in other words, we don't need to prove any more that they did it to cause distress to the victim, or they did it for sexual gratification — it'sjust that consent issue that is central. the online safety bill will also be amended to make sharing explicit deep fakes — which involves editing a face onto another body without consent — a crime in england and wales. it will also tackle downblousing, where photos are taken down a woman's top without permission. i think, for a long time, people thought many of these practices were already criminal offences. obviously, we're facing a different type of threat to people with digital means used, so the law's got to adapt and we've taken evidence on it, we've looked very carefully at it, we accept that there is a gap that can be filled, and now we're taking action. the law commission — an independent body that advises the government — recommended these changes, and say criminal offences had not kept pace with technology.

monika plaha, bbc news. now on bbc news newswatch. hello, and welcome to newswatch, with me, samira ahmed. on this programme... why has the bbc�*s disinformation correspondent created online profiles for five fictional american voters? and is it the responsibility of her and the bbc as a whole to confront and expose the purveyors of false conspiracy theories? first, the football world cup has certainly made its presence felt on our broadcasting landscape, sparking rows over the tone and extent of its coverage across both sports and news outputs. those two worlds came together when bbc one's coverage leading up to the men's tournament's first game on sunday featured appearances from bbc news

international editor jeremy bowen and its analysis editor ros atkins. hundreds of thousands of foreign workers — mostly from south asia — were hired. and there have long been concerns about their treatment. that focus on qatar's human rights record and questions about how fifa came to award it the right to host this year's world cup have featured extensively on news outlets over the past week, and that's raised questions in the minds of some viewers, such as hugh balter. "i cannot believe the consistent criticism of qatar throughout the last week, delivered by goodness knows how many different bbc reporters. this unbalanced approach continued into the one—hour build—up to the first match by gary lineker and team. if the bbc despise qatar so much, i suggest they significantly reduce the size of their team out there, or basically leave itv to cover all the matches." england's first match on monday kicked off at 1pm, meaning that a shortened version of the lunchtime news started a full hour

and a half early at 11:30. come 1:00, diane smith acted accordingly. "i assumed anyone interested would be watching bbc one, so i tuned in to the bbc news channel at 1300 for general news coverage. what i was subjected to is 21 minutes of — guess what — coverage of the world cup. whenever we have any kind of sporting tournament, the bbc seems to become obsessed, and really doesn't understand that this is not welcomed by all of the population." later that day, the news at six spent its first 15 minutes on the world cup — a decision which got this response from anne street. "you started with an in—depth report on the first england game against iran. there has been an earthquake in indonesia with extensive loss of life. obviously, the world cup should be reported on, but does a game, sport — a competition — really take precedence over a natural disaster?" in the coming weeks, we hope to speak to someone from bbc news about the reporting of the men's world cup, but let's now revisit a complaint we aired last week about these two graphics

which featured in coverage of the chancellor's autumn statement. some viewers pointed out that the graphs showed uk borrowing and household income as percentages, but without any explanation of what they were percentages of. bbc news gave us a response to that point, which we promised to bring you, so here it is. "the graph showing uk borrowing illustrated it as a percentage of gdp, and we should have made that clear. we also used a graph from the office for budget responsibility, which illustrated the percentage fall in household disposable income per person. in his analysis, faisal islam provided context on the economic consequences of this, including what this means for living standards. " on that same programme, though — the news at six on thursday of last week — another graphic showed the cost of the decisions made in the autumn statement. some of you noticed that those numbers actually refer to billions of pounds, not millions, as faisal islam made clear in his script — and that was corrected on the news at ten. but there were also objections

to the irregular intervals shown in the left—hand axis of the graph. steve fifield's response... "each vertical interval is five. wait, ten. hang on, no — —15?" david taylor also spotted a problem. "they corrected millions to billions. the scale is still a mess, though." and john roberts summed up like this. "a few data fails here from the bbc. all in all, it's pretty shoddy, isn't it?" now, with fake news on the rise over issues such as covid and the validity of the last american presidential election, it's a sign of the times that the bbc now has a disinformation correspondent — marianna spring. last month she presented an edition of panorama which explored the conspiracy theory that terrorist attacks, such as the manchester arena bombing of 2017, never took place and were actually staged by a group of so—called crisis actors. tonight on panorama... emergency services are dealing with an incident near

manchester victoria station. ..the people who deny these terrible events ever took place. i've been trying to find - evidence of a real explosion and evidence of a real bomb, and i haven't found any. - 27 people — 20 of them children — have been killed after a gunman opened fire at a primary school in the state of... no—one died in 2012 in sandy hook. - we reveal how the twisted world of disaster trolls has arrived in the uk. the views of the conspiracy theorist featured in the programme, and the accompanying radio 4 series — richard d hall — may be abhorrent to most people, but he still has his supporters, with malcolm naylor emailing us this reaction. "yet again, the bbc played its part in supporting the establishment deception to instil fear to control the population. this programme provided no evidence whatsoever, or examination of hall's claims to prove they are false." well, marianna spring has also been looking at disinformation in the united states, creating for newsnight,

and the podcast americast, online profiles for five fictional american voters to find out what they're exposed to and recommended across social media. when donald trumer — the son of the former president — found out about this approach, he posted this response on twitter. "some still question if fake news exists. the bbcjust admitted it created fake profiles across social media. well, marianna spring was undeterred, responding... "a new fan for americast�*s undercover voters." well, marianna spring joins me now in the studio. thank you so much for coming on newswatch. what are we talking about when we're talking about disinformation in news? i think it's really important to think about how disinformation tends to be deliberate misleading of people, promoting conspiracy theories or falsehoods that can cause serious real world harm, and a lot of the focus that i have in thisjob is understanding how disinformation spreads and how it affects people — particularly those who are targeted by it — falsehoods about the pandemic, the war in ukraine.

these aren't fringe beliefs any more. these aren't sort of small internet forums where people are promoting conspiracies that, you know, a lot of people would think are quite extreme and they wouldn't believe — particularly after the pandemic, but also around other major global events, elections and more. disinformation is more common than ever, it's something that can proliferate and spread very rapidly, and it has a real—world consequence — it spills out into the real world. it can cause violence offline, it can lead to people being targeted and harassed, it can lead to all kinds of other harms. well, you've just mentioned, you know, the harm done to people being targeted by it. panorama, your radio four series, disaster trolls — they examined how survivors and the bereaved are harassed by those who believe that these disasters never took place. is there a danger at all in publicising those people, that you actually spread the conspiracy to new believers? it's a really important question, and it's one that we discussed extensively when we were doing both the panorama and the podcast series, because we have to think about how we can cover these topics

ethically and responsibly, and whether we can cover them at all. and i think with this specific investigation, it really did come down to the survivors and centring our investigation around those survivors who were being really seriously harmed by the tactics employed by some of the conspiracy theorists involved in this investigation. they were left feeling unsafe, they were left feeling frightened, and one of them said to me, "if you don't investigate this, the harm continues for us — it gets worse." and what's really interesting, i think, in response to the investigation is not just the huge reaction to it — the number of people who were shocked and engaging with it — but that those survivors feel like people care and that people notice, and that particularly there's some amount of accountability, because they felt like they aren't able to hold to account the people who are pushing these harmful theories, or the social media companies or others who, in many ways, aid and are involved in facilitating the spread of these conspiracies. the main conspiracy theorist who we investigated as part of disaster deniers — we were trying to understand what drives him and motivates him, but we didn't want to unduly amplify his claims, and having the survivors' testimony coupled with that.

and i would say that in response to the message you read out at the beginning — that there was evidence to combat those false claims, there was testimony from real people who'd lived the worst day of their lives, the terror attack at the manchester arena, for example. and so i think if you always focus on the survivors and centre it around them, that's the most important thing. undercover voters — the five profiles you created for newsnight and americast — you know, we saw, donald trump jr cited them as evidence that the bbc�*s in the business of fake news. it's a dilemma, isn't it? it's a really interesting question, and certainly one that donald trumer has raised, and that is important for us to talk about. again, something that we spoke a lot about when we were creating these accounts — because we always ask the question — the public interest has to trump, or has to be greater than the possible deception of these accounts, because we don't want to promote disinformation or spread falsehoods. and there are a number of measures we take so that we can ethically set up

these accounts, and we make sure that they're private, for example — they don't have friends and other people that can see what they post. in fact, our undercover voters haven't posted anything at all, their accounts are private and locked down. but what's crucial is, they are the only way of investigating what social media sites are recommending to users, and they can't be an exhaustive view of what every us voter is seeing on their social—media feeds, but they do give us a window into what they can and could be promoted and could be seeing. and until the social—media sites are more transparent about what their algorithms recommend to people, it's the only way of us knowing because i couldn't test it with my own profiles — it would be redundant. so you have to have these characters that allow you to get a sense of what voters could be seeing in an honest and truthful way, because if you rely on people just to tell you what they're seeing, that's not always going to be the best way of knowing. one thing that's really been on my mind over the last couple of years is, is there a danger that mainstream journalists are putting all this energy into fact—checking and fighting each fake story — you know, fact check by fact check — and you're never going to get

over the backlog, are you? i think that's something we have to think about all the time. one thing i'm really passionate about is that i think fact checking is really important, but i think fact checking alone is not enough. and i think, actually, in many ways, we can learn from the people that push conspiracy theories and are successful in promoting harmful disinformation, how to investigate it and tackle it and expose it. because, actually, you have to weaponise the same things, the same techniques they use — human stories, bringing stories to life, capturing people's attention — to explain this to them. you want to be showing the real—world impact it has, you want to show people how this affects all of our lives, and you want to really expose the tactics and how it works so people can think, "oh, hang on a second. i don't really want to be conned by this person, either." and that doesn't mean you shouldn't ask questions of the mainstream media — the media, just as you do, you know, every time you do this programme — but you should be able to also spot when people are misleading you on purpose and benefiting from it. marianna spring, thank you so much. thank you for all your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news — on tv, radio, online

and social media — email newswatch@bbc.co.uk, or you can find us on twitter @newswatchbbc. you can call us on 03700106676. and do have a look at our website — bbc.co.uk/newswatch. that's all from us — we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again next week. goodbye. hello there. it was dry and sunny earlier today across many parts of the country but the weather will change this weekend. with all this cloud beckons coming in from the atlantic that will bring in some rain overnight into north—west scotland and then later heading into northern ireland. some clearer skies possible for a while, lighter winds in eastern england here it will be quite a chilly start to the weekend. but the winds are strengthening throughout saturday we have got more cloud coming in eastern england dry may be a little sunshine and some rain setting in across wales, western england moving northward to scotland still some rain at times in northern ireland. and the winds are strengthening

may be touching gale force around western coastal areas. drawing in mild air which will push its way northwards all the way into scotland. it stays mild, wet and windy overnight but as we head into sunday we have got more cloud left in east anglia in south—east may be in the far south—east still some rain left into sunday. elsewhere, some sunshine showers coming into these western coasts this could be heavy and thundery, not as windy and still mild.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. in the world cup, england are locked in a goal—less draw with the united states. i'm lester mcgregor in doha. all the reaction to two nights game coming up. certainly not the result many england fans were expecting, but the usa, many of their fans will be delighted. we'll be talking to some of the noon in the moment. kherson under attack — now hospital patients are being evacuated from the ukrainian city because of constant russian shelling. nurses in england, wales and northern ireland will walk out on the 15th and 20th december in a dispute over pay — the first