this is bbc news. the headlines... emmanuel macron and marine le pen cast their votes —

as france heads to the polls in the final round of the country's presidential election. japan says 10 people have died off the northern island of hokkaido after a sightseeing boat went missing on saturday. as russia's war on ukraine enters its third month — us secretary of state antony blinken is expected in kyiv — the first top us offical to visit since the invasion. the row over lockdown party breaches in downing street continue. a conservative minster says removing boris johnson from office would lead to "instability". now on bbc news, the media show — piers morgan returns. ros atkins interviews piers morgan after signing for rupert murdoch's new talktv channel. hello, and welcome to the media show.

our guest today is the star signing of rupert murdoch's new talktv network. it's piers morgan, of course. and he won'tjust have a show in the uk, it will also be streamed on fox nation in the us, it will be broadcast on sky news australia. as well as that, there is a column in the sun, in the new york post, and there is a book deal with harpercollins, too. all of which is owned by rupert murdoch, all of which is a significant bet on one man grabbing the world's attention. let's hear why he thinks that bet is worth making. piers morgan, thank you for coming on the show. how does that happen, how does a deal get thrashed out? it was fortuitous, really. the whole good morning britain blow—up with the meghan markle thing, and the free speech debate, it was all raging in the uk, predominantly, around the world but predominantly in the uk. and rupert happened to be in the uk that summer, and he watched it all go down. and i think they had been toying with whether to do a new network,

and i think he felt that if i was now available, that it was worth having a go. and so they had to get me, and i had a few suitors, as i think has been well documented. and as soon as rupert came knocking with his company, with the global tentacles it has and the ability for me to do, as you said in your intro, to do columns, to do books, to do crime documentaries i have been doing as well, you know, it seemed to me an irresistible chance to go back and work for my first big mentor, and also to do all of the things that i love doing under the umbrella of one company. so, irresistible, but you had other suitors and i am sure you negotiated hard. i'm just interested, how does that work? do you sit down with rupert murdoch at a table and go, well, all right, i will take this much for doing this, or if you throw this in, i will give you, i will take a bit more? how does it... or are your lawyers doing that? i had representatives acting on my behalf, but we had a few conversations. and i think that we were basically in agreement that the kind of show that i was proposing fitted very well with what he wanted

for the wider network of talktv. it is a show that defends free speech, it is a show that i think will uphold the pillars of democracy in a time when society is, i think, under more threat to free speech and freedom of expression than i have known it in my lifetime. and you have been very critical of the way that you had to leave itv, but before that blow—up, as you called it, did you have any pressure from itv, previous to that famous walk—out, where you felt you couldn't say what you wanted to? no. in fact, the sadness for me about it, other than i was loving doing the show, and we were breaking ratings records left, right, and centre, including on the last day. i know you don't want to hear this but we finally beat the bbc, which they told me that was a hill we would never climb. so, i felt the show was on fire, it was doing exactly what we set out to do, which was me leading with very strident opinions, susannah reid, my co—presenter having her strong opinions, and creating a national debate about whatever the issues may be.

the sadness for me was that itv had always been unbelievably strong in protecting my right to express my honestly held opinions, right to the end, and suddenly they lost their bottle. hold on a minute, itv�*s chief executive says they defended you vigorously, and there was no way we wouldn't be absolutely notjust endorsing but championing freedom of speech and freedom of expression. well, why am i sitting here doing another show then? well, you chose to leave, says itv. well, i chose to leave because it turned out, they didn't tell me this at the time, it turned out meghan markle had written to dame carolyn the night before i was invited to apologise or leave, demanding my head on a plate. i was told, either you issue a public apology for effectively disbelieving meghan markle, because i had disbelieved what she told oprah winfrey, or i had to give up the show which i loved. so, if itv want to try and play semantics about this, let me be very clear, that is what happened. and what they didn't tell me, and which would have been interesting to me as part of the general debate, they didn't tell me meghan markle had personally contacted dame carolyn, and i believe,

from what i was told, used phrases like, "we're both women, and we're both mothers." i mean, as if that had something to do with it. so, i felt that the way that i was handled at the end was a shame, given how supportive itv had previously been. well, they say they didn't want you to leave and they say that they defended your right to free speech. well, hang on. they didn't. let's be clear. if they defended my right to free speech, then i wouldn't have been asked to apologise or leave myjob. ofcom then later came back and defended my right to free speech. but ofcom also said, with reference to some of your statements about not believing that meghan markle had had suicidal thoughts, they said, ofcom, "we were particularly concerned about mr morgan's approach to such an important and serious issue, and his apparent disregard for the seriousness of anyone expressing suicidal thoughts," we also heard from the charity mind, it was disappointed and concerned, and that people, when they share this, need to be treated with dignity, respect, and empathy. i mean, presumably, you will agree you didn't treat meghan markle

with respect in that moment. ijust find her, i'm afraid, not a witness that i find credible. and my point that i made very forcibly on the show was if, as she claimed, she went to two senior members of the royal household and told them she was suicidal, and they said, as she put it, that she couldn't get any help because it would be bad for the brand, let's have the names of those people and they should be fired. but here we are, over a year later, there isn't a shred of evidence to support that claim. nor is there a shred of evidence to support either of the two racism claims. but you could have expressed doubts about meghan markle and what she was saying in a way that was more respectful of the broader issues of people having suicidal thoughts, which ofcom and perhaps even more relevantly a leading mental health charities say they're concerned about. you don't have any regrets about that? i am entitled to my opinion and i have no desire to diminish the importance of an issue like suicide or serious mental health or racism or any of the other issues that she touched

on in the oprah interview. but as a journalist, every instinct in me was, is it true? and i reached the conclusion pretty quickly that it wasn't. now, if she was to produce evidence that supported her allegations and we're still waiting, then i may revise my position and i might be more sensitive but i am afraid, when i watched it, ifelt she was being an actress, spinning yarn after yarn to cause enormous damage to our royal family and the institution of the monarchy. and i wasn't going to have it. and now you have a different show, you are not on itv,

you are on rupert murdoch's talktv, piers morgan uncensored — you are rehearsing at the moment, i assume. i noticed earlier you said it was to un—cancel those who have been cancelled. so who are we going to hear from that cannot get in the media elsewhere? cancel culture issue is not about... who are you getting on? i am not going to tell you who. i am not going to tell you who my guests are. who is failing to get access to high—profile media that you would like to have on your programme? i would love to getjk rowling on, for example, the author who has been appallingly vilified, and there's been a massive attempt to cancel her, it has been unsuccessful because she is extremely wealthy and can look after herself. but the abuse that has been meted out to her, for effectively defending women's rights, has been a complete disgrace. you are not suggesting thatjk rowling wouldn't get on the mainstream media? but she had a lunch with women recently, many of them who have been cancelled... university professors, and so on.

the university professor is kathleen stott, we can discuss how she was treated at her university, but in the context of the media... but that is the wrong context. let me clarify what i mean by cancel culture. it is not about whether they can get interviews, it's about whether people like kathleen stott lose theirjobs for holding an honest opinion. is that right in a democratic society? and the answer to that is yes. althouthk rowling is wealthy enough to sustain the barrage, we have to ask ourselves is this what we want in a democracy? do we want to see university professors who hold honest views, which in my view are not remotely contentious, do we want to see them driven out of theirjobs by a bunch of students? but there are limits to free speech, mainly around, i have a quote of yours here, "you shouldn't be cancelled for having an opinion, unless you are genuinely spewing hateful, bigoted stuff." on your programme, where is a line drawn? would you have guests who suggest vaccines against covid—i9 don't work? yeah, because i would want to expose that thought process which i think

has been extremely dangerous, i would want to expose them with facts, i would want to let these people who, by the way, there are a lot of people who think this, and they have been encouraged to think it by nonsense on the internet — i would want to hear where they heard it, why they believe it, and then damn them with facts. that's actually how a democracy should function. if you let these kind of debates purely operate online, that is where the trouble starts. i do believe in shining a light on some of these views like that. but would i get someone on who preached racial hatred towards people and wanted to cause violent conduct towards any minority group? no, i wouldn't. so there are obvious limitations to me to where free speech would lead. in america, you can't run into theatres and shout "fire", for example. we know there are logical limits to this. let's take the drug ivermectin, which we are well aware of, which some people have been

using as a treatment for covid, despite there not being mass studies to back it up, would you put them on air to challenge? yes, joe rogan did that and it was a really interesting debate about which of these theories, which have huge followings now around the world, during the pandemic, which of them have any merit or not. at which point does it become an irresponsible act? i think a lot of people would criticise the bbc for refusing to ever go down these roads of debate because they believe they have the truth. and yet we know in the pandemic that scientists have changed their own minds many times, whether it be about the efficacy of masks, whether it be about the ability of vaccines to prevent transmission. i myself have changed my view about coronavirus many times in this pandemic. but isn't the concern aboutjoe rogan in the case

of misinformation about covid, but more broadly, that if those pieces of information which aren't factually true are given a platform, and are not adequately challenged, they then just get the platform without any of the downside? but i intend to challenge them from a position of fact and truth. your programme is to going to be not just on talktv. your programme is also going to be on sky news australia and fox nation, the sister network of fox news. do you think sky news australia and fox news always counter claims, theories...? i'm not here to speak for them. you'd have to ask them. i'm responsible for my show and i have had no pressure from any of my various employers to have any stance about anything — i can only speak for my show. that would be like getting you to defend every show at the bbc, every presenter on the bbc — i think that is a ridiculous thing for me to do. what i would defend is that all of them, in my opinion, have a right to their opinions. and it's right that people like you and others

challenge those opinions. but don't we get into a problematic space? you have talked about the importance of your show to democracy, upholding certain values, but doesn't democracy in some ways rest on us all having facts, on us all having good information? so on fox nation, tucker carlson also has a programme, a documentary series which floated the idea that the storming of the capitol was potentially an insidejob organised by the fbi and police insiders. no evidence was offered, is that a helpful contribution? i don't agree with him about that. so at what point do you get to the stage where someone is doing something that you don't agree with but "i don't know...?" i'm sure i can find a 100 people at the bbc who say things that are abhorrent. i can ask you if you are responsible or accountable for everything that your colleagues say? in tucker carlson's case, i watch his show... you go on his show. igoon i go on his show. i like his show, i agree with 75%

of the stuff he says. last time i checked, that's fine. in a democracy, you are allowed to not agree with people that you work with. tucker, he and i have had spirited debates about gun control in america, he has a very strong view about guns and i have an equally different strong view about guns. if you're saying i can only go and work somewhere and i can already check that i agree with every view, that is what my show is going to be tackling. coming back to my point. what i want to understand is not that you should not go onto a network with someone you don't agree with, no—one is suggesting that, what i'm trying to understand is that you are positioning your programme as part of a reassertion of what democratic society should have, free speech, and yet you are going to work, particularly with reference to fox, with a network with a long track record of saying things that are not rooted in fact.

i would think that would make you... do you feel as uncomfortable about the time that i spend at cnn, given the way cnn has gone the last few years? given their obsession with russian collusion? i can throw it back and say cnn is the bbc of the states, in many ways, it's a network people look at and say everything they say must be truthful and factual. for two years, they spun old baloney about donald trump being in cahoots with the russians to fix the 2016 election — it turned out to be nonsense. i understand why they went down that road, i think they were chasing ratings with trump, but i look at that and i think, well, i didn't support that either, i thought that was wrong. but you're not going to work for cnn. my point is that all these networks get things wrong, all of these networks have anchors and presenters i don't agree with. no—one at fox exactly to go

in with my slightly liberal tendencies and suddenly be a hardcore right wing conservative. you keep flipping from talking about facts to talk about opinions, is there no dividing line for you on that? i'm not asking you about your opinions. everyone is entitled to an opinion, what they are not entitled to do is invent facts. that's my point. and that's what i will be defending on my show. so you don't have a concern with this. james murdoch, rupert murdoch's son, said for a great news organisation, the mission should be to introduce fact, to disperse doubt, not to sow doubt. he is entitled to his opinion. everybody is. but you don't share those concerns, that there are some...? i don't share your concerns, no, i am very happy to be working for fox nation, i am happy my show will air every night in america, and i'm happy that nobody at fox has tried to tell me what i should put on my show and what opinions i should be having.

quite the opposite. i spent a week in america ten days ago, i went on eight or nine fox shows in the week and i expressed my honestly held opinions the entire time and they lapped it up. there was no pressure to be conservative or right—wing, but nor was there the pressure from me to play "you are all the devil". i don't think that, i have always liked rupert murdoch, i like him as a swashbuckling media visionary. that's not a view you'll hear at the bbc, but the bbc has its own problems, so much as you like to put your halos on, i look around the bbc sometimes and i think, "hmm, martin bashir," that is a bit awkward for everybody. believe me, i'm not coming with a halo... you are a little bit like saying, look, we are the bbc, you are going to work for people which don't have our

kind of standards. when i worked at fox last week, i thought their stands were pretty high and i was happy to work there. i'm asking the question. i'm not telling you what the right answer is. one of the reasons that fox and cnn and others are stepping into the streaming arena is that the original business model of 24—hour cable news is under pressure, not least since trump left... it's under a lot more pressure if you are at cnn, nbc, one of those, who put all their money on trump bashing, 99% of their programme was trump bashing, which i felt at the time, having worked at cnn when it didn't do that, when it was very nonpartisan and non—biased in its coverage, and i felt that was what is business model should be, they went into full on trump bashing to the extent that some got hysterical about it, and i felt it was killing the golden goose and the ratings of cnn has really gone through the floor, whereas the ratings for fox news are gigantic by comparison.

it reminds me when i ran the news of the world and the mirror, there would always be this charge that we're only doing this for ratings and circulation — yes, that's myjob, literally myjob. yourjob is to serve people who want to listen to the bbc and pay a licence fee for the privilege, i'm happy to do that, by the way, but i think your own business model will have to be reviewed going forward. what do you think about the bbc�*s business model? i don't think the licence fee is sustainable. i felt what you did with the over—75s was a total disgrace and i said that loudly and clearly on good morning britain regularly. i feel that was a betrayal of pensioners in this country. the bbc is facing unprecedented threat, it's not going to get it from me because i'm a huge supporter of the bbc, i think it produces amazing programming, i recently watched jeremy bowen in ukraine, astounding, clive myrie, again, astounding. brilliant journalism, the bbc at the very best,

as there has been at cnn, some of my colleagues risking their lives to bring reports to people, that is these great corporations at their best, but can the bbc continue to charge a licence fee to kids when they already make their own for netflix or amazon prime, whatever it may be, i don't think that is sustainable. i think eventually, the bbc will have to go down that road. some sort prescription model? i think it is inevitable, yes. and i don't think it will be the end of the bbc. i think you willjust have to get more competitive, and you will have to stop relying on people being compelled to pay for a licence fee when we are now in a completely different world. talk about different types of models, here in the us, you have major reservations about cnn. you're incredible critical about the us media, i wonder

if you reflect on how you handled donald trump? you had high—profile interviews, when you look back at those and you know some of the things that donald trump did later in his presidency around covid, around the election result... no—one was more critical of donald trump about covid and the election denial and aboutjanuary 6th than me. if you read the columns i wrote, they were incendiary columns, attacking him head—on and directly. in the interviews i did, i would say to people, go back and watch them in full, don't believe what people told you on twitter about those interviews. frankly, if i didn't take a club into the room and smash him around ahead for half an hour, it was always going to be, softball. i challenged trump a lot in those interviews, much more than the narrative has been allowed to say. having said that, he was a friend of mine, and i'd known him since 2008, i won his celebrity apprentice show, i got to know him and his family,

this was a friend of mine who then became an incredibly divisive president of the united states. i was lucky that he gave me interviews, and the challenge for me was to then try and park the friendship and do an interview as i'd do with anybody else. i think i did that. hold on a minute, but the point i am trying to make here is that you approached that as you would an interview with any world leader, i assume, you treated him like a normal politician. yes, and gave him a harder time than i have seen otherjournalists give other presidents, so when you go back and watch the obama interviews, look at those. that's what i would say in return. i haven't said anything yet... i know what you're about to say. you don't. the way that donald trump spoke about covid and the fact that he didn't accept defeat in the election were not out of the blue, they were completely in line with how he had behaved in the campaign, they were completely in line with how he behaved in the early years

of his presidency and yet you treated him like a normal politician. i wrote over 120 columns about trump. and if anybody bothered to go back and read... but in his presidency, you said, i've known trump for 12 years and genuinely like him — why did you feel warmly towards a man who had already spoken with great prejudice during the campaign, who had already shown a scant regard for the truth during the campaign and in many ways appeared to be undermining the tenets of american democracy? you're falling into the slight trap of being the trump is the devil narrative. i wrote 100—plus columns about trump. about half were positive, and half were critical. i felt that was a fair analysis and assessment, until his last year, of the trump presidency. at the start of 2020, trump was heading for a comfortable reaction. forget what he said on twitter, a lot of it was ludicrous. wait a minute, how can you forget

what a politician says? what they say is a great part of who they are. if you park the twitter rhetoric, which was unique to trump and very polarising, and you either love it or hate it, there was no middle ground, but you simply focused on what trump achieved and his actions, i would argue that when you look at the totality with the exception of the final year, where i felt he was a catastrophe on covid, i felt he showed no empathy over the george floyd murder, which i thought was disgraceful. i felt his refusal to accept the election was disgrace, and i felt the january 6th capitol riots were a direct result of that behaviour. i said that very vehemently. i know you did. what you're asking to do is guess what was going to happen. i'm saying i don't think that the first three years was either the devil or the saint you would like you to think he was. you're making a show for a uk audience, a us audience, an australian audience — they don't all care about the same things.

how do you factor that in? everyone is fascinated by trump, i think every day there are lots of stories which resonate around the world. twitter in particular has made the world a small place in terms of debate, you see the trending topics are the same in almost every country, and every day i look at the stuff in the news and i think that will resonate all around the world. most things do now, whether it's ukraine, meghan and harry's antics, whether it's donald trump, whether it's the health ofjoe biden, all these things work in all these countries. what's your definition of success? if you came back on the media show... if i am still on air. that will do? yes, rupert doesn't muck around. by which you mean, if the numbers aren't right... it will take time to grow it because of the different calibrations and ways that are assessed

around the world. but i think that we're all going to know whether we have a hit show on our hands within a few months, if people are tuning in in bigger numbers. if we're becoming the centre of debate in three continents, then i think i will have done myjob and it will be very exciting. if not, then it will be back to the beach for a while. i would love to be watching but i'm going to be on air on bbc news. i'm going to destroy you. with that, thank you very much indeed. we had temperatures but 19th degrees in the bournemouth area of dorset. overnight tonight, it stays dry for most of us. clear spells coming and going. northern scotland will continue to see quite a lot of low cloud, and that can be thick for the occasional spot of drizzle, maybe a few mist patches. temperatures are similar to recent nights. 4—7.

tomorrow morning should be a fine start to the day with lots of sunshine, but through the morning you will notice cloud bubbling up and through the afternoon a few showers are likely to break out, most of these will be across central and eastern parts of england. one or two heavier ones, perhaps with some hail, towards the south—east. and temperatures easing down a few degrees. looking at around 10 degrees. looking at around 10 degrees port northern scotland, steam for southern wales and south—west the rest of the week pretty quiet but turning windy. and a bit cooler as well.

this is bbc news ? welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm tim willcox. our top stories... voters in france cast their ballot in the final round of the country's presidential election. incumbent emmanuel macron is hoping for a second term in office. his challenger marine le pen seeks to replace him — but voter turnout so far has been lower the run off 5 years ago. as russia's war on ukraine enters its third month — us secretary of state antony blinken is expected in kyiv — the first top us offical to visit since the invasion. japan says 10 people have died off the northern island of hokkaido