Day s news will be here. First of all, time for newswatch. Welcome to newswatch. With me, samira ahmed. The bbc gets an independent and external regulator, what difference will that make to viewers concerned about whether News Coverage is fairand impartial . And. So what does britain think . Are we on the brink of a bright new dawn, or might we sink . A measured analysis of brexit from David Dimbleby in the form of a rap. First, one of the survivors of the westminster attack a couple of weeks ago, melissa cochrane, gave an emotional interview to the bbc on wednesday. Her husband was killed and she herself was badly injured. Heres a clip from that. Melissa cochrane has spoken exclusively to fiona bruce. Kurt was probably the best man i have ever met. He was. Sweet and kind. And, im extremely proud of him. Im very happy that the world now knows what a wonderful man he was. Two viewers recorded their thoughts on that for us. They were divided about the interview itself, but united in thei
about this a little yesterday after the interview and i ll acknowledge candidly i went back and was watching the feed in our system just because i was very interested in the actual interview itself, but you mentioned it yesterday, and i want to follow up on it because your perspective on the non-endorsements, particularly when you take a very straightforward line on roe versus wade, and i ve seen a lot of people with a lot of money in politics try and strike this middle ground and within a year or two, their grand efforts have completely faded away. what was your why doesn t she endorse? i think you heard her say there because she s not just a democrat, not just a republican, she s an independent, but you could still endorse certain candidates. i think she doesn t want to alie alienate people. i think she believes that she can make change without publicly saying who, not just with money but with resources, with the writing that she does. but it was really interesting. it s just bee
disturbing. the german government is even calling it disgraceful. and the interview itself is quite difficult to watch. you do see that roman protasevich, at times you can see that he has marks on his wrists, which could obviously come from having had handcuffs on before being lead into that interview room. in the interview itself, protasevich is essentially saying that he s repenting. he says he pleads guilty to organizing some of those protests that took place in belarus. he also says he doesn t want to conduct political activism anymore in the future. he essentially says that he respects the dictator alexander lukashenko. the belarusian opposition, of course, not buying any of that. in fact, the opposition leader in warsaw called for tougher sanctions against the belarusian regime. and there are indeed some new sanctions that have just come into effect. the u.s. is sanctioning nine state-run belarusian companies. minsk is reacting to that. they are now saying they are going to limit
and rather vulnerable woman. these days, if you want to do anything like that, it would be, i think, very closely monitored. i don t think it was in 1995. i think martin bashir didn t have a producer, to the extent that he didn t have any sort of supervision, and it was really steve hewlett, the editor, and obviously steve had a lot of other things to do as well. so a producer wasn t brought in to the process until right at the last moment literally days before the interview itself, and that was reallyjust to handle the sort of technicalities of the actual production of the interview. they. that wouldn t happen today. things have shifted. david, if i can ask you, and again, this is in a historical context, when you were the editor of the sun in the 90s, how much did you know about what your journalists were doing on a day to day basis and the tactics they were using?
to the extent that he didn t have any sort of supervision, and it was really steve hewlett, the editor, and obviously steve had a lot of other things to do as well. so, a producer wasn t brought in to the process until right at the last moment literally days before the interview itself, and that was reallyjust to handle the sort of technicalities of the actual production of the interview. they. that wouldn t happen today. things have shifted. david, if i can ask you, and again, this is in a historical context, when you were the editor of the sun in the 90s, how much did you know about what your journalists were doing on a day to day basis and the tactics they were using? well, of course the answer to that is that i can t - possibly know that. i thought i knew quite a lot, -