this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. on the show today we will be looking at a new pod cast that charts the rise of

reality tv. and the wagga the christie. who would play in the movie? �* , , ., , movie? it's funny, we had this conversation _ movie? it's funny, we had this conversation in _ movie? it's funny, we had this conversation in the _ movie? it's funny, we had this conversation in the office. - conversation in the office. what is the answer? my airline is going quickly. ross kemp was moved in. martin compton would suit me. ., , ,., suit me. the other person we have here _ suit me. the other person we have here is _ suit me. the other person we have here is tim _ suit me. the other person we have here is tim watson, - have here is tim watson, guardian�*s media editor. you have been following the trial began, there is a whole lot of interest in this case. how long is the queue for the press box? it is quite extraordinary. there _ it is quite extraordinary. there is_ it is quite extraordinary. there is a queueing system, people — there is a queueing system, people have to get their pretty early~ — people have to get their pretty early. you have 20 or 30 photographers outside. they are so confident they have had to put up — so confident they have had to put up another corflute to try and make sense for all the journalists. what that says for all the — journalists. what that says for all the other court cases going uncovered you can make your own

mind _ uncovered you can make your own mind on_ uncovered you can make your own mind on that. uncovered you can make your own mind on that-— mind on that. let's start the show with — mind on that. let's start the show with the _ mind on that. let's start the | show with the editor-in-chief show with the editor—in—chief of bloomberg. labour, famous for financial coverage is on mission to become a major presence in uk news. it has launched a subscription website and wants to rival the likes of the sunday times and the anti—. welcome to the show. what have you launched bear exactly and how much does it cost?- you launched bear exactly and how much does it cost? what we aet our how much does it cost? what we get our money? _ how much does it cost? what we get our money? two _ how much does it cost? what we get our money? two things, - how much does it cost? what we get our money? two things, to l get our money? two things, to some extent we are using what we have. in the newsroom behind me we have 500 people, one of the biggest newsrooms already. we cover 400 british companies and have long been a massive force in the city of london. we have a television station, a radio station and a pod cast. we are targeting that audience and our aim is we are targeting that audience and ouraim is to be we are targeting that audience and our aim is to be the main business infinance, a

business in finance, a destination, a consumer can subscription business four years ago. we are ready have 400 other subscribers which is quite big by british standards. the uk is our second—biggest market. the uk is our second-biggest market. ~ ., ., ., market. who are the target audience. _ market. who are the target audience, sorry _ market. who are the target audience, sorry for - audience, sorry for interrupting. it audience, sorry for interrupting.- audience, sorry for interru-utin. , ., . audience, sorry for interru-utin. , ., interrupting. it is finance and business and _ interrupting. it is finance and business and broader - interrupting. it is finance and | business and broader politics. we do global news more than anybody else. we have 27 journalists right the way around the world in 20 countries. we cover the globe. also pushing things deliberately in the british market. the westminster pod cast does tomorrow. we have individual things aimed at british business. we have a big office right in the middle of the city in a iconic building. we think there are a lot of things we can do from here. hind things we can do from here. and add british _ things we can do from here. and add british media. why now? your boss michael bloomberg has been claiming that the uk media

is following the us path to become what he termed hyper partisan and hypo sensationalise. a saying there is a gap in the market for essentially more impartial fact —based news? i essentially more impartial fact -based news?— essentially more impartial fact -based news? i think there is a bit. i -based news? i think there is a bit- i think _ -based news? i think there is a bit. | think what _ -based news? i think there is a bit. i think what he _ -based news? i think there is a bit. i think what he actually - bit. i think what he actually wrote is he betty was going on the same direction. we prosper from being in the middle. what we do, you need to be very factual. you need to be on the ground. when you do analysis and commentary, you need to back it up with numbers and theirfacts. we look back it up with numbers and their facts. we look at britain and i think there is quite big divisions with things like brexit. one of the first reasons i thought this could work, remember i came from being at the economist before. i sat and when we launch a brexit newsletter, what was interesting was that people from both sides are brexit. and i think that ability- at the moment to be able to cut

through and say what really matters, there was a piecel a couple of days ago about levelling up and we looked at all the constituencies . of britain and went around adding up all the places that had gone forward and sadly, there were not very many of them. - nobody accused us of bias i in that, whilst i think in many cases in britain, almost- automatically, when people read things, they imagine which side they are coming from, - and we are not. in that category. ok, interesting. jim watterson, media editor at the guardian, let mejust bring you in, what do you make of the bloomberg proposition? well, there isjust this enormous amount of competition for high—end news readers who will pay a lot of money for sort of quality news. you have got the ft, you have got ben smith, my former boss at buzzfeed launching a new project, you have got the economist and you have obviously got this bloomberg offering now among many others. the real challenge is, is there enough interest to sustain all of these places, because advertisers love these readers, but are there enough people, with enough time in the world, to read all of this news being produced for them? and what does it mean for all the people who cannot afford a paywall, because they are just left with stuff that is made on the cheap?

john, just picking up on that — is the idea that people would give up their digital subscription to something like the sunday times, and switch to bloomberg or are you proposing this as yet another subscription for people to pay for? i think we would make - the argument that we should be the main one, we do more coverage than anyone else when you are looking . at business and finance around the world. that is what we do, and i think within britain we should be - able to get into that position . and make the same argument. even then, i think there - is a large market for people who have more, i suppose, more money than time. - if you are in business, - the amount of money that subscribers, the different. competitors that you talked about, it is not that much- compared with the advantage you get from knowing things ahead of other people, - and that is why i think there is more room. i and what has happened, and i remember back- at the economist when we were only about 400,000 people, i people talked about there being a limit then. - somebody from the guardian making that point. _ |the economist i think it is now| 1.6 million under a much better editor now and you look -

at bloomberg, we have reached 400,000 people — 400,000 people are paying for us in only four- years on a consumer basis. and we think that has a lot to grow and i don't think. all the evidence at - the moment is the same... jim, i am sorry to interrupt. i was just going to say, jim, quickly you wanted to come back in on that. i just want to say, this is what we are trying to solve at the guardian by having that model, which is outside a paywall, but still doing qualityjournalism, because the rest of the market is really going into different directions, either behind a paywall orfree and done on a tight budget. ok, both of you, please stay with us, as we do very much change direction. i mentioned at the top of the programme that we were going to take a look at the new podcast for bbc sounds about the history of reality tv, have a listen. big brother house, this is davina. reality tv created an entirely new category of celebrity and revolutionised our viewing habits. it created a genre predicated on a single, shining moral imperative — the authentic

above all else. all the problems that would plague the genre were there from the start — confrontainment, the effects of surveillance and the spectre of the producer, and puppet master. that was a clip from unreal, a critical history of reality tv. pandora sykes is the podcast co—presenter — pandora, welcome to the media show, it is ten parts, your show, you have got 60 interviews, i understand, in it. what did you find? ooh, that is a big question. it is indeed, i am asking for an answer and it is tough. we found that what people have been looking for since the start really, because we chart it from big brother to love island with 14 other shows in between, in the states and in the uk, and what people are looking for now is what they loved about big brother then, which is authenticity. but the tension reality tv exploits is that who you are, who you think you are is not

who others often see you to be. once you're on tv? once you're on tv, which is where a lot of that "oh, the producers edited me badly" comes from. and we wanted to look at increasing ethical concerns about the format. we want to look at who the responsibility lies with, the people who go on television, a matter of self—regulation or does it lie with the commissioners and the producers? what was the answer? well, it depends who you are asking. one producer pointed out to me, phil edgarjones, who was the creative director of big brother for ten years, he pointed out that the only people who said they had been edited badly are the unpopular ones. they ones who come across well never have any problem with the editing. so you could say it is only ever an issue... but that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? crosstalk. does the unpopularity come after your editing or before i suppose?

in a bit, we're going to take a look at wagatha christie and what it tells us about celebrities and how they interact with the media. do you think reality tv invented the idea of the normal person as celebrity? presumably it did. jade goody is largely seen as the first demotic celebrity, a celebrity famous for simply being themselves. of course there has been a lot of controversy about how reality tv has changed the nature of celebrity and fame, the ordinary person without talent becoming famous. but actually it goes way back to candid camera in the 50s. in the 1970s, american family, in the 1990s, you had the real world. it is not really as new as we like to think it is. though what we have now is a surfeit of reality stars, it's an entire ecosystem. you start on something like love island, you go on to celebs go dating, then ex on the beach, then you might graduate to strictly, i'm a celebrity get me out of here, then if you are lucky, you could be like alison

hammond and be a presenter. many don't know she came from big brother now. so the really successful can graduate out of it, but most of them stay on the same endless loop. do you think the genre has exploited ordinary people's desires to be famous? that is a good question, and not one i think i could answer completely either way because the problem is, people who want to go on reality tv by and large are the people who do not fare well on it. because the people who would fare well on reality tv are the people who have a solid sense of self, and are not really bothered by attention. but they are not the sort of people who want to go on reality tv. certainly, there has been a lot around the duty of care recently, not least the four suicides that are connected to love island, including the presenter caroline flack. and a lot of reality stars have come forward in the last few years saying "i have made a deal with the devil, the producers did not

look after me, and these are all the problems that i faced". but then you could argue, is that the producers' fault for casting them, or — it is hard to imagine how being on reality tv would impact your life and the ramifications of everyone thinking you are public property. simon paul, i'd love to bring you in. you're the executive editor of showbiz at the sun, the paper's celebrity goddip column bizarre will have charted the rise of lots of these reality tv stars in the last decades. did you treat, do you treat them differently to other celebrities? you are absolutely right. we have covered huge amounts of reality stars, and you start to forget that some of them started out as reality stars, it is true. the successful ones started as reality stars, it is true. both in music and conventionally with big brother and love island and things like that. i think people who come through the reality route generally speaking are seeking out fame and fortune ideally on the back of it at every possible opportunity,

generally speaking they have been more accessible, quite prepared to bare their souljust for the sake of being more famous and more popular, and potentially making a few quid on the way. does that make them fair game in your mind, though, people you are more willing to — i do not want to use the word hound, but you know what i mean? i would object to the word hound, because the symbiotic relationship we have developed with these people over the last 10—15 years, which has a real golden age and boom for reality television, probably started with big brother, and the only way is essex is another show that moved the dial on that sort of model. it has been completely relationship—based. a lot of my career, at the sun and in showbiz generally, lots of these people i have come to know really quite well, you become friendly, in fairly regular contact. i guarantee the phone rings more frequently from them asking if you can write something than the other way around, there's lots of people seeking attention and publicity.

sometimes it works well for us and our readers, other times perhaps i'm slightly more dismissive. it definitely goes both ways. pandora, you were nodding earlier to what simon was saying, what's your reaction? it wasjust reminding me of a contestant from love island who we interviewed called rachel finney. i cannot remember if it made the final episode because we had a lot of footage. but she was saying when you come out of love island it is very normal to call the paparazzi, and that anyone who says otherwise is lying. i do not know if that is true but certainly if you look under the line on on tabloid websites, there's often a lot of caught by the paps. so i would agree that there's much more...unlike an a—list celebrity, who i would have thought is very rarely calling the paps, i think with reality stars certainly there is much more of a synergy. unreal, a critical history of reality tv,

out now on bbc sounds app. i'll bring simon back in. i was interested in what you were saying about you being a top show bizjournalist and your relationship with these people. how do you maintain the relationship to keep the stories flowing? or are you effectively saying you don't need to really because they are always calling you? it is a damn sight easier with the likes of love islanders and the proper reality stars than with the a—listers. we'd like to think we can do it across the board, i can think of some examples to point to say the way we do things generally speaking is we try to get ourselves into the mix of people at all levels. if our readers are interested, we are interested. something like love island, has a successful series, absolutely i want to know the people on it, get to know them and stay with them. some, with varying degrees of success, have maintained a career long beyond. a friend of mine who won love island several years ago, amber davis, has gone on to be successful on the west end a talented young woman, now the lead in two shows, another one coming. i have stayed friendly

with her throughout. others less so. there are definitely occasions in the reality sphere where people continue to call long after their expiry has rather run out. if you can be polite and gentle about it, say sorry, we are no longer too interested in that story, thanks for calling. that's a fair thing to say. let's bring it to the wagatha christie trial, maybe not everyone realises quite how heavily implicated you and your paper are in that case. for those listening, this is the big libel case playing out in the high court, between two wives of famous footballers, rebekah vardy who says coleen rooney libelled her when she accused her of passing stories about rooney to your newspaper, the sun. and one was under your byline about the rooney's basement flooding, coleen rooney says she planted the story as part of a sting operation to catch the leaker. for our listeners, the obvious

question will be who gave you that story? the only answer i can give and ever would give is the same one that we gave in the high court a week or so ago. so as you alluded to a short while ago we had been at the centre of this to some degree. certainly we were at the very beginning of it. the case between the two of them relates directly to stories we carried. that is definitely true. stories that turned out not to be true. stories that certainly were presented as fact online, as you say, they were presented as fact directly from coleen rooney, online and then in each case and they play out in court to this effect as well, each case we contacted the rooney's representatives who said, "we will not comment on that. no problem with us if you want to run that." plainly, we now know there was a vested interest in us running it and there was a frustration, perhaps, of sorts but journalistically we went to the proper levels of checking it out. we operated with integrity. and there is no great secret in this.

i don't apologise. my face is in the newspaper six days a week with a little line that says "have you got a story? give me a shout." i can't apologise forthat, per se. that is basically the business i'm in. and we tell stories to our readers. in terms of who gave us the story, which is a very direct question we would never reveal it. and never will reveal it. and we went to extraordinary lengths and extraordinary expense in the high court a week or so ago after being pushed by both sides, actually, to come to court to both hand over some documents and take the witness stand and that is simply not something that we would do or would ever do, and on a wider basis it would have set dreadful precedents forjournalism across the board both for newspapers and broadcasters. how did it feel to be put in that position, to be asked to reveal your sources but presumably they were asking if they wanted to search your phone, for example. what was that like as a journalist? my first thought was, like everybody else, oh, my god what is on my phone? i was quite happy to take some advice at our end,

i knew it was not something we were going to immediately back down on because we have always taken that stance with a source, it is very important and as i reiterate, not just for us but for journalism as a whole and the president set if we back down and done that it would have been generally catastrophic across the industry. it was uncomfortable. it was _ i was lucky that as an organisation, and this is an important point, as an organisation we are large and well funded, relatively speaking, and we were in a position to take some legal advice. i was given some legal representation and we were able to go to court, myself and a colleague, and present an argument as to why we shouldn't and fortunately the judge agreed with us. i worry that if i had been put in that position perhaps as a freelance journalist you see it, the potential expense and losing that money perhaps i would not have been able to go at all. how much does it cost? many tens of thousands, i would have thought. but people listening might think if rebekah vardy was not your source, why not go to court, say that and protect the actual source? it is not as simple as that. you get into a jigsaw identification process. once you are on a stand there

is no getting away from it. a barrister in court, and anybody worth their salt, let's be honest, they are using the most expensive barristers in the business. he will be pushing hard and hard and hard and fast and i would like to think, with all myjournalistic experience i hope i am a relatively articulate and reasonably intelligent man. but the speed at which you can be tied in knots and tripped up by a barrister on a stand under the pressure of that occasion, and anyone who has been in court will know it is not a pleasant place to be, it is very intimidating. i simply did not want to be there. as presumably...as coleen rooney said, she didn't want to be there and it's looking like rebekah vardy may not want to be their either at the moment. people whose lives have been dragged through the dirt like those two in this trial, i guess you could have ended it before it began. i have not got a horse in this race. there is absolutely no doubt in my mind these are two women who plainly do not before like each other, don't now and won't in the future. they started out and we were the genesis of this case and perhaps we were used as a bit of a tool in part.

for me our involvement stopped there. we have behaved with integrity by protecting anyone we have ever spoken to and i will continue to do that indefinitely at almost any cost. beyond that, if they want to tear strips off each other in a slightly ungodly soap opera, who am i to stop them? they have both had any number of ample opportunities, and i do mean both of them, to come to the table and discuss this. we are talking about millions of pounds. well in excess of £2 million. it has been suggested online by onlookers perhaps that money could have been better spent. only rich people can do libel cases, i think. a lot of the details that came out have revealed pretty unseemly relationship, it looks like, between celebrities, agents, papers like yours. do you see what is coming out as damaging to your profession? let's start with the very basics. would i prefer this had

never come to where? absolutely. it is not something i would ever have tried to orchestrate myself. what it does demonstrate is that any notion that what appears in tabloid newspapers is not very often very well sourced and very well put together, if the suggestion is, and i am not... this will play out in court anyway... if the suggestion is if people believe we are talking directly to people intimately involved in football, music, other sports, film, whatever else, i would like to think that we are. i do not feel the suggestion that we speak to people intimately involved in any of the creative arts or sports that our readers are interested in, again, i make no secret about what i do, i am an entertainment journalist, showbizjournalist, i go out frequently, go to parties, events, concerts, i like to meet people. if i can get on well with them and form a relationship i always will. i hope the vast majority

of the journalism we do is not tawdry or voyeuristic but positive, engaging with our readers and the industry we are talking about. i do not think there is any shame in that. jim waterson, media editor at the sun, what is your reaction to what simon has been saying? sorry, the guardian. i do apologise. well, not apologise. maybe you want to work at the sun next. maybe they will give you a job after your brilliant coverage of the wagatha christie trial. what is your reaction to what simon has been saying? simon who is from the sun. he has found himself in the position where no journalist wants to be where he is the story. it has been an extraordinary exposure of howjournalism works and it is rare that you want to see how that sausage is made. it is not a pleasant sausage in this case. i think there is one particular thing to take away from the trial, though there have been lots of salacious details, this is an example of millions of pounds being spent on something

i do not think anyone could really argue is particularly good use of every one's time. in the same way our libel laws can be used by rich people to fight on small things, who leaked a story or not, they can also be used to keep the secrets of russian oligarchs out of places, be used... our courts are increasingly making it harderfor journalists to work and libel cases favour the rich who can afford to fight these cases. it does favour the rich and powerful and it is important journalistically. i said this before and i will say it again, if any of us as journalists found ourselves in a position to challenge some of that status quo and pressure from wealthy people, in my case, to reveal our source, or pressure in the case ofjohn and many others to keep their identity anonymous amongst something perhaps unpleasant or a reader should be aware of, we need to take that every opportunity.

the great shame is the huge expensive involved. i spent one day in court and a couple of days beforehand speaking with lawyers and as i said earlier, it would not surprise me of our total bill ran into many tens of thousands of pounds because that is simply the sort of market you are in with this sort of stuff and that is dangerous. ifjustice is not available to most people and openjustice is not available to most people we get into murky territory. the case this week is a good example of constituents who have no idea that their mp is not accessible to them and not in a position to help them with anything if they have a problem and could still be continuing to engage with that very mp expecting something to be done and whether or not they would be told at the time i cannot help you at the moment, who knows? it is a very murky position for me and i think is a journalistic industry, tabloids broadsheets, broadcasters and otherwise, it is one we need to club together on and stick to. do you agree with that point? libel laws are made for celebrity?

it's a slightly strange situation. we have the issues affecting the sun that could also affect bloomberg. ironically could also affect coleen rooney's instagram account when she makes a journalistic allegation. because she bypassed the media. we all have to deal with the same issues and we all end up being held to the same standards. i think libel law in the uk is in need of another look, the extent to which it can be used to bully people around the edges. where in—house lawyers say we may not want to take the story on because of potential risk. it is important places like bloomberg fought to the supreme court on that one even though they lost because they at least managed to make a stand on that. that is it for today. thanks tojohn micklethwait, editor in chief at bloomberg, jim waterson, the guardian's media editor, pandora sykes, co—host of unreal reality tv podcast on bbc sounds. simon boyle, executive editor of showbiz at the sun. thanks for watching, goodbye.

hello. temperatures close to average across the uk this week. it'll be breezy, windy by wednesday, and it will be wet at times, not all the time. in fact, there's quite a bit of dry weather around to start off on monday. a lot of cloud, showers breaking out more widely during the day. catch one, could be heavy. there may even be a rumble of thunder. brightening up in northern scotland, after a wet sunday. turning wetter across parts of southeast england and east anglia, after a very warm sunday, so it will be cooler here. and into monday night, we'll see, through parts of eastern england, eastern scotland, some outbreaks of rain. showers elsewhere through england and wales. northern scotland and into northern ireland becoming mainly dry here,

with some clear spells. probably the lowest temperatures going into tuesday morning. on tuesday, it's eastern areas seeing outbreaks of rain pushing southwards. elsewhere, you may see some sunny spells. showers will develop again, a few heavy ones, tending to fade away from western areas during the day. it'll be breezier on tuesday, windy on wednesday, with rain moving east.

welcome to bbc news. i'm our top stories: president biden is on his first visit to japan since taking office, as the us seeks to bolster its regional influence against a dominant china. we report on howjapan is boosting its own military, amid fears of chinese aggression towards taiwan. if china did try to invade taiwan, despite all of the impressive naval power on display here in tokyo bay, it is not clear at all whether the united states and its japanese allies now have the ability to stop them. i will well and truly serve the commonwealth of australia, her land and her people in the office of prime minister. anthony albanese becomes australia's 31st prime minister

before heading to tokyo for talks with president biden,