to boost the us economy and fend off competition from china. mr biden is demanding huge investments in infrastructure, education and green technology. the plan, the biggest since the second world war, still needs congressional approval. belarus�*s leader has accused the west of trying to de—stabilise his nation. he made the commons on a visit to russia for talks with president putin as the fallout continues from last week's plane interception. the west said it was an act of air piracy. the european union's medicines regulator has approved the use of the pfizer— biontech coronavirus vaccine for children aged between twelve and fifteen. up to now, its use in the 27 member countries has only been allowed in those aged 16 and over. in theory this paves the way for a widening —— and those are the headlines. now on bbc news, it's

time for the media show. welcome. it's official, martin bashir used lies and deception to secure the biggest tv interview of all time. lord dyson's report into the whole affair raises questions about the governance of the bbc. in fact, the prime minister says the bbc needs to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. so, on today's media show, we are tackling this head—on. we are exporting the relationship between reporters and their editors. we are asking what tighter safeguards at the bbc will actually look and feel like. we are exploring the impact of this scandal onjournalism more broadly. let me introduce my guests, i've got richard tate, former editor in chief of itn. now a professor ofjournalism at cardiff diversity. dorothy byrne, former head of news and current affairs

affairs at channel four. david yelland, former editor of the sun and now runs a pr firm, kitchen table partners. john ware is a investigative reporter and fronted last week's panorama on martin bashir and the bbc. jane martinson is professor ofjournalism at city college. welcome to you all. jane, you have been writing about this for the guardian. how do you assess the scale of the reaction to this story? the scale of the reaction, i mean, you know, this is a devastating report for the bbc. it involved the royal family, it involved, you know, wrongdoing and, sort of, terrible mishandling of a wrongdoing 25 years ago — including numbers of the bbc ——of a wrongdoing 25 years ago — including members of the bbc who then went on to hold senior jobs, and, of course, which i am sure we will come on to talk about, a reporter

who subsequently left and then returned to the bbcjust five years ago. so, the reaction was obviously going to be huge. the timing is terrible for the bbc, and i would argue terrible for all of us who care about ethicaljournalism and public service broadcasting. the government has made no secret of wanting to, you know, look into the bbc. there have been lots of comments from, including the prime minister to other cabinet ministers, there is a psb review going on. the bbc itself has got a midterm charter review which should've just been about sort of relatively small issue of governance, and it looks like him if you listen to ministerial statements over the past few days, to be broadened out. we are going to get a new head of ofcom for so many reasons this is huge. i would argue, you know, such a shame when we actually need the bbc, we are talking on a day when the prime minister's former right—hand man has just said how terribly the government handled the covid pandemic last year. we need the bbc to be leading

their reporting on that. it's a huge issue that we are not dealing with the complaints of so many. i hear you. we have a lot to get there. i just briefly want a bit of context for this, because richard sharp, chairman of the bbc, spoke to us on monday. we've got tim davie, the dg, he was on the today programme on tuesday. they have both the announced further internal investigations. it's fair to say that the bbc is in crisis mode, but how does that crisis compare to bbc crisis of the past? oh, that... you could argue the bbc has had many crises, and i compared, when i wrote about this last week, i compared that they are different, but the jimmy sabol crisis, cliff richard, problems happen at the bbc when they believe in journalism where the end justifies the means. and that has no place in ethicaljournalism.

of course, we want to bbc to break stories, to do greatjournalism, but not when means are unethical, as it was found to be with this particular case. so i think there are questions for the bbc, and i think tim davie�*s interview in particular where he talked about two points that actually were not dealt with by dyson, the 2016 hiring. why an earth was martin bashir brought back given his history? and also the whistle—blowing factor. to me, the terrible point of this is the only person to truly suffer at the time was the freelance designer who was asked simply to mock—up a bank report. that is shocking to me. we will... the bbc should never allow that. we will unpick this in a bit, i want to zoom out and really focus on the relationship between reporters and their editors. i want to look at the methods that reporters use as well to gain trust from a source, from a potential interviewee.

martin bashir�*s editor was, of course, the late steve hewlett, who in his post—panorama career became founding presenter presenter of the media show. now, john, you are an investigative journalist. you have been in the panorama office, i was going to say forever, not quite forever, but you have been there long but you have been there long time. we are familiaryour work on screen. can you give us a sense of before you get to that point, before the cameras are rolling, what is the work and the ground work that has to be done? what are some of the tools that you use? well, it depends what sort of story it is. i mean, if it's against criminals or is about criminals or, you know, dishonest people, then subterfuge is authorised, but only on a very strict basis. obviously, in this case, martin bashir... john, we are just getting your hand knocking the desk, and i want to hear you. so, sorry. martin bashir had used some really deceitful subterfuge and, obviously, the princess was not a criminal, she was a young

and rather vulnerable woman. these days, if you want to do anything like that, it would be, ithink, a very closely monitored. i don't think it was in 1995. i think martin bashir didn't have a producer, to the extent that he didn't have any sort of supervision, and it was really steve hewlett, the editor, and obviously steve had a lot of other things to do as well. so, a producer wasn't brought in to the process until right at the last moment. literally days before the interview itself, and that was reallyjust to handle the sort of, technicalities than the actual production of the interview. so... that wouldn't happen today. things have shifted. in fact, can ask you, and again, this is in a historical context, when you are the editor of rhe sun in the 90s, how much did you know

——of the sun in the 90s, how much did you know about what your journalists were doing on a day—to—day basis and the tactics they were using? well, of course the answer to that is that i can't - possibly know that. i thought i knew quite a lot, and had a very good head i of news who i put in place - because i had known him a long, long time and i trusted him. i think pretty much - i knew what was going on. as an editor of any kind, - you never know where a reporter has got a story and how they have gone - about that story. but what i would say is that i think there is a certain- at the bbc in the case i of martin bashir, which wouldn't have happened, oddly and ironically, - in fleet street. i think fleet street - is much better, actually, as having suspicion - about its own reporters. i certainly was always asking questions of that kind. - but tell me this, if you had a particular reporter that was courting a source, was going out for meetings,

would you generally have known about the ins and outs of those meetings? i think so, yes. ithink, look, there is no doubt that this era, - the 90s, was- the wild west, right? it's complete different now. there is much more governance. the irony of this is _ that the governance changes which the government say. they want the bbc to adopt, they have already adopted. this is already in place. and it's the same in newspapers. . i mean, you know, partly. because all kinds of things and the decline of the power of those papers, the kind . of things that went on then would not go on now. - i also think it's important, perhaps, not to defend i martin bashir, i don't know. martin bashir, but i do always have sympathy with somebody where the entire world - turns against them, j and that is what has happened to martin bashir in the last few days. - it's important to remember that the culture than - was very different. i mean, you know, iwas at. the sun when i was in a very

junior position, i hasten - to add, when there was still editing, we had squidgy gate, which was the tape _ between princess diana - and james gilbey, which isjust a few years before this. there were all kinds of things going on at that time. - and also what is not, i you know, never really remembered is that, you know, i when the duke of cambridge made made his statement, - which i thought was slightly unwise, in fact, quite unwise, but understandable, - what he perhaps doesn't understand is that his i mother was using a number ofjournalists, including - andrew morton, as we know, but others as well, _ people close to his father, i close to people, and camilla, so stuart higgins, my. predecessor at the sun, had a lot of stories from that side of things, particularly. of camilla.

of course, and... so, either side were playing - that game, and so when she did what she did, the princess agreed to be interviewed, | it should be seen in - the context of a huge battle that was going on between those two sides. _ of course, and i think that's really useful. what i don't want to do is go down the path of everyone was doing it, because we know what martin bashir was doing. absolutely, - i'm not excusing it. i'm trying to put it in context. - of course, of course, and that's really important. dorothy, as a former head of news and current affairs at channel 4, how much would you expect your editors to know about what journalists were doing and what does that extend to? does it extend to, you know, do they know about their phone calls? do they know about the e—mails they are sending? well, with a story of the profile of this one, i would expect the editor and the producer to be across all the details. this wasn'tjust any other story, this was an exceptional and extraordinary story.

so i am assuming that steve hewlett — a very clever man — knew a lot about what's martin bashir was doing. he's not in a position now to tell us how much he did know, but he would know, definitely, you would know a lot of detail. richard, can i bring you in here, because i know you are wearing two hats for us today. i want to start off with you wearing your former editor in chief at itn hat. in that role, did you ever involve yourself in discussions between journalists and sources and interviewees? no, ididn't. and i think the itn system was based on delegating that responsibility to the editors of the different services, for the service for dorothy at channel 4, there is one for itv, there is one for 5. essentially, there is a lot of trust injournalism.

what happened with martin bashir was a very successful and disgraceful deception of his editor and of his management. and i think it's quite interesting that this was a story, dorothy is right, this is a story that had potential to go really badly wrong from the beginning. clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, i agree with the judgment about steve hewlett, he was a very good editor. he made the wrong call, which was he thought he could supervise it, the early stages of the project himself. by the end of the project, if you look at something like john bert's memoirs, half the bbc management is crawling all over it because, of course, issue was that they could transmit it, given that the chairman was married to the queen's lady in waiting? of course, there is a lot of knots in this story. david, i want to know from your perspective, you have spoken about your relationship with journalists that were working for you at the sun. did you ever get to a point

of turning down a story because there were question marks over how access had been gained? oh, yes. many times. well, more than five . times in five years, yet, well, more than five times in five years, yeah, - which is quite a few. without libeling anyone, can you kind of give us a notion of context? i think in editor... i think an editor... well, i will answer that by saying this, i think. an editor sets a culture. and, you know, you have to be prepared to be unpopular, - and i was very unpopular| within my own newsroom because i was quite - conservative after having had my fingers burned in the first year. - now, i knew steve hewlett very well, i wasn't a friend, - but i really liked him and got on well with him. _ but i do think it's important to say that the politics - within panorama have always been toxic. - everybody knows that. in fact, there are two big toxic institutions here, .

the royal family and panorama, and when the two clashed, - it all went wrong. i just... something went wrong - at panorama, which, you know, it doesn't surprise me. john, i just want to bring john in because you winced when david just said that the culture panorama is "toxic". you winced, why did you wince? well, "toxic", it was competitive, it was quite gossipy. i mean, that's, you know, in some ways, that's quite a healthy thing. there were a few toxic elements to it, i suppose, but i don't think, it's a different place, i don't go there very much these days, but they are all sort of freelancers. everyone has been sacked. laughing. orlaid off. but to the extent that i do go, it seems to be rather a sort of docile, actually, and i think all the venom, such as there was, has drained away. i don't mean now. so back, would you say it was toxic back then, john? well...

it was lively, you know, i don't know about toxic. lively and toxic. i don't know, it was fun! it was fun, 0k. so the reporter editor relationship, i appreciate that context, but we know that there were mechanisms in play here further up the bbc that failed to stop what happened from happening. richard, if i can come to you with your other hat on now, you were a bbc governor appointed in 200a. give us a sense of what that role was about, and at what stage of the bbc�*s journalism would you have got involved ? well, what happened in 1995 was under the old governance system. when i came in, the governors were on their way out, largely because they'd made a hash of the hatton affair, which is now a case of a story that went wrong. so we appointed, we were

appointed to run a new system of governance called the trust, and what happened there was that if there had been a complaint, it would be not judged only by the bbc's own internal staff, what was happening was the bbc were marking their own homework, essentially. the complaints were being held and investigated inside the bbc. the trustees were meant to be independent for the bbc. they were not executives. and we had an editorial standards committee and we employed outside investigators, it could be compliance experts, it could be media lawyers, they could be experienced former editors, with serious complaints, they would investigate those complaints. they would talk to the bbc, they would talk to the complainant, and they would give a report to us, and then we would decide what we thought about it, and the rule of the game was if the editorial standards

committee many said it was wrong, that was the end of the discussion. bbc had to do accept it. bbc staff didn't like that very much, i have to say. but the authority of the trust was that we could oblige the bbc to make an on—air apology post topic oblige them to change the way they were doing things, and it was a system that didn't work perfect. the trust had lots of other problems, and it was then shut down in 2016. richard, in fact, can i ask... in fact, that bit of system didn't work badly. if i can ask you this specifically post topic your knowledge of the bbc governance and the kind of various incarnations it's been through, was that in your mind any point where the processes in place would've stopped the diana panorama actually going out? would the processes have stopped? yes, i think they would. i think that... in the case of the trust, there was an editorial standards system run at the top of the bbc, which was chaired

by mark byford, which i think would have meant it had a problem like this begun to emerge, it might have been taking away from the line management. but i'm not... i have to say i'm not certain. i think the fundamental problem is that when things go this badly wrong, it's very hard for organisations to look after themselves. they need some sort of external intervention to see how things are really happening. i mean, i think, in a way, what's going on at present is a good example of how the news system is stronger. because what's going on now is, as i understand it, that the chairman has asked the new bbc boards editorial standards committee, which has a couple of very strong editorial figures on it, ian hargreaves and robbie gibb, they have asked them to look into things like how can the governance be improved? how can whistle—blowing be sorted out? those sorts of issues.

richard, if i can ask you for a brief response because i want to bring jane in in a second, this new oversight body, at what point do you think that new body will risk meddling in actualjournalism? is that a concern for you? yeah, there's a huge problem here, which is almost all of our systems are about post—transmission. they're about once something has gone wrong, how do you investigate it and put it right? and there's a real problem with intervening too early, because the danger is that a complaint can be an attempt to stop the programme going out. so, i don't think there's an easy solution to this at all. there's not an easy solution. jane, you're nodding. tell me what's your take on this. yeah, i would agree with that. and just on the previous thing about the reporter—editor, - we should point out, _ steve hewlett, the dyson report cleared steve hewlett, - said there wasn't evidence. and actually i think - to david's point as well, talking about the '90s - being the wild west, you know, you are saying that it's . different on fleet street, david, but you and i know that phone hacking, for example, i when there's a great story, a reporter comes in with i a great story, actually-

what happens, and it's exactly what happened here, is that lots of people in authority, i lots of people who should've l been the boss of martin bashir didn't want to ask questionsi because it was a great story. she did an amazing interview. he won awards. _ so, you know, and look at phone hacking. - i mean, how many editors defended themselves- by saying, "we never knew." so, anyway, iwould just like to sort of say that l i think that this is- a culture ofjournalism, that when there's a great - scoop, actually most people, there's a human desire not to ask the question. - which is where we get - to regulation, and richard's right, this is such. a difficult question.

you know, one of the scandals here was that it's taken so long for the truth to be admitted by the bbc. not actually for the truth to come out, because we've known the key points here. so, i've heard people call for some massive new regulatory framework, but i'm not sure that that is what we need. thank you. john, you're on the front line with this absolutely. is there a concern that

a new form of governance could end up meddling with your day—to—day work? well, i think it would be a travesty if it did. i mean, honestly, i'd rather weary, if i may say so, at these sort of armchair critics who opine about editorial values from the comfort of their offices like charles moore, who described... who said there was a systemic problem in bbc editorial. i mean, it is simply nonsense. let me explain the assault course you go through to get almost anything on air on panorama these days. quite apart from the wokery, you've got safeguarding trust, you've got safeguarding values, you've got safeguarding impartiality, you've got risk assessment forms, you've got... i mean, honest to god, you know, if you want to... and when it comes to the really important sort of subterfuge, like secret recording and so on, quite rightly, quite

rightly, it's a hell of a job to get authority for that. you have to fill in reams and reams and reams. i mean, this is so closely scrutinised. people like charles moore and this, what's his name, julian knight, they have no idea what it's actually like getting a programme together in the bbc. the one thing i would say i think the bbc is vulnerable on, and i don't want to sound complacent. i mean, ijust made a programme about martin bashir. you know, he was an extremely calculating... and you cannot underestimate the extent to which this was, you know, plotted out. i mean, really, in a very considered, calculating, psychologically targeted way, step— by—step. i mean, it was very, very insidious, and it... but, you know, where i think the bbc is vulnerable is i think it still tends to be too defensive when some criticism is aired.

and we saw that actually... it's interesting. for everyone listening, i've never seen all the panellists nodding so much. it's worth pointing out martin bashir did say, "obviously i regret what i did. it was wrong." he says it had no bearing on anything... that's absolutely not true. ..meaning diana going on to do the interview. we are out of time. to dorothy byrne, richard tait, jane martinson, david yelland and john ware, thank you all for your time today. you have been listening to the media show. i am mobeen azhar. have a great week ahead. hello there. friday was a bit of a disappointing day thanks to a weak weather front which brought more cloud around and also some light and patchy rain. but for the weekend, as high pressure builds in,

conditions will improve. we'll see increasing amounts of sunshine, and it will turn warmer as well. so, here's our building area of high pressure today. it'll be pushing these weather fronts out into the atlantic, so we'll see a lot of sunshine into the afternoon. because we will start off rather grey through this morning thanks to the legacy of yesterday's weather front. a little bit of drizzle here and there close to the west coast. but increasing amounts sunshine into the afternoon, and that could set off an isolated heavy shower here and there, particularly across the higher ground in the north. and there could be a little bit of low cloud and mist affecting north sea coasts. but with more sunshine around, we could make 19—20 degrees, maybe even warmer than that in one or two spots. now, as we head through saturday night, any showers will fade away. we'll see some low cloud and mist rolling into eastern scotland and eastern england, but further west, skies should remain clear. those temperatures will range from around 7—11 degrees. so, on into sunday, then, our big area of high pressure's dominating the scene, slowly pushing out into the north sea. that's going to bring a lot of dry weather around. it will start quite grey

and cool across eastern scotland and eastern england, but that low cloud and mist will burn back to the coast thanks to the strong late may sunshine. many places will be dry with widespread sunshine around, so it's going to be warmer. temperatures reaching 22 degrees there for glasgow, 21 or 22 or 23 degrees in parts of england and wales. now, as we head on into bank holiday monday, our area of high pressure will be out in the north sea, and that's going to draw some warm air up from the south or the south—east off the near continent. so, combine that with the strong late may sunshine, it's going to feel even warmer. 23, 2a, maybe even 25 degrees somewhere, so that will be challenging the warmest day of the year so far, which was set back in late march. tuesday, we do it all again. south—southeasterly winds, plenty of sunshine around. it's going to be another very warm day. a bit of fairweather cloud bubbling up into the afternoon. those temperatures ranging from low to mid—20s celsius. always a little bit fresher along from southern and eastern coasts.

this is bbc news. i'm ben boulos. our top stories: the 6 trillion dollar plan. president biden pushes the biggest spending programme since world war two — to reboot the us economy. belarus's leader accuses the west of trying to destablise his country. he's met president putin as tensions mount over last week's plane diversion. india's hidden death toll. covid is killing thousands every day but the figures show only a fraction of the tragedy. we've been told that 26 people have died here with symptoms of covid—19 in the past month, but none of them were actually tested. that means they're not included in india's official death toll from the virus.

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