delved this is bbc news — i'm david eades with the latest this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. hello. welcome to the media show. we will talk about partygate in this edition because the investigation into what happened in downing street during various lockdowns is now out. the prime minister has been responding. the media of course is covering it and we will explore the role the media has played in the story from its beginnings

in early december all the way through to this week of the report coming out. but bvefore we get to that, we are also going speak to anneka rice, because the she is coming back to channel five. she has been off our screens for 30 years but that period is over and she is with us. annika, great to see you. it is very exciting because understand the media show has a small part in the comeback? it does because i love the media show and i was listening amol rajan talking to channel 5 to some journalists talking and i sat there thinking this is a man who runs on instinct and spontaneity and i had not come across that sort of spark for some time. i recognised it because when i first took challenge 30 years ago to the bbc, michael grade had that spark �*cause i went with a whole new

forward and he just went, "i trust you and to go away and make it." that is rare. i recognised something. someone put ben and i together and the rest is history. so thank you. i'll pass on my thanks to amol, i can't take it myself but i have many questions about the return of challenge anneka. we will get to that later in this edition of the media show, great to have you on it. but we will start with partygate because the sue gray report is out, borisjohnson had a press conference and made a statement in the house of commons and responded to questions from mps from both sides of the floor and let's explore whether media fits into this story, with a columnist from the daily mail and a david yelland,former editor and now runs kitchen table partners and we have the broadcaster and journalist and former advisor to some senior labour party politicians. stephen, can i start with you? how do you assess the evolution of this story? i think it is a triumph

for old—fashioned journalism and i would like to talk about the beergate, the story involving keir starmer and his alleged antics in durham. on the one hand we have the daily mirror, which basically as you say broke the partygate story and on the other hand we have the daily mail, which pursued the beergate story for weeks, without anybody taking much notice. for me it's a good example of how the partisan press can work very well in a democratic way. many people say that the press is too partisan and too extreme and you need more evenhandedness and fair mindedness in newspapers but it is only because the daily mirror so hated borisjohnson that it went off with this story with such energy, and it was only because the mail had similar feelings about starmer that it slogged away at that story for weeks,

even longer, before the rest of the media took it up. so i think it is a good example of how newspapers, by being partisan, as long as they have some sort of balance, one paper here in another paper balancing it, it can actually serve the democratic process surprisingly well. do you agree with that, that the partisan nature of some parts of the press is actually a crucial engine to this kind of journalism? i think i probably take a different view. i think good journalism is not about being partisan. good journalism is taht old—fashioned type ofjournalism, which is taking the time, building up good contacts, putting the work in, checking that everything corroborates and we saw pippa creed do a fantasticjob and also by castle which she worked on with the guardian.

itn news is not seen as a partisan organisation and paul brand has done a fantasticjob and it points to the fact that number 10 is a bit shocked because there are sections of the press, particularly on the right, who have been very supplicant to number 10 and i think they have been quite shocked at the tenacity with which a lot of these papers and broadcasters have stuck with a story and i'm afraid i absolutely push back against some false equivalence. 120 fines at downing street versus one beer in durham, which the police did investigate. they said, "nothing to say here." let's see what they say but i think this is the daily mail kind of collaborating with number 10 to push out this false equivalence line, which i'm afraid i don't think washes with the public. stephen, i'm interested to ask about that. do you feel the mail

is collaborating with number 10 or putting across... it was the mail last year which broke all the stuff about wallpapergate at number 10. which was almost embarrassing to borisjohnson, the stuff about the expense wallpaper and who paid for it. i think the mail is perfectlya re justified in going after keir starmer and clearly there has some deceit there and people can make out of what they want. if you are right that there is no equivalence then people will say, fine, it is much more serious what is happening in number 10 but i think many people are interested about what happened and the fact durham police have reopened the case in keir starmer is very excited about it. people will decide how important it is. david dillon, you once edited the sun and now you are running a communications firm. how do you view, first of all, the work the media has done on this story but also

how it fits into the political persuasions of the different papers? look, i think there - is no doubt whatsoever that there is a good chunk. of what we used to call fleet street has been enforcing, | has been acting as enforcer for downing street. there is no question about it. the daily mail is much more - professionally run than downing street. and is extremely good - at what it does but the fact is and i counted this morning, 9 out of 14 splashes . were on keir starmer, 9 out of 14? that is an absolutely, l brilliantly put together campaign and they got what they wanted. - wait, i think the wallpaper. story was under the previous editor. it was the same title set—up.

just on monday, we had the daily mail splash, . the first paragraph- was, "sue gray is playing politics over partygate." boris johnson's allies claimed last night," which she wasn't. you are here as a columnist of the daily mail but i wonder if you, at any point, has felt uncomfortable at the point of how much emphasis on keir starmer and durham versus not putting the photo that itv news obtained of borisjohnson having a drink. most papers put that on the front page earlier this week, and the daily mail did not. i must say, looking back over the last year, the daily mail has given boris a pretty hard time. i'm in the middle of writing a column giving him

a hard time. at the very beginning, with keir starmer, when the mail started, i thought this will not go anywhere. and it went on and on and on. in the end, they stood it up. they made a story. and the proof of that was it was then reported by the bbc and other media. and if that is some thoughts on how the mail has approached this story, david, you alluded to how the government approached it. how do you assess the media strategy since it began in early december? i think what is interesting about what how the government has handled it, it has mishandled handled it from the — beginning and i was thinking today why did they do that? of course we would not be here today with all this collateral damage being done to boris johnson's reputation, the reputation of number 10 as an institution, this sort

of cockpit of government and british politics, the damage done to the broader conservative party if right at the outset, borisjohnson and number 10 said, you know what? we did fess up, we did have a bit of a gathering, really, really sorry and i hold my hands up and we should not have done it. everyone, we've had a word with everybody and we are deeply compliant deeply sorry. ironically, and i never thought i would say these words, gavin williamson sort of played it right. he was in that position as well, he had been caught having a gathering and he said sorry — the world moved on. but i'm just wondering now perhaps number 10 at that point did know it was not just a one—off party. now we see the scale of it, so what they have sought to do is to mislead, then double down and i think this is the problem. then they have gone on the attack to keir starmer. hold on, let's clear up a few things, borisjohnson never knowingly misled the house of commons or indeed anyone else.

he also says and he said so today that he did not appreciate the scale of what has happened inside downing street street. he said today he has been surprised by some of the things he has learnt. i appreciate you don't agree with that but important to point that out. david, do you agree with ayesha that the government should have said yes, we have made a mistake early on. i'm not entirely convinced it would have kept the daily mirror and others off its case? well, let me turn it around, the question is why did - the press office feelj it was untouchable? many of these parties i by the way were in that office with those people. one of the parties were celebrating i the departure of its leader. to go off and be deputy editor of my old paper, the sun. just ask yourself, why i would you find touchable in that situation? because you have thel prime minister as your boss allowing you to do . anything you want in your bosses gone off to be - the editor of the newspapers. they are not to write - about the coming together

of the media and political class as created, - has created an untouchable grow of people _ i'm not talking about my - colleagues at the daily mail. i'm talking about those people, it wasn't - like that in tony blair's time, alistair campbell and hunter| were close to me at the daily but not like this. _ it has got so close that it's - dangerous and antidemocratic, i think. stephen, i know you have to go in a minute not least because you have some writing to do, but i would be interested to know the process of producing a column for the daily mail. do you write it, send it off and say, "here you go"? or is there a to and fro with the editor or the editors below about the angle you are taking on a story? to the features editor and then i may talk to the editor if i feel if they have something

useful to say or if i can learn something from what he says or not. i've spoken this afternoon about the column i'm writing about boris johnson and i take a much more critical view of borisjohnson than he does. he's perfectly happy about it. when do we get to see it? tomorrow morning. we will watch out for it. we appreciate you joining us. we will let you go and i know it has been a busy day in all the newsrooms. that is stephen glover, writing another column, as he often does, in the daily mail, appearing tomorrow. david, let me explore this a bit more because you are saying the relationship between certain newspapers and numberio is too close but there may be some people thinking, hold on a minute. papers like the sun, even when you're in charge, made a point of getting close to people in power because in many ways it made sense. what is so different here? well, people did say that and they may have had a point, because at the time i was a supporter of new labour and because i thought that was great, because i thought

they were good. so, you know, there isn't the hypocrisy there. and it's just straightforward newspaper support for political parties. i used to have dinner a lot with paul dacre, when i was editing the sun, at least twice a year, just the two of us, and i can remember many times him saying to me, "you are far too close to these people." "you are far too close to tony blair, you shouldn't be going to downing street." these days, i look at the mail and i think, "hmm, i have never known a paper," at the moment, "that is closer to a prime minister than the daily mail." and i'm not quite sure why that is and it's clear that there a lot of independence, people like stephen, who can say...who has a stature where he can say exactly what he likes. but, put it this way, if this was a labour prime minister, he'd have gone months ago.

he or she would not survive having the tabloids and the telegraph and the times banging on. it's only because they know they can rely on that support. the mail tomorrow will be more professional in supporting borisjohnson than his own team, because they're better at it. but it is also — you are saying if a labour prime minister was in this situation, i think it is worth pointing out that boris johnson is an unusual politician and i don't mean that in a judgemental away, it's simply true that he proves more resilient in moments of pressure than many other politicians and that is not necessarily whether he's conservative or labour. it's maybe more particular to his character. ayesha, can ijust bring you in here, and this the degree to which the media actually influences politics or simply mirrors it. we know from lots of borisjohnson supporters today that they have said, look, mrjohnson�*s apologised, it's time to move on, to focus on other challenges. who do you think decides if we all do move on, does the media decide that? i think the media does have a big role to play in shaping the sort

of anatomy of a story. and the media, in this case, have been incredibly dogged with the story, because there is a chance that this story could have ebbed away, but journalists did keep pushing it. but the other thing which is interesting about this story is that clearly it's a symbol of how dysfunctional downing street has become, because i worked there in the press office, i worked there under gordon brown, i also worked there under tony blair, and there was a real... first of all, we were not having that kind of level of partying, it was not like freshers week when i was working at downing street, but secondly, we were a very, very tight team, right from the cleaning stuff very tight team, right from the cleaning staff to the people working in the kitchens, to the civil servants, to the special advisors, to the ministers, to the prime minister, it was really tight ship. to the prime minister, it was a really tight ship. so the fact that all these leaks have been coming out in a sustained way tells you that number 10 is not a happy ship. now, we know that, because of all the personnel

changes, and there has been a lot of — there has been like stormy clouds over downing street for quite some time. but what i think is true is that there is an element of partisanship, but i think it's too lazy to say that, because i think most of the broadcasters do not have a particular agenda. they are looking at this because there is a legitimate story to probe. well, i want to ask about the broadcasters, and in particular about the bbc, in a moment. but, david, help me out with the context here, ayesha is saying that the volume of leaks coming out on this story suggests a broader dysfunction in number 10, but has the volume of leaks during this story really outstripped the kind of leaks that we would have seen during any other political scandal? yes, i think it has. i think last night's panorama would be an example of that. there seems to be — and sue gray's report touches on this — a generation of very entitled people in and around downing street, and it almost seems that they're all the same kind of people. they've been to the same schools, the same universities, and that's very dangerous, because they seem to think they have a right to be there, and don't respect the fact that, you know,

they are in the most extraordinary place. that is the prime minister's responsibility. he doesn't know anybody, i mean, who didn't go to those schools, didn't go to that university... of course, they're all like that. but i think that... well, i'm sure the prime minister would say he does know people who didn't go to those schools. but let's pick up on that — you alluded to laura kuenssberg's edition of panorama, which broadcast on the bbc. she spoke to a number of number 10 staffers, some of whom had attended some of these gatherings detailed in sue gray's report. i wonder, both of you, ayesha and david, what your assessments are of how the bbc has fitted into this story, because some people reacted to laura kuenssberg's panorama and said, well, these are significant scoops, but actually, through the partygate story, many of the scoops have been

coming via either itv news or the mirror. should we read anything into that, ayesha? well, it's interesting, looking at the way the bbc has covered this and the mood towards the bbc. i think quite a lot of the animosity goes back to barnard castle, when the story broke about dominic cummings, and laura kuenssberg and the bbc received quite a lot of criticism for reporting, "sources close to dominic cummings said xyz." and there was a huge accusation of, you know, the bbc being a stenographer for dominic cummings, and for people right at the heart of downing street. now, some of that is slightly unfair, because if you are a lobbyjournalist, part of yourjob is to get information and get it out there. you are not there to make an editorial decision on it. you are there, and then people can make their minds up. but i do think it was important for the bbc to do this panorama investigation, and i think that has redeemed the bbc, in a lot of people's eyes.

and before i bring you in, david, i should say first that panorama is available on iplayer if people would like to watch it, and we did invite laura kuenssberg to come on the media show but she wasn't able to. david, what are your thoughts of how the bbc has taken on this story? well, i think post—brexit, the bbc was accused of being unfair, because it balanced truth and untruth, i think there's a lot of truth in that. the bbc has been going through a transition of leadership — in its editorial leadership — in the last few months. i think that's part of it. i think they've been very "steady as she goes" type of thing. and i think the bbc looks a little bit... it's the only channel out there that's now completely unbiased, since talktv and gb news have launched, you go back to the bbc and it looks slightly less exciting, because it's — and i'm talking

about the news channel — because it is unbiased. i think laura's show last night was excellent, actually. and isn't it interesting when people have got stories to tell, they will go to the bbc, because they know they are going to be protected and that they will be fair? anneka, david, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on pa rtygate. you're both going to stay with us, but we're going to do a pretty sharp turn away from uk politics and downing street and we're going to talk about this. challenge anneka theme plays. i know what i am going to be humming for the next few hours. channel five is returning challenge anneka to british tv screens, 30 years after the original series first ad. anneka rice is still with us, she said it came about after the head of channel five was on the media show a couple of years ago. because the she is coming back to channel five.

she has been off our screens for 30 years but that period is over and she is with us. annika, great to see you. it is very exciting because i understand the media show has a small part in the comeback? good to have you back with us, anneka, a trustee will be using the theme music again, you are not changing that. i won't change anything. that has been the wonderful thing about working with ben. he just wants it analogue, he doesn't want to go digital on this. when we first had a zoom chat about this, i didn't even get my video screen up, he just went don't worry, remember what you look like, because it wasn't what i look like, now it is about how many twitter followers i have, which isn't very many, he just wanted the show. and we spoke for a long time about the legacy of it. he was really interested that i am so... because it has been my life's work, all those projects are still very strong and most of them i'm very involved with them. so it was a breath of fresh air. you alluded to it at the beginning, when i heard him on the media show, because i caught that instinctiveness and the spontaneity of him. and he is someone who will just go with an idea and that is good old—fashioned

producer choice, which we used to have when i used to make programmes in the �*80s and �*90s whereby you made a programme because you a programme because you are trusted to make that programme by the broadcaster. michael gradejust said ok, anneka, golf and make it. michael gradejust said ok, anneka, go off and make it. never had any contact with the bbc, we just delivered the programme each week and that was it. whereas now there is a lot more sort of committee stages and focus groups and that sort of thing. i think in the end there is a lovely alchemy where we have got together over this so it is coming to channel five, one person was excited is ayesha, we were talking about this earlier. i am so excited about the reboot of this, anneka. when i was growing up by absolutely loved challenge anneka . you will like an icon to me and i loved the zipping out —— you were like an icon to me and i loved the zipping in and out of helicopters

with yourjumpsuit and headphones and that sort of thing. i am very pleased, ayesha. to be honest, when we launched this week, i put up a very childish tweet which i thought would get about three people going, oh, that is interesting. itjust took off in a way that i was prepared for. your sentiment there is exactly what people are feeling. such an absolute rush of affection and nostalgia, and i think we owe it to that audience, and a younger one who has come through, because now people your age will have kids, and they are watching it, and so life goes on, to keep it as it was, because at the end of the day it is not about getting someone from love island to be my co—presenter, it is about those communities, it is about the power of the collective, it is about harnessing the power of television to make a difference. i think they can guess the answer to this question, are you nervous? you don't sound nervous? no, i can't wait. because as i say, it is not like i've ever left it. it is not dusting

something off. it is part of what i do every day, we sold the format around the world, i am involved in all those sales, the digital version for abc in america with erin brockovich, we built a peace garden, post—9/ii for the families, it runs through me like the middle of a stick of rock. i have only a few seconds, when is it on? to be announced. you will hear all about it. i know ayesha will be watching it, david, will you be tuning in? i shall be watching with my ten—year—old daughter. - and i know she will love it. it will bring a smile to both our faces. great tv brings a smile to your face, strictly, l and that sort of thing, that is what it is all. about. it has been a pleasure speaking to all of you. thank you for making time for us, that is david yelland, who runs the communications form kitchen table partnerships.

anneka rice who will be back with challenge anneka, and also ayesha. we also heard from stephen glover, at the daily mail. thank you for watching this edition of the media show. be back with you next week at the usual time. hello. i'm sure it'll be all eyes on the weather forecast this week, with the platinum jubilee celebrations just around the corner. the week certainly begins with some heavy showers in the forecast, some spells of sunshine in between, but those showers, driven by this area of low pressure wobbling its way westwards, and that will take up residence across the uk, as we head through the next couple of days. it'll be quite a chilly start to the morning across some southern areas, but that's where we'll see the best of the morning sunshine. quite a lot of cloud to start off for scotland and northern ireland, with some patchy rain, but by the afternoon, we are essentially all in the same boat. we'll see some spells of sunshine developing, but there will also be some

showers, some of which will be heavy and thundery. quite a few showers across parts of southern england, the midlands, east anglia, across this eastern side of england. maybe not as many showers across parts of wales. northern ireland, turning brighter into the afternoon, sunny spells, but still scattered showers, and just 12 degrees for belfast, 11 at best in aberdeen, and these heavy showers across scotland will be quite slow—moving, given we will have very light winds. now, through monday night, some of the showers will continue. the area of low pressure just sits on top of us, and so the showers just continue to circulate around, and we will see this band of cloud bringing some slightly more persistent rain, perhaps into the far west of scotland. a bit of mist and murk across parts of scotland, as well, quite a chilly start again on tuesday morning. it's another sunshine and showers day for most, but we will see this area of more persistent rain dropping its way southwards into parts of northern ireland. it may well be that, across wales and the southwest, by the afternoon, there will be fewer showers and more in the way of sunshine, and temperatures will nudge upwards a little, 12—18 degrees. still some showers around on wednesday, but they will increasingly become confined to northern and eastern parts. further west, more in the way of dry weather, some spells

of sunshine, and again slightly warmer — 17 to maybe 20 degrees across parts of the southeast. now, as we head into the long weekend, this area of high pressure will try to settle things down, but this little weather front threatens to bring some showers in from the northwest. this low, spinning to the south, threatens to throw some showers across the channel islands, and into southern counties of england, so certainly there is the chance of a few showers as we head through the weekend. it should often be dry, and where we see some sunshine, it will feel relatively warm.

this is bbc news — i'm david eades with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. president biden visits texas to meet grieving families, after last week's school shooting. the justice department will investigate police delays in confronting the gunman. a first visit to the front line since russia invaded — president zelenskyy visits and decorates troops in eastern ukraine as intense fighting continues in the region. translation: i'm greatly honoured to be here. - i want to thank each one of you for your great service, for risking your life for our sake, for the sake of our country.

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