meanwhile, fake news, false claims about what is going on, have been in abundance. journalists have been attacked and injured, so lots to discuss around the media's role. katya adler, the bbc�*s europe editor, is with us. we've also gotjournalists who have been out reporting for french outlets. and we've got one of the bosses of agents france press, the big news agency. but before we get into that, i want to cross to new york and start with emma tucker, the editor—in—chief of the wall streetjournal. because one of emma's reporters, evan gershkovich, has now been imprisoned in russia for more than 100 days. the authorities accuse evan of being a spy. charges that he, the us and the wall streetjournal all deny. he is the first western journalist to be detained in russia since the cold war. emma, welcome to the show. i will ask you for the latest on the situation in a moment but can you just take us back and remind people

the circumstances of his arrest back in march? well, evan is an accredited journalist in russia. he had full accreditation from the russian foreign ministry and he was doing what he always does, he was out reporting from the ground. he was covering a story over in the east of russia and while he was out on this assignment, he failed to check with us. we have a system for journalists operating in difficult territories, which i am sure the other journalists will recognise, whereby we asked people to check in twice a day. he missed his morning check in and then he missed again his afternoon check in and overnight, it was confirmed he had been picked up and arrested and taken back to moscow to be held there. and after the first... i'm sure people listening will be interested in the check in system. were you very worried after the first non—check in? is it very rare for people not to check in? it's unusual.

and i didn't like it, but i didn't panic because, you know, people lose internet access, they lose their phones, they get tied up doing something, so i didn't like it, but i did then panic... i mean, i didn't panic, i did then start to really worry when in the afternoon i was told the second check in had been missed and at that point, we all started to worry. to the manager, "call me if it is bad news," and my phone went off at four o'clock in the morning. i get emotional thinking about it. it is so awful. she told me he had been arrested. for espionage. absolutely. and you have been quite categoric that the charges he was arrested on are completely baseless. totally bogus. completely. everybody denies it. we deny it, the us government denies it, his family — it is complete... complete rubbish. and he is a russian heritage journalist, whose family left russia before he was born, is that right?

evan is american born and bred. his parents fled the soviet union. his parents are sovietjews who left the soviet union in the 1970s to start a new life in america. they took advantage of an opening that allowed waves ofjews to leave the soviet union. evan and his older sister danielle were both born in the us and were educated here. the thing about evan though is he's bilingual and he was very interested in his heritage. they spoke russian at home with his parents and he was fascinated. so his parents had taken him back there on holiday. he loved the country. and he really understood the country as well. and this is what makes him such a great reporter. and what do you know now about the conditions that he's being held in and what did you know early on? he was taken to this prison in moscow, which is notorious, it is a prison that has been

around since the cold war, since long before that. it's where they tend to take political prisoners. he's there. one new thing that we can report is he was finally granted consular access. the last time he got that was april 17. the us ambassador went to visit him onjuly three. we have very limited information but he is in good health. and he is bearing up 0k. i think he is there, he is reading, he can receive letters from people and he can send letters out, all heavily censored, ithink, everything goes through the censor, but he's doing... he's looking after himself as best he can. does he have access to a lawyer, to any of your lawyers? yes, he has some wonderful russian lawyers. that is where we get most of our information. we can't speak to him directly but we can contact him

via the lawyers and he has a very good relationship with them and he's in regular contact with them. and the ioo—day anniversary of his arrest is friday the 7th ofjuly. what more, if anything, can you tell us about this report about a possible prisoner swap? a kremlin spokesperson was quoted as saying there have been certain contacts on the subject but they must be carried out and continue in complete silence. yes, we don't know what he was referring to. we can only speculate. we have no idea. we don't know anything. i mean, what i can say is that... i suppose the anticipation is that the normal course of events in cases like this is that once there's been a trial and evan has been found... you know, convicted, then some sort of prisoner swap might take place but again, i stress, we have heard nothing official, simply picked up on this quote from the kremlin spokesman,

which again we don't know what he was referring to but he did say that. i wanted to bring in phil chetwind. presumably when it comes to reporting in russia, this has a chilling effect. i think evan worked for afp before joining the wall street journal. how are you, phil, managing your moscow bureau in light of what has happened to him? it has been a really, really tough period for our team in moscow. obviously, an event like what has happened to evan casts a cloud over everybody trying to do theirjob in very difficult conditions. i will reiterate what emma has said — he's a terrific journalist, loved by the whole team. nothing but great things i can say about him as a journalist. and so obviously, it second guesses everybody who is there. some decide to leave, others cannot leave because they may be russian. and they try to do theirjob

as best they can, not really knowing where the line is. i mean, that's what is so hard. and emma, what level... what kind of staffing do you currently have in russia for the wall streetjournal? we no longer have anyone in russia. it's too dangerous. we have very talented reporters who are doing... covering the story from outside, they have contacts still inside russia but it is a very, very dangerous place to keep a journalistic presence, as we have discovered we have a journalist in russia, hejust happens to be behind bars. we are talking in a bit about the unrest in france, one of the issues we will get to it is the level of mistrust people in france have ofjournalists, which is not dissimilar to here in the uk. you were talking about the kind of issues facing journalists and yourjournalist particularly in russia, but do you think the public

actually appreciates the genuine risk some journalists, reporters like evan, face in bringing them the news? i think yes and no. one thing that has been amazing is the level of support we've had from notjust other journalists but from the wider public. and our own readers are really very supportive and outraged on our behalf and that's been very encouraging. but i think perhaps it's underappreciated, the risks thatjournalists take and the importance of what they do. i have to say, in america where i am now, they do take independent journalism very seriously. so i think that is party explains the credible response we have had here. i don't know. i think we need to tell the world more often how dangerous and complicated it is, to maintain a network of foreign correspondents. you know, the amount of back work that goes into it, the visas, the security, the assessments you have to make on the ground, peoples�* families, you know, it's a complex and difficult business, keeping a foreign correspondent network going.

emma tucker, editor in chief of the wall streetjournal, thank you so much for coming on the programme. now we're going to turn to france, where earlier this month the country was gripped by riots. the starting point was the fatal shooting of 17—year—old nahel m by a policeman in a traffic stop in a suburb of paris. in the violence that followed, thousands were arrested — shops were looted and vehicles set alight across the country. we are in a tourist hotspot and, as you can see, riot police are everywhere around. this is not the face of france that emmanuel macron wants you to see. that was katia adler who we were taught —— will talk to in a moment. the n60 reporters without borders says at least 18 journalists were attacked during the protest and rioting. a freelance covering protests in the city needed stitches after being hit with a crowbar. and hundreds of police had been injured.

let's find out what it has been like for journalists. emma pearson is the editor of the local france. boris is from a news channel. welcome to all of you would let me start with you, boris, tell us what you are experiencing. your channel has been reporting non—stop on this story. yes, i covered the first four night of violence in paris, the most violence. more than 3,000 people are in jail after these riots. it started with the shooting of a 17—year—old boy. 16,000 police were mobilised. they are police that are normally fighting terrorist operations.

many fireworks were fired at the police. many cars were set on fire. and lots of businesses and shops looted. and police stations, the same. the mayor was attacked by two people. an incredible situation. it is very difficult forjournalists in france to cover these riots. let's have a listen to a clip of you reporting on tuesday

the evening, the day that nahel m was killed. you're standing in front of a police van and talking about the violence that has started. boris, just tell me a bit about what happened when you first tried to report from that scene because i understand... you said earlier it was difficult forjournalists — i understand people were telling you that you should leave. young people from the nanterre neighbourhood tell us that the only way to appear in the media is to burn everything. burning police stations,

burn cars, some people are afraid that i am filming, and the police may recognise them and they think we don't tell the truth and that we protect the police. young people asked us to leave this place. it's very problematic to work in nanterre, in paris, the same in toulouse. i'm used to covering the protest in paris. it's the same situation since the yellow jackets. what does it mean you do in terms of staying safe? do you take a security guard? what's the situation for you? for covering the riots, the protest in paris, we have security, we are filming with the iphone, not bigger equipment. much smaller equipment,

so you are much less obvious. more discretion in the population. yes, we cannot use normal cameras. because it's too dangerous for the journalists to work in this situation. and safety is important for us. you can do is it about a mistrust of the media, hatred ofjournalists, or is it because the kid is expensive and people might think it is worth robbing? i don't know that. i think the problem is mistrust of the press in france to date. there is a mistrust? yes. lots of people don't believe... people think that the prices near to emmanuel macron and is not independent.

it makes harder work, normally, it is since yellowjackets, since four years ago. katya, what precautions have you had to take and what reaction have you had from people on the ground? the bbc... when you are known to go out into those kind of situations, with the bbc, you get riot training and also i worked in the middle east for many years and you get hostile environment training which is renewed every three years. and though sort of things are for insurance of course, from a bbc point of view but it is also to equip us with realising key things. for example nanterre, daytime, the housing estate where nahel lived, it can look quite calm during the day but in seconds it could change. you have one look, a whole people appear and you are threatened.

that it happened to us on the first day that we were there. things happen very fast. what happened when you did get threatened? several times we were threatened, we were... just by raising a mobile phone and filming. people were shouting at us, "where were you before nahel?" why is it that the press and authorities only look when something awful happens, that is a big question. many people we spoke to in those suburbs and from nahel�*s family, saying, the case is getting so much attention from the press and the authorities responding is because it was filmed on mobile phones from several different angles, which means that the policeman who shot nahel, initially he said he thought his life and the life of another police colleague was in danger. that was shown from phone footage to be absolutely not the case.

but then in the suburbs, they will say to you, there are many nahels but their deaths, the provocation, discrimination, the racial profiling they say they face every single day is not recorded and they say the press are not there and that leads to a lot of resentment. also from what we look like, we lead very different lives to the ones they experience in the suburbs and they object to being portrayed as... two big police unions in france put out a press free calling them savage hordes, pests. and so what they fear is the press is there to portray them as such. so there is a deep, deep, deep distrust but also i have to say we face, when we are going out to demonstrations of the far right in france as well, there you also have a deep distrust of... as you know, it is called mainstream media and we are not welcome and that can also lead to us being pushed around and cameras being taken or damaged. and in terms of your approach

to this story, if you are faced with unrest across an entire country, it started on the outskirts of paris, how do you decide... i don't mean what angle in a dodgy way in any sense, but how do you decide how you are going to cover it? the bbc is very lucky in that we have lots of talented reporters across europe and so with a story like that, so big, you have such huge riots, across the country, shocking the country and france's allies across the world, it is important to show it is not just paris and so we are able to do that. it is important to get different voices on, clearly. whereas of course the people who live in those suburbs are the ones attracting attention, we made an effort to go and talk to a police union as well to get their perspective. i went to france's ministry

of foreign affairs i think for ones credibility, you really need always to have the different perspectives and the different voices and the young rioters, their mothers and fathers. it was so striking, i thought, that president macron had to leave the biggest emergency that europe is looking at right now, the invasion of ukraine, he was at an eu summit and he had to leave butt the press conference he then gave was appealing to the parents, the mothers and fathers, of the young rioters, saying keep them at home, keep them off social media where there are messages circulating, asking them to gather on the streets and protest but it is also an indication of the fact that he has to ask them that he is aware that french authorities just do not have a foothold or any trust in the communities that they could reach believably and appeal for calm. that is a real indictment.

phil, we were talking earlier about the precautions journalist had to take and presumably when access to the scene of a story becomes an issue when journalists are being attacked potentially, i am assuming a news agency like yours becomes even more useful to newspapers and tv channels because you can go out and try and provide the material that they may be less able to get, i don't know. absolutely. what i would say for example is we have a full—time correspondent in nanterre. we have someone who works there every day when there is not a riot or a crisis and so on, so therefore, knows people that you can then call on when you need to go in there in difficult times, so you can build trust and also we have a network of bureaus across france, of course, which means we can mobilise as and when different areas of unrest break out. to react as things evolve.

for clients such as the bbc, clients all over the world. and the levels of precaution that we were talking about, filming on iphones, security guards, is that also the kind of thing you would implement? absolutely. we would certainly film with iphones. since the yellow vests, which boris mentioned, we have seen that real anger towards the media on the streets, in particular television. i would say our text journalists and photographers have been able to work relatively easily on demonstrations. there is a huge sensitivity about tv and a huge sensitivity about live tv. that is really raising the stakes. what i would say over the last sort of week is it has really gone up a notch. it was really that much higher. we had a couple of journalists injured. maybe it was the younger demographic. i think it was also linked to the fact there was a lot

of criminality going on. there was a fear that the images would be used by police or someone later as evidence to bring criminal cases. text journalists could actually work, they were let through sometimes, whereas the image people were in trouble. and also saying about mistrust, emma pearson, has mistrust ever been this bad in the media in france? the latest reuters institute report says france is one of the lowest scoring european countries for public trust in the news. just 30% trust it most the time. yes, i think as the othersl said, we certainly saw this a lot since the yellow vests i and since the pandemic, like all countries, there has been a real increase in sort of distrust of media - but one thing i did notice this time was this absolute - avalanche of disinformation . on social media about the riots

in france and there were crazy stories going round. _ they seemed to me to be - amplified by english—language media accounts, the far right in the uk and the us, - they were really amplifying it, stories and sharing video clips that were not from france, or from years ago, stills i from movies, the leader- of the british far—right party shared a clip from one - of the fast and furious movies, claiming that people i were pushing cars off multi—storey car parks, that did not happen. it seems to me that the - disinformation has kicked up a notch this time. president macron has been blaming social media and video games, he seems to be saying in future they will cut off social media. how do you think that will go down? i think maybe his comment might i have been slightly exaggerated. i he said he had a meeting. with a lot of mayors and this is reporting what was

said in the meeting. it is maybe not as quite - as extreme as it sounds i think they are looking to bring - in some provisions for a social media bill that is already - going through parliament. katya, just as we come towards the end, what would be your suggestion... what are your thoughts on the strategy president macron has employed over the last few days? whether it is working in any sense. he has tried to tread quite a tightrope in a very security obsessed country, where the far right is breathing down his neck in public opinion polls, to put a lot of extra security forces on the street but at the same time try to not inflame passions. he did not call for a state of emergency, which is what we saw the last time there were such huge riots in france, back in 2005. the difference then is that it was just in the suburbs and did not spread into mainstream france and that has been put down to social media that is why he is worried about it.

i'm afraid that is all we have got time for this week. thank you so much to all my guests. thank you all so much for watching. goodbye. hello. our spell of fairly unsettled sort of mid—july weather continues. temperatures not doing great for the time of year, but we will have some sunshine around over the next couple of days. showers as we head through the week at times, temperatures a little below average for some of us. but the driest weather will be found towards the south—east because we're closer to high pressure sitting across europe at the moment. but low pressure across scandinavia drifts its way northeast with fewer isobars on the map on monday, certainly compared to what we've seen through the weekend. so not as breezy first

thing monday morning. few showers from the word go for western parts of england and wales as they drift eastwards. could be the odd thunderstorm, the odd sharp one in the east during the afternoon. scotland will see the cloud breaking up to leave sunny spells and a few scattered showers. and just the odd shower for northern ireland, too. temperatures somewhere between about 14 to 22 degrees north to south. and most of those showers do tend to ease away later in the afternoon from the west. so some late sunshine for many of us. overnight, though, the cloud increases from the west as this area of rain moves in to northern ireland, to wales, perhaps by the early hours of tuesday morning. ahead of that, quite a cool fresh night, particularly across parts of scotland. temperatures down into mid temperatures down into mid single figures in places. single figures in places. but through the day on tuesday, i think the weather will be dominated by this feature, slowly moving in from the atlantic, bringing that cloud and rain earlier on to parts of northern ireland and wales. but it'll drift into northern and western england, southern scotland where it could be quite heavy through the day. to the north of that, sunny spells and a few scattered showers, but across south—east england and east anglia, it could well stay dry with some sunshine lasting through the day. so temperatures here up to about 2k degrees,

whereas if you're stuck under the rain, typically about 16 or 17. now looking towards the middle part of the week in that area of low pressure clears to the east. could be a bit of rain in the south—east overnight into wednesday. wednesday, we're left with the airflow once again coming from west or north—westerly direction. not a particularly warm direction, but it should bring some sunshine and just a few showers. the showers for parts of eastern england and eastern scotland could be quite sharp. so perhaps the odd rumble of thunder, probably more likely to stay dry for the likes of wales, northern ireland, south west england too — temperatures 16 to 23. so up a little bit by this stage in the middle of the week and then towards the end of the week it's staying unsettled. further spells of rain. there will be some sunshine thursday into friday, but looking fairly unsettled as we head towards the weekend. not particularly warm for the middle ofjuly. bye for now.

live from washington. this is bbc news. the global heatwave shows no signs of stopping — with parts of the us and europe poised to shatter all—time records. a key grain export deal between ukraine and russia is set to expire in a matter of hours. will11th hour talks save it? and — actress, singer and french icon —jane birkin dies at age 76.