeth in kent and editorjonathan in north london. always remember, news... ..is a team effort. with lockdown, many tv and film productions inevitably came to a halt. that caused hardship, not just for the artists, but for the crews, the engineers, the makeup artists and everyone involved in production. thankfully, by the autumn, many of those productions were up and running again, as my colleague, david sillito discovered. david: it's been a while. eastenders returned to our screens after a covid—related break,

but social distancing has rather changed filming. for instance, let's look again at that kiss. what you can't see is what's actually between them. there is a screen in between us which you can't see because of the way it's shot behind the railings. the railing is covering the fact that the screen is there, so we are kissing the screen. it looks like we can be as close as we need to be because of the screen. and here, no screen, but a deceptive camera angle. there's also another solution, bring your own partner. we've had partners bring in their real partners for kissing scenes. so it's a total new way of working. the tv and film industry has had to think on its feet to get production back to almost normal, but for the soaps, coronation street, emmerdale and eastenders, it's been a challenge. for local print newspapers, disruption mostly means

terminal decline. despite a few scraps from the likes of google and facebook, the market for local news in this country is broken. there is huge demand for trusted local information, but for now, a lack of willingness to actually pay for it. there were big redundancies at national titles like the mirror and the guardian, too. titles like the london evening standard and metro which depend heavily on commuters were particularly badly hit. but there was plenty of exceptional journalism this year. one of the scoops of the year was a co—production between the guardian and the mirror. i spoke to the mirror's editor, alison phillips, about how breaking a massive story in a pandemic isn't exactly glamorous. back in the summer, we did the dominic cummings story, which was one of those great stories that you live to do. and it was late on a friday night that we finally got enough to get it over the line to get it up online at seven and then in print the next morning.

so there was me in my spare room, and then there was our head of news, who was sat by his son's bunk beds working. and our night editor there in his flat. and it was like, this is not how it looks in the movies, is it? when you try to break this important story. i would love to get your side of that story. this was a big exclusive that you shared with the guardian. we spoke to kath viner. we spoke to pippa crerar, your political editor, about it. just tell us again why you ended up working together with the guardian on that. we had a call really early on, and i think as the guardian had as well, they had gone to number ten and we were being completely stonewalled. you know, as you know, you need to be absolutely certain when you go. and the idea that we weren't getting any response from them just made it really difficult, but we kept on working on it. obviously, we havejeremy armstrong, our reporter in the northeast was on it for several weeks, and photographers, and we were looking at all sorts of different...trying to patch it all together, and then pippa heard

that the guardian were also looking at having different sources as well. and then by bringing it together, and i spoke to kath viner, and we knew that together, we had enough to get it over the line. did you deliberately hold back some details to give you a really strong splash over several days? in other words, did you drip feed the story? no, not intentionally. in that there were some bits of the story that we needed more work on. just to be clear, did you have any agreements with the guardian about what they would do and what you would do? yeah, completely. so we had to make sure that we were going with the same lines on the same day at exactly the same time. alison phillips of the mirror titles there. let's turn now from traditional media to an area that has seen exponential growth. in recent years, an alternative media economy has sprung up, one in which tens of thousands of entrepreneurs become so—called creators, producers

and presenters of their own content, their own media. this alternative universe is of course youtube. and in the past year, one of its biggest stars, joe wicks, has become part of the daily routine for millions of us. let's go! good morning, everybody, and welcome back to pe withjoe. today's work—out is another wheel of fortune work—out. whilejoe wicks became an even bigger national star than he already was, countless others are finding fame and fortune as youtubers. i spoke to youtube‘s managing directorfor the uk and ireland to get inside this revolution. what lockdown and the pandemic and the impact of the lockdown confirmed for us was something that we have known for a long period of time which is youtube is where the nation comes to watch content that they love. you know, what happened during the pandemic was some of those things came much more into the public sphere than the private sphere for us all, and they became really shared moments. what you're talking about really is the creation of a whole new economy.

you're talking about a huge number of people, some of whom become very famous or rich, some of whom don't, but hope to and also businesses, which are essentially youtube phenomenon so this is a new economy. that's absolutely right. it's a critical part in my view of the uk's current creative economy. it is, as you say, it includes individuals making very significant money, there will be names in the uk, ksi, zoella, that people will know of from people who have built their brands, their personality, and ultimately their business on youtube as a platform. but there are also people who set out as businesses. if i think, in the uk, grm daily began as grime daily. grm, the holy grail of black british music. started by two young guys who had a passion for a particular genre of british music and have built themselves into what is today the heartbeat of british youth culture, or a completely different

audience, global cycling network, another example of a channel begun by two guys, again around the kitchen table, this time in bath. all you need to do is make a direct connection with an audience that shares your passion, that's as interested about the topics that you're interested in, and you can build and shape those audiences. 0ur gaming creators, our female gaming creators, a young woman who is called yammy, or her channel name is yammy, yasmin uddin, who's from leeds. my son dante has been requesting me to play this game for a month. every day he says to me... please can you play the henry stickmin collection? she's a young woman who has built a hugely successful gaming channel. she had a child at 16, that would largely speaking rule you out of a career in mainstream media, traditional media, but it hasn't held her back at all. any one of our creators would be able to open their analytics and see what's happened to pricing in which market, where did

their viewership come from? that empowers people to make informed decisions. you know, he's not as famous asjoe wicks, but on our platform, he's just as successful asjoe wicks, is a young guy from folkestone and hythe called matt morsia. the more subscribers i have, ultimately the more i can command in terms of sponsorship. if i go to a company and say i have 1.5 million subscribers, i can ask for more money and get a bigger sponsored video. he's produced multiple video explaining how much he's made,s either from an individual video, how much he's made overall. i forget, like, that money, that revenue from this video, that's more money than i've made in an entire year as a teacher. one of the other areas of media making a lot of people very rich is gaming. gaming was one of the big winners of the pandemic. stuck indoors, millions of us travelled into virtual worlds limited only by the speed of our broadband connections. he's hit his head. call of duty, the first—person

shooter video game, isn't merely an experience these days. for a growing army of players, it's the pinnacle of a career. that includes 21—year—old sean 0'connor from glasgow. a bit like a top footballer, he plays for the london royal ravens, one of the best teams in the international league. he's just signed a six—figure deal through his manager, and often trains for eight hours a day. i feel like gaming has a thing for everyone, streaming, youtube, there is competing, there's casual gaming, and i think there is a lot that even the casual or even older or younger can all play and have a good time, and you can do it from the comfort of your room. don't eat the food product! gaming today is more a global social network than a digital version of monopoly or snakes and ladders. global revenues have leapt from under $20 billion annually a decade ago to a projected $200 billion within the next three years.

the growth in the uk alone was astounding, even before lockdown led to a huge surge in playing. smartphones and consoles are driving that growth. and britain is benefiting. these vast buildings are now creative studios deployed for making films or games. if ever there was evidence of new media supplanting old, it's here. a former print work site for the daily mail in 0xfordshire, now owned by rebellion, a british media giant that makes games such as evil genius 2, sniper elite, and this one, zombie army 4. one of the key technologies for us in the games industry is digital distribution across a global population. so the more people that we can connect to with our games, the more people that can play them, and then itjust becomes a challenge of discovery. a key component though is exporting our creativity worldwide, and the audience for our computer games is as broad as we can

reach with the internet. it may look like a blank canvas, but sites like this one 50 miles west of london will help video gaming dominate the attention economy. new technologies are making even the most complex games universally accessible. multiplayer titles made gaming a social experience, and whereas books, films, tv shows and podcasts all have a single plot with an ending, it's in the very nature of gaming for the same content to go in countless attention—grabbing directions. these 3d worlds are great and growing business. new technology is converting gaming from an alternative reality to a way of life. gaming's remarkable growth is being driven, like the rest of media, by the power of the internet. in the uk, regulators are belatedly trying to limit the dominance of a few tech giants, having announced the creation of a digital markets unit in just the past few weeks. in america, the department ofjustice is also on the offensive,

taking google to court in the next year. indeed, what we are seeing is nothing less then a global battle is nothing less than a global battle for the soul of the internet. a cold war is under way between the world's leading two superpowers. though it's been little noticed this year by voters dealing with a global pandemic. what started out as a battle over trade escalated into threats over the exchange rate for the un and is now a major conflict. as ever, in battles between ideologically conflicting superpowers, america and china are vying for technological supremacy. two companies illustrate that battle. huawei, with its dominance of 5g, and tiktok, a young entertainment platform already boasting over 800 million users. tiktok is owned by bytedance, now worth $100 billion. its founder, zhang yiming, has pledged deep cooperation

with the chinese communist party. that is why politicians of all stripes in america see tiktok, like huawei, as a national security threat, giving china access to the precious data and attention of american citizens. earlier this year, president trump demanded it be sold to a non—chinese company, and that the us treasury get a cut. it's unprecedented in the us, but such assertions of sovereignty are already standard practice in china where platforms like youtube and whatsapp are blocked, along with foreign sources of news and religious instruction. religious instruction, and where the web is a tool of surveillance. in a sense, then, president trump merely borrowed from china's playbook, and these new methods of control go further than just the us and china. in india, for example, narendra modi's government has banned tiktok and other chinese—owned mobile apps. other states have used various social media controls monitoring all censorship. tiktok is notjust a platform

for video pranks, it proves there's a battle for the soul of the internet in an era of rising nationalism, where governments say that countries, and not companies, should control the web. with almost half of humanity not yet online, how and if this big digital chill spreads could shape the 21st century. you are watching a review of the media year here on bbc news. it's good to have you with us. as ever, the british royalfamily were all over the headlines. at the start of the year, prince harry's war on tabloid culture led to the departure of him, meghan and their son from official duties. there was a multi—million pound deal with netflix and a sympathetic book about them serialised in the times. all the while, prince harry and meghan are pursuing legal action against several of britain's newspapers. there will be headlines aplenty from court in the coming year.

in october, extraordinary allegations re—surfaced that martin bashir‘s astonishing interview with princess diana from 25 years ago was partly obtained through forged bank statements. bashir, who is recovering from a major operation, hasn't spoken, but tim davie, the director general of the bbc, has announced an independent investigation led by a formerjudge. one of the central figures in that investigation will be davie‘s predecessor, tony hall, director of news when the diana interview aired. he bowed out after seven years as director general this summer, and is his exit interview, he addressed rows over the n—word and rule britannia, and suggested ways the bbc might need to change in a world ripped asunder by technology. eight years ago, deep editorial failures over coverage ofjimmy savile and lord mcalpine led to the resignation of a director general of the bbc after just 5a days. chris patten, then chairman of the bbc, sent for tony hall,

a former director of bbc news, who directed a creative turnaround at the royal opera house. i'm standing on the edge. after steadying the ship, hall's big challenge was to negotiate a new charter for the bbc. central to his deal was the bbc taking on a welfare payment for free tv licenses for the over 75s. hall considered this nuclear. did you threaten to resign over that? i thought about resigning, but at that moment i thought you have got to get in there and try to stop this or ameliorate what they're proposing to do. did you make it clear to them that this is a welfare payment and that's what governments do and not broadcasters? yes, we made all of those arguments. it was one of the most difficult and tense sets of negotiations or discussions i've ever had. the bbc has now said it will only pay for those on pension credit, a level the government decides on. at the end of that negotiation, which you led for the bbc, the bbc had a time bomb placed underneath it, and that time bomb is going off just as you are leaving.

you call it a time bomb, i say we've come to a solution, which is an absolutely fair solution, which is those who cannot afford to pay for the licence fee don't have to pay for it if you are on pension credit. but for a lot of people this is a very, very painful choice. there are hundreds of thousands or millions of people in this country who love the bbc, who have supported the bbc for years and have gotten used to having it forfree. why are you now actively hurting those people and saying you've got to pay for something you've been getting for free? but you have got to go back and say, who is actually responsible for this? a then majority conservative government put on the bbc. for many truly national institutions, from the bbc to the monarchy, the struggle to reflect a more diverse, divided and digital britain itself creates deep divisions. injuly, the bbc broadcast the n—word prompting an outcry. initially, it defended the decision, strongly, then hall apologised. i felt using the n—word at that time of day in that report was a mistake. these are difficult decisions,

and in the end, occasionally, i've intervened as director general when i felt it was right. the future, hall reckons, is a mixed model. i think the news business is one which is very difficult to make commercial sense out of and that's why i've been arguing with the government to say, give us more money, we can get to a billion people globally. then we have also been working with itv on a thing called britbox, and britbox outside this country, and i think that could be the breakthrough for us going to many, many more places globally and selling to people directly. lord hall has been an effective director general who probably had the toughestjob of any director general. his tenure was shaped by dealings with a majority conservative government. the same will be true of his successor. the us election was predictably a festival of misinformation, not least from the outgoing president himself, something twitter decided to call out. when trump has made claims about election rigging or missing

ballots, twitter now attaches a label declaring those particular claims about election fraud are disputed. note, they stop short of saying they are false, somewhere very few tech companies want to go. actorjohnny depp lost a high—profile libel case against the sun, which had a headline calling him a wife beater. depp has been dropped from the next fantastic beasts movie. 2020 was the year we lost two broadcasting giants, nicholas parsons and des 0'connor both died, and journalism lost one of its greats with the death of sir harry evans. they don't make them like harry evans any more. as the most celebrated british editor of his generation, he personified the noblest possibilities of both journalism and social mobility in the 20th century. the son of a railway man and grocery store owner, he came up through local papers,

first on the manchester evening news, than as editor of the northern echo in darlington, news, then as editor of the northern echo in darlington, aged just 32. harry evans fell out spectacularly with rupert murdoch, but not before, in 13 years at the sunday times, he redefined journalism itself. a master craftsman, he pioneered a form of brave, investigative, campaigning journalism, famously winning compensation for the survivors of thalidomide, a drug given to pregnant women who gave birth to children with serious birth defects. it was a landmark victory. it's the most importantjudgement not only for the freedom of the press, but for the citizen's right to know in england. the most distinguished group ofjudges have told the british government reform the laws, they have got to do it now. the ten years of public campaigning have left their mark on the family. david mason was the parent who first interested evans in the story. his daughter, louise, was one of those affected by thalidomide as a baby. she died two years ago after many years of poor health.

i went along to the offices of the sunday times and harry evans got up from the far end of the table, walked down, all the board in there and he said, david, i want to pledge now "david, i want to pledge now "all the support of the sunday times and all the power that we can muster "to take these people on and get the due compensation "to which the victims are entitled." he was invaluable, he really was invaluable and i will miss him greatly. evans moved to america with his wife, thejournalist tina brown, shifting from a golden era in newspapers to one in magazines. now, in a new york power couple, he was a long way from his north of england roots, but remained forever a news man at heart. he excelled at everything journalism required. he was a fine writer, he had a great eye for layout and design and typefaces, he had an airing instinct for a story and he believed in investigative journalism, and he took all that and used it

to create the modern sunday times. the embodiment of a humble hack taking on mighty forces with nothing but the truth, harry evans putjournalism itself in a debt to him that will never be serviced. sir harry evans. we owe him so much. the digitalisation notjust of media but of our entire lives will, of course, accelerate in 2021. look out for a new wave of anti—trust measures as regulators everywhere try to break up tech monopolies. the tech cold war splintering the internet further, lots of royals in court, new chairman, maybe a new path for the bbc, and a shake—up of british broadcasting with the arrival of gb news as the battle for our ears, eyes and attention intensifies. whatever you're doing, and however digital your christmas may be, i hope you and yourfamily have a happy and healthy time. thanks for watching.

good evening. it's been a cold and wintry day right across the uk today. some, though, enjoying the sunshine, but wherever you are over the next few days, the blue colours on this chart indicates temperatures will stay below normal for the time of year. so, that means whatever falls from the sky always has a chance of being on the wintry side, so we could be seeing more scenes like these we saw in shropshire earlier on with some more snow in the forecast. and there will be tonight, particularly across parts of northern england, north and east scotland. notjust over the hills, maybe into lower levels, but on the pennines‘s peak district, we could see up to ten cm of snow. and then, the upland parts of say, sheffield, leeds and manchester, we could see a covering of snow into the morning. away from that, some fog for eastern areas, but we will see a widespread frost and some icy conditions, slippery around first thing on tuesday morning.

more snow for the morning drifting from northern england through the north and west midlands towards wales, again giving a covering in places, particularly over the hills. the showers we see elsewhere to the west and north could contain a little bit of sleet and snow at times, too. many, though, will be into the sunshine during the afternoon. temperatures up a degree or so on today's values, but still a cold one. now, the persistent shower line we've got across west wales and cornwall will continue. that's a bit of a risk of flooding, i think, over the next few days. it will turn wintry over the higher ground. with cold air in place through tuesday into wednesday, we now have to watch the next feature pushing in from the atlantic. this is going to run its way into cold air. we've got milder air to the south of it. where the mild air is, likely to see rain. 0n the northern flank, there will be snow and the exact track will be crucial to where. a more widespread snow is possible on wednesday and into thursday, could just clip into northern ireland. most likely, we'll see snow through wales, the midlands towards east anglia, but bear in mind, that whole system could be a bit further south, so instead of rain in southern counties, it could be snow.

could be a bit further north, which means rain into the midlands, snow into northern england. but at the moment, looks like further north you are, the brighter it will be, but a cold day for all once again. even if it is a bit further north, once that system clears, we could see some snow for a time through wednesday night to thursday morning, east anglia and the southeast. on thursday, new year's eve, a run of northerly winds. batches of showers could bring yet a further covering of snow mainly across central and eastern parts of the country, which could linger around into new year's day morning, but for most, new year's day 2021 will start chilly but dry.

this is bbc news, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm philippa thomas. the uk reports a record 40,000 new infections in the past 2a hours. doctors say some services are stretched to the limit. we see patients who are coming in who have covid symptoms, but we also see other patients coming in with other problems who turn out to be covid—positive and, between that, there is a great deal of difficulty getting those patients through into the wards. after president trump finally signs a coronavirus relief bill, democrats try to increase the pay—outs to americans. a chinese journalist who reported on the early days of the coronavirus outbreak has been sentenced to four years injail. also in the programme... a major study of the atlantic ocean has discovered species