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. 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.

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. 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. 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...

david taylor also spotted a problem. and john roberts summed up like this. 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. 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. well, marianna spring joins me now in the studio. well, marianna spring was undeterred, responding... 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 4 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, "0h, 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 03700106 676. 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. after a turbulent week of weather, many of us had a much drier friday, and there's some dry weather at the end of this forecast, too — but before we get there, more rain to come through the weekend, particularly on saturday — some of it's going to be heavy, most of us having a drier day on sunday. and that rain is all tied in with this atlantic system, gradually pushing its way eastwards through saturday — some of that rain is going to be heavy. also, notice that the isobars are close together, so we'll see some gusty winds, especially for western areas. so this is how saturday shapes up — this band of rain gradually pushing north and eastwards, through southwest england, wales, northwest england, western scotland, northern ireland — though drier here through the afternoon, although still likely to see a few heavy showers. further east, less of the sunshine through the morning — in fact, east anglia,

southeast england could stay dry for much of the day — northeast england, perhaps, too — but some gusty winds, especially for irish sea coasts and the western isles, those gusts perhaps reaching a5, maybe even 50mph. but they're south or south—westerly winds, so mild airflooding across the uk, with highs of 11—14 celsius. now through saturday night, we see that band of rain continuing to push its way eastwards — again, some of that will be heavy. the strongest winds extending to eastern coasts. behind it, something clearer across many western areas, though a few showers starting to push in from the west. it will be a very mild night, with temperatures for some holding up to ten or 11 celsius, and not much lower than six or seven at their lowest. so, as we head into sunday, here's our frontal system — but notice how it's lingering very close to the southeast of england, so we'll keep a hang—back of cloud, and also potentially some outbreaks of rain across parts of southeast england, maybe east anglia, too, through the morning. behind it, for many, some good spells of sunshine, but further showers will be pushing into western areas, and those are likely to become quite blustery again with some

strong winds for irish sea coasts. the winds should start to ease through the day across eastern areas. not quite as mild as it will have been on saturday, but temperatures still quite widely in double figures for most. and, actually, for many, sunday looks to be the drier day of the weekend. and as we head into next week, we actually see this area of high pressure starting to take charge, and just keeping these frontal systems at bay for most of us. so as we move into next week, things are looking mostly dry — although there will be a lot of cloud around. could also see some problems with overnight mist and fog. that's all from me — goodbye.

this is bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories... a matter of national security — new chinese surveillance equipment is banned in the us over concerns it could be used for spying. kherson under attack — hospital patients are evacuated from the recently—liberated ukrainian city after constant russian shelling. world cup frustration for england fans — a 0—0 draw with the usa — but both teams can still progress to the knockout stages in qatar. in the us and the uk tens of thousands of retailers offer cut price deals for black friday...are the shoppers buying it?

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