by what's happened. and would you listen to an ai podcast series? we're going to hear about how one team has recreated the voice of a celebrated talk show host two years after he died. that's coming up on the media show. we're going to begin in la. all of you will have seen the fires that have swept through parts of the city. at least 25 people are known to have died. thousands of buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have had to evacuate. and covering this disaster raises ethical and practical questions for news teams. we've been speaking to two reporters who have been covering the story from the start. first of all, let's hear from jonathan hunt of fox news. i'm standing right now in what is called the unified command center, ros. and by the way, thanks for having me today. this is the headquarters of the entire response across the whole

of the la region. about 3,200 personnel from los angeles fire department. you can see one of their command trucks behind me. the los angeles sheriff's department, office of emergency management services, of course. so they're running everything from here. and we're in the parking lot of the iconic rose bowl in pasadena. normally, this would be full of the vehicles bringing 90,000 people to watch a game here, a football game. american football, of course. um, but today, it is just full of these kind of trailers you see behind me and a huge operation being run. so you've got some extraordinary access there at the command center. i wonder how you negotiated that and why you think those in charge of it agreed to letting you listen in on some of these conversations. you know, i... we have some very good contacts, some of our producers. i won't take credit for that myself. but one of our producers in particular has very good

contacts with the sheriff's department. uh, they were happy to let us in. and i think, you know, the various emergency services have faced some criticism. nobody criticises the people on the front lines, doing the work, trying to save lives and trying to save homes. but there has been criticism of the leadership and i think they... what i imagine what was... i wasn't privy to the conversations, obviously, at the top of the departments here, but i imagine that they wanted to reassure the people of la and indeed, you know, across the globe that they are doing everything they can, whatever the decisions that were made in the immediate run up to the these devastating fires, whatever the decisions were made on that first day, since then, that they have become, as the title of this place says, a unified command, and they're really doing their best. so i think... i'm imagining, ros, that that is what they want the world to see. at the moment, then, jonathan, you're focused for fox news viewers and listeners

on what's happening at that command center, but i know that you've also been covering the fires more closely, more close up, as well. i wonder, in those first few hours and days, as the fires began to spread, how you and your fox news colleagues calculated where you would report from and how you would stay safe, while at the same time informing your audience. yeah, i spent the first six days of the fire up in the pacific palisades. uh, and, you know, it's a dangerous situation. what i would say is that, uh, fox, as i think all the media organisations, the major media organisations do here, they're very, very good with the safety. they give us all the gear we need, the full fire suits, uh, masks, uh, helmets, etc. and we're obviously... everybody is encouraged to wear all of that gear because, you know, you walk around in a fire like that, um, and you don't have anything on your head, for instance, you're not even wearing a baseball cap.

um, you know, you get one ember in your hair, then suddenly, you're trying to put that out with bare hands and you're getting badly hurt. so they're very big on making sure that we have all the gear we need. and then, the bosses, um, running things are very good, as well, at leaving us as individual crews, myself, the producer that i'm with, the cameraman that i'm with, to make our own decisions based on safety. are very good as well at leaving us as individual crews — myself, the producer i'm with, the cameraman i am with — to make our own decisions based on safety. it's not something you can second—guess at the moment. you know, unfortunately, we've been through a lot of these kind of things. um, and we have a decent idea of where to go and when to be where. although, i have to say, this was a fire of a nature of which i don't think any of us has ever seen before.

my wife is also a reporter here with the local fox affiliate. she was driving out of the palisades on tuesday night, finishing her shift, and she was driving along the iconic sunset boulevard and suddenly flames... she caught it all on her dashcam, flames coming from both sides of the road here. and i can tell you, just watching that i had a panic attackjust watching it, knowing that she had been through that. um, and she was absolutely terrified. when you see video like that, with flames coming at you from both sides, it's an extraordinary thing and an extraordinarily dangerous thing. thank god she got out. well, jonathan, we wish you, your family and your community well. thank you very much indeed for making time for us in the middle of a very busy reporting day. that's jonathan hunt, fox news correspondent, who was with us from the unified command center in pasadena. let's turn... let's stay in los angeles and bring in my bbc news colleague emma vardy, who's the bbc�*s la correspondent. many of you listening will have seen and heard emma on the news in the last week orso, in particular. emma, i rememberturning

on the television in the newsroom a few days back, and seeing you wearing lots of protective equipment as you reported on, i think it was the six o'clock news. just tell us about your preparations as you went into doing live reporting in those kind of situations. i mean, the first 24 hours of the fire was just extraordinary because the flames were right in front of us. the smoke was so thick, it was blocking out the sun. you could barely see anything in the middle of the day. and so the goggles might have looked ridiculous, but they were absolutely necessary because your eyes were stinging. of course, the flame—retardant suits, you know, needs no explanation. um, but we were taking precautions off—camera, too, you know, we were coming into a situation, making those calculations, looking at where the emergency services were, but we couldn't have documented this as closely and witnessed what we witnessed without getting, you know, with the risk in mind, somewhat close to it. and on those early days,

the fires were just extraordinary. just everywhere. um, and you could find yourself in the thick of it very, very quickly. so that's what you will have seen. it was very intense. the wind was blowing towards us. i've never experienced anything like it. i'm with a very experienced producer and crew who've done lots and lots of fires. so, i had the benefit of that, as well. and we all work together and make those decisions bit by bit, but an incredibly intense experience. and i can see you, as you talk to me, emma, on a video feed. but of course, lots of people are listening to us. just describe where you are, because behind you i can see a scene of absolute devastation. it is. i'm in the pacific palisades, overlooking the ocean, and we're some way back from the ocean, but as far as the eye can see, there is absolute devastation all around me. this would have been prime real estate. just imagine the beautiful homes that would have been here with that view of the sea — all now absolutely devastated. and the winds were blowing so hard those first

couple of days. you can see how quickly the fire just swept across this land between here and the water. and now, just the shells remain. and, you know, we've been driving through miles and miles of this devastation for days. and how do you judge, when you arrive at a story such as this, where the emergency services are present, where people directly affected are present, and you are doing your work as a journalist, how do you judge when to approach people affected or people working to contain the fire and when not to? yeah, likejonathan said, you know, it's a minute—by—minute decision. um, you can tell... you know, firefighters go through moments of intensity and moments where you can see that they're able to sort of relax a little bit, too, and you can politely sometimes call out, "how's it going?" you know, it's not an official interview request, but it feels right in that moment. sometimes you can see they're already sort of saying hi and being quite friendly, and you can kind of check in and get the vibe, but you get a feel for it

when you've been in situations like this where emotions are very high, people are dealing with really emotional situations, and sometimes in that moment, people really want to talk because they want to tell you what they're going through. they want other people to see it and feel it, and then, you get that sense from them. and then you feel that, not if somebody is in shock or really, really devastated, there's got to be a duty of care there, too, but i think also people do have the right in a situation to tell the world what they're going through, what they're experiencing, um, so that it can sometimes warn others of the danger orjust communicate what human beings are going through in this incredible situation. so, it's a judgment call. you know, you get a feel for people when you do this job and you speak to a lot of people in these very intense situations. and you've done lots of broadcasting on the television and on the radio, as well as reporting on the bbc website to british audiences, just as you are now. i wonder if there are particular aspects to this disaster that, as you cover it,

you think, "i need to get this across to people "who aren't in this country, that this is how it is"? yeah, i mean, a couple of things really struck me here that wouldn't be that surprising to americans, but it's really eye—opening to people in the uk, particularly when there were lots of bullets on the floor, exploded bullets that had obviously... people have, you know, gun ownership very common in america. people keep ammunition at home and therefore, in a fire, it got hot and exploded and we were seeing the remnants of bullets, some of them intact, all over the streets. that was surprising to me, you know, being from the uk, not so remarkable in america, something i wanted to communicate. also here, the use of private firefighters. you've got very wealthy neighbourhoods with these private firefighters, which cost thousands and thousands a day, stationed outside certain homes. meanwhile, schools, care homes, ordinary public facilities have burnt down. that's more remarkable to me, too. but in america, a very capitalist society, you'd say, well, of course, if you've got the money, you pay for it.

you know, maybe perhaps a little more accepted here. although, you know, people have started to raise questions about this being a little more controversial. so there's a cultural difference between the uk and the american sort of society that always strikes me when i'm talking to a british audience compared to when i talk to my american colleagues. so there's some of that, as well. and alsojust a place like la, it's a place like no other. it's a unique place. it's world—famous. you cannot experience.. the disparity between rich and poor here is huge. and so, watching extremely rich places that you might think of as being untouchable also being destroyed in this fire, it's just something we just have never really seen before. and that's extraordinary, too. and something we've been communicating, um, not to take away from, you know, the many ordinary people who've lost their homes, absolutely, but it is striking to see when you see a bunch of celebrities involved in a disaster like this, as well. um, there's a lot of things to communicate here that are unique to la and that you wouldn't see anywhere else. emma, thank you very much indeed for taking us through your experiences

of the last few days. that's the bbc�*s emma vardy. we can hear the wind on emma's microphone as she's talking to us. before that, we heard from jonathan hunt from fox news. many thanks to jonathan and to emma. well, to analyse the media coverage of these fires, we're now going to talk to allison agsten, director of the university of southern california's annenberg center for climatejournalism and communication. allison, thank you very much for your time. i wonder what your assessment has been of the media coverage of this story? well, because of my role, i'm thinking a lot about climate change and whether or not it's being communicated with these fires. and so far, i feel it's been pretty strongly underreported, in some of my preliminary analysis. i'm finding that in a selection of five outlets i looked at, all of them but one were mentioning climate change in less than 10% of instances. the one outlet that really showed difference is — perhaps, not surprising

to you in the uk — the guardian. what would you like news media to be doing that it's not doing at the moment when it's covering a story like this? i think it's actually not too hard to parenthetically mention climate change when we talk about the cause of these fires, because increasingly people are asking what caused these fires. i don't think you're going to hear anybody, including me, say that climate change is the cause of these fires in los angeles, but certainly they set the stage. this is the backdrop for this catastrophe. this disaster has exploded to this degree because of conditions here that are related to the effects of climate change. so i'd love to hear reporters say, um, when they're talking about the cause, maybe, "we don't know yet, "we don't know what ignited this fire. but what we can "tell you is that climate change "is definitely involved to some degree." and i know that you've been conducting an experiment on your street, which sadly has been affected by these fires.

just tell us about that. sure. i was evacuated from the sunset fire last week. i'm one house down from the perimeter of the fire. and we were very, very fortunate because of wind conditions to be able to come back to our home last week. before i was allowed by the police back on my street, i marched around and talked to the local news crews in the area. i talked to three of them. i asked each one, "how are you covering climate? "are you including it?" and one of the local crews said, "climate change? "that's an interesting angle. "i'd be happy to talk to you about it." another one said — and this is the one that scared me the most — "i'm not sure how my news director feels "about me talking about climate change." and the third outlet, a big public news outlet from germany, said, "climate change? of course, "we just talked about it in our last live shot." it would be interesting to also hear from that news director, wouldn't it? but i don't suppose that was a possibility

in that moment. allison, stay with us, please. listening to this is caroline frost, a columnist for the radio times. caroline, climate change is one dimension of this story. another is celebrity. emma vardy alluded to that earlier. have you been comfortable with the degree to which celebrities caught up in this disaster have attracted coverage? i wouldn't say comfortable, but i would say unsurprised. i mean, just historically, we've always been very west—centric with our coverage of disaster across the globe. and as emma pointed out, the juxtaposition between the riches, the luxuriousness, the glamour of the setting and the suffering that some of these people are going through, and that is without taking away, as emma rightly pointed out, that celebrities form a tiny proportion of these people affected. however, we have homed in on them, as we always do. i mean, when i see somebody like paris hilton moaning her malibu home's destroyed, i mean, i do think that somebody like paris hilton probably has a hotel or two to go to, so it's unseemly. but all we can do is report.

maybe she was just noting that she'd lost her house. she... i'm sure she was. and as all of them are, i mean, they are suffering as much as we... so many things in life, it's... things are great levellers, aren't they? external, internal disasters, illness, tragedy. these are the things that make us human. these people have always been writ large on our screens. i don't think it takes away from the story. it's probably getting a lot more attention than it would were they not there. but i think we have to proceed with care as reporters that we don't somehow ascribe to them more capacity for suffering, and that it's somehow a worse tragedy than other things going on in the world. but the reason it's receiving so much coverage isn't only because celebrities are caught up in this. it isn't only because the areas affected are, in some cases, wealthy. it's also because this is a story which connects to macro issues that affect

all of us, including, as we've been discussing, climate change. yeah, we have environment, we have social disparity, we have climate change that you mentioned, we have social structure, we have political decisions, we have leaders being questioned and held to account. i mean, it properly is a story in many, many crosshairs and i can't see it... i think there's a reason... i think it deserves to be at the top of the news, because it taps into, you've just said i'm an entertainment correspondent, but i can't think of many correspondents who wouldn't have an angle to take on a story of this stature. and, allison agsten, from the annenberg center for climatejournalism and communication, you've talked to us about how you wish climate change featured more in the coverage, but i wonder, if you stand back and compare the coverage of these fires in la with how the news media might have covered this story five or ten years ago, do you at least see a development in the sophistication with which news media is connecting climate change with other stories it's covering? 0h, without a doubt. i'm particularly seeing it in europe in the early moments, tracking the fire.

i also think the distance helps. like you said, when you're close, when you're covering this story for your community, you're covering it for the people on the ground, and maybe you're not getting into that. but, overall, there's a huge advancement even in the us, certainly in the uk. ijust read a study yesterday that virtually all opinion pieces that are anti—climate in the eu media are gone. they don't really exist any more in your opinion pages. and we're seeing that steadily as we are watching the rates of people who believe that climate change is real and happening now. we're watching those rates just steadily tick up. allison, thank you forjoining us today. that's allison agsten from the annenberg center for climatejournalism and communication. now, have a listen to what i'm about to play you. i wonder if you recognise the voice. i'm very much expecting that you will. parkinson: it seems like. the evolution of your career and personal life has been intertwined with overcoming challenges and uncertainties.

reflecting back to your earlier years, did you experience particular insecurities that shaped how you approached your life and career? that is the voice of sir michael parkinson, a legendary british talk show host who died two years ago. and what you've just heard isn't from the archives, it's from a new podcast series that's been produced using ai. we hear a recreation of sir michael parkinson's voice speaking to a number of different guests, and i've been speaking to one of the team behind this project. this is benjamin field. hi, yeah, thanks for having me. um, yes, it happened after mike parkinson, uh, sir michael's son, got in touch with us to see whether or not we could do some kind of archive show, um, which had an ai replication of sir michael, uh, introduce sort of archival clips and things. um, and that conversation escalated. um, after we realised that somebody would actually have to pay for that and that perhaps, you know, there wasn't the right ecosystem at the moment within the media industry to sort of buy into that. um, and so we moved towards the idea of saying,

well, actually, you know, we'd probably get it away... we could get it funded if, um, you know, if it was that there was an ai version of sir michael doing new interviews. and at the time we said, but, you know, but what would be the point of that? uh, and so we left it, we left it alone. um, and then i was making, uh, a project for something else entirely, uh, where i had to create an ai model of somebody else in order to then have a conversation with it, um, with this ai model, um, and that conversation i had was unlike any other conversation i'd had before. um, and so it suddenly realised that maybe there was something in this idea of exploring the relationship between ai and humans, uh, in that sort of chat—show sphere, uh, that perhaps couldn't be done if it was, you know, if it was purely, you know, talking about it. so, we had to do it where there was an ai host interviewing new people, and explore this new relationship, what does it mean to be human? and that's where it came from.

so you resolved to do it. i wonder how you went about it. how does it work? how did you build the means to create this podcast series? um, so in isolation, there are ai software models that allow for voice synthesisation and, uh, ai brains, if you like, uh, to be created. but there was no software that tied all of these things together, so we couldn't have, you know, three or four months ago, we couldn't have anything that allowed us to have a conversation with an ai parky, if you like. um, so we built some software and then we ingested, um, around about 100 hours' worth of sir michael parkinson's material into the ai in order to train it on its interviewing style. um, and we took it from there. so that's the broad approach. but, of course, ahead of any interview that i would be doing, i would sit with

the media show team, they would provide me with a brief about the programme, about the guest. we would talk about the kind of questions that we might want to ask — much as we've done before speaking to you. but how do you do that for an ai presenter? well, actually, it's remarkably similar. so we have a researcher by the name of briony, and briony prepares research notes on the guest ahead of time. and as part of our software, there is a an element of the software whereby we can feed in research notes. um, and ai parky is trained to go through those research notes and generate questions in the style of michael parkinson, which then form the backbone of the interview that comes out. and on that issue of the generation of questions, of course, some questions in interviews are planned in advance. 0thers, though, are in response to what the interviewer is hearing. and as you'll be aware, not everyone has been entirely convinced. a times review said, "the questions sounded

rehearsed, "stilted and overlong." monty don, who took part in this, said, "it was less satisfactory and less interesting "than i thought it was going to be. "there's no response to what you're saying at all, "there's just a pause, and then another question." what do you say in response to that? i think at no point when we set this podcast up did we say that this was a podcast that was a chat show. what this podcast has always been is an exploration about the understanding between where ai is right now and where it can be in the future and what it means, you know, are we in a position to be able to generate a chat show host that is purely driven by ai? and at the end of each of our episodes we deconstruct the interview and we work out what was good, what was bad, and what we can improve on next time. so i think everybody will have, uh, you know, an opinion on whether or not it's good, bad or ugly or indifferent. i know that caroline has an opinion on it... we're about to hear it. yeah, she's not hugely keen, so i'm looking forward to the word "terrible." well, let's see if that is one of the words that she chooses. benjamin, thank you forjoining us.

that's benjamin field who produces this podcast series. caroline frost — terrible? is that the word you're going to reach for? that's awkward, isn't it? is that the word you're going to reach for? that's awkward, isn't it? no, i wouldn't say terrible. i mean, i applaud the noble pursuit and the brains that have clearly been at work on this. however, i do find it somewhat disingenuous, if i'm allowed to go that far, to say that at no time was a chat show planned. and yet, here we are with michael parkinson, inverted commas, michael parkinson, i mean, he belongs... perhaps i'm being very old—fashioned. i feel he belongs to an era of david niven and peter ustinov and jason robards, not jason derulo. butjust leaving for a moment michael parkinson to one side, could you imagine a scenario where in the future you listen to a conversation between an ai presenter and a guest and take pleasure from that? no, because i think that that has its place. that has its place when you're trying to perhaps buy a parking permit or to buy pay your gas bill. i don't think that has a place

when we're sitting, talking. i mean, the art of conversation is endangered as it is. that is the last item on today's edition of the media show. thank you very much indeed for watching. we'll be back with you next week. bye— bye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts. hello. while some parts of the uk got to see the sunshine right the way through to the end of the day on saturday, for others it was a grey, gloomy start to the weekend. a pretty chilly one as well. you can see the extent of the cloud on saturday afternoon, and underneath it, temperatures in parts of lincolnshire hovering around freezing for much of the time. northern ireland with a few brighter breaks, up to around 11 degrees, and that split remains as we go through into the start of sunday. mildest conditions in the west. temperatures close to freezing

in many areas, whether you've got the cloud or not. maybe down to minus four in parts of north—east england. a bit more cloudy here compared with saturday. the best of the breaks in the cloud in northern parts of scotland, northern ireland and actually a few brighter breaks out towards the west of england and wales possible. temperatures, though, not going to recover a huge amount through the day — except, that is, in the west. around 6—10 degrees here, but we will see the cloud thicken up later in the western isles. northern ireland. could see some rain into the evening, patchy outbreaks of rain and drizzle towards the south—west as well. that edges a bit further eastwards as we go through sunday night and into monday morning. to the east of it, again, a chance of some frost around as we start the brand—new week. but it will be another fairly cloudy start for many on monday. this time, though, a greater chance of some rain or drizzle across parts of the west, and that may even fall as a bit of sleet and snow over the higher ground. not a huge amount around. many places to the south and eastjust about dry. best of the sunshine on monday still in the north—east of scotland. one thing on monday, though —

temperatures will start to lift just a little bit compared with what we've seen through the weekend. into tuesday, we've still got a fair bit of cloud. maybe a few brighter breaks as we start to pick up the breeze, but the cloud thick enough with the weak weather front straddling central areas. some rain around the coast, maybe a little bit of sleet and snow over the likes of the pennines. some heavier showers into the north—west of scotland. and then, through wednesday and thursday, the cloud amounts will still generally dominate. now, it's to the south where we could actually see some long spells of rain push in. linked into this weather system, it is going to bring a miserable few days across parts of portugal and western spain. but as that clears through, another batch of rain for thursday, and then we turn our attention to the west. the jet streams waking up for the end of the week, and what that could signal later in the week is a potentially stormy period, with much more in the way of rain, a bit of hill snow and potentially some disruptive winds. take care.

live from washington, this is bbc news. donald trump hosts an event in virginia ahead of his inauguration on monday. he's due to speak shortly. we'll bring you that live. ahead of his flight to washington, trump told reporters he will most likely give tiktok a 90—day reprieve from the ban that comes in on sunday. tiktok says it will be forced to go dark without the white house's intervention. and hours before the ceasefire

in gaza is due to start, benjamin netanyahu says israel reserves the right to resume fighting if further negotiations collapse. hello, i'm christian fraser. donald trump has arrived in washington ahead of his inauguration on monday. he is hosting tonight a fundraiser in virginia. there is currently a firework display happening for the 500 guests. president—elect trump is due to speak. we'll bring you that as soon as he does. but according to those who attended, it is now a much more diverse group. the president appears to be in very good spirits, and it is one of several scheduled events

before he takes the oath on monday.