this year bbc news. hello. i am joined today byjeremy bowen. you, jeremy, are the current international editor, former middle east editor, and yourjob is very much being on the front lines of covering war and conflict and international affairs on the ground. and you are the disinformation social media, aka misinformation, person here at the bbc and it's... you know, when i started here, someone had said to me, "we will one day have someone, a correspondent, whosejob it is to look at social media." well, i'd say, "what is social media?" i might have said, "what is media?" i'm here becausejeremy has a new podcast called the frontlines ofjournalism

and it's all about unpicking our role as journalists, especially journalists who find themselves in very difficult situations, war zones and covering some of the very worst stories, and it really interested me because i, less so on the war front lines and more on the digital front lines. yes, and you, i've been listening to your latest of many podcasts, marianna in conspiracyland, right? i didn't come up with the title. it's a nice name. nice title. and it is very interesting. you are talking to people often who really don't like you and see you, it seems to me, as the absolute symbol of the mainstream media, the conspiracy that's tracking them down. that your questions, one of your interviewees said your questions were clearly dictated by the government or by some other shadowy part of the deep state,

or the international financial conspiracy, something like that. yeah, i'm unfortunately not as obedient as that, they might be disappointed to know. and actually, in that exchange that happens, i think i had to slip in very quick, "no, that's not true," but in general, you're right that i find myself very much the lightning rod or the villain for a lot of these conspiracy theory movements. but interestingly, certainly i felt through this podcast, they want to talk to me. they want to meet me and talk to me and engage with me, and i had to, on several occasions, agree to answer questions about myself and myjournalism in order to be able to ask them questions. that's fair enough. which i think is totally fair enough. so i think if you're, yeah, if you expect that of other people, then you should be able to do it yourself. i think so. i have come across colleagues at times over the years who say when they have been asked to answer a few questions for local tv in some countries, "oh, no, i can't do that." meanwhile, "can i have

an interview with...? or, "can you help me get an interview with the prime minister?" i think, you scratch my back, i've got to scratch yours. exactly. and i also just think we should be sure of our own journalism, so we should be able to answer those questions. i think there's a misconception that reporting on social media means you don't go anywhere, you just sort of sit in a room and scroll on a phone and go on a laptop. actually, an investigation like conspiracyland takes me from totnes, a small town in devon, to just outside manchester, to quiz this conspiracy newspaper editor, and all the way to berlin, to uncover more connections. so it's definitely sort of out and about and getting to the bottom of stuff. i think that's the essence of journalism and of reporting myself. and, you know, in the series, i was just on the frontlines ofjournalism, it's one thing i keep banging on about, that i think it's important to actually get out of the office and go and see for yourself, because even though these days, people ask, you know, they are very, very used to zoom or phones

or whatever, you can learn a lot more from someone by seeing them, sitting with them for an hour or so. how did you get the idea to do this series and why did you go to totnes? which i've never thought of as a hotbed of potentially dangerous conspiracy theories. so, a lot of it came about because i was getting lots of messages from people telling me about how covid restrictions had lifted, the lockdowns had ended but people they knew were still very deep into this conspiracy land. and now they thought, at least some of them thought, notjust that covid was a hoax or vaccines were part of this sinister plan to harm and kill people, but also that climate change is a hoax and the war in ukraine is a hoax and i know you've had some experience of that... i suggest they take a little drive to eastern ukraine and then they'll find it's not at all a hoax. exactly. so people being drawn into this very topsy—turvy world view and not just that, the more hateful and violent rhetoric that was accompanying that,

calling for mps, doctors, journalists to be executed for war crimes because they believe they are complicit in these sinister plots. and totnes was one of the places where i heard this conspiracy theory newspaper was being handed out regularly. so it was why i headed there to kind of try and get to the bottom, well, to get to the bottom of why it is happening. it was actually a rich scene, wasn't it? you got a lot of material out of it. yeah, and i think that's a really important thing as well, is that there are lots of places across the uk that seem to have been impacted by this conspiracy theory paper and, you know, people accusing it of causing division and tension and harm, but actually focusing on one place, one place that helps us understand the real world impact it can have. and then also, it's somewhat a springboard for the investigation because then i'm off to track down the editor and reveal more about what it is connected to and who it affects. but one thing... i mean, one complaint they seemed to be making was you just focus on extreme examples and actually, me, myself, i've got reasonable doubts about

what the hell is going on. what's your answer to that? what i always try to do is actually unpick, you know, it's totally legitimate for people to have questions of those in power. people often are understandably distrustful, have been let down, and it's kind of trying to untangle those legitimate concerns and fears and questions people have that is just contrary to evidence or that's hateful or misleading, so i always try to, that's where the empathy comes in i think because i want to understand how they have got here and then i hope by sort of interrogating that, i can figure out, well, hang on a second, you know, are you being misled by this person? who are you being misled by? how is all this unfolding? i was very struck by that woman who burst into tears in totnes. she got so upset about it, you could see, hear it in her voice. and she was really upset, didn't she say something like, "we're just trying to save everyone"? yeah, and i think actually, i've been to quite a lot of these sorts of rallies,

like the one that's in the podcast, and that's one of the first times where i've really been struck by how deeply some of the people there believe it and how deep, how much they really subscribe to that worldview. and when she became emotional, i was actually quite taken aback by it and i said to her, "i hope you're 0k." i think we have to think about how we approach, and i'm sure you find this is the case a lot, how we approach the leaders, the people who are we are putting accusations to and challenging and asking them difficult questions. and then the people who are also part of this movement in this case but who have been drawn into it, and in some ways are also victims of it because they've been lured into this way of looking at the world and thinking about the world that us as journalists you have to calibrate your question a bit differently. absolutely. and for those sorts of people because, i mean, to start with, for a leader or, if you like, a professional, the gloves are off,

and they've signed up to it and, you know, they are setting their own agenda but yeah, people tied up in it, i think it doesn't... i don't think you would get very far if you start trying to really push them. it's better to try to tease it out. so, why did you start thinking like that? i mean, how does it work? i mean, different thing, i'm not comparing the totnes tour but when they talk about people being radicalised into various kinds of extreme philosophies, often you hear about them being loners who spend hours and hours online, going into websites or even the dark web trying to find things. are these conspiracy theorists doing it that way or is it more that they, well, you are quite a lot in cafes and art galleries and things. i mean, do they meet other people and compare notes? how does it work? it's interesting you say you use that word radicalization, because actually it's one that quite a few of the people i interviewed use to describe the people who've been really drawn into this kind of topsy turvy way of thinking,

and particularly who've been drawn towards kind of more sort of far right ideology or hateful ideologies, anti—semitism and stuff like that. and i think that it's interesting how it works. i think that a lot of it is becoming really embedded in this social media community where your whole worldview is kind of distorted and you're just seeing so much of the same stuff. and it does become a bit more extreme and it normalizes the kind of rhetoric and language and discussion that, that if you stepped out of it, you might think it wasn't actually okay. and maybe it was something that, two or three years ago, you wouldn't have done. and that's kind of where there are questions for the social media companies and the role that they play. but in this case, this was also about a physical copy of a paper. and so it's kind of that idea that you become a part of this alternative universe where you have a whole community, where you have your own media, where you have...you're part of these big telegram channels talking about conspiracy theories and you actually are able to, yeah. you become so immersed in it

that that becomes your whole way of thinking. and so that's, that's, i think a bit how it works. one thing i was going to ask you, i guess, is what why did you decide to do frontlines ofjournalism now? what was the kind of trigger for it? well, i'll tell you exactly. georgia catt, the producer, contacted me and said, "are you interested in doing something about impartiality?" and i thought, that is very interesting. it's very timely. and then we talked about it and we thought, well, actually, it's, it's notjust about impartiality, because for me, impartial reporting, it's really, it's a technique. it's a technique that allows you to get to the truth of what's happening and to present it in as open and honest a way as possible. i mean, i can hear people gnashing their teeth and saying, you and the bbc are not capable of honesty. but actually i think that we very much are. it's just that sometimes we report things people don't want to hear and therefore they dismiss them.

so it broadened out then. and when people ask me what the series was about, i said, well, i think it's really about the obstacles that lie between a journalist and getting to the truth. and being impartial is one way of evading some of those obstacles. there are other things you've got to think about as well, which is what we go into. so the whole thing broadened out because if you just looked at impartiality, it was just, it was going to be a little one dimensional. and actually, i think it made for a much more interesting series of programmes. one thing that interests me is the way that we deal with a bit, like you say, the kind of obstacles to the truth and how we can get to the bottom of what's going on, particularly when the person who perhaps is the key to what's going on is is not telling us the truth and how we deal with that. and i wondered if you could tell me a bit about that kind of... well, around syria,

i think in particular, or any examples you have of actually where someone is kind of outright denying something, but what you have available tells you that that's just not true. well, the example we for that idea, i think the programme was called the big lie. the example that we chose was president bashar al—assad and the interview i did with him in 2015 at the height of the war. and i asked him about barrel bombs, which were very much in the news at the time. and these were these was very well documented metal containers filled with explosives and sharp bits of metal, really crude, being pushed out or dropped out of the back end of helicopters just in the general direction of the people beneath and the very definition of an unguided munition of some sort unguided missile, if you like. and so they were very, very indiscriminate. they killed an awful lot of civilians. so i asked him about that.

and he to my amazement, he denied it. he denied they even existed. he started making a series of stupid jokes about, next thing you're saying, we're going to have cooking pot bombs. and... and so in the programme, you know, i sort of try and discuss a bit why he was so blatantly telling a lie, even though, i mean, there are videos of these things dropping out of the back of planes. there's endless eyewitness testimony, notjustjournalists, human rights groups have done did very, very forensic investigations into the use of them. i've seen the aftermath of them myself and spoken to eyewitnesses in rebel held parts of damascus. so in the programme we talk about why would he actually choose to tell such an outrageous lie? and i think it was partly because, of course, he wanted to stick to his story,

but also because it was aimed it wasn't aimed at our bbc audience. it was aimed at their audience at home and aimed at the people who support him. do you think that outrageous lies are harder or easier to tackle as journalists than kind of small mysteries? easier, i'd say, because they're so outrageous. i think what is sometimes very difficult is when someone is coming from a particular political position which may or may not be based on lies or wild exaggerations. and they say something. i've interviewed people in this situation. it's quite hard because you think, he's just said, he's just spoken for 50 seconds or a minute 20 or something. and in that, as well as the fact

that i can challenge the main thrust of his answer, underneath, underlying it, there might be three or four premises that also also need to be challenged. but the problem is, when you challenge the premise, especially in a truncated, relatively short interview, then you go away from sometimes the main thrust of the new story of why you're there. so if you're not careful, if you don't, however, challenge the underlying premise of what that person's saying, then the interview proceeds on their ground and they're setting the agenda for it. so i think you need to try and destabilize them a bit in terms of getting at that. but when someone has been pushing a point of view for many, many years and often they're very good at it, it's quite hard to do. you have to be on your game, well briefed, have examples ready and also be absolutely prepared for that person to totally ignore what you're saying and not

try and address the points you're making, but simply repeat that point of view. so in a way, sometimes you might argue, and i've spoken to people about i've discussed it with this a bit with colleagues. maybe to try and interrogate these things straight on interview on its own is not the best way to do it. you have to do other things as well to set it, set it up. look at the context, the wider context. i mean, with a lot of the people i interviewed, it often boils down to a question of why they believe what they believe as opposed to what exactly they believe, because you find yourself in this kind of constant cycle of saying, oh, there's not evidence to support that, and here's why. and then they move on to something else. and actually what's i think much more valuable to the audience often is to actually understand where they're coming from and how they've arrived at that point. and when i was interviewing that conspiracy theory newspaper editor darren, one thing i found was that our conversation was very topsy turvy because it felt like and i said this to him during the interview,

i said, and he's actually uploaded the full 3 hours, but on the podcast we hear the 15 minutes. i said to him, you know, it feels like. democracy and society relies on this shared reality. we have that you and i might both be looking at this table and say, you know, it's a grey table. we agree it's a grey table. i like the grey table. you hate the grey table. but if one of us thinks the grey table isn't there, it becomes really difficult to have a conversation because, you know, he kept saying things to me along the lines of, oh, you know, well, me and you, you're actually the same. but you think you're exposing the harm caused by sort of disinformation and trolling and and so and so do i. and there was this constant back and forth of him kind of denying some of the stuff i raised, and then he'd say other things that

kind of contradicted that. and you end up in this very cryptic back and forth, which one of the brilliant things about podcasts, i think, is you can unpick that for the audience and in a wider context as well. i think you're totally right that the interview alone is often not enough. i mean, one thing that in the years i've been a journalist and i, i started work here in 1984, is thatjournalists are much more in the the metaphorical or the realfiring line. where if you're out and about in a war zone, it feels a lot more dangerous, i'd say to be, i think we're potential targets in the way that we weren't always before. and it's notjust in things which clearly are dangerous environments, which you probably shouldn't. you know, if you go to them, it is going to be dangerous. it's in terms of what things like you're trying to do or political correspondents are doing or economics, whatever, any field that the messenger is much more of a target now, i think. do you agree? i mean, that's absolutely been my experience. and sometimes i think that the job

i do kind of uniquely places me as... part of these conspiracy theory movements is that the media and journalists are absolutely universally people that they don't trust and they don't believe and they therefore target in that way. and so you are, i guess, a part of the story. and i think that's a really interesting question of how much should and can we be part of the story. and, you know, i'm talking about a podcast that has my first name in the title, and i think and certainly on the beat i cover, i found it hugely valuable to sort of inhabit this world and actually experiencing hate and understanding how that is a weapon that's often employed by these conspiracy movements. and the way that that works. i'm sort of uniquely placed to be able to investigate that and unpick it, and i think that's a really positive thing for the audience, is understanding, even if it's not easy for me. it also means you're uniquely placed to get trolled. yeah, well, exactly. and more than troll threatened. there was a conversation i had with them with maria ressa, who won the nobel peace prize. and she's someone who has faced huge

amounts of kind of backlash and also online abuse and abuse offline. and she kind of said this as well. she said, oh, i don't i don't know if there's something weird about me, but i see it as a real asset that i am able to understand how this works because i experience it firsthand. and if i can convey that to to the people who are reading or listening or whatever, then i'm able to actually better expose it. and i certainly feel that that's the case. even if the price is being trolled, i think i'm i'm able to expose what's happening in a way that would be much more difficult if i sat as a sort of outside observer. and i actually think in this world where more and more people are able to, we're not, like you say, the kind of big voice from above that's telling people what to think, when and how that works. we are very much with everyone. and so actually, if you want to be with everyone, you have to actually be with everyone. you have to turn up and, you know, meet them in person. you have to, you have to take their questions. you have to be embedded. and the risk of that is the trolling. yep, i think it is. and i think another antidote to a lot of the flak that we get is something i know we're trying to do more and more at the bbc

and notjust at the bbc either is to show how we get to stories, you know, expose the way that we operate and the things that we do, the stuff that comes out on air or in podcasts or on the news or whatever doesn't, it's not born as a fully formed, beautiful child. there's all sorts of things that go into it, all kinds of processes, all kinds of checking, enormous, enormous efforts. you know, when i've been working in difficult countries, authoritarian countries, if, say, like syria under assad and during the war there, if we could get a decent sequence of pictures, ie one of the building blocks of a report. say every couple of days. which probably when it's edited make 45 seconds. i think we were doing pretty well, but to get that is an all consuming task.

so sometimes i've even suggested, in fact, to one of our two, our big boss here, deborah, that we should sometimes even film that process just to show how we have to go about things. and i think people would find it quite surprising because, i mean, to get a decent report on air, you know, we both know it's absolutely all consuming. i think that all of that, when we're able to actually explain to people, even conversations like this one, where people can understand a bit more about what goes into the kinds of reporting we do, it's so valuable. and i do often find occasionally, particularly when i'm facing the trolls, that it helps to humanize us or to know that we're real people who often i'd like to think, or certainly i'd like to think we are kind of well intentioned in what we're doing and genuinely kind of believe what we're doing and looking at. and i think the more that that can be conveyed to people, particularlyjust explaining how it

works and how we investigate something and why and the behind the scenes, the more that people may be, can have their trust restored just a little bit in the bbc. hello there. it was a very thundery start to the weekend, and particularly so across parts of the west midlands, into north—west england. and later, those storms spread their way northwards, into scotland, during the overnight period. part two of the weekend looks a little bit better. there will be sunny spells around, but further showers too and low pressure always close by, and these weather fronts, which will continue to generate these showers and thunderstorms. now, we start sunday off on a bright note, plenty of sunshine. that's the overnight rain — thundery in places, clearing northwards, so it could be quite wet in orkney all day. an area of rain, some of it

thundery, could affect east anglia and the south—east for a time through the morning. then that clears into the afternoon, and then it's sunny spells, scattered showers. most of these, northern ireland, wales and western england. now, it's going to be a cooler, fresher day across the board. top temperature, around 23 degrees in the south—east. so we could have some disruption at wimbledon for that early rain. but then, into the afternoon, it does look like conditions will improve, with increasing amounts of sunshine. so as you move into sunday evening, most of the showers fade away — not completely, but most of them will. we'll see lengthy, clearer skies, but across the south—west, here, we'll see some cloud thickening, with increasing breeze too. temperatures lower, fresher than what we've had over the last few nights. range from 10 to 12 degrees. cooler than that out of towns and cities. this area of low pressure will throw out further weather fronts into the south—west. this area of cloud will thicken up further. we'll see outbreaks of rain, strengthening winds — south—west england, into wales, pushing into the midlands. some of this could be quite heavy. elsewhere, it's sunny spells, scattered showers. so we could be up

to around 2a degrees in the south—east, given plenty of sunshine. a little bit lower than that further north. but as you move out of monday into tuesday, this area of low pressure sits right on top of the uk, so a really unsettled day, i think, on tuesday. it'll be quite breezy. there will be some sunny spells in—between, but showers or longer spells of rain, and some of these showers could turn out to be heavy and thundery in places. pretty much anywhere could catch a shower. and temperatures will be lower, 16 to 21 or 22 degrees. that's below par for the time of year. and temperatures fall further as we move deeper into the week. this area of low pressure pushes towards the north of the uk, bringing some cooler air down on that north—westerly wind. so it stays unsettled for much of this upcoming week, with temperatures below par for the time of year. there will still be some sunshine in between the showers.

live from washington. live from washington. this is bbc news. this is bbc news. further allegations tonight, further allegations tonight, concerning a bbc presenter, when they were 17. concerning a bbc presenter, accused of paying a teenager accused of paying a teenager for sexually explicit for sexually explicit

photographs, beginning photographs, beginning when they were 17. the claims in the sun newspaper, allege the unnamed