The news. First, it is time for newswatch. Hello and welcome to newswatch with me samira ahmed. Vital Insight Orjust Demoralising Coverage . The bbcs Special Nhs Reporting is in the spotlight. Is it ever justified to show an image of a child who hasjust been killed, as newsnight did in a report about a recent us raid in yemen . Reports about the National Health service have been especially frequent on Television News bulletins over the last few weeks of winter, but this week more so than ever. The bbc was running a week of special programmes and reports, which they branded as health check, about the state of the nhs, including mondays panorama and lengthy items on the 6pm and 10pm Bulletins on monday, tuesday, wednesday and thursday. Seven years ago this council spent about a third of its budget providing care and support to people who are older and disabled. But now the cost of Adult Social Care is heading towards half of its budget, with demand still increasing and that is at the heart of the problems they are wrestling with today. Inside the royal blackburn hospital. The bbc was given unrestricted access to witness the pressures facing the nhs. We have had patients here for 6 9 hours and we cannot find a bed for them. We were in the corridor for five hours. It isnt what you expect from a country like ours. Hospitals like this one are running at 95 capacity which means they are nearly full so with more emergency cases coming in and difficulty discharging some patients back into the community some of those needing surgery are having to wait longer. 0ur Health Editor and Special Correspondent and social Affairs Correspondent there. No question about the comprehensive nature viewers told us by telephone and webcam that they were concerned about the effect of that coverage and that the bbc had an axe to grind. Every night this week we have seen the bbc 6pm and 10pm news leading with the story on the current state of the nhs. We all know there are many problems in the nhs, and there are many reasons for this including bed blocking, immigration, lifestyles, health tourism, waste, bad procurement, trivial a es visits and so on. And yet bbc news would rather have us believe the problems are all due to so called tory cuts and that throwing more money at the problem will solve everything. Please, bbc, get your house in order and start reporting the news and not making it. This campaign should be reserved for a panorama my name is grace. I understand there are Serious Problems in the nhs and i understand that things have got worse by some measures, however, bbc news seems to be trying to make us feel angry. We have Better Health care than most. Please try and help us to feel grateful for what we have and try to help us make things better rather than constantly telling us it is a disaster. I am not newsworthy because i am one of the thousands of people who have received treatment from the nhs over the last few months who have nothing to complain about. I only have praise for the dedicated, professional staff who have carried out treatment on their behalf. This week we have been bombarded by the news on all channels telling us what is wrong with our National Health service. It is broken. What you have as the bbc is responsibility in terms of making sure we do not demoralise the staff any more than they already are. I asked a nurse if she was impacted by the adverse publicity seen on the news this week. She looked at me as if it was a silly question. The bbc has spent the last week with intensive wall to wall coverage of bad news about the nhs and some important things are needed to be said about Waiting Times. It is a real issue for people. However, the effect of that is to produce a downwards spiral for staff and patients alike. Come on bbc, it is not that we dont need to know about these bad things and they do need addressing, but i think that the benefit of the nhs and our appreciation of it we should hear some of the good news too. Well, the Health Editor for bbc news has been on the news for much of this week and is here now. Viewers, as you can see from looking at those clips, have felt theres been so much coverage focusing on the negative things, Waiting Times and cancellations, they wonder whether the bbc is hyping up a sense of crisis . There have been several strong newsline is which we would want to cover as part of our bbc news output. We did some research on Waiting Times, patients who were waiting longer than 18 weeks in england to get surgery. That is the target, they should be seen for a routine surgery, within 18 weeks. The number is up 163 . We discovered from our data that nine out of ten hospitals are running at levels that are deemed to be above what is normally considered safe. Institute for fiscal studies has said that Health Spending in england has gone up but per person it will start bawling. Falling. On thursday, very bleak figures from nhs england on how the performance in december was the worst since records began and looked like it was going to get worse in january after documents were leaked to us. I think it is ourjob to report on facts and figures about the performance of the nhs. In terms of staff morale, i take on board what people were saying there about staff feeling downtrodden because of this. Equally we have had contact, e mails and calls, from staff who said it is really good that the bbc is focusing on what is really going on, from senior consultants to Junior Doctors and nurses. This is what the bbc should be doing and it has not done enough often the past. It is finding that balance. 0ne viewer said that they felt the coverage felt like a downward spiral of despondency and that was so overwhelming that perhaps it needs to be balanced with some tfibe beletteefiwifitefime eweeeeh shows the more that shows the more positive side. There has lot of ;. U. . 37
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