the world health organization has urged countries to keep using the astrazeneca coronavirus vaccine — france, italy, germany and spainjoined the list of countries who have halted injections. concerns were initially raised by norway when a small number of people suffered blood clots. astrazeneca insists the vaccine is safe. italy is tightening measures to try to stop the spread of a third wave of coronavirus. a sharp rise in the rate of infections, has caused the government to close schools, shops and restaurants again. a full national lockdown is planned for easter. the un's secretary general has said he's apalled by the the escalating violence in myanmar. at least 50 protestors are thought to have been killed by the military during demonstrations against the military coup in the past 2a hours. martial law has now been extended across the nation's largest city, yangon. now on bbc news,

the media show. hello, it's the oprah, meghan, and harry show! not really, this is the media show. but if you're bored of that spectacle, i'm afraid to tell you that the aftershocks are very real and relevant to us. as we always say, the media is the story. itv�*s share price fell by around 5%, reuters has quoted city traders who say that the fall could be partly attributed to the resignation of itv�*s starjournalist, piers morgan. morgan was bringing in record ratings for good morning britain, of course, but he quit on tuesday after refusing to apologise for his on—air criticism of the royal couple. so, whilst the oprah interview represents an historic move , moment for buckingham palace, is it also a massive deal for british media? perhaps so. does piers morgan's departure show that his brand of highly opinionated journalism is incompatible with an ofcom—regulated tv channel?

and will he resurface on the new news channels that's coming to the uk which has promised to capitalise on that exact style of noisy journalism? let me introduce you to our guests. jane martinson is a professor ofjournalism at city university, and was the guardian's media editor. jane, just a moment ago when we were on the zoom call, you were on a phone call which terrified me slightly. who were you talking to and did it have to do with journalism? it was, i was actually talking to the guardian opinion desk, which i had written a piece about the aforementioned piers morgan and his departure from gmb. just give us a quick take. the top line was that it's, you know, outrage sells, and the row over freedom of expression overnight shows that what is about impartiality, and piers has made himself the story, and it's amazing how many times

it has all become about piers morgan. but it sort of says that at this particular time, when we've got these two new entrants — i know we'll hear from one of them later in the programme — this is a really important time for the british media scene to think about what public service broadcasting means, and impartiality, and how we will protect that and whether we want to. absolutely, absolutely. that's a marvellous answer, you set up the show, i could go home at this point. benjamin cohen is the chief executive of pink news. benjamin, what are you writing about today? i'm not writing about anything today. there's been lots of stories — on our snapchat, we're doing a story about the transformation of a trans guy who's been going through a weight loss regime, because we have a show on there called workout, which is about the increase

in fitness programmes. but me personally, i'm having a bit of a weird time. i'm actually midway through a multiple sclerosis relapse, so i'm not actually able to write anything. i can't use my right hand, i can't lift a pen, i can't type properly. so i'm in a bit of a strange few weeks. i'm really sorry to hear that, but i should say that despite that relapse and that medical challenge, you're

overseeing pink news which has, despite your own medical difficulties, seen huge growth in the last year, hasn't it? yeah, it's really weird. when the pandemic started about a year ago, i really wasn't sure what the future would be. i was worried i would have to let people go. we actually doubled our team during the last year with i think tripling our revenue, somewhere around that, we've massively grown our stapability. because actually, and all this really strange environment where. .. it's a very toxic environment, but actually readers and particularly young people are going towards media which has a purpose, which has a mission. and pink news has that across all the different brands. it's interesting, there is a financial argument for that editorial vigion. we get onto that, it's good to have you with us, ben. thanks forjoining us, especially in such difficult circumstances. scott bryan is a tv critic and broadcaster. scott, how did oprah — you watch a lot of tv and interviews — how did oprah manage to dominate news for two weeks with this interview? i mean, it is such _ an unconventional way of how interviews are done these days. with the rise of streaming - giants and there being so much competition, it always comes down to, as a strategy, - right, how do we get it| on to so many different platforms at the same time? with oprah, what happened was, with the exception of two clips i

that were 90 seconds revealed in advance last week, - there was absolutely nothing| said about what the interview was going to contain. it was also surprising that it - was on a broadcast tv channel. they've managed to get. the ratings in the us triple the amount of people i who watched the emmys or the golden globes. and i think people are quite surprised, this is not - what we expected, a two—hour interview with many adverts i on a broadcast channel. i think part of that is- downed oprah's approach — she's always known exactly what audiences want. - she has many deals, she could have been with apple tv+, - harry and meghan also have deals with netflix, - but they decided that the way to generate a lot of interest l is with a news interview. and if you look at all - the viewing figures throughout the pandemic, they've all come massively when it comes - to news, but also in other stories as well, and this l isjust one example of that. so fascinating, the enduring power of terrestrial channels. we'll come back to that, thanks you, scott. already lots of speculation as to where piers morgan will be going next. and in the frame is something called gb news. that's the news channel launching later this year which counts discovery amongst its backers. people in the media getting very excited and agitated about it, there's been some

talk about whether or not it might be a uk version of fox news. on monday, i sat down with the chairman of gb news, also its star signing, andrew neil. i should point out this was recorded before we'd seen the royal interview, and an eternity before piers morgan quit itv. let me play you a big chunk of that, because i asked andrew neil what the business case for gb news actually is. i think it's always a good time. as journalists, we should always welcome new news channels and jobs for journalists, more diversity is great, when i was on sky in 1989, it was meant to destroy the bbc and itv. it did nothing of the kind, it just added hugely to the choice that was available. and if you look at the major news providers in britain at the moment, they all come from various shades of left — not mad left or anything like that, but from centre, centreleft, a bit more left, then a bit more left from that. i think people hear you and say, "what evidence do you have for that?" you've written that the bbc news, a lot of news output

is too southern, too metropolitan. but if you actually go and listen to local news in leicester or scunthorpe, it's not liberal left, its local news from localjournalists. i understand, but i'm not talking about the local news. so what evidence do you have that national bulletins lean left? well, for the bbc, i would say it's a moderate, centreleft outlook. because they share the metropolitan outlook, they share the same metropolitan values, they have broadly the same look on life. look, this isn't me saying it, director generals of the bbc have said it... let's be clear about this, tim davies said the bbc might be too metropolitan — that's a different thing from centreleft, centreleft is a political position on the spectrum. mark thompson said it was, and the bbc was at its happiest when mr blair was prime minister, because the bbc had basically a blaire—ite

outlook on the world. it doesn't make them bad people, i share a number of views with mr blair. let's talk about some of the names you've signed up as on—screen talent. alexander phillips, who was ukip�*s head of media for three years then an mep for the brexit party, michelle dupree, a brexit party candidate in 2019. they are hugely talented, doubtless. one thing in common there is a distaste for socialism. so just how brexit—y will gb news be? i don't know whether you've caught up with the news... brexit has happened. brexit�*s over. you know what i'm talking about, to what extent will it be — how right—wing will it be? if a number of our presenters were on the brexit side of the argument, so what? 90% of the bbc�*s presenters were on the remain side of the argument. so what's the point? they still did theirjobs properly. the main presenters of the bbc

still covered the referendum in the proper way they did. and i would expect our journalists to do the same. do you accept that gb news is the first explicitly political domestic tv channel, set out with a political purpose? that assumes that the existing channels aren't political. are you trying to tell me that channel 4 news is not political? you're setting out... you trying to tell me sky news is not political? but you're political in a different way, let's not be disingenuous. the typical view that it's fine to be on the centreleft, that's not political. but if you're on the centre of the centre right, that's political. no, that's not what i'm saying, what i'm saying is there a lot of people who look at gb news and the mission that you have expounded in public about answering a need for nonmetropolitan news, and the fact that you are going to channel personality—led, opinion—led evening broadcasts, and that challenges or threatens potentially an ecosystem where impartiality is receding from public view, and a lot of people think

impartiality is valuable. yes, you will be regulated by ofcom, but there are lots of people, not necessarily political people, but people who might have concerns that in an era of culture wars and social media, actually gb news might end up exacerbating the problems we have rather than answering them. i know that, and that's the mantra that's thrown at us all the time that don't want gb news to succeed. but it's not true. and of course, the other thing that's thrown at us, which is part of that mantra, is that it will be fox news, and so on. well, it'sjust nonsense. we can only be judged by what we do, you know, i've grown long in the tooth now denying things about a network that hasn't broadcast a second of programming yet. we would be different from the existing networks? yes, because they all do the same thing. so what's the point of doing what they do? will we cover stories a different way? yes! will we give voices to people outside the metropolitan consensus? yes.

do we have any interest in fox news? no — disinformation, no, conspiracy theories, no. there's nothing in my journalistic record that could lead you to fox news, and there is no market, in my view, in britain for a fox news—type. you'lljust have to wait and see what we do. sure, that's a view i've put out on this show several times. help me out here, fox news is a right of centre, it leads towards opinion rather than prime time and invests heavily in personality—driven evening shows. gb news — right of centre, leans towards opinion rather than news and prime time, and invests heavily in personality—driven evening shows. so gb news is different to fox news because? now describe msnbc. a liberal version of the same thing. exactly! so what's the difference between gb news — i'm giving you a chance to not compare gb news to fox news. i'm giving you the chance to be explicit about the different. look, there are two people, when gb news launches,

there are two people who will be deeply disappointed. one is a small number of people that want it to be fox news, and the other are those who've said it will be fox news. they're the ones who be disappointed. it is possible to learn from the us, both from the left wing, msnbc, and the right, fox, about programming and the importance of not doing rolling news any more unless there is strong news to do. that's a lesson sky and the bbc don't seem to have learned. americans have learned that. that you get appointment to view if you break up the schedule during the day with programmes, not rolling news, programmes built around strong anchors with edge, character, and even a sense of humour. that's what msnbc and fox news do, as well. you can do all of that without being either fox or msnbc. you can do that by having a different perspective to the way the existing broadcasters come.

will it please the metropolitan classes that control the existing network news? no. but that's not ourjob, we aren't aiming to please them, we're trying to give people who don't feel they have a voice a voice. i'll give you a good example, and it's on the bbc, and that is question time. in the aftermath of the brexit referendum — and question time, to give it huge credit, used to be just out of london, but now it goes all around the country — and it would go to bradford in barnsley, or wigan in the north. and in the post—brexit referendum aftermath, when the atmosphere was quite toxic, more so than it had been during the referendum, some southern smoothie on the panel would say about brexit, "they didn't know what they were voting for." to be met by a cacophony of voices with a northern accent saying, "oh, yes we did.

we knew what we were in for and we won't be patronised by you, saying that we didn't." that's the kind of voice that you actually don't hear very often in british broadcasting, and i hope we will give it a voice. where will your headquarters be? in paddington. and what's the format of your show going to be? it'll be an hour, it'll be on between 8—9pm, four nights a week. it'll be pretty segmented, so it can be replayed in digitalformat and digital slice—and—dice as much as possible. we'll have a monologue to begin with, and a main story, i think we will have a lot of fun with things like chest—feeding, that police thing about "being offensive isn't an offense," a lot of that isn't properly covered. we will do an interview if we can get one — we won't do an interview if it's only for paperclips. and i want to do media watch,

including a media watch that holds ourselves to account, and when we get things wrong we put our hands up and say, "we got this wrong." we'll also hold other media to account, as well. and then, i think we will have a regular guests, you know, abbott and portillo — and i think each night we will have an equivalent of that to be able to chew the cud on the main news stories. are abbott and portillo coming back themselves? who knows? maybe. that was andrew neil, and i spoke to him on monday afternoon for well over an hour, in huge detail about his old career, the real reason he fell out with rupert murdoch, where he draws the line on free speech, not least in relation to the spectator writer taki, the real reason he left bbc and loads more. it's a very long and interesting conversation and it will be available for the media show, subscribe to the media show podcast, you can find the long interview. jane, you were nodding

your head vigorously throughout much of that, why? i've heard some of it before, i have to say. the argument that this is purely about economics, it's about choice, it's about the "left behind", i don't think you left them behind, but the current media — he normally says if you got channel 4 on the left, why can't we have gb news on the right? what's wrong with that argument? well, i think it's a very reductive argument, and it was really interesting that he said there was no market for fox news. but to answer your point, i think it's because actually channel 4, you know, are still bound by a level of impartiality. so is gb news. they will be, but as you say, the output will all be about news presenters, it'll be about opinion

presenters, a bit like lbc radio, which has been hugely popular and has a range of voices, which is of course how you might get your ofcom licence and still be judged to be impartial. but the thing is, casting doubt on existing broadcasters by being "the bbc�*s 90% left of centre," i think that's all part of this culture war which says that just because you at the bbc are metropolitan, you can't be speaking the truth and doing good journalism, and journalism shouldn't be about left or right and politics. just a reminder, i don't speakfor the bbc from a corporate sense. we're moving from a world where the news was the star, to where the star is the news. very much so. i think in terms of where we're seeing the possibility of gb - news and how it links . to good morning britain in terms of opinionated - programming — i see gb news as this case where you would - have opinionated people arguing at length with guests _

who completely are on the other centre of them, therefore being "impartial". - i think that's where there's been lots of reporting, - like piers morgan's next step and whether it'll be - with gb news, primarilyj because that is the style ofjournalism which gets very popular online. - there is no hiding away- from the fact that good morning britain beat bbc breakfast in the ratings yesterday. l those clips went viral on social media. - even if you are completely- appalled by the content within, i think, for some people - who think we have very partisan ways of expressing ourselves online and partisan forms - of news, newspapersj and online, why can't it be reflected on tv?

at the same, time many people say, "we want to have that - space for impartiality to get i the news and information and, most important, leave it to us, not you to decide for me - exactly what i should be thinking." - then, andrew neil said part of the strategy for gb news will be to slice—and—dice. do you mind expressing if that's what you do it pink news? i don't quite know what he means. i think it means cutting segments of a tv show up and posting them up on social media. all our content is short form, so it could be hosted on snapchat. we call them "long pieces" of content, but long for pink news is 5—6 minutes, which is shorter than traditional broadcasters. i did find two things particularly interesting in what he said. he believes that the bbc, channel 4 — i used to work with channel 4 for six years — is this liberal thing.

i don't think it is, actually, i think the mainstream news might be for the people whom consider themselves to be left of centre politically — they're actually incredibly socially conservative. that's what we see with coverage on issues relating to lgbt, particularly trans issues on the bbc. you could say they're covering them from a liberal agenda, but they're actually covering it from a really quite socially conservative agenda. the other thing that he said was that it would be "woke" watch — he keeps going on about this "woke" watch and the "woke" media. let's ask ourselves, what does "woke" mean? it means being aware of socialjustice issues, particularly racial issues. i don't know why anyone should find people who are aware of socialjustice issues particularly concerning. it's a new way of saying it's "politically correct", it's another way ofjust denigrating people who care about minorities. we can't get into too

much about woke culture, but andrew neil and piers morgan wrote a book about it, about how "woke" means something different from how it started. it's interesting you mention that, benjamin, because he said he'd put a spotlight on terms like "chest feeding". that wasn't actually true, that story was repeated on pink news, it wasn't true. the trust was merely saying that when it came to transgender people, they should have appropriate language. it wasn't saying that it should be for anyone else, but actually a lot of the media, the mainstream broadcast media and print media kept repeating a lie that wasn't true. it on pink news and a couple other publications that pointed out that the story wasn't true. andrew neil is one of those people perpetuating the myth that somehow, these terrible woke misogynists will come after everyone else.

we aren't, we just care about minority groups. but we haven't talked here — while we're focusing on the broadcast media and the notion of impartiality and truth — journalism has been about facts, leaving your own opinions at the door. we in the uk have had an incredibly opinionated newspaper industry. 4% of the british media are of ethnic minority. the numbers alone tell a story that perhaps we aren't terribly representative in the newspaper industry. that is a huge issue that we do need to look at. isn't the truth that the tabloid approach to news and information, which prioritises the outrageous and emotional, is good business? ofcom received 41,000

complaints about good morning britain after piers morgan said he didn't believe meghan markle's claim, got lots of complaints — and the very next day, they beat bbc breakfast in the ratings — briefly? but it can create a lot of problems in itself. | with regards to piers morgan, mind, the mental health- charity, issued a statement- saying that they found morgan's comments about meghan markle to be "disappointing". _ why does that matter? because itv themselves i have been doing a mental health initiative called "get britain talking" l across the entire channel thati was launched after love island and caroline's passing. and it was completely at odds, but also, it. had mind's involvement. also, the duchess of sussex had written letter to itv, _ i think even though these can be incredibly lucrative - to ratings, we seen time - and time again that if anything becomes too controversial, advertisers get spooked - and they can easily leave, i and it can cause headaches across the entire l rest of the brand. do you want to come back to that, jane?

yeah, i think that what's really interesting is the idea that there was no market for fox news, so there obviously has been, as scott's saying — the numbers watching piers morgan, he has improved ratings for good morning britain. look, the tabloid papers we're talking about, the most popular in britain — the guardian and pink news have absently been outsold in print by the mail and the sun for many years, not online. luckily, we aren't in print. but not online, that's the point. the thing is, look what's happened in america, freedom and market deciding, you've got the social media giants taking over everything without any control. some of that is coming to this country, certainly not enough long form. i always campaign for these shows to be much longer, and today is a good example of why it should be. thank you so much to our guests. and thank you also to andrew neil, chairman and presenter on gb news.

i'll be back at the same time next week, thanks for listening. hello there. in comparison to this time last week, it is a much quieter weather story to tell. but i suspect we will be chasing cloud amounts around over the next few days, just like we had on monday. in cornwall, it was a beautiful day with blue sky and sunshine, similar story for northern ireland. but further north and west, cloud gathered as we went through the day, rather threatening looking skies, indication of what's to come. yes, we have some weather fronts bringing some rain into the far northwest. high—pressure is trying to build in from the southwest, but some of this rain will be heavy through the night. isobars squeezing together as well, strengthening winds particularly in the far north of scotland. now, the rain will sink its way south and east, a lot of cloud across the country, so a relatively mild

night for many. so as we start off tuesday, there will still be some heavy rain to come, particularly across scotland accompanied by some strong gusty winds from the northwest. widely, we could see gusts in excess of 30 mph first thing, but in the far north, 40—115 mph not out of the question. that strong wind will help push the rain south and east as we go through the day, quite a clearance, the winds will fall light, the sunshine will come through. the only exception, perhaps, across east anglia, essex and kent, it may well stay cloudy for much of the day. top temperatures though through the afternoon, generally around 10—15 celsius — not bad. now, high—pressure will anchor itself across northern ireland. a little bit more of a breeze always around the periphery of the high, and that is going to continue to drag in cloud amounts, hence the reason that we will be chasing cloud from time to time. so on wednesday, there will be quite cloudy skies with the odd light shower into the far north and some cloud coming in off the north sea,

so sheltered westerns parts of england and wales seeing the best of the sunshine potentially. now, as we move into the end of the week, the high—pressure just moves a little bit further west again, and that allows more of a northeasterly flow, a cooler source, particularly across east anglia and southeast england. so what that will do is it potentially breaks up the cloud to allow more sunshine to come through, but it means that it might feel just that little bit cooler the further south and east you are by the end of the week. further west, it stays largely dry, but there is always the risk of a little more cloud. that's it, take care.

welcome to bbc news — i'm mike embley — our top stories. the world health organisation urges countries to keep using the astrazeneca coronavirus vaccine — as a growing list of european nations suspend injections. the influential sister of north korea's leader, says the us must avoid causing a stink if it wants peace — as america's top diplomat heads to the region. the un's secretary general says he's appalled by the escalating violence in myanmar, at the hands of the military making history: deb haaland is confirmed as us secretary of the interior — becoming the first native american to lead a cabinet agency. it's a moment that each of these nominees will never forget. and — the nominations are out for this year's delayed oscars