at wembley in their eagerly anticipated group game at euro 2020. it was the first contest between football's oldest rivals at a major tournament since euro 96. the stalemate still leaves both sides still able to qualify for the next round. polls have closed in iran's presidental election, to choose a leader to succeed hassan rouhani —— who's not allowed to serve for a third term. in a highly controlled contest —— almost all those allowed to run were regarded as hardliners. the conservative cleric, ebrahim raisi is expected to win. ajudge in brussels has rejected a legal attempt by the eu to force the drugs firm astazeneca to provide it with 120 million doses of its coronvirus vaccine, by the end ofjune. the court instead ordered the company to deliver just over eighty million doses by september. now on bbc news —

the media show. hello, we are talking radio today. the biggest leaders are fa ce—to —fa ce the biggest leaders are face—to—face with meetings this week. these are some the most intensely scrutinised meetings you can imagine. and you will have to imagine because none of the press were allowed in the room. how easy is it for journalists who specialise in diplomacy to sort fact from spin. to the politicians even want them there on this of course it's to snap them with those ridiculous family photos was of an introduction to wonderful panel of guests. diplomatic editor at the guardian and the correspondent for the irish times. senior france correspondent and

correspondent at politico and steve is the pulitzer prize—winning journalist and chief diplomatic correspondent at the new york times. stephen, you have been covering this week's international diplomacy from your base in brussels. tell us, are you the only journalist less —— left in the city? -- left in the city? part of the problem _ -- left in the city? part of the problem is _ -- left in the city? part of the problem is that - -- left in the city? part of i the problem is that covid-19 the problem is that covid—i9 has made it very hard to travel and if you want to go bouncing around, you have to have a separate news for all of the tests and you have to worry about the quarantine. you have enough people on the white house playing and so we have someone to cover moscow covered geneva and i was here in brussels. there are still some people here, yes.— people here, yes. naomi, you managed _ people here, yes. naomi, you managed to — people here, yes. naomi, you managed to get _ people here, yes. naomi, you managed to get some - people here, yes. naomi, you managed to get some of - people here, yes. naomi, you managed to get some of the l managed to get some of the summits? in managed to get some of the summits?— managed to get some of the summits? ., ., summits? in general, over the ast summits? in general, over the past year— summits? in general, over the past year the _ summits? in general, over the past year the people _ summits? in general, over the past year the people have - summits? in general, over the|

past year the people have been remote — past year the people have been remote and they reduce the contact _ remote and they reduce the contact between journalists and the leadership and things like the leadership and things like the delegations that countries are allowed to bring with them. in general, overthe past year most of the events in brussels have been remote and they really reduce the contact between genetics and top leadership and also things like the dedication that countries are not to bring with them. it has been a bit different rather than being gathered together in press rooms and press facilities where everybody has got their laptops and so on of the summits are in your own apartment

covering it from your laptop and coordinating over the phone with people. and sometimes press conferences and so on will resume or it dipping in on live streams and it's quite a different experience. i think there's pros and cons to both. yes. i know you are in cornwall for the g7 but where you now? am i back in paris, god. got back home. after a long few days on the road and very little sleep. . patrick, you might as well i hear? i took the 19 hour train journey to cornwall and and you sit in a press room which is a more than 15 minute drive from where the actual leaders are meeting. so you are very much one step removed but i agree that it's been a frustrating year for us and i was hoping maybe using the spectacle to go to tehran for the iran presidential elections and then it became too complicated with covid—i9 codes and timelines so it's been a frustrating time. also with me today is tom, media editor at the economist and tom, let's start with you. and that the peak media story of the week, the launch of bgbb was, i am sure you have been watching it. they said it was going to affect appointment to view television. what have you made of it so far? it's interesting, and more used to writing stories about these

organisations going to bankrupt and having to affect families that new ones starting so it makes an exchange to have new linear tv channel. i think so far, the quantity may be a bit uneven. they have got some experience janice by engineer and some of this experience and the budget they have is very well. —— andrew neil. they are planning to spend 20, 20 £5 million a year which would sustain the bbc for two or three days. so people have been seeing it looks to be cheap in places and it is cheap but it's created a big buzz and they might be happy with that. we have also seen some companies pull their advertising from the channel. what is the general reaction? i think we have to wait a few weeks. the first week you will see teething problems that they have had and you will see more people tuning in then they would in future weeks just to get a sense of what it's like. let's wait and see. i think the advertising

thing is potentially going to be a problem for them. there have been lots of comparisons with fox news in the advertising thing is potentially going to be a problem for them. there have been lots of comparisons with fox news interstates which is very commercially successful but fox makes most of its money in the piece buy charging cable networks carrying the channel. tv news is distributed free so it relies entirely on advertising for its income. and so if appetisers start to lose interest and that will be a big problem. this week a parade of bbc director general appeared at the senate committee. they were being grilled on myjanice martin bashir was not fired back in 1997 when he was found to have lied about making documents and they were asked about why he was rehired by the bbc in 2016. is the bbc is able to put this issue to one side and focus on different big challenges ahead? i hope so. this week it was kind of more of the same. it was more mp5 getting a chance to meet on the bbc which much on his way to bbc to quibble over this story which was a hideous blunder.

but yes, watching it i felt there are other things going on. i think when people look back in the future at this year and last year it was the year when they the biggest hollywood studio came into direct competition with the bbc through disney plus. and i think there are big questions about what the role it is for public broadcasting like the bbc in this world, it is completely new world of globalised streaming and people will look back and wonder why it was that parliament in the press are spending so much of that time talking about the princess diana interviewed by whether or not the bbc should have the brakes —— the lyrics or whatever the latest culture were is. i hope he can move on to other stuff soon. let us turn back to the world of diplomacy. it's been a mammoth fortnight of summits and presidential meetings. but despite the masses of photos, this sort of action

always takes place away from the eyes of the press. so, steve and give me the nuts and bolts of yourjob to the new york times. how do you find out what's happened when you are stuck on the other side of the door? you often find out by not sitting around at the summit itself but sitting around and phoning people and a great advantage of the mobile phone is it's revolutionised the diplomatic reporting. in the old days, you could not reach people and now you can reach them even when they're in actual meeting. so that's a big help. you are looking for interlocutors and you're looking for the people who have been briefed by the people who are in the room. and that takes a lot of preplanning and it takes a lot of relationships and it takes building up trust. it's not something you can do in nh. and not do well, you can look at the communique and the parse them out and he was about who is making a blunder and who's doing well and who's speaking property and what the boss says and the president or the prime minister, this matters. but the real heart of these

things is actually in the men and women who are preparing and briefing the bosses and those are the people that you need to get a hold of. i like that. the greyer people in the room are the least important. if the ones outside that know what's going to happen first. yes, and sometimes they'll even tell you. so talking about telling people, naomi, you speak to people who have their own agenda all the time. there is a lot of spin around this stuff. you hear phrases like a robust exchange of views or they had a frank discussion, how do you cut through that when you went there? how do you get to the actual truth of it? a lot of those phrases that are familiar are l codes for what happens. so frank exchange of views means it was a bit testy. and i think like steve saidl it was the really important work goes him in the monthsj and years before the meeting work goes in the months - and years before the meeting

actually happens. at the moment when the news breaks that is not the time - when someone who does not know you is going to answer a call- or a text, so you have to have those existing relationships. in place long before - and also those relationships of trust and understanding about where those people | are coming from and what their angle is and that will help - you to evaluate i what you find out. being physically present l or as close to the meeting as possible is useful- for things like picking up the atmosphere and if a worried i official went out back and tell. official went out back and that can tell you a lot. and then also what's really important about it is - when you do have access to the legionaries havingj the opportunity to ask them . questions because sometimes of hesitation and inability- to answer a question i'm just catching them off guard will tell an awful lot - about what happened as well. and the issue with the summits going more behind closed - doors during covid—19 - is that the more controlled circumstances and the -

environment is about the access ofjournalists, the more pressure that can be - put on genetics to play. and restricted the number and just chose six or something like that and those generalists are under pressure to ask- questions that are friendly so there asked again. - and it's a really noxious . dynamic and it's important to have broad access. like i say, it's really— important and it is and is done away from the location and is done remotely. on the phone to people and that's where a lot i of the really good digging into sources and original stuff is. l i'm glad you mentioned that. we'll touch on that later. you say a lot of work goes into the months and months before that. stephen, is being a diplomatic agenda list a bit like being an actual diplomat? how do you cultivate sources on both sides? in a way, you actually have more agency and your area of responsibility is wider and it's actually

you have more ability to move in and out and you probably have more access to a diplomatic bosses than the actual diplomat still. now part of a piece the power of our institution. i work for a very important newspaper, so everyone wants to spin us in a certain way. that is interesting. essentially, these people are not your friends but you are having to cultivate a very trusting relationship with them. you have won a pulitzer prize for your work on russia. how easy did you find that finding sources within the kremlin? i was in russia at a very nice time. i went with margaret thatcher in 85 when gorbachev came to power but i lived there for the new york times for the collapse of the soviet union and the first four years in the place is really up and you could talk to people and it's

much harder now. i think it's really difficult now but then you could it's almost like covering palestine. people would talk to you and they'd use their names and they are not worried about you and now a much harsher regime and talking tojournalists can have worse consequences. i think it's much harder now than it was then. i feel very lucky to have been able to wonder the former soviet union when it was so chaotic and in some ways free. talking about wandering the world and cultivating sources, patrick both travelled down to the g7 summit in cornwall but patrick, how close they do actually get how close did you actually get to the action? if you mean by the action, i the actual room in which they

the seven leaders . were meeting, i say earlier roughly 55 i minutes drive away. so you're watching quite a lot on television - and you are trying to pick up moods from the very short i slots of camera you get for a bilateral meeting i or something like that. so, you are a long way away. but you have to use the phone and you have to contact people who are in a large number- of different delegations. on sunday, which was a car crash of means. when communique comesl out which is incredibly long and you get every metre. having a press conference almost simultaneously and you have an hour and a half to digest the and try and make i sense of it and that's i when they will be a lot of hanging about and suddenlyj you have to move very quickly. that's true with a lot - ofjournalists hanging around. you have to make very quickjudgements. - still worth going and still worth turning up? yes, i think so.

it's going to get better. this was pretty well the first . physical summit we had of any stature and it was really about the idea of a - multilateralism is back. and agendas about what we do about china and how is boris. doing and how we are all getting on. - sorry, how mrjohnson was doing and etc- but the kernel of a ton is that this was the first physical summit and this i was the arrival ofjoe biden in europe and this is - the return of multilateralism after trump. that's really what this event was about. - the fact that it was happening. naomi and stephen touched upon this earlier that this groundwork and preparation that goes into the months before estimate like this, but how muchjen nathan can you actually do once you right here? you are very sensitive ask questions and find out answers.

you can actually do a lot of genetics and but it also you can actually do a lot ofjournalism but it also means you have to be hustling the entire time. you also need to be harassing sometimes some of dead people that you know. for example, i did get to go to the site where the leaders were meeting which was as patrick was saying 55 minutes drive away but that's because i had been talking to the french presidency folks for days about wanting to be there at the top of the bilateral meeting between president macron and president biden and those spots are very scarce scarce and there's a lot of competition to get one of them. i didn't get that spot. we were about four on the french side and who perhaps don't understand, why do you want to be there? it's important to be there to see for yourself the body language, to pick up on some things that perhaps are not on camera, especially for such

an important first meeting. it's the first time that president macron and president biden were meeting and also when you find that he get there you get maybe a couple of minutes with one of the important advisers who is going to be basically the person who is to your questions and it's good for them to see you and it's good for you to say hello so you have to do that. and then you spend a lot of time and lots of frustration and i have to sayjust in terms of this g7 if i may, this was supposed to be and this is supposed to be the meeting of the richest democracies in the world and are busy a democracy the role of genetics and are busy a democracy the role ofjournalists and access to information is extremely important. i thought it was quite a bizarre decision on the side of the british hosts to decide to basically park the journalists so far away that we were cut

off from the normal accessory should be getting. he did not seem like the best example or message to be sending. it does, we'll come back to that in a second, because i think we have got a clip of the meeting you're talking about betweenjoe biden and micron regular trying and macron regular trying to ask question at the end of a photo opportunity. let's play it now. provide the backbone and support for nato and so we were very supportive. thank you. so, that is with the us official telling you to move on and shooing you away. you had to have very pushy elbows to get there in the beginning right? it's interesting because i've always been told that i have a voice that carries and you could kind of hear my voice, and i'm the person speaking in french because i was trying to get emmanuel macron to respond to borisjohnson coming out with this protocol and he could not hear me.

he knows me and we usually make eye contact and i was counting on that and the american pool of reporters were just all screaming at the same time to getjoe biden to respond and yes, it is like one line out us and dropped 19 out of emmanuel macron saying yes, america is back and of course we were ushered out and quickly and actually the various said well done, you guys are very tenacious. how stage—managed is something like the g7 summit? when it comes to the bilaterals, it is stage—managed by the people who run it but once we are in front of them you can hear that was not stage—managed, they expected us to be shouting questions but we will do our best to impose a q&a and most of the time, we can't.

but they also show you away a lot, they don't give you the space to ask those questions. a part of the game and part of the relationship. we are not but even if you were staying at the beginning, we are not friends, we have a working relationship and sometimes it's a relationship that gets to be quite difficult but that's our job. we ask questions and we are free to respond or not. patrick, there is a bit of controversy about boris johnson's final press conference but some people questioning why only eight journalists were allowed into the press briefing. did the guardian have someone there? we did, and my colleague went and she left at ten in the morning and she spent a good bit of time on the road and think she was in a holding pen for a while and then she was in the room where the press conference was to be held and she was given the very last question at the end. and he took about eight or so questions. i remember 20 and i think he did allow for an genetics because they started

to complain that they had not been asked which was ridiculous and the problem is every country has its own agenda. so, everyone wanted in the uk press pack, wanted to ask about what was happening over covid—19 because it was going to be in the announcement coming up and they are trying to tease something about that or they're trying to get into this story around sausages, many people dying outside, a police car going by, outside, a police car going by. anyway, so there's always been different agendas and he finally did allow foreign journalists to ask some broader questions. but these no, joe biden took a press conference and managed to confuse libya and syria and it confused me in

the process as to why he's suddenly take an interest in libya. so it would be a teryl austin 25 minutes to start with and then about an hour and 15 minute question and we would be taking questions from anywhere around the floor. it's very open. but we are in this covid—19 period and journalists collectivity have to make sure out of it and be don't let politicians use the link out to try and permanently change the access we have. is itjust covid—i9 or is it a precedent for shutting down access and, you raise your hand. what do you want to say? i just want to say one thing. this was supposed to be on the world stage after brexit and the fact that the host prime minister decided to only allow journalists who were based in london. so, evening those that still work for international media

are people who are based in london and the fact that they decided to restrict it that way really makes me wonder about what does global briton look like and is that the right way to do it? i remember two years ago that emmanuel macron host that he spent an hour answering questions and there were people in that room was packed and they were journalists from all over the world has one that should in that situation and that's one thing that really is puzzling to me about this g7. on your question about whether they are using covid—i9 as an excuse to keep us at bay? yes, 100%. that has been the case for a year now and it's been extremely difficult and covid—i9 is like a godsend for officials who don't really want to talk to the media to say, well, i can't meet you because covid—i9 and actually there are different ways to get around it. there are encrypted apps that people can use if they want to talk to you and as patrick was saying i think it would be very important for us journalists to hold their feet to the fire and make sure we go

back to the way we used to operate before covid—i9. zoom press conferences are a scandal and a nightmare and brussels in particular uses them to make sure that you can't follow—up a question. they will meet and be able to talk at you and they will take three questions and you can't follow it up, it's really annoying and it really needs to stop because i think degrading for all of us and exploit and i am not sure they understand this, it's counterproductive. let's have a look at some of those policies that came out from that summit. media editor for the economist, let me bring you in here. they g7 leaders put out a statement that they said they agreed to some reforms to take on the tech giants. the role of silicon valley

is something we talk about a lot, are we going to see the g7 nations taking on the might of facebook or google? i think maybe up to a point. the main thing referring to is this tax proposal. and i think that's about more than just the tech firms. - that's an attempt to try and get all multinationals to try| and pay the tax and i think. that's something that's been brewing for some time - and you can trace that back to the financial crisis and - since then, people have been wondering if there is more that can be done and it was - earlier this year they said i america did not want them to race to the bottom and i think this is - the conclusion of that. it goes broader than tech. it's all multinationals - which had been using tax laws to avoid paying tax at all. i think more broadly, there is a bit more i of a willingness and eagerness to take on some _ of these tech firms. we saw last year during the election that both . republicans and democrats were criticising social- networks about the questionj

of free speech from opposite points of view and they have to try and manage this now. j stephen, are we starting to get a sense of what they are expecting in terms of silicon valleyjames? of silicon valley giants? i think they are but he's also a controlling person to. at least he's having them, trump did not have them, so nowjoe biden is having them every day which is good but his proposal of a minimum corporate tax is very popular and very progressive and very unusual and i think people should take it quite seriously. that's it for today. thank you to all my guests. europe correspondent for the irish times, chief diplomatic correspondence at the new york times, senior friends correspondent of political and media editor

senior french correspondent of politico and media editor at the economist. the media show will be back next week. thank you for listening. hello there. some parts of southern england had a whole month's worth of rain injust21i hours on friday. but, the area of low pressure responsible is now clearing away eastwards and leaving us between what the systems for saturday and that means a fair amount of dry weather and there will be quite a lot of cloud around in places but equally some sunny spells. showers are likely to pop up through the day around scotland and this can be heavy and there will be some more from the channel islands and southern counties of england through the afternoon. the highest temperatures are likely to be found across parts of wales and northwest england up to around 21 degrees. through saturday night, cloud and showers,

longer spells of rain around england and wales. more than likely to hang on in the way of dry weather and overnight temperatures between nine and ia degrees. and during sunday, we will see some outbreaks of rain in places at times. but it's not going to be raining all the time. there will be some dry weather too. that is all for me. goodbye for now. bye for now.

this is bbc news. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: voting ends in iran's presidential election to choose a successor to hassan rouhani, but how much choice do iranians really have? both sides claim victory as the eu and astrazeneca face each other in court over the supply of vaccines to europe. more trouble at the golden globes as two members of the body that organise the awards quit, calling the organisation "toxic". one of the most anticipated matches of euro 2020 so far ends in a goalless draw as england face scotland at wembley stadium.