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tv   HAR Dtalk  BBC News  November 11, 2022 4:30am-5:00am GMT

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this is bbc news. the headlines: seniorfigures in the ukrainian military say they're making putin. russia has admitted having problems with its supply lines in and around the southern city of kherson. moscow says it's moving to new defensive positions on the other side of the dnipro river. president biden is embarking on a whirlwind diplomatic tour which will take him to egypt, cambodia and indonesia. over the next few days he'll attend cop27, the us-asean summit and the east asia summit before joining the meeting of 620 leaders in bali, where he'll meet china's president xi jinping.
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despite police saying their investigation is still ongoing. they've urged people not to speculate about a motive. cassius turvey died in hospital 10 days after he was beaten with a metal rod. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. where do you get your news from? do you trust it to be true many of us, the answers to these questions are changing. social social media is an increasingly dominant source of information. a long established new sources are like us at the bbc are in a fight for audiences and, yes, the trust too. my guest, david
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dimbleby, became in the cross along broadcasting where the face and voice of the bbc on the biggest occasions. from elections to royal ceremonial. can he has journalistic elections to royal ceremonial. can he hasjournalistic values survive in a world where opinions are so often trumps truth? david dimbleby, welcome to hardtalk. ., ~ david dimbleby, welcome to hardtalk— hardtalk. thank you. white mi . ht in hardtalk. thank you. white might in the _ hardtalk. thank you. white might in the course - hardtalk. thank you. white might in the course of- hardtalk. thank you. white might in the course of your. might in the course of your broadcasting career you've seen a massive transformation in the way news and information is produced and the way it's consumed. do you think, for the better? forthe consumed. do you think, for the
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better? for the worse. consumed. do you think, for the better? forthe worse. for consumed. do you think, for the better? for the worse.— better? for the worse. for the worse, because? _ better? for the worse. for the worse, because? i— better? for the worse. for the worse, because? i don't- worse, because? i don't subscribe _ worse, because? i don't subscribe to _ worse, because? i don't subscribe to the - worse, because? i don't subscribe to the view i worse, because? i don't. subscribe to the view that there is one truth and that there is one truth and that there is one truth and that there is only one way of telling stories and of telling news. but i do subscribe to the view that the anguish and mischief and anger that's caused by the invention of the twitter world, where my truth is the same as your truth, ranks with yours, even if i'm lying through my teeth.
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where everything becomes a bitter controversy instead of a cool look at the facts. i think that is a destructive process. i think that there is such a thing as objective truth. an absolute truth? objective truth, i'd say, i don't know absolute. but i mean, facts and figures, for instance. in a war, who's winning? who's losing? what's going on on the ground? i mean, take a very simple example. if you're living in tigray province at the moment and you want to know what's actually happening on the ground, you would not listen to addis ababa. you'd listen to the bbc cos you know the bbc would be trying to tell you, as well as it could, the truth as it saw it on the ground. that's a very interesting example cos, actually, if you really wanted to know what was going on on the ground in tigray, you'd probably be best advised to follow all sorts of different people with different inclinations and political mind—sets on the ground in tigray, through social media, through twitter, and other platforms that may be very powerful in ethiopia. and i notice, you're not
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even on social media. no, i'm not. no. doesn't that make you a bit of an information dinosaur? yes, probably! well, you can laugh, but you're a journalist. yes. you care about the information environment in which you work. cos this is the reality of today. do you spend your whole time on twitter? i don't spend my whole time... do you pick up all your news from twitter? i'm definitely on twitter. or do you pick it up from bbc reporters? no, i pick it up from all sorts of different sources. well, what do you get from... you get so many more sources today than we had when you set out injournalism, and in a way, you're saying, "you know what, that's really not a very good thing. "i want the right, as a very respected..." no, no, no, no. "..seniorjournalist, "to be able to tell my "..senior journalist, to be able to tell my "audience what's happening." i'm not that that kind ofjournalist. i've done political interviewing like you do. i've done political interviewing and i've done question time, which was big audience debates. that's the kind of stuff i've done. when i was reporting, i reported in south africa on apartheid for about three years. and then, it was my eyes, yes, and it was pre—social media, yes, and i went around and talked to lots of people, yes, and produced what i thought was a story of what was going on.
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and that seems to me fair. no, my objection to social media is not the information that comes in, for instance, during the arab spring, when a lot of information was coming from the streets. i'm in favour of all that. it's the controversies that get distorted by social media that i'm against. i mean, issues like trans rights, for instance, which i'm very interested in, cos i think it's the most fascinating debate that's going on about gender and what constitutes gender and whether there's such a thing as fixed gender. that debate has been debased by insult and anger. that's what i'm getting at. that's what i object to about social media. if you think things are getting worse, i imagine you feel they're about to get a whole lot worse. why? because elon musk, the world's richest man, has just bought arguably the world's most powerful social media platform. i don't understand what he's going to do. what's he going to do with it? well, i'lljust quote you a couple of things he's said, which are very germane to our discussion. he has stated his ambition to become, he says, "by far "the most accurate source of
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information "about the world. that is the mission." in response to one american journalist who was questioning him, he said, "you represent the problem. "journalists who think they are the only source "of legitimate information, "that is the big lie." what do you anticipate he will do? it's not a big lie. journalists don't believe themselves to be the objective source of information. they pride themselves on trying to be objective. they pride themselves on trying to have the truth. a lot of people who opine on twitter and social media don't even pretend to try and get at the truth. they have their own fixed idea about how things are. of course, journalists come with baggage. of course they come with a certain attitude, but they do at least try on the whole to get to the truth, even though they get lambasted for it. survey after survey suggests public trust in journalism and journalists is in decline. public trust in almost everything is in decline. public trust in politicians in this country. public trust in the monarchy.
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public trust in journalism. everybody�*s trust in things is in decline. nobody trusts anything any more, do they? not in the sense they did when we were in a more hierarchical world 50 years ago. i don't think so. your career, six decades of it has been spent inside this organisation, this building that we're speaking to each other in today. luckily not in this building. mainly outside this building, thank you very much. indeed. but here we are in hq of the bbc, which you clearly feel still very passionate about. you talk about the exceptionalism of the bbc. that word always raises certain suspicions in my mind. are you sure the bbc is so very exceptional? i wish it were. i hope it is. i mean, i tell you what i think is exceptional about the bbc and the thing i've always liked about the bbc. first of all, it's not there for profit. elon musk is on twitter for the money he can make out of it, and getting to mars — great ambition. the bbc is only there for one purpose, which is to serve the people who pay for it and the people who pay for it... everybody in the country who owns a television set. so, it's not got any agenda of its own.
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it's kind of created for the people who own it. you and me. yeah. and thousands and millions of others. for those who are unversed in the bbc�*s funding, everybody in the uk pays what is in essence a form of television tax which goes to the bbc. at the moment it's roughly £160. £159, yes. which is just under $200. everybody who owns a television and uses the bbc has to pay that. yes. now... i mean, all public service broadcasting does that. germany does that, france does that, italy does that. and britain is the first example of it. began in 1926? 100 years ago. yes. but you say it serves everyone, and in a way... no, its aim is to serve everyone. i didn't say it does. of course, there are people who feel they're not served properly. the bbc�*s role, as i see it, i mean, unlike almost any other broadcaster i can think of, since its onlyjob is to serve the people who fund it and indeed to serve, the people who fund it, and indeed to serve, through the world service, other people around the world. since that's its onlyjob, it's acutely sensitive to people who are excluded.
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so, it's always trying to adjust itself so that it does represent all opinion in the uk. and that's unlike any other broadcaster. interesting you say that because i wonder if you feel, if you were setting out on your broadcasting career today, whether you'd find it as easy to become the top dog at the bbc in the way that you did? no, i'm sure not. but, in a funny sort of way, it's worth exploring your own past cos it's quite telling about bbc past and present. you were the son of the bbc�*s, perhaps, most famous presenter of the time, a man who'd been a war correspondent during world war ii. he then, i think, was presenter at the coronation of queen elizabeth. he was, in many ways, the voice and the face of the bbc, as, i said earlier, you were to become. it feels a bit nepotistic that you ended up doing pretty much the same job that your dad did. what's nepotism? how do you define it? nepotism is when your family sort of pulls strings...
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what, my dead father? my father, who died in 1965, was pulling strings for me in 2020? you must bejoking. no, no, not literally up to 2020. well, you asked the question. i did, and it's a serious question. no, i tell you exactly what i think. i came into broadcasting... actually, you got the date wrong. i came in when i was 12 years old to the bbc. i don't think you were being professionally employed at that point! i don't know whether i was paid or not, but i did family favourites and i did work in the bbc pretty well all my life. i went to university and then i started as a reporter in bristol. and the name dimbleby is a funny name. it sounds odd and there aren't many of us in the country. so, you know, sackur is quite a strange name, too. but if i'd been called smith, nobody would have said it was nepotism. i'm sure at the very beginning, at the very, very beginning, people thought, and the bbc was a small organisation then, "well, let's give this bloke a try and see how it goes." you wouldn't last 60 years on that basis. i mean, it's interesting that, you know, the dimbleby family has been injournalism so long.
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my great—grandfather was a journalist. we are journalists by trade. my son's doing it now. it is interesting. and it gets to the point we were discussing earlier about the way the bbc has to adapt to serve its audiences. do you think today the bbc should very actively be seeking not to have as its figureheads the public school educated, the upper middle class, those who've come from a privileged background, but should be seeking to make their most prominent figures, people who've come from very different, diverse backgrounds? absolutely. should they be using positive discrimination? absolutely. i'm absolutely favour of positive discrimination, both on ground of gender, where it's improving in the bbc, and on ground of colour. i'm absolutely in favour of that. it should represent the whole of society in as far as it can. i mean, when i came in, it was all, you know, university, and people who ran the place, people up
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there were all, oxford and cambridge, white, and it was like that for a long time. i think it is changing now because i think its power has been broken by all the other outlets that you were talking about. so, it's no longer enough to say, "this is the bbc, "we are the bbc, we tell it to you straight," and all that. the big battle for the bbc now is how to reflect the society that's increasingly complex and divided. and for that, you need people talking to the audience who come from all those backgrounds. you can't do it by people like you and me. let's talk about one of the specific challenges facing bbc news and current affairs, and that is holding power to account. you've been doing it professionally for 50—odd yea rs. a rather grand way of putting it. you mean interviewing politicians? interviewing politicians... is that holding power to account? well, you tell me, did it feel that way when, for example, and you've written about this quite a lot
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in your memoir, challenging harold wilson when he was leader of the labour party opposition? you, in the course of that interview, felt it was right and proper to ask him about his personal finances cos he'd written a book and he'd made some money out of it, and he got furious and he cut the interview short and he said, "that tape will never go to air." and he... and the bbc agreed with him. until his death, it wasn't allowed to be shown. which leads me to my point, do you think you have been successful in actually holding power to account? i think that, erm... how can i put this? you need to have politicians who are serious about theirjob and thoughtful about theirjob, and they're rather few on the ground at the moment, to hold power to account, because it's a two—way street. you have to have a politician, like margaret thatcher was, who took political interviewing seriously, prepared for it, wanted to answer questions. you can't do it with politicians who are briefed by their advisers.
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you know, "just say this, just say that. "there's nothing in this for you. "don't do a half hour interview with sackur. "it's not worth it. "he'll roast you. "do ten minutes on something that they don't have a chance "to really dig deep." so, this holding power to account is a two way street. and i think it's to the great discredit, and i blame social media for this bit, it's to the great discredit of many politicians that they will no longer sit down for half an hour, or we used to do a0 minutes with thatcher when she was prime minister every year. i'm a little confused. that's a behavioural change amongst politicians. it's a calculation they've made, but you seem to be saying something much more profound. you seem to be saying politicians, as a breed, here in 2022, are less honest than they used to be. i didn't say "less honest," but i think they're less willing to explain what they're on about, what their real thoughts are. they're less willing to share with the voter, with the public the problems they face and the difficulties
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and the ambiguities of it. and they're much more inclined now to go for slogans. we live by political slogans in a way that we didn't 20 or 30 years ago. i think it began with the total chaos over the brexit vote and whether we leave the eu — which, in my view, is a referendum that should not have been held, not a proper subject for a referendum. it should have been for an election and a political party who had worked out what it was going to do. instead, we just had a yes/no, turn the light off, turn the light off, and then decide what to do afterwards. we're six years down the road now and this country still doesn't know where it's going to be after brexit. i won't go on about that. well, you can let off steam and former mate now.— —— well, you can let off steam and fulminate now. you couldn't have said those things as a bbc chief presenter six years ago when the brexit referendum took place. is it a good idea... you hosted the referendum
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results programme. yeah, but before the results... if people had known your private views then... what are my private views? you told me you thought that referendum was illegitimate, that it was not a subject which should have been subject to a binary yes/no result. if you'd aired that opinion on that programme, people around this country would say, "why should i listen to david "dimbleby? "he's got such strong opinions of his own about "the illegitimacy of this referendum, i don't think "he should be presenting for the bbc." no, i would simply have raised the question was whether the referendum was a proper way — that's a perfectly legitimate question, which we did discuss on question time. we talked about the brexit vote for, what, six months or more every single week on question time about the issues involved. do you ever think...? i was just thinking looking back, you know, mrs thatcher always used to sneer at the idea of referendums, saying "it's a plebiscite and we don't govern "by plebiscites in this country." i mean, there is, with hindsight, it does seem that a yes/no vote was too crude a mechanism for something as complicated as pulling out of the eu and finding a new role in the world. just let me finish. it's taken six years
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and we still don't know what it is that we have created by leaving the eu. we still don't know where we're going, we're still confused and there are still difficulties on every front because of it. yeah, no, i'm intrigued to hear your views and i think it's fair to say you're freer to speak now than you were when you were... yes, true. ..in the bbc full—time. do you think, looking back, that you ever betrayed your personal feelings and opinions in the course of interviews with those in power? no. never, ever? don't think so. do you think people have any idea how you vote? my wife doesn't, and she's the closest person to me there is. you never discuss with anyone how you vote? never told anyone. never discuss politics? i discuss politics all the time, but i never talk about how i vote. right. the bbc is preoccupied with... i mean, do you tell people how you vote? do i know how you vote? if i asked you how you vote, would you tell me? no, of course not. no. of course not. do you vote? i do. why won't you tell me? because i work for the bbc.
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i'm impartial. no, because it's a private matter! let's talk about impartiality, because the bbc wants it to be front and centre of what it gives to the british public in terms of its information and news. yes. there has been significant questioning of that from inside — or at least from insidejournalism. emily maitlis, for example — who you know very well, a former bbcjournalist who's working now in the private sector — she has suggested that the bbc in the recent past has been cowed in the way it's covered politics. she was particularly looking at the boris johnson premiership and the way the bbc handled one of the covid controversies. she expressed — she made an introduction to a programme which the bbc decided was not right, it was not impartial. she says the bbc has been cowed. what do you think? erm, overcautious, maybe, a bit. maybe because of the threat from borisjohnson to — through nadine dorries to undermine the bbc, get rid of the licence fee, bring the bbc to heel.
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i mean, i think it's part of that syndrome that the bbc can become overcautious. i happen to think the things that emily — and i said publicly and i've said it to her — said about the covid expedition of cummings to have his eyes tested, that it was clearly false. i thought that was not the right thing for her to say, that's all. but i think on the broader picture, the idea of the bbc�*s impartiality is important to defend. and the bbc has to understand that all prime ministers attack the bbc, all prime ministers try and undermine the bbc. all prime ministers think they hold the whip hand through the licence fee. so, the bbc has to appeal, in a way, over the head of the politicians, to the public, to its audience, and say, "we're not frightened of government." and they don't, you know — it's easy to attack them
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for being frightened of government. impartiality? it's very, very... it's in the eye of the beholder, in a way, but it is very, very important to defend it. and i think, on the whole, the bbc does a good job of that. in other words, i don't know your political opinions. no, all right. we've been talking for 20 minutes. i don't know what you think. you don't know what i think. that's as it should be. let me switch tack. let me switch tack a little bit. you say the bbc mustn't be frightened of government. you also contend in your book, i think it's fair to say, that the bbc is somewhat frightened of the monarchy. yes. chuckles. you should know, in a sense, because you've been covering the royal family, the monarchy, but particularly the big ceremonial events for the bbc, again, for the best part of 50 years. it now turns out as, again, you're opening up, you're being more frank, that you think there are many aspects of the monarchy that are, frankly, ridiculous. you don't like deference. i don't think you like the hereditary principle. i don't know where you get all that from, but i'll tell you what i do think. i don't like deference. no, i don't like bowing and curtseying.
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i think we're beyond that. i believe in a constitutional democratic monarchy. i believe one of the aspects of that is that the bbc, as broadcasters, should be able to look at the controversies that surround monarchy, how it's funded, what rights it has to change laws, which it does — which nobody knows much about — what rights it has to avoid paying taxes, which nobody knows about — corporation tax and death duties and inheritance tax. those things ought to be open. we're an open society. we should know about them. ijust wonder... and the bbc is cautious about doing that. were you happy to sit in the commentary box, being — using your lovely, sonorous voice and your ability to commentate on the biggest events — were you happy to do all that, knowing that the bbc wouldn't allow you to dig into some of those other stories concerning the royal family? yes, oh, yes — they're two different things. i mean, by talking about — what are the state
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opening events i've done? i mean, the state opening of parliament, which is a traditional ritual, or a queen'sjubilee, those are fine. i'm happy with talking about those, or the marriage. the marriage i talked about didn't last very long but anyway, talking about a marriage and, indeed, the queen's funeral, being at st george's for that. no, no, i have no qualms about doing that or i wouldn't do it. i think that that can go along with looking at the structure of monarchy and how it fits into our democracy. i think that's important. and it's always been — you know, after queen victoria died, we had monarchs who used politicians to replace the monarchy inside the constitution, to work out how it should appeal to people. all i think is we should have that same openness and maybe now with a new king, we have a chance to do it. but i think the bbc is overcautious about that. it's worried about upsetting. i'm not quite sure why. will you be commentating on king charles�*s coronation? i've no idea. i only heard i was doing the commentary on the funeral
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the day after the queen had died, so i pass on that. it's interesting. i want to end the interview byjust reflecting on these two institutions we've discussed. the bbc, which is so dear to you and has been your life for so long, the monarchy which you've been connected to in the mind of the british public for so long. do you think both of those institutions will long outlast and outlive you? for what, another 100 years?! my guess is, and i'm more interested, in truth, in the bbc. i mean, my guess is the bbc, in some form, will last. obviously, i dearly hope it does. i mean, you say i love the bbc. i've enjoyed working for the bbc and i admire the bbc. it goes through every kind of bump on the way. but i think thejob it does, the thing that you were deriding at the beginning — of being objective and impartial — i think you were deriding it as a concept. i think you're wrong, but keep going. ..is something still to aim for. and the bigger, the more information flow there is, the more elon musk on twitter
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or whatever it is, the more important it is to have people like you in this organisation, trying to be objective and considered about what they believe to be true. and as for the monarchy, i — the appetite for getting rid of the monarchy in favour of a republic. people may, the young people say they're not interested in monarchy. you look at how you rewrite a constitution when you have an unwritten constitution. we'd spend the rest of our lives discussing what it should be, so i think that is not likely. certainly not something we have time for now. david dimbleby, thank you so much for being on hardtalk. thank you, stephen.
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hello there. our exceptionally mild spell of november weather is set to stick around for another few days. there's also a lot of dry weather on the cards but we have got some rain across the far north—west of the uk. not only is it very mild out there but it is also going to feel windy once again through friday. so, we've got high pressure towards the south—east and this waving weather front in the north—west. that combination of weather systems means our winds are coming in from the south—west. so, from a very warm direction, we're drawing up this warm air from the azores right up towards the uk — you can see the orange colours on the map there — so, a very, very mild start to friday morning. on average, we'd expect overnight lows this time of year to be between about 3 to 6 degrees north—to—south but overnight temperatures at the moment between about 13 to 15, so a good ten degrees or even more than that above average for the time of year. so, very mild to start things off, also fairly cloudy for most of us. we will see rain initially for the western isles and parts of highland. that area of rain will track eastwards across scotland
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and northern ireland through the day, becoming lighter and patchier as it does so. england and wales predominantly dry, the odd spot of drizzle in the west, best of the sunshine towards the east. but gusts of wind once again a realfeature — 30—a0mph for many of us, 50mph across parts of scotland and through the irish sea, too. and temperatures 16 or 17 for most of us but as high as 19 celsius for the north—east of scotland — probably the warmest spot during armistice day on friday. so, through the day, then, we're going to be seeing this area of rain moving a bit further south for a time and then, starting to return northwards overnight and on into saturday morning, so still very mild — not quite as mild as first thing friday morning, though. we're down into single figures across parts of scotland. so, through the day on saturday, there's that area of rain clearing to the north slowly, just sitting up towards the northern isles for longest. but elsewhere, after mist and fog clear away from parts of england and wales, should be a bit more sunshine coming through. lighter winds than we've seen — 17 or 18 towards the south, mid teens further north. and for remembrance sunday, again, largely dry and settled. some early mist and fog which should clear away from the vale of york, welsh marches, for instance, as well.
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lighter winds not quite as warm but we're still looking at temperatures well above average, 13 to 17 degrees. probably the last of the dry and warm—feeling days because things are set to turn cooler and more unsettled as we head through next week. bye for now.
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this is bbc news. i'm tadhg enright with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. an army on the move — ukraine says it's making major gains around kherson, a day after russia announced its withdrawal from the southern city. france suspends a plan to take in 3,500 refugees from italy after it refused to let a migrant rescue ship dock. anti—terror police in belgium investigate a stabbing attack in which one officer is killed and another injured. and seizing the superyachts — a new wave of arrests of russian oligarchs is promised as well as the impounding of their luxurious assets.

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