with me, samira ahmed. coming up: the reactions, suggestions, and criticisms made by newswatch to what they have seen on bbc news. and the responses and insights given to bbc correspondence and editors who have come on the programme in 202a. it's been a challenging year for bbc news, covering wars, rides, and elections on a declining budget. back injanuary, though, we focus on the big head at that time a british television, itv�*s mr bates vs the post office, a dramatisation of the horizon it scandal. nick willis was among the first journalists to investigate what turned out to be one of the largest miscarriages ofjustice in british history. we have come across dozens of examples similar to this. reporting initially for bbc local radio and panorama. i spoke to him about why it had taken a drama to bring the scandal to full public attention. it's interesting there

were very few interviews over the years with anyone from the post office about the horizon it concerns as the story gained more and more coverage. is that a failure of news media? it's an absolute failure ofjournalism. i said that on the record. we consistently try to get an interview with paula vennells. if serious news editors had gone to the government and said why won't the chief executive of the post office give an interview to anyone, then things might have happened. that is one thing you can point atjournalism. why weren't big news organisations piling in there at the very highest level and saying it is unacceptable that this person, the leader of this organisation, who is paid by the taxpayer, is refusing to allow herself to be held to account. later that month it emerged that the dedicated news programmes, the seven and the nine on the bbc scotland channel, had been getting remarkably low ratings. one edition of the nine had

1700 viewers and an edition of the seven just 200. the former editor of new programmes at bbc scotland gave us his reaction. to spend large sums of the license payers�* money on shows which are really not achieving in any way respectable viewing figures and certainly not impressive viewing figures is truly a way of squandering not only money but public regard. that is something the bbc cannot afford to do and i would expected to be ruthless in closing down these shows because they have no justification. a month later bbc scotland announced plans to scrap the nine, a proposal later approved by the regulator, ofcom. the wars in the middle east and ukraine have occupied substantial amounts of our time and resources this year. shattered — israel's security, its sense of self.

and it's sparked what is now the longest most grievous gaza war. and in april we asked lyse doucet about the challenges of reporting on the war in gaza. ourjob is to ask as many questions as possible, get as close as possible to the truth, to try to reflect the views of what is happening on the ground. and after decades of covering conflicts i now believe that there is — that wars in particular, conflicts of any kind unfolded two levels. there is a level of what is actually happening the who, when, what, where, why — the bedrock of the facts. then there is the perceptions of what has happened. and sometimes that is aligned with the facts, and more often it is not. in covering wars i've come to understand that the perception of what is happening actually matters more and can determine the course of a conflict even more than what really happened on the ground. the prominence given to showbiz and celebrity stories on news bulletins is a regular source

of controversy on newswatch. in april when taylor swift released a new album, we had many complaints from viewers about the level of airtime that attracted on the bbc. i just couldn't believe the level of coverage. it made me wonder, you know, really the bbc should have been paid for marketing it. are they desperately trying to get young people to watch? or, you know, what is it that is suddenly making this a news event, because there are very big names in the music industry who have not, as i've noticed, had that kind of coverage. soon after the general election was called injune we discussed the emergence of fake audio and video clips of politicians, such as wes streeting apparently calling his labour colleague diane abbott "a silly woman" and an ai rishi sunak

saying he would be "proper gutted" if his government were voted out of office. some of these clips again are obviously satirical, others are causing confusion. you see many comments saying, "hold on a second, is this real, what is going on here?" and that's the difficulty here, where do you draw the line between obvious satire and parody when it affects real voters, particularly younger voters who, for the first time, are perhaps engaging in politics. and tiktok we know, if we look at some of the data from ofcom, the media regulator, is a place where people in their teens and their 2024 news updates about what is going on. later in the election campaign we talked to nick robinson about his series of interviews with party leaders. if you want a really better service than you have got to reform and we will have to do public service reform... i am hearing that. viewers will say politicians do more and more of these interviews as well as all those social media clips and there is a danger than that an interview becomes a broadcast press release. they write the words, they market research the words,

they test them to death to check whether they offend this group or that group, and then the politician learns them off pat, and then you can read them you can see them read the words, so myjob is to try to either escape that, to put a question that doesn't allow them to do that, or to put a question that highlights the fact that they're not really answering the question. they may be talking about roughly same subject, they are not really answering what i've put in a question, and that means that yes, sometimes i interrupt. the spark for the violent protests that took place over the summer was a knife attack in southport in which three young girls were killed. a false name for the alleged assailant spread online, naming him wrongly as an asylum seeker. after a legal delay the media were able to broadcast the name of the actual suspect.

his parents were from rwanda. this person was a british citizen from cardiff. why, therefore, was it relevant to mention that this person's parents came from rwanda? it was nothing to do with the crime, which was non—racially motivated crime. all it did was it ignited deep—rooted anger against immigrants across the country, and the bbc must take some blame and responsibility for the riots that followed. we felt that, actually, it was important that we gave as much information as we could about the identity of the attacker, because of the disinformation that was out there. we did have discussions, actually, even before the attacker was named, about how much information we would give out because we knew the name but we weren't able to because of legal reasons, to actually say that name on air. and our decision was that in actual fact it was better to give out more information, clear information, correct information at a time when there was an increasing amount of really quite dangerous

disinformation online. as november's presidential election in the united states approached, a number of claims made by the candidates and their teams came under scrutiny, such as donald trump's suggestion that illegal immigrants were eating cats and dogs in the city of springfield, ohio. they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. they're eating the cats. they're eating the pets of the people that live there. caitriona perry told us about the difficulty of distinguishing political fact from fiction. fact—checking is something that keeps us all on our toes, when you are a presenter like myself doing live television or live radio, really you have to be across a whole range of subject matter so that when whoever you are interviewing says something that you know not to be the case or they are trying to presented in a certain way, that you have that information. we also co—operate quite largely with

our bbc verify team who can also fact check things. we have seen a move not just here in the us, but in politics right around the world for claims to be made, i mean spin doctoring is as old as methuselah in a way, and is very important in this information age that we are able to tell our viewers, tell our audience, what is the case and what isn't the case. there has been less money available for bbcjournalism this year. the latest cutbacks include the ending of interview show hardtalk were announced in the autumn and bbc news ceo deborah tennis came on the programme to discuss them with viewer autumn phillips, responding the following week. it's done good work for decades for bbc news, but when you make £24 million of reductions and cuts to an organisation, you have to do some things that do hurt. we have looked at our audiences, hardtalk is funded by and runs on our news channel, and we can see that audiences are coming overwhelmingly to our news channel for a live experience.

i think was also very important to say is hardtalk does a great job, but we do have an awful lot of very high quality, interview, accountability, rigorous journalism across the whole of bbc news. the decision to cut hardtalk and the decision that they have made to diminish newsnight, the decision to bring correspondents back from very key places and to reduce and to cut the arabic radio service and the persian radio service are very big errors. and i think people value a programme whose culture and presenters they know, that they can come back to, they know what they are getting with stephen sackur, they know they are getting a depth of research a very seriousness of challenge to very important people who many people in their own countries cannot challenge.

thank you to everyone who has appeared on the programme this year and all of you have contacted us. we are off the air now for a couple of weeks but please do continue to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news on tv, radio, you can e—mail us... orfind us on... and do have a look at previous interviews on our website. that's all from us for now. we'll be back to him more of your thoughts on how the bbc covers the news in the year, but until then a very merry christmas. hello there. after a week of gloomy weather, it does make a difference to see the sunshine. we start off the weekend with sunshine for many today. but tomorrow, the cloud makes a return, quite breezy

but you will notice it will be turning milder with winds coming from the southwest. here is a sunnier slice of weather across england and wales for the rest of today, cloudier skies in scotland and northern ireland with patchy drizzle, but it is a warm front so temperatures will rise. the rest of the day, england and wales will see the best of the sunshine. some showers in the south west, wales and the north west, with rain starting to get into northern ireland and western scotland as the warm front pushes in. temperatures lifting here, turning breezy but chilly for most despite the sunshine. tonight, the cloud and patchy drizzle and low cloud push in across all areas. the winds pick up, especially across scotland and northern ireland and by the end of the night, turning milderfor most, with temperatures into double figures. sunday starting on a mild note but cloudy once again. the best of any sunshine towards high ground, eastern scotland, east of the pennines, but turning wetter across the north

and west of scotland and very windy with gales in the north. a breezy day further south but rather cloudy. look at these temperatures — looking at 12 to 14 or 15 degrees, so mild for the time of year. high pressure to the south, low pressure to the north as we get into monday, bringing more heavy rain across scotland, persistent rain, and windy again with gales here. further south, breezy but drier because you are closer to high pressure, so some sunny spells breaking through from time to time. western hills rather grey, some hill fog and patchy rain at times, but mild for the time of year — temperatures in the low teens widely. moving through the week, staying mild and unsettled for the first half of the week. we could see deeper areas of low pressure from the southwest, so heavy rain and gales at times, interspersed with some drier and brighter moments, but looking unsettled for the upcoming week, staying mild. just hints of it beginning

to turn cooler again as we push closer to next weekend. take care. live from london. this is bbc news. the former manchester city footballer mikheil kavelashvili is elected as georgia's new president — amid mass protests by the opposition. mps in south korea vote to impeach president yoon over his failed attempt to impose martial law. us secretary of state antony

blinken meets with turkish us secretary antony blinken says they have met direct contact... prince andrew says he "ceased all contact" with a businessman accused of being a chinese spy — after the uk government raised concerns. hello, i'm kasia madera. a former manchester city footballer has been elected in a vote in georgia's parliament, despite condemnation from the incumbent president and the pro—eu opposition that the process is illegitimate. mikheil kavelashvili is a former mp from the increasingly authoritarian ruling georgian dream party and was the only candidate for the job. it comes after 17 days of pro—eu protests across the country's towns and cities. this was the scene outside parliament earlier. the four main opposition groups have rejected kavel—ashvili

and have boycotted parliament, insisting that the elections