Latest entry
- Richard Chapman
- 4 Mar 09, 12:30 PM
Without wishing to fall into cliche mode February 2009 will always be remembered by the BBC Weather team as a month of two halves.
According to provisional Met Office figures, as a whole, this winter is expected to be the coldest in the UK since 1995/6. The low temperatures have also been accompanied at times by heavy snow.
Monday 2 February saw heavy overnight snowfall in south-east England, the heaviest snow in 18 years, causing trains and buses to be cancelled, and airports and schools to be closed.
Some parts of London saw up to 20cm (eight inches) of snow with the highest accumulations reported on the North Downs at 28cm (11 inches).
There was little comedy value for those of us who needed to get to work but with hundreds of schools closed many children enjoyed making snowmen as the thousands of pictures sent into the BBC demonstrated.
The snowfall also raised the question of imperial units versus metric measurements. Our weather policy has not changed over the years and we continued to present the data in metric with conversions, in this case to inches, when significant.
Although, I have to say at times it did remind me of one of the most famous lines in comedy, from Hancock's Half Hour, The Blood Donor: "A pint, that's very nearly an armful," as we did our best to present the detail of the snow depths and offer conversions when the pictures really told the story well enough.
Aviemore recorded the lowest February temperature since 1986 (-18C) on the morning of the 9 February, Altnaharra in the Highlands was down to -15C and Aberdeen was -12C.
From the 15 February the weather turned much milder and we entered a far quieter period of weather. Temperatures peaked at 15.3C (59F) in Charlwood, Surrey on Friday 27 February, making it the warmest day of the year so far.
Of course, the weather itself was not the only major feature of February 2009 for the BBC Weather team. As you may have noticed from my previous blogs on the subject we managed to plan the launch of our new look weather website just in time for the significant snowfall.
Although this produced major interest in the new site it also presented us with a problem. The traffic to the site was greater than we had ever experienced with a reported 500,000 users per hour. As a result the decision was taken to roll back to the old weather site until we were able to ensure we could cope with the increased traffic numbers.
It took a huge effort by the project team to ensure that we had the resilience to migrate everyone across to the new look site and during the last week in February users of the weather site were re-directed to the new version.
Some pages still need to be migrated over to the new design and this will happen over the next few months. So take a look around the new site and let us know what you think.
And for the outlook, the first week of March is seeing temperatures dipping back down below the seasonal average, as cold air floods across the UK. And with that comes a return to wintry weather.
Recent entries
- Rome Hartman
- 25 Feb 09, 05:30 PM
I'm not sure I can handle the pressure. Suddenly, Washington has gone crazy for Twitter.
It seems that to occupy any position at all on the press or political landscape in this town, one must be "all thumbs"; constantly tapping out text messages from the mobile to let everyone you know (and many you don't) exactly what you're doing at any given moment.
Every day there's an article about another media luminary or administration official taking up "tweeting"; just this morning, the Washington Post has a story all about the members of Congress sending text tweets from inside the chamber during Barack Obama's speech to a joint session.
Now, I'm as tech-savvy as the next guy, and I completely get the way in which social networks like Twitter are changing the way information is shared around the world (remember how that great photo of the plane in the Hudson rocketed around the globe via Twitter?).
It's just that I'm not sure I really care to know in real time what the anchor of Meet the Press is having for breakfast, or just what the House chamber podium looks like from the seat of the junior Senator from Arkansas. And I'm sure that no one, not even my wife and kids (perhaps especially my wife and kids), are desperate to know what I'm doing all day long, in bursts 140 characters long.
So, don't look for tweets from me anytime soon. But if you must know, my lemon-poppyseed muffin this morning was delicious.
- Dominic Ball
- 25 Feb 09, 04:30 PM
"How do you choose what to put in the news?" is the question I'm most frequently asked about my job.
It's also the most difficult to answer. Letters on this subject received by Feedback on Radio 4 prompted the programme to dispatch one of its reporters to the BBC Newsroom at Television Centre in west London to find out more:
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My own view is that the choice of stories and the order in which they are presented is based on a number of factors, which inevitably, overlap: how significant does the story feel? How interested is our audience likely to be? How new is the story? What is the context? (Not just in terms of what else is going on but also, have we done variations on this story recently?)
These considerations are combined with something more difficult to define - a journalistic instinct perhaps - in the decision-making process.
On the Six O'Clock News on Radio 4 we aim, to mangle a phrase from the New York Times, to provide all the news you need to hear. By the end of the bulletin, we want listeners to feel they know about the important events that have happened that day in the UK and around the world, and why they happened.
Fortunately, our audience is rarely shy in letting us know if that is what we have achieved.
- Jeremy Hillman
- 21 Feb 09, 01:34 PM
I've just watched the BBC's Newswatch on my laptop, catching up as I do at the weekends with bits of the output I haven't been able see during the week. (In fact I saw the link to it on Twitter, another subject handled by Newswatch this week).
One of issues mentioned by Ray Snoddy was the number of audience comments asking why the website's top story on Monday 16 February was about the 850 jobs being lost at BMW's Mini plant at Cowley, whilst the smaller story just underneath was the creation of 9,000 jobs by KFC.
Some have taken that as proof we are always keener to report and highlight the bad news. In fact we had a detailed editorial discussion about this on Monday and I believe we made the right choice on journalistic grounds, though I can fully see the argument both ways.
The jobs being created by KFC are over a three to five-year period, the jobs being lost at Cowley were immediate and entailed stories of human pain and shock. The wider story of the car industry, and the political debate surrounding it, was deemed by us to be more newsworthy at this moment than the also interesting phenomenon of "value" food chains doing pretty well in the recession (McDonalds has also had a good story to tell recently).
In the end we had to make a judgement call, but it's never just a case of us deciding to put the "bad news" first.
- Rod McKenzie
- 20 Feb 09, 10:35 AM
"I have been making myself sick since I was 13, I am now 17...it controls my life and I can't stop. I don't want help. It's my life."
You have to be a very hard hearted editor not to be deeply moved by the Radio 1 audience's struggle with eating disorders and body image. No-one who has any contact with teenagers or early 20-somethings can fail to understand how large this looms as an issue: it destroys lives - and frankly, it doesn't get much news coverage.
The number of young people being admitted to hospitals for problems related to Anorexia has gone up 80% in 10 years, according to NHS figures for England. Three times as many 12-year-olds are now getting help for the condition.
Newsbeat spoke to Heather Youell who lives in Northampton. She's now 22 and her problems started when she was 15: she cut out breakfast, then lunch, then dinner. She collapsed while out jogging and doctors told her she had just days to live. She's better now but no thanks, she says, to her GP surgery. Their advice was simple: "you should eat more". In hospital, nurses discussed their diets while trying to get her to eat.
"We thought it was time the prime minister was asked about this, so our politics reporter Dave Howard put him on the spot at his monthly press conference. Doesn't late diagnosis put lives at risk? Gordon Brown agreed: "I think the more the Health Service can do to help particularly teenage girls the better. I assure you that's one of the issues Alan Johnson is looking at very seriously in his health service plan."
We contacted Susan Ringwood, from the eating disorders charity, Beat, who said: "What Gordon Brown said to Newsbeat today was the first time a prime minister has ever made a statement about eating disorders."
So far, so good, but then - suspicion from the charity: it has been pleading with the government to find out more about eating disorders, particularly simple facts like, how many people in the UK suffer? They think the Department of Health is rather less keen on doing the hard work on this than the prime minister might suggest, and claim that anorexia - and similar eating disorders - cause more deaths in young people than any other medical condition.
Our text response after the story might be persuasive. Emily - who's 17 - went from being a nine stone (57kg), 5ft 9in to just five stone (31kg). And again, as with so many of our stories on Radio 1, it's not just the girls who suffer. We heard about one young man who wanted to be a male model: his quest for the body beautiful nearly killed him - at one point, he was given three days to live.
And to be fair - there are people who blame the media too. Helen in Cumbria spoke for many others when she tapped out this text to us: "The problem is down to the media. Girls being airbrushed and promoting size zero is becoming more and more acceptable. We need to stop promoting this image of a perfect body which is unachievable."
- Steve Herrmann
- 19 Feb 09, 01:39 PM
The BBC News website was temporarily affected by technical problems this lunchtime which meant users in the UK were unable to get onto the site for about 20 minutes as a result of problems with our London servers. We're sorry for this, the site is accessible again now and we are looking into exactly what happened and why as urgently as we can.
UPDATE, 05:40PM: We found out what the problem was caused by - it was faulty code on a new deployment by the technical team. This has now been fixed. Sorry again to anyone who tried unsuccessfully to get onto the site earlier today.
- Peter Horrocks
- 19 Feb 09, 12:50 PM
Yesterday, several newspapers picked up on an internal e-mail I sent to BBC News TV presenters asking them to avoid using the phrase "as you can see on your screens" when pointing audiences to the BBC News website. I asked them if they would please spell out URLs, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, pointing out that a significant number of blind people use television news. The phrase "as you can see" excludes people with visual impairments, and means they can't get the information they might want. This is discourteous, and we can do better than that.
Commentators, and one reported "BBC insider", have said: "This is political correctness gone mad." It is not. This issue is not about avoiding causing offence. It's about information and how to access it.
Eleven million adults are considered to have a disability in the UK which affects their everyday life, and this group make up 19% of the working population and an even higher proportion of our audience. For instance 21% of the audience to the BBC News at Six on BBC One is considered to have a disability. Surely it's not political correctness to consider whether the content we're producing is suitably accessible and understandable?
The BBC has a commitment to help people with disabilities use our services. There are various pages on the BBC site which give information about how it addresses this - for instance bbc.co.uk/accessibility which helps arm audiences with tools which enable them to make the most of the web. There's also the Ouch! website - which reflects the lives and experiences of disabled people with articles, blogs, and an active messageboard.
I'd be interested in hearing from you on what more BBC News could do to makes its services more accessible to all and also about the range of stories we cover.
- Steve Herrmann
- 19 Feb 09, 12:37 PM
We've made a change to the "Most read" and "Most watched" headline lists which appear on all News website story pages and the front page.
As of yesterday we've increased the number of most read and most viewed headlines visible in this list from five to 10.
These headlines are themselves a popular and well-used feature. They are, in effect, your agenda, the things which News website users actually find most important and interesting at any given moment, as revealed by the real-time usage statistics.
I sometimes get asked whether this feature dictates our news agenda - whether it affects the front page running order which represents our editorial view of what's most important and interesting through the day.
The answer is it that it does inform what we do - but it's just one of many criteria our front page editors will be thinking about and discussing with other BBC News editors across our TV and radio outlets as they order the stories of the day, along with overall significance, interest and news value.
The journalists writing for the site keep a close eye on the ever-changing "most popular" list because it can be a good place to spot emerging interest in stories which we can then develop, and it can also help us assess how successful we've been at highlighting and headlining what we see as the key stories of the day.
The change we've just made is an experiment to see if we can measure the relative importance of this feature in increasing your engagement with a wider array of stories, and potentially increasing the amount of your precious time you spend reading and watching things on the site.
We'll be monitoring the effects over the next few days and will assess them next week. I'll let you know what we find out.
- Jeremy Hillman
- 18 Feb 09, 03:30 PM
I'm writing this from the Trafford shopping centre in Manchester where we're in the middle of a BBC financial roadshow which we're calling Money Matters.
We've assembled a large team of independent financial advisors and together with the BBC's own team of personal finance and business experts we're offering advice and finding out what's most important to people now we've entered what could be a steep recession.
Already we've been broadcasting live on Breakfast, the News Channel, BBC2's Working Lunch and Radios 4 / 5live as well as local and regional radio and television. You can see a lot of what's being generated on our Money Matters website which has been constructed specially for today.
Of course the range of problems and issues people have is wide but what's struck me is that all day the longest queue has been for "savings and investment" advice.
Across the age range people are most anxious about what to do with the money they have. That's both in terms of getting a return for it, and, even more importantly for many, keeping it safe.
Of course, the answer is not straightforward and a lot depends on whether we're heading for a long period of deflation, or conversely high inflation in a couple of years time. You can find economists who passionately hold each of those points of view (there's a surprise).
Please do have a look at the site and enter our money quiz. I got 8/10 right which isn't great for the business and economics editor.
- Sandy Smith
- 12 Feb 09, 10:07 AM
Yesterday the Omagh families met Prime Minister Gordon Brown at No 10 to discuss the outcome of an inquiry into Panorama's revelations that GCHQ were recording mobile phone exchanges between the Omagh bombers on the day of the attack.
The report by the Intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Peter Gibson had been ordered by Mr Brown and was published last month.
Panorama's September 2008 programme, Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told, disclosed that GCHQ had monitored up to five mobile phones used by some members of the bomb gang during the 100 minute bomb run from the Irish Republic to Omagh, but that the detectives trying to identify the bombers were never told this, even though they were desperate for leads.
None of the perpetrators have been convicted of the bombing, which killed 29 people, two unborn babies and injured 250 people on 15 August 1998, despite promises from the-then Prime Minister Tony Blair that no stone would be left unturned in the hunt to bring the culprits to justice.
However, although appearing to confirm many aspects of the programme, Sir Peter avoided holding any branch of the intelligence services to account for the fact that the detectives were never told that intercepts existed and that the telephone numbers of some of the bombers were known.
Sir Peter also criticised Panorama for making "allegations" that the bombing could have been prevented.
In fact the programme made no such allegation. Rather, we asked whether the bombing could have been prevented - a question we now consider even more justified by Sir Peter's failure to challenge our central claim: that GCHQ was listening to the mobiles of some of the bombers while the bomb was being driven to Omagh.
The Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward told Parliament Sir Peter's review was "exhaustive" and "comprehensive".
Today Panorama publishes a detailed response to Sir Peter's criticisms of Panorama and highlights the many questions we say it it fails to answer. Readers can judge for themselves whether they consider Mr Woodward's comments are merited.
Even to this day detectives have never been officially told about the phone monitoring.
The families say they want to know why neither Sir Peter nor the Northern Ireland Secretary have had anything to say about the GCHQ policy in place in 1998 that appears to have prevented even one telephone number being passed to detectives to get them going even though 29 people lay dead.
Sir Peter comments only on the "cautious way" Special Branch shared intelligence with the CID.
He just says it was not part of his remit to investigate the reasons for their "caution" but he "does not doubt" there were "good operational reasons" for it.
Sir Peter says the Branch could have asked GCHQ for "material that might have existed" to disseminate to the CID, but that "the record shows no such request was made".
The Omagh relatives consider this to be his single most extraordinary comment.
They ask if any reasonable person would seriously consider that the entire intelligence gathering apparatus of Northern Ireland would need to be specifically asked to collect intelligence to help identify those responsible for the single worst atrocity of the Northern Ireland conflict?
While Mr Woodward thinks Sir Peter's work was "exhaustive", some senior officers John Ware has spoken to beg to differ: "Gibson has surface skated" said one, adding that he had been "appointed to close the curtain on Omagh".
You can read Panorama's detailed response and make your own mind up.
Sandy Smith is editor of Panorama.
- Rod McKenzie
- 11 Feb 09, 10:20 AM
It's a depressingly familiar scene. Police at a family's doorstep; a woman inside, tearful, bloodied and bruised; the officers were called because she was being attacked by her partner - now she won't, or can't, take the matter further and press charges.
Shocking - but perhaps not surprising. We know it happens often. But what if the victim in such a case was a man - a young man?
New statistics suggest that men in their early 20s are MORE likely to be abused by their partner than women the same age. It's not a subject that's much talked about. On Newsbeat, we're changing that.
The official definition of partner abuse includes non-physical forms like emotional bullying as well as physical force. But men in this age range have been on the receiving end of all forms, including sometimes severe violence.
Across most age ranges more women are abused than men. But analysis of the latest figures from the Home Office shows the problem is more evenly spread between the sexes in the early stages of a young relationship
So why are men in this age at such risk? Are 20-something women becoming more aggressive? Are men less able to defend themselves? And is this a taboo that's now being talked about for the first time?
Our journalism started with a piece on Radio 1 from our special reporter Jim Reed. 5Live's phone-in with Nicky Campbell picked up the story also.
Mark Brooks from the men's health charity Mankind reckons the issue of male domestic abuse is often ignored by the government, social services and the police. There simply isn't enough help available for men, he says.
Reporting the crime carries risks too. Some men clearly feel that telling police can lead to the finger of blame being pointed at them. One, who wants to stay anonymous, texted us to say "ex girlfriend pushed me down the stairs ,i called the police and they locked me up for three hours and made me walk home with dislocated toes cos they did not believe me". Others say they were threatened with assault charges - even though they were the victim.
The response from the Radio 1 audience appears to fit the stats, too: "She knocked me to the ground and then started punching, kicking and biting me." Another one told us: "My ex broke my arm with a metal pole ... when the police came round, I ended up being arrested."
And perhaps most movingly: "My dad was stabbed to death by his girlfriend in a drunken unprovoked attack. She had been attacking him randomly for months. He would never talk to us about it but we knew she had a violent temper. He was a wonderful dad and we miss him every day. More should be done to encourage men to report domestic abuse."
Covering this subject has provoked a flood of stories and experiences - and from many a desire for something to be done to help young male victims. We're now following this up with a full length documentary - coming soon on 1Xtra.
Rod McKenzie is editor of Newsbeat and 1Xtra News.
- Mike Rudin
- 9 Feb 09, 11:19 AM
We have "constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world". That was the stark conclusion of Friday's report by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, "Surveillance: Citizens and the State".
BBC special correspondent Richard Bilton has been taking a journey through our surveillance society for a new BBC2 series called "Who's Watching You?", which will be broadcast this spring. He's been meeting both the watchers and the watched.
Cheaper and more advanced technology has prompted a massive expansion in surveillance - not just through CCTV, listening devices, tracking, but also through all the personal data that's collected on every one of us.
As the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas says, we leave an "electronic footprint" behind us almost wherever we go - with every click of the mouse, every phone call, every time we use a credit card. And that information just grows and grows, allowing a more and more detailed and intrusive picture to be constructed of how we each live our lives.
The paradox is that there is a great deal of support for things like CCTV. We all benefit from better crime detection and from easier and cheaper services. But we know surprisingly little about the depth and breadth of modern surveillance, or about the potential problems when things go wrong.
Wherever we went, we were told: "If you've got nothing to hide, then you've got nothing to fear." But when we looked further, we found people who had suffered from the loss of personal data, and ordinary people who are watched every minute of the day at work and even at home.
Pressure groups like Liberty, Privacy International and NO2ID have long warned of the dangers to personal privacy. But even the word privacy is hard to define and hard to relate to.
What we have found throughout making the series, almost whatever the type of surveillance, is that regulation is all too often an after-thought and sometimes non-existent.
Take CCTV for example. The Lords committee's report makes clear that "there are few restrictions on the use of public area CCTV cameras in the UK".
The government has already announced consultations on creating a new "super-database" to record the fact (but not the content) of every email, phone call and internet use, and also on the use of covert surveillance by local authorities; and it is due to reveal how it will come into line with a recent European Court of Human Rights ruling that our present DNA database has been in breach of the right to privacy.
"Who's Watching You?" will examine how surveillance is now becoming all pervasive but how little we understand it.
Mike Rudin is series producer of Who's Watching You? and The Conspiracy Files.
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