Remember that, for the royal family, there is the spectre of another royal duke and duchess. The windsors, the former king edward viii and his american bride, wallis simpson, who turned his back on duty and went off to america and elsewhere, and who, of course, never really found happiness. As ever, with this topic, audience reaction to what they saw was sharply divided. Bruce white picked up on that analogy made by nicholas witchell, writing more widely, carolyn clay thought and brownwyn benham felt bushfires have been raging in australia since september and this week, the crisis developed with fires out of control across large swathes of the country. The story featured in the headlines of sundays news at ten. Australians are warned of the bushfires emergency could last for months as more homes are destroyed. The fire season here is the worst of modern times, killing more than 20 people, forcing thousands to flee their homes and traumatising a whole nation. The presence on location there of clive myrie, who continued to present and report from australia throughout the week, raised objections of a nature which will be familiar to any regular newswatch viewers. Heres Brian Chambers and first, hugh robson. So im baffled why suddenly i see clive myrie being parachuted in to report on this. Its a real slap in the face for the local reporters. A sort of move over. Serious talent coming in. But its worse than that, because what does it add and what cost financially to get clive and whatever team supports him across the world and back again is extraordinary when the bbc budgets are so tight. But in the story itself, its about Climate Change and how the conditions that are leading to this are seriously affected by carbon in the atmosphere. And here we have reporters being jetted halfway around the world and back again. So it doesnt make sense. Come on, bbc, lets have responsible news gathering. I feel that is a complete waste of time and money when there are already correspondents within those countries covering the same news items, doing exactly the same job in an equally professional manner as the news readers would be doing. Well, we put those points to bbc news. They told us that clive myrie was sent to australia to support the team based there locally, whod done many long days coverage of the bushfires before he arrived. A spokesman added mondays news at six led with the highly distressing news of reynhard sinaga, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for no fewer than 136 offences of rape. Claire was watching and recorded her response for us on camera. On monday night, i watched the early evening news with great concern. There was a report about a serial rapist which, in my opinion, went into unnecessary detail, and i was very concerned that it was being shown at a time when my seven year old granddaughter would be able to see it. I certainly felt that we didnt need to see a photograph of the mattress where the attacks took place, along with graphic detail. Although children do need to be aware of whats going on in the world, i feel that that this was not appropriate for the early evening news. It would have been better on the late news. There is a watershed in place for a reason. Mps returned to parliament this week after their christmas and new year break, entering a Political Landscape completely changed by last months general election results. Heres a reminder of how huw edwards began his marathon broadcasting stint on the night of december the 12th. Our exit poll is suggesting that there will be a conservative majority when all the votes are counted after this election of december 2019. The conservatives on 368 seats and labour way down on 191. Now, on those figures, we are looking at a conservative majority of 86. Over the next few hours, bbc news reported the results as they came in on television and also online. But articles on the bbc news website like these were generated in a whole new way, through automated journalism. With me to explain is robert mackenzie, the editor of bbc news labs, which leads innovation across bbc news. Thank you for coming on newswatch. How did you use automation in the general election, then . So what the viewers will have seen is they will have seen stories that were compiled by a computer but written by a human being. So it all started months ago. We sat down and we tried to work out what possible combinations of stories might come out of every single constituency. So large majorities, smaller majorities, changing from one party to another, independents winning, independents losing all the possible permutations we could think of. Right. Write all of those into a piece of software that allows you to go to use. Number crunch. Yes, exactly. So you you have sent different sentences or phrases will appear, according to the results. So what you do is you write it in advance. And then, as the results come in, the results then control which stories get written. And then its manually checked by you . Exactly. Yes. Everythings manually checked. Theres always a a human in the loop, as they say in computer speak. So we can see how it would make sense in elections. It shows a lot about numbers and possible projections. What other types of stories have you been experimenting with, or are you thinking about using it for . For about a year ago, we did an experiment with our colleagues in the east of england, where we used the a e waiting times. So same thing think of all the possible versions of the story and then use the a e waiting times data to produce a report for every single Hospital Trust in the east of england. So you could look and see what your Hospital Trust was doing compared to the targets, which seemed to go down very well. And we did an experiment last summer, again with our colleagues across england, where we were looking at levels of government supported or council supported tree planting. So, again, we generated a story for every local council about how many trees have been planted in your area by your council. Now, i noticed on the website with the election stories, they had a label to say theyd been created through automation. Will you always label stories that way . Yeah, we think its really important that were really clear with our users about how the stories have been created. So they are written by humans, checked by humans, but the machine has compiled them in the middle. Could automation one cant help asking would it help avoid some of the human errors that happened, like with wrong images. For example, when you know the wrong photograph is used in the obituary of screen actors . I think of facial recognition technology. Its a possibility. You do tend to find that human beings make mistakes. Computers make mistakes when human beings program them incorrectly. So theyre not fail safe either, im afraid. And indeed, you know, just thinking of errors on Archive Footage more broadly, you know, there was a very specific issue with Archive Footage of borisjohnson used laying a wreath. And i wonder if computers could check dates and things and avoid that in future . Yes. And thats actually one of the projects for news labs is how we can use face recognition. How we can use the metadata that comes with pictures, like when it was filmed, when it was retrieved from the archives, to help journalists avoid those kind of mistakes when theyre in a hurry. Some people might also be wondering, at a time when theres lots of talk about budget cuts, if the bbc might be using automation in news writing to get rid ofjournalists . I would say thats absolutely not the case. So if you even take the election stories, the bbc has never, ever written a story about every single constituency. So we are at 650 stories in english, plus a0 in welsh for the welsh constituencies, and that just would not have been possible without human beings. So, as far as im concerned, what automation is here for is to add to the range of bbc journalism, not to substitute forjournalists doing journalism. Obviously, yourjob is partly looking medium and long term. Do you have a view of where in five years automation might be in terms of its use and bbc news . Well, nothing is certain with technology but certainly, our hope is that we will be in a situation where we can provide much more coverage to our audiences about everything from local traffic accidents, local crime figures and education outcomes, ofsted reports and so forth. You should be able to get a much more personalized view of whats going on in your neighbourhood as a result of data driven journalism like this. Robert mckenzie, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all your comments this week. If you want to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news, please e mail. Or you can find us on twitter. You can call us. And do have a look at our website. That is all from us. We will be back to have your view of bbc News Coverage next week. Goodbye. Before the cloud rolled in there was a good view of the wolf moon for early on in the night. The biggest of the cloud is actually where we have the weather front there which is bringing more rain across scotla nd is bringing more rain across scotland and Northern Ireland. The winds are picking up as well, coming from a long way south, mind you, so drawing in mild air after cold start of the night, those temperatures continuing to rise. Typically nine, 10 degrees or so by the time we get early morning. On saturday, a little chillier across parts of east anglia. Still got the rain across scotla nd anglia. Still got the rain across scotland and Northern Ireland, heaviest over the hills and it will move its way further south would slowly, bringing wet weather to the cumbria fells and into snowdonia. The rain turning more showery, eventually, in scotland and Northern Ireland as the winds starter is through the afternoon. It stays blustery across england and wales, gales likely in some places. While there, though, across many parts of there, though, across many parts of the uk with difficult temperatures 11,12, the uk with difficult temperatures 11, 12, maybe even 13 degrees. That band of rain is going to sweep its way south eastwards during saturday night. Drawing in behind it some cool air with sunshine and showers. The last of the rainbow clear away from the south east corner early on sunday and there we have this crop of showers running through wales, the midlands, could be heavy for a while, easing down in the afternoon, sometime for scotland and Northern Ireland, showers mainly in the north west but they will be wintry over the Higher Ground because we are back into cold air across the northern half of the uk. Not so cold further south. For all of us, northern half of the uk. Not so cold furthersouth. Forall of us, sunday will be less windy. But only briefly because look at what is out in the atla ntic because look at what is out in the atlantic a storm is raising our way. But is really going to strengthen the winds on monday and bring in some rain too. We start the day probably dry and they will still be some sunshine and dry weather for the eastern side of the uk into the afternoon but further west, the cloud thickened, we get this rain which could be quite heavy, and it will probably be the strength of the wind that causes the biggest issues with gales or severe gales of 70 mile an hour gusts possibly across the Western Areas of the uk. Still mild, temperatures typically 8 11 degrees. That sets the scene on what is going to be a very changeable week ahead. Often windy. Some rain at times. But, for the most part next week, we will continue this mild theme. Goodbye. Thank you for watching, see you 0011. This is bbc news welcome if youre watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. Im james reynolds. 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