this is bbc news, the headlines: the us and chinese presidents are to speak on the phone as tensions soar between the two countries. beijing has warned washington it will bear the consequences if house speaker nancy pelosi visits taiwan. the us says it has made a offer to russia to release basketballer brittney griner and former marine paul whelan. secretary of state antony blinken says he'll push his russian counterpart for a response in talks scheduled for the coming days. a new coordination centre has begun work in turkey — part of a complex deal to re—start blockaded grain exports from ukraine.

it's an effort to ease the global food crisis, that is affecting millions of people around the world. now on bbc news, the media show. welcome to the addition of the media show stopping the conservative party leadership races down to two candidates, rishi sunak and liz truss. there have been two debates between them and some of the other candidates already, one got cancelled after some of the candidates declined to take part and then the bbc is planning another with just the final two and the whole process and the way the debates have

played out have raised broader questions about how they run. we are going to be speaking to jonathan from sky news, julie etching as well, but first of all let's bring in faisal islam because faisal, you are going to be part of the on—air team for this bbc debate, tell us more. �* . ' for this bbc debate, tell us more. . , ., for this bbc debate, tell us more. ~ . , ., for this bbc debate, tell us more. ., more. an awful lot has been done, more. an awful lot has been done. a _ more. an awful lot has been done. a lot _ more. an awful lot has been done, a lot of— more. an awful lot has been done, a lot of the _ more. an awful lot has been done, a lot of the legwork . more. an awful lot has been i done, a lot of the legwork has been done by the excellent debates are hosted by two of the other people on this call, really rich in terms of drama. and some interesting and intriguing policy proposals that we're yet to hear detail on. i think another factor here is that we haven't heard as many broadcast interviews with some of the candidates to be prime minister as we may have had in the past. so these really have been the only way to, kind of, independently probe

people that could be literally prime minister in a few weeks' time. so i found them tremendously interesting. and i think we will try to tease out some of the detail where obviously there can be strategies where such detail is not forthcoming or helpful for the electorate you are trying to impress. so it's ourjob to try and hold the two people who are left in now to account on behalf of the country, to try and extract that information, to try and find out what they think about the, you know, what really matters right now, and obviously, for my mind, that's the economy and the cost—of—living crisis, too. and krishnan and julie, as you listen to faisal, he is alluding to the fact that all of these programmes try and tease out policy details, but there are different ways going around that. krishnan, help me understand how you settled on the format that you went for. well, the format was very much based on what we had done before in 2019, when we did that conservative leadership

contest, and the labour party leadership contest we had done as well, which was essentially that the subjects will be determined by the invited audience. they would kick off with questions that would determine the main topic, and then i would follow up with supplementaries. each candidate would get an opportunity to answer each question, but we would take it in turns to give them the first go, and then after that it was basically free debate. they were free to chime in. and it took them a little while. i mean, it was interesting. they did start debating, but it took them a little while to get used to that format, and to start taking advantage of it. but it was pretty simple, and what we've done before. i mean, in terms of getting them to argue, i mean, what we kind of had to do was point out that they were saying different things. and the big one in the channel a debate, i think, was the opening out of the economic debate, the question of whether you can

fund tax cuts through borrowing or not, and that disagreement between liz truss and rishi sunak which has become the story of the campaign. it was fleshed out more onjulie's debate on sunday, and i'm sure it will be the core of the debate on monday, as well. and so that was just a question of saying to liz truss, "what's your economic policy?" rishi sunak, why do you think that's fairy tale economics? and off it went. that was the format you pursued. julie, iam interested, do you negotiate the format with the candidates, or do you just ring them up and tell them, "this is how we're doing it?" effectively, in this... we need to acknowledge, i and i know krishnan will be super aware of this as well, j these debates were literally turned around within four . or five days, so there is not time for a long negotiation. we basically decided - here is a crisp format for itv that is an hour long. we've had less time than i krishnan had for his debate, and we presented them - with what we wanted to do.

we invited them all to take part. | they're obviously free to do that, or free not to do that, and we said on this occasion we are doing an hour. - there won't be an audience. we had a strong feeling with our format that, i actually, we were introducing . the candidates to our audience. very many people watching . at home might not have been aware of all of them | or know them at all, really, in terms of their political standing. - so we had a slightly differentj format, and i think it actually possibly gave it that sort - of intensity that you saw play out on sunday night. so do you rehearse or you didn't have time? we didn't have time. we didn't have time to game it. i didn't know this is happening for sure until thursday at about four o'clock when rishi sunak tweeted, "see you there," and until that point i was waiting for somebody at channel 4 to say we've decided to call it off, we are not going to go ahead unless they all turn up. and we didn't have confirmation. it was really only thursday at four o'clock that i started

going, "right, how is this going to work?" "what are we going to ask?" it was only on friday morning when we got the audience questions in that we can actually determine what the core of the debate was going to be about. because we had obviously thought, well, we would like to have a section on this, a section on that. but we couldn't decide that because we had given a commitment that it would be the audience's questions that determined what we talked about. so it was literally, sort of, about 11 o'clock on friday that we were going through the questions going, right, most of the vast majority of these questions are about trust. about 70%. we've got to give a big amount of the programme to that, then it's economy. we went from there. you didn't have time to rehearse. so what about you, julie? i have to say, because i've done quite a lot of these, i i know krishnan has as well, i as soon as i know there is one in the offing, there - is a part of my brain already working on it.

so i first got the call, - i was on catalonia for my silver wedding anniversary. well, congratulations. you can imagine how that went down. - i got a call on mondayl and it was just sort of, "0k, here's a heads up — there may be a debate . on sunday night. " it was like, "0k, fine." as soon as somebody has said that to me, there is a part- of my brain that is. already going on it. i knew that it was pretty likely within hours. - it looked as if it was moving in the right direction, - ijust kick into- an automatic mode. i know how i have to prep for these and it is really. detailed, it is, you know, i had already thought - about which subject areas, | clearly, and they were very obvious subject areas. ijust start working as soon as i know, because i knowl there's that element of you'vej just got to be prepared in case something shifts or changes. i would just- like to be across it. i'm particularly interested in this idea of rehearsal. i know that when emily maitlis was preparing for her interview with prince andrew, krishnan�*s now editor esme wren would play out scenarios of what might happen in that interview.

we do that. you have a colleague pretending to be rishi sunak? we have a whole line—up - of colleagues pretending to be all of them. i got back on friday- night, saturday morning, we were in a room rehearsing, doing a paper rehearsal- with five stand—in candidates. we are just very fortunate. i do these debates with this - amazing team on the programme, an amazing array of smart producers who are all - across all of the policy. detail, and it allows me to test out how the debate is - going to work, so we were doing that on saturday morning. we did another full dress rehearsal on sunday, - and for me, they're - an absolutely crucial bit of the process. one question i've got for the three of you before i bring in our guest from sky news, and maybe faisal, you're back with us, you can help me here. when this is playing out in real time and there is a lot of information coming your way, a lot of it you wouldn't know is coming your way until you hear it, how do you fact—check it?

how do you catch the things that are maybe not as accurate as they need to be in the moment, faisal? that's part of the format that we have put together for monday, is that we have the brilliant host, sophie raworth, doing the main questioning, but myself and my esteemed colleague, chris mason, will be to the side checking things, interjecting, i think, asking some questions. it's not firmly hammered down, but we're literally going to game out the process that you've been talking about in the next couple of days. i think it's quite intriguing, actually, we did this in some depth for the brexit referendum when i was working withjonathan at sky, and jonathan was a rather good michael gove. and was incredibly difficult in the practice. so difficult that i thought there is no way, it's not very helpful, jonathan, you're being so difficult, it's unrealistic. and he was only half of the tough opponent that michael gove ended up being! so it was a bit of a reunion.

after that billing, we have to bring him in, jonathan levy, head of newsgathering and operations at sky news, a man who it sounds like can do an impression of michael gove when it is required. i won't do that! but i wonder if this is a little frustrating listening to all of this, jonathan, because you are listening to the bbc, itv and channel 4 talking about debates that either have happened or will happen, and your debate didn't. it was very frustrating this week. he went into the week, into monday with a commitment of four of the five remaining candidates in the race at that point, whoever was left on tuesday evening to turn up and debate. we felt we had a kind of viable programme that we could go ahead with. then unfortunately, for us, on monday morning, liz truss and rishi sunak said that they weren't going to take part, and rishi sunak's team had been, had not given a commitment, but the others had. so at that point, we really didn't anticipate given that they were two out

of the three candidates who were leading in the mp's ballot that we would have a programme, and so it turned out to be. but that really speaks to, you called it earlier, the kind of freestyle nature we were talking about earlier, the kind of wild west nature of the way these debates are organised. chris was talking about it as well, how he didn't know until rishi sunak tweeted earlier in the week on thursday, i think it was, that he was going to turn up to the friday debate. the current kind of wild west way of organising these debates where all the broadcasters do their own things, strengthens the hands of the politicians. but is it wild west, or is itjust that perhaps a leadership contest in the conservative party is not precisely the same scenario as a general election, for example?

you might want different programmes, different numbers of programmes, depending on the circumstance. sure. well, the situation that we've seen play out in this contest completely foretells what is likely to happen ahead of a general election, whenever it comes. in which the broadcasters will all try and game each other and game the politicians in order to try to hold their own debate, which is why sky is arguing once again as we did in 2018, for a formal body, an independent debates commission, that certainly ahead of general elections and possibly other contests, organises this and ensures that we get a series of debates that politicians turn up to and they're properly formatted and they're over a proper series of times. because as fantastic as the debates the weekend, and i enjoyed them both immensely, and they were brilliantly chaired and very illuminating, what we ended up with was two five—candidate debates within two days of each other, and possibly another debate, though it didn't happen, a couple of days later with three candidates,

rather than something that was coordinated and structured and organised more properly. julie etchingham from itv, would you prefer this to be a centralised system where someone rings you up whether you're away with your husband or doing something else and says, "actually, this is definitely what is going to happen." you don't have to sit there wondering. that is part of myjob, - can ijust be perfectly clear. we know that that comes with the territory. - it's part of myjob- and ijust get on with it. that is what we are here for. the thing is, you know, the certainty element, i especially if you are in the position of being i the moderator, has obviously a great deal of appeal- to me personally. i'd like to be able to plot - and plan, and work out if i am going to be the person who is moderating. . i'm not making - assumptions there. it is obviously very attractive to think about having these i

things planned and done - in a measured way because, frankly, as a journalist in the middle of it, - you know, that is- obviously helpful to you. but itv has taken a bit of a different view- about the idea of a debates commission, because itv,| you know, their position is l that it's for the broadcasters to make the invitation. we decide the programme format and we do it in a sort of mixed . economy way, if you like. sometimes, we've had seven party leaders, . we've had head—to—heads, - sometimes there are programmes where the candidates are - interrogated by an audience. there's a whole different way of mixing up the coverage - to make sure that you're i offering, as a public service broadcaster, a really good template of programmesl to the audience. and we just think that, i you know, itv has taken the position that broadcasters have a right to organise them| and invite participants. and the participants i then have a free choice whether to take part. but i wonder whether you all —

and you all have great experience making these programmes — but you also have great experience of doing longform interviews. faisal islam, let's bring you in. you were political editor for sky news before you joined the bbc as economics editor. you have done lots of high—profile longform interviews. do they not reveal more, perhaps, about the candidates and their policy positions and their personality than the more complex and harder to define formats that come with these leadership debates? i think sky and channel 4 together developed a format that was very interactive interview alongside a town hall. that was pretty effective, and sadly didn't happen at the last election, and it was interesting because it was two broadcasters joining together. i think when you look back over the past six or seven years, or decade or so when these debates first happened, back at the 2010 general election, i guess the reality is that it was felt, that they had a material impact on the results, and various people in the negotiations don't want them to have

that material impact. so it's a very delicate situation and they are happening less. and that's one set of problems. but i think the absence of longform interviews, as well, is a real problem. we have very deep and complicated problems, dilemmas, and trade—offs that all benefit, i think, from discussion, and benefit from some accountability. and, you know, everyone here does superb interviews. and i think democracy benefits hugely when those longform interviews happen, but they're also under threat, as is the debate format. i want to understand from all of you how you try and make these formats work. you've all taken different approaches, both in the last few days, but across the last few years, as well. before we talk any further, let's listen to one thing that julie did during the itv debate on sunday night, which was an effort to ask a question but get them

to answer using their hands. if he wished to serve, who here would be happy to have boris johnson in their cabinet? please raise your hands. if he wished to serve, would you have borisjohnson in your cabinet if you were prime minister? not a single person would have borisjohnson back in... i would like to say something about it, because i think it's only fair. we are going to go back to that after the break. hold that thought. julie, you'rejuggling everything as well as having to go into a break as well. i wonder why you decided to do that? you must have, i assume, planned to do that in advance. yes, yes. we planned to do it, and it's because when we are thinking about format, we are thinking about, 0k, we are asking our audience to stay with us for an hour. that is actually quite a tight time. it might seem an odd thing

to say, but it is quite hard to cover, with five candidates, a lot of subject in an hour, so it's a good bit of shorthand. it switches things up a bit. it gives a different sort of tempo to the programme. i mean, it's television — it's a visual. it's a great bit of visual shorthand, even though those hands were down. and it's just one of those little moments. and it also helped us to tee up before we went to the ad break that we were going to get into the issue of character, and we just thought that was a punchy, quick, sharp way of doing it, and it was the thing that was picked up. is itjournalistically satisfying to do these debates when you go into them? trying to balance all of these different, sometimes competing factors? i think that... that is a really great question because, actually, they are satisfying as a moderator. they are not always journalistically satisfying because your instinct as a journalist is to want to do endless follow—up questions, to go down the route that people have set you on and follow up and interrogate, but you are,

actually, in those formats, you are there to encourage debate between the candidates, and it's absolutely right that quick follow—ups and points of information are necessary, but you simply cannot start fact—checking every little detail that gets thrown up within the conversations. you are there to encourage a debate. you know, that's what it is. it is not a longform interview — it's not even a short form interview. in some ways, it is quite hard because you have to park some of your instincts at the door when you get on with it and just left them interrogate one another�*s position. can you relate to that krishnan? yeah, i mean, that is absolutely the case. you inevitably have a huge amount of material up your sleeve for all of the candidates ready for if the moment arises, and there are sorts of things that as a moderator you could pursue that you end up not pursuing because, you know, it's not yourjob, it's not an interview, asjulie says. what you have to do is try to get them to answer the questions and debating each other. i think they've been very.. i think these debates, the two debates that have

happened have been really substantial in terms of what they have revealed, and i think they opened up a debate that had been going on behind closed doors, behind the scenes, and also opened up the rivalry and the vitriol between some of the candidates that had been going on behind the scenes and with briefings of newspapers. i was quite surprised, in some ways, that they were as open as they ended up being, but i think as exercises, they were substantial. but, presumably, jonathan at sky news, you have concluded that one of the reasons yours didn't go ahead was because of what happened during julie's and krishnan�*s in the days before hand? i think we know that now, i because afterjulie's debate on sunday evening, it's - understood that rishi sunak looked to liz truss and said, "why are we doing this?" i 0r words to that effect, - and they then decided not to do it, or not to do it. the tuesday after.

i think what comes through from all of this discussion _ is the debates were great, they were illuminating, . they were revelatory, l they demonstrated why they needed to take place, but what also comes - through from this discussion is that ten years on from - when we secured working | together as broadcasters, the great debates in 2010, i the three across the general election here, over a decadel on from that, they're still not a cemented, consistent feature of our good political— and broadcast landscape. they aren't, but, some would argue, i guess, that perhaps the different formats tease out different things from the candidates, and julie, i'm really interested to know whether before, during,

or perhaps afterwards, you saw indications that liz truss and rishi sunak realised that they where showing an abrasiveness within their relationship that perhaps we hadn't seen before. well, i have to be honest, i mean, it was very genial before we went to air, and you've always got those few moments where you're on the set, and as the moderator, i've got the countdown in my ear. you know, it was very chatty and very genial. you know, actually when we came off air, and i actually always say, please, can we build in a few moments for that shot at the end to see if they are going to go and shake hands or whatever. ididn't... i genuinely, and this may be my misinterpretating things, but i didn't get a sense when they were walking off the set that they necessarily knew the impact that they had had on, you know, outside. it wasn't something that i particularly witnessed at all. i saw a few of them in the corridors, in the green room afterwards when they were coming out of their dressing rooms and all of the rest

of it, and everything was very good—natu red. do you think that's because you didn't have an audience, that they didn't pick up on how people were reacting to them? a bit like the way that big brother contestants emerge from the house and don't realise how the tv audience has reacted to them? well, i hadn't thought of that comparison, necessarily, but i thought, you know, a lot about it since. i think that may well have been a factor. it is so intense when you are in that space, it is so intense, and i am used to doing it with an audience on the other side or behind me, and you can pick up on the vibe in the room, but there wasn't a vibe. it was just this little, sort of, intensity, you know? and krishnan, what about you? did you pick up on dynamics between the candidates which then played out on the tv?

well, i mean, asjulie says now, they come on and it's all very straightforward. i think actually what this may have revealed is a relative lack of experience in these candidates on these sorts of debates, and i think that may have also been revealed in, sort of, the negotiations leading up to them. you know, you don't have to fall out in these debates. you know, the debates became acrimonious because they did so, and maybe they did so by accident, or maybe they did so on purpose. i mean, i certainly got the impression that having opened up the economic arguments and the argument on culture war on the friday night, they seemed to have come into the sunday night determined to really thrash it out, and you know, to really go at each other. it seemed to be quite a deliberate thing. that may be wrong and it may

just be my impression as a viewer. but i think, i'm not sure they had thought that clearly about what the impact of disagreeing like that would be. finally, faisal, you're listening to all of this, no doubt taking mental notes and you'll be talking to your colleagues about whatjulie and krishnan have been sharing. how do you and chris mason and sophie raworth plan to interact with liz truss and rishi sunak, if at all, before they go on the tv with you? i don't think there'll be much interaction between now and monday. there'll be plenty of interaction between us as a team to try and find out the best ways of teasing out this information. but would be meet the candidates half an hour before and say hello, or would you not see them at all before you engage them on air? i don't think there's much form for this, ros. i do remember doing the sky referendum debate in my green room, and i opened the door and outside is a much taller than you would expect david cameron just waiting there for me to sort of eyeball me, just to say i am here, a bit like a defender putting in a quick tackle on a striker at the beginning of the match. well, that is an image to leave us with. thank you very much indeed to you, to krishnan guru—murthy from channel 4 news, tojulie etchingham from itv news, and alsojonathan

levy from sky news. thanks to all four. thank you for watching the media show. we will be back at the usual time next week. bye— bye. hello there. the weather story's looking pretty benign for the next few days. we'll have very little wind around to move the weather along. but one thing you will notice over the next few days is that it'll be warming up, particularly across england and wales. most places will be dry, but there will be some showers around — increasingly so across the north and the west of the country as we move into the weekend. so, we've got this weak area of high pressure just to the east of the uk, rather cloudy high, drawing up some warmer airfrom the near continent. but there is a lot of cloud trapped underneath it, so a rather grey day, i think on thursday. showery bursts of rain continuing to affect parts of northern ireland, northern england, southern scotland, certainly through the morning, it'll tend to ease down into the afternoon. could see a few showers developing across western areas, most places will be dry. despite the cloud amounts,

it'll feel warmer — 22—24 celsius in the south. we could see 20 celsius or so in the central belt of scotland. so, it looks like it should be a dry affair for the commonwealth games�* opening ceremony in birmingham, temperatures at around 19—20 celsius, so feeling quite mild. now, as we head through thursday night, it looks like most places will hold onto the cloud — again, the cloud will be thickest across parts of northern england, southern scotland, where we could see some splashes of rain. but for most places, it will be dry, and a milder night to come, lows of 12—14 celsius. so for friday, we start to see this area of low pressure pushing into the far northwest of the country. the breeze will be picking up here later in the day, but much of the uk will be under the influence of high pressure once again. so, we'll start off with quite a bit of cloud around friday morning across northern england, southern scotland. that should tend to fizzle away, and we could see the cloud

melt away, as well. so, i think there's a greater chance of seeing the sunshine on friday. the odd shower will develop again into the afternoon, but most places will be dry, 25—28 celsius across england and wales, the low 20s across the north — so feeling a lot warmer. saturday's another warm, muggy day, but we will have more cloud around outbreaks of rain affecting the north and the west of the country, as that weather front continues to push its way eastwards. very little getting into the southeast, the areas where we really do need the rainfall. again, it'll be another warm day — low 20s in the north, up to around 25—26 celsius across the southeast. it stays warm into sunday and monday. there's always the chance of rain in the north and the west, but tending to stay dry in the south and the east.

welcome to bbc news, i'm david willis. our top stories: the us and chinese presidents are to talk on the phone as bejing warns washington it will bear the consequences if house speaker nancy pelosi visits taiwan. the united states says it's offered russia a deal aimed at freeing the american basketball player brittney griner. trying to avert a global food crisis, the first ships carrying crucial grain supplies prepare to leave ports in ukraine. he's credited with inspiring the global green movement, tributes are paid to the environmentalist james lovelock, who has died at the age of 103.