the most persistent rain will be to the north and north—west of northern ireland and more especially across the highlands of scotland. could see over a month's worth of rain here in the coming days and that could give some minorflooding. but look at the temperatures. just south of our front, 12 and 13. well above where we should be by day, never mind by night. so it will be a mild start to monday morning. still the rain there in the highlands of scotland pushing its way northwards, turning a bit dry in northern ireland through the day, and brightening up to southern scotland, northern ireland, northern ireland and north wales. but with winds going into a more southerly direction across the southern half of wales, midlands, southern england, it is going to be increasingly sunny. and note the temperatures — on the up. above 20 degrees for one or two during the afternoon. even in eastern scotland, 17 or 18 degrees. and it gets warmer still through tuesday and wednesday towards the south. but the cold air is back across the north midweek onwards. hello, this is bbc news with tim willcox. the headlines... with further easing of restrictions in england tomorrow, the culture secretary says the country's on target —

he hopes the lifting of curbs will be "irreversible"... but the national medical director for the nhs in england warns people not to "squander the gains" made against coronavirus. the government says lorry drivers arriving in england from outside the uk will need to take a covid test within 48 hours and then one every 72 hours afterwards. the prime minister is urged to "swiftly clarify" how many covid vaccine doses the uk is prepared to donate to poorer countries. the un demands international action to stop a shocking wave of brutality against civilians in myanmar. the latest attempts to dislodge the ship that's stuck in the suez canal have failed — officials say efforts will continue around the clock in 20 minutes. now on bbc news, it's time for world questions with amol rajan. this is the bbc world service. i am amol rajan, and welcome

to world questions. this is the programme which brings together questions from the public around the world and puts them to the experts. for this edition, we're looking at information and misinformation. how have the big institutions, governments, health organisations and the media informed and misinformed us about the pandemic? and has the rise of what is sometimes described as fake news, though there are reasons to be cautious about that term, of course, impeded the battle against the spread of covid—i9? i'm joined remotely via zoom by a panel of leading journalists, academics, health experts and a representative from one of the big social media companies who will take questions from members of the public from all corners of the globe. let me introduce you to our panel. from new york, zeynep tufekci is with us. she is a technosociologist

who has written extensively about covid—i9 and won plaudits, both for her analysis of the pandemic and for her work covering the technology giants. neynep, it's good to see you. zeynep, it's good to see you. also with us is nick pickles, a senior director of public policy strategy and development at twitter. he is in colorado, usa. nick, good to see you. from geneva, we have margaret harris. she is a spokesman for the world health organization and has worked all over the world fighting pandemics, including ebola. margaret, good to see you. and from here in the uk, eliot higgins, founder of bellingcat, an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists. eliot, it's good to see you as well. welcome to you all. now, let's go to our first question. and this is from annetta in skopje, macedonia. she works in the air freight business. over to you. thank you for having me on this bbc panel. it's very nice to meet all of you.

my question was how can government, and this means also including medical experts, can offer simpler explanations about the pandemic and about covid—i9? because here in my country, we don't have so much official explanation from the government and from the medical experts and from the world health organization, we don't have almost nothing. so, how can governments best offer simple explanations about what's a complex subject to the public? given you addressed the world health organization directly, i think we should go to margaret harris, who was smiling at your question, hopefully a positive smile. margaret, over to you. nice to meet you. i'm really sorry you have not heard anything from us because at the beginning we had daily press conferences and we still have twice—weekly press conferences on this very subject, and also our regional director, dr kluge, gives weekly press conferences. but perhaps you are saying

you wanted to hear the more simple information about what the public can do and what they need to know. and sometimes it is difficult to get that. but i promise you, we've got it, but from what you are saying, we need to do better. so, it's important to hear. thank you, margaret. zeynep tufekci, the question is how can government best offer simple explanations about the virus from official medical experts? i think the best way would be l to provide accurate information about the transmission mechanisms and empower people _ to use their judgment. you cannot really have exact. instructions for every possible setting somebody will encounter. so what i think the health - organisations like the who or national public health authorities should do is to go in front- of people and explain, "look, i this pathogen is airborne in this i particular way and this is what it i means," so that a person who sees

somebodyjust passing by them without a mask outdoors, - they don't need to panic. that is a fleeting encounter. that's just going to dilute, that's not a big deal. - whereas if you're going into a grocery store - and even if everybody is wearing ia mask, if it's really crowded, i |that's not the safest environment —| even if everybody is a few feet away because it can accumulate. given the, sort of, vast variety of experiences we all live, - the best way is to - explain mechanisms which empower people rather . than rules, which i think can fail. because how can you predict exactly what we're going to encounter? eliot higgins, the question is how can governments best offer simple explanations about the virus including from the official medical experts? in my experience, using online platforms to see how these things are discussed, it is often these discussions over the language which allow conspiracy theories and alternatives facts to appear about what is happening. that's very difficult to counter because there are communities that

want to find a reason to be angry at the world health organization, don't want to trust doctors, so it's a real challenge. the world health organization has found itself at the front of the communications issue in a world that has changed rapidly over ten years thanks to the internet and the way we communicate with each other. and it's difficult for many organisations to deal with that in normal circumstances, but when you are the middle of a global pandemic, which is one of the biggest crises of the modern era, you then have this kind of internet community that is looking for conspiracy theories and it's very hard to predict how they're going to use these debates that you're having, these legitimate debates and discussions, to push their own agendas. thank you, eliot. nick pickles from twitter. i think as eliot says, one of the biggest challenges we have seen here is you have public health agencies communicating through press conferences with journalists in one way, which is primarily intended to inform the media. and those same communications devices are also being used to inform the public. and i think one of the big

challenges we have seen during covid is really the 20th century communications methods in the information century proven by the internet. and so making that transition has been challenging for some organisations and the big question i think for social media companies companies is often trying to referee some of the debate we have just heard. we want to allow people to have a debate, to engage on the issues, but at the same time, we are under huge pressure to remove content that may be harmful. and so we are trying to strike that balance between elevating credible content, but also remove content that could be harmful. and often during covid, one of the hardest things for us has been to make a decision about what to remove when the health advice and the scientific community themselves have not aligned on a clear outcome. that makes us the arbiter of a scientific debate, which is not the role we should be playing. we should be helping people find credible information and the scientific community should be coming to its own conclusions.

indeed, as you said, these are incredibly complex calculations involving trade—offs. annetta, what has it been like where you are? do you feel you can you trust the main broadcast media forms of communication there? could you get information from them? yes, you can. you can get them. but they are not so much explicit about the situation, _ about how it is transmitted. nobody is still sure, for example, that in indoor places, _ they know that they have to wear masks, but they don't _ know exactly how to act. there are many indoor places here, like restaurants, - they are allowed to work. and i visited one, to be honest, a week ago, i have not - been in a whole year, - and i'm entering with a mask and there i see people l who do not wear masks. so who are we kidding? i'm kidding myself outside to wear a mask where the possibilities - to catch the virus are less

because i'm outside, - and when i enter the restaurant, and you know, i did not know. what to do. should i wear the mask, - should i not wear the mask? i think you take us on to the questions basically of who you can trust. and perhaps a question of whether or not you can trust the media, which brings us nicely to our second question. this is huey, a social worker in child protection in lancashire in the north of the uk. hello from beautiful lancashire. my question to the panel is how much responsibility must media outlets accept for initially saying that this was an old people's disease. thus young people worldwide have never protected themselves, thinking that they are safe. so did the media cause ageism and did it make the pandemic worse? do you mind me asking you who you're talking about specifically when you say the media said initially this was an old people disease? well, initially all

media reported it. it was many, many months before media, particularly in the west, started to talk about young people being affected by covid—i9. thank you. eliot higgins. do you accept the premise of his question, and what do you think about — broadly speaking — what he calls the mainstream media and its performance? ithink... yeah, overthe initialweeks and months of the crisis, it felt like the messaging coming from the media was changing every single day. and i think part of that may have been informed by a sense of consciousness about not wanting to feel like they're the ones exaggerating the danger of what is happening. but then again, this comes down to an issue of trust and the trust in the information that you were getting. and if that information's changing on a regular basis and it seems to contradict what you've heard before, you're going to lose trust in those sources. and i think that becomes very dangerous especially, again, when you have so many people who are looking for the conspiracy behind these kind of things. and it's very damaging. now is that a...

i would never really approach this as a question of is the entire media guilty of doing this? maybe you could do a study to see exactly who was saying what and when, but i think it was certainly a pattern i was observing in those early weeks of the crisis. margaret harris, the question is how much responsibility must media outlets aacept for initially saying this was an old people's disease? certainly right from the start - we were saying and indicating people that anyone could get it. but the epidemiology did indicatej that the people most likely to get the severe form were older. this was one of the tricky things about the virus, i everybody could get it, - but the people most likely to get severe forms and most likely to die were olderj or had underlying conditions. but i do remember continually trying to emphasise that a young _ person could get it, - could get very severely ill. because, there did seem to be very early on up, oh, well, _

it only affects old people sort of attitude. - and i do remember even saying, do not think like this, _ we are all in this and we all have to take it very seriously. - i think media did a lot of things in a way that did not serve the public as well, because it was a hard adjustment for them. i write myself on a more traditional media, so i do have sympathy. but we went from don't worry about it, at least in the us, it's like the flu, it affects older people maybe and don't worry about it, i think, early on, which was almost underplaying it. and then it almost swung the other way at times and it became a young person's shaming. there is the other kind of swing where people are constantly, to this day, sharing pictures of beaches and parks and young people just hanging out outside as if that's a major crisis, which is not correct either. either end of the spectrum

is not correct. what i think we need going forward is to try to fund these public health agencies and agencies like the who so they have resources to be really quick and out there. what do you make of what she has just said? do you feel, reflecting on what zeynep tufekci said, that you were let down by the mainstream media? yeah, i do agree that the conflicting information that people were given was very confusing. although i do think that this had a wider argument in society. because i think the media, arguably, were too quick in picking young people against old people. so i think outside the remit of covid, this brought a wider impact on society. rather than bringing people together, it drove people apart. so i think it impacted the wider society. thank you. let's go to our next question.

this is from david moreno, who works in tourism and he is in madrid in spain, good to see you. hi. thank you for having me this evening. - so my question is morel about on a specific thing that happened in spain. during the peak of the first| lockdown here, the spanish government censored taking pictures of an ice rink that was _ turned into a morgue. actually, we have very. rarely seen real pictures from inside a hospital. so my question is in this case, - do you think censorship is practical or it just feeds the monster i of conspiracy and fake news? so, your question is about censorship, david. about whether or not censorship is justified, whether or not it's practical, or, as you say, if it just feeds the monster of conspiracies and fake news? i should, i guess, say, eliot higgins, in defence of many governments,

it is notjust the spanish government who would be against these sorts of pictures of what's going on inside morgues being shown, lots of people and governments around the country would not want that shown, and lots of media organisations would not allow it to be shown on grounds of decency, basically. but eliot higgins, what do you say to this idea that censorship may be justified or it may end up feeding the monster of conspiracies? i think most often, if you have an image that is then removed from social media platforms or banned from news sites, that will absolutely fuel conspiracy theorists. that is absolutely their bread—and—butter, they love that kind of stuff. they will talk about that for years. if one single image... because i've seen this happening on a whole range of different topics where stuff is kind of taken off—line or something is deleted, and even if it's not an act of censorship, the perception that something has been removed will be enough to fuel conspiracy theories and draw more people into it. because then it does look like there is a cover—up. margaret harris from the who.

there are times when you would not use photographs but we have strict rules for instance about not identifying children and about how you would show certain procedures or even the wearing of personal protective equipment, if we have a picture that's not correct we will not use it. so there are reasons for not using particular photographic items. but also i agree with what has been said before about when you remove the thing, we don't even, we would only remove it because of an error or in language, our technical language is difficult and we make it simpler, we actually archive the older stuff because you're quite right. the conspiracy theorists then see the update as meaning that you are doing something very suspicious when all you're doing is actually trying to improve your work. nick pickles at twitter, you must have in your calculations as whether or not

to take down certain content or stop certain content being uploaded the first place and we must reckon with the fact that you would be accused of censorship. is that a trade—off in your mind, whether or not it was worth going through the accusation? well, we have certainly been accused of censorship in the past _ and i myself have sat in congress and been accused of censorship l baselessly by people saying that we make decisions - for political reasons. the reason we introduced labels i was exactly to give the ability. to add more context to a piece| of content without removing it. and that intervention allows usi to give people a signal that says this image is not what you think it is, it is perhaps older, - without removing it and fuelling the exact cycle that eliot - and others have otlined. the big challenge is that often i and certainly over covid i've seen. the response from any public health agencies and from governments in the circumstances, is to ask i the companies to remove the content. rather than being proactive - and debunking it and explaining to people why it's not happening.

and that is a big change that still has not happened in communications. look at something like 56, the endless list of things . that 56 has been blamed for at this point is in itself- a very powerful way of explaining that 56 might not be responsible. and actually unfortunately, when covid happened, _ we wanted to signpost new credible information explaining why 56 was safe, but there was basically nonej to point to because governments themselves had never— produced that information. so we need more persuasion and more l education much faster, but content l moderation is not going to solve this problem alone. _ that is fascinating. let's go to our final question and this is from priyanka, an accountant in new delhi, and shejoins us now. very good to see you. hi, everyone. my question is about the blurred line that has been created between the opinionated reporting and factual reporting. how do we make it more obvious so that we are able to eliminate the bias and the facts?

and the big question is how do we do that? how do we go about it? great question. eliot from bellingcat. you're group is all about getting to the truth and getting to the facts. the question is how can we limit the bias from facts? if i may paraphrase is how can we make facts fashionable again? i think partly really comes down time and time again for me of having a kind of educated populace who understand how the media works nowadays and it's important, and i don't want to train everyone to be media studies student, that's not what i'm saying. i'm saying we need to have looking at a new way of teaching civics because we are engulfed in media nowadays, it's coming to us from every angle, as we carry on ourselves we can be engage with the media on a device. yet we cannot have a reallyjust have society think about that and from a very early age we are not really addressing the issues that is raising and i think 0fcom were saying the 50% of ten—year—olds in the uk have smartphones.

so why don't we actually get a way of having a class and maybe not at ten years old it may be 16 or 18—year—olds but the student view example is an organisation setting up pop—up newsrooms in the uk where students are taught how to do investigations but it is not about turning them into a journalist but about engaging them with a local community. and making them learn that they can actually have an impact in their local community but that also gives him the protection and understanding against misinformation and also against the way of confusing opinion for fact. and i think if we don't do that, especially with this kind of new online communities and it will in societies, then the situation there are just going to get worse and worse and worse because we are not addressing the underlying issues. a fairly pessimistic outlook, but one obviously rooted in your efforts. thank you for that. 0fcom is of course the uk broadcast regulator. margaret, the question from priyanka is how if at all we can eliminate the bias from factual reporting? i think again being able -

to understand the difference between opinion and fact is critical, but also - being learning how to search for some support. for what somebody is saying or saying as fact. learning to always check your facts. one of the glorious things that ijust love is the fact _ that we can search now so easily, - and there are so many things we have taken as truism. i'm hearing an academic saying the surgeon general said in 1968 we can close the book— on infectious diseases. he never said it. if you search, you actually find that it's fascinating _ to if he will have repeated that line and made this a truth - that is not a truth. so we are in an age we've got the ability to check our facts, | i would also look at sources that give you the particularly- land the media several opinions, | so you were hearing from people who don't agree with. you have a better chance of facts

coming when you were given the opportunity to _ hear from all sides. absolutely, nick pickles. i think this is a good example about what the people clear—cut context, will help build trust and one of biggest challenges is newspapers have gone online, the structure of how you are reading a newspaper and the opinion pieces being in a physically different section to news pieces, we have lost that. so i think transparency of the content will build trust and i think that also applies to transparency around the contributors themselves. i think there is long—running debate of people not appreciating that someone giving a comment might have been a political candidate or maybe has received funding from the organisation. so that transparency will build trust and at twitter, for example, we've introduced these labels that we apply on state—run media. people can see if they're engaging with media that is editorially controlled by government, and that kind of extra context means the people can still access information but they also

have a little bit more context. but a big part of this still goes back to media responsibility during the us election, we had a pretty strange case where the opinion page of a paper was being debunked by its own news pages because an opinion piece was so out there on questions of voter fraud. so a big part of this as well is making sure the people who are given the opportunity to share their opinions to opinion pages are also subject to a high standard and high scrutiny by the media organisations themselves. thank you. zeynep tufekci, your fellow columnists in america fear that the american attachment to the idea of news is disintegrating and what we have now is instead is an obsession with narrative. do you think that priyanka is right to hope that we can eliminate the bias from facts? the reality is i think there is an enormous amount of demand for intelligent, complicated explanations that are not being filled. i don't mean to say that i'm the only one doing it. there's a lot of great stuff.

but two of my most popular articles last year, one was about ventilation, aerosol transmission and what it means that i published in july of 2020, and the other was about over dispersion, which is how the transmission is concentrated in a few superspreading events and most people don't transmit. these are very basic important facts about this particular pathogen. and they are both 5000—6000 words, they dive into the science, they go against the grain of what everybody will tell you is popular. so i feel like what we need to do is get beyond the simplistic, is this opinion or fact and say we're going to make a case and we are just to justify it and do the work and i trust you to give as much information as you want and we are going to link to everything else. so this is like what conspiracy theories do but either bad faith

or a wrong way and like what eliot was talking about with we are going win that argument with justifying someone saying we are saying what we are saying rather than... i can see on the side of facts with somebody else will get up and say i'm a scientist and that does not get us out of the problem for any position you want, i will find you an expert with excellent credentials who will make that point. saying istening to the scientists does not solve the problem because they also don't... we need to sort of get beyond who has got facts and say justify what your position is. thank you. priyanka, what are your thoughts on your own question? do you have any hope we can eliminate bias from reporting? i think from where i come from, what i feel is that there is lack. of sensitivity where people don't even realise that all— the information that they are getting is accurate. - we need to make, apart from media houses and the government - also need to hold individuals accountable to validate -

something before they go - on and share it for the masses, which is what i've seen a lot - happening during this pandemic. i think that's a wonderful and cheery note on which to end. thank you so much to our esteemed panel, the questioners who have discussed so many important issues and of course to you for watching wherever you are around the world. goodbye. hello. spring can throw all sorts of weather at us from one moment to the next, and it is going to be one of those weeks. we start off with some warmth building across the country, feels like early summer, though it will be very wet in north—west scotland. we see the week out, though, with you needing to dig your winter wardrobe back out because it will be

much colder as we head towards easter, and one or two may even see a little bit of snow. 0ut there at the moment, though, well, two things to consider. we have got these weather fronts which continue to bring rain across the north and west of the country. to the south of it, drawing in tropical air and south—westerly winds, blustery south—westerly winds. but it is that which kept temperatures up in the teens for many today. and we will keep things on the mild side for tonight. a little bit cooler with some clearer skies towards the south and east. some outbreaks of rain in northern england, north wales, the isle of man, but the wettest weather to the north and northern ireland and across the western highlands of scotland. but just look at the temperatures, just to the south of our weather front, 12s and 135, well above where they should be by day, never mind by night. so we go into monday on a mild note. still a bit blustery, particularly further north you are. rain in the highlands pushing its way northwards. could see some flooding here over the next few days as around a month's rain, if not more, falls. up in northern ireland, southern scotland later in the day, as well northern ireland, north wales. but lots of sunshine, the midlands, south wales, southern england and here, temperatures 20 degrees, fern effect, maybe 17 or 18 parts of scotland.

now, as we go into the evening, the rain stays there in the north—west of scotland, as it will do into tuesday. but with high pressure across the near continent, we are going to see a little shift in wind direction, coming in more of a southerly direction, which brings clearer skies after a bit of a misty start for some — england and wales, lots of sunshine. a bit more sunshine to southern scotland and northern ireland, too. but still raining in the north—west highlands and islands. here temperatures only around 9 or 10 degrees. but some summer warmth almost for england and wales. widely into the 20s, maybe 23 or 2a the high in south—east england. start to see some changes, then, mid week. high pressure builds in between us and iceland and that helps to push the weather front back southwards again. so, brightening up across the north of scotland, rain and cloud elsewhere, even a bit of hill snow, but not too much in the way of rain. a bit more cloud to northern england and north wales later, and temperatures drop here through the afternoon. but further south, 23 still the high compared to just seven or eight in the northern half of the country. and then, as we head in towards the end of the weekend, towards easter, the colder air is back for all. temperatures down on where we should be for the time of year. many start easter weekend dry, but there could be an chance

of wintry showers later. see you soon. this is bbc news. the headlines at four... more than 30 million people in the uk have now received their first covid vaccine dose, according to the latest government figures. with further easing of restrictions in england tomorrow, the culture secretary says the country's on target — he hopes the lifting of curbs will be "irreversible". at the moment, we are on track, so thanks to the work of the british people and the excellent vaccine roll—out, we are confident both in going ahead with the easings from tomorrow and the next stages. but the national medical director for the nhs in england warns people not to "squander the gains" made against coronavirus. the government says lorry drivers arriving in england from outside the uk will need to take a covid test within 48 hours and then one

every 72 hours afterwards.