Friday 18 April 2014

'Newsnight' - 14-17 April


Because of the Easter weekend, it's a four-day week for many of us this week (and next week), including Newsnight. So, a day early, here's this week's run-through of the topics covered by Newsnight this week, plus details of the people they interviewed. Can you spot any bias?


Monday 14/4
1. Ukraine: "Are the towns in eastern Ukraine falling to the mobs or to Russian special forces?" Interview with Dmitry Linnik, bureau chief of Voice of Russia & Orysia Lutsevych, Chatham House.
2. Nigel Evans's acquittal: "Following Nigel Evans's acquittal, a Tory MP rejects accusations she tried to get the complainants to call the police" We'll ask Nigel Evans's friend Ann Widdecombe what should happen next". Interviews with Sarah Wollaston MP (Con) and Ann Widdecombe. former Conservative MP.
3. Release of man on Death Row in America: "It's one of the greatest nightmares: Being convicted of a crime you didn't commit and then being sentenced to death. In the case of Glenn Ford almost everything about the trial stank - no eye witnesses, no word of a murder weapon, just a black man represented in court by a couple of incompetent lawyers in front of an all-white jury. He was sent to Death Row in Louisiana in 1984 and now, thirty years later, he's finally been cleared of the crime and set free." Interview with Glenn Ford, freed Death Row inmate.
4. Fiction and the First World War: "The story of a horse conscripted into battle has made global conflict real for many. We ask the author Michael Morpurgo whether stories about the First World War help or hinder our understanding of it." Interview with Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse.
     [closing credits: timelapse video of a man's daughter growing up]



Tuesday 15/4
1. Ukraine: "As protestors march on the airport, will the Ukrainian army roll over again or fight?" Interview with Sergey Sobelev, parliamentary leader of the Batkivshchyna Party. 
2. Cost of living: "Now inflation in this country is now running at its lowest rate for four years, 1.6%. Figures out tomorrow are expected to show that wages are rising by more than inflation. A year ahead of the election this is good news for the Conservatives. The shadow chancellor Ed Balls was steadfastly maintaining today that the improvement didn't mean the cost of living crisis was easy. Well he might because Labour already has had to change its economic attack on the government once." Interview with shadow Treasury minister Shabana Mahmood MP (Labour).
3. Is Britain sexist? "An U.N. investigator is appalled at how sexist Britain is. Absurd? Or has she got us banged to rights?" Interview with Louise Chunn, former edition of the Guardian Women's page and founder of welldoing.org; Laura Bates, founder of Everyday Sexism; & the Guardian's Nesrine Malik, writer and commentator. 
4. Social media and radicalisation: "From what has emerged from the world of espionage and counter-espionage it seems received wisdom that the greatest terrorist threat to this country comes from radicalised young men who travel to Syria to fight in the civil war and then return to Britain. But how do these networks form? How does a young man get drawn into an experience so utterly alien to his life here?  A group of researchers from King's College, London have unearthed the vital role played by social media."
5. Lord Tebbit's new children's book: "And the story of a telepathic Russian dog who befriends a disabled boy. Which drug-addled hippy wrote that? You might be surprised at the answer."
     [closing credits: Liverpool's The Kop singing You'll Never Walk Alone on the anniversary of Hillsborough]



Wednesday 16/4
1. Ukraine: "Is there a looming point at which this proxy confrontation between Russia and the West turns into something worse?" Interview with Olexander Scherba, ambassador-at-large at the Ukraine Foreign Ministry.
2. South Korean ferry disaster. Interview with marine salvage consultant Captain John Noble.
3.  Murder of P.C Blakelock: "Now, it has not been British justice's finest hour. Almost thirty years after his killing no one has been convicted of the murder of P.C. Keith Blakelock. The investigation into the horrific killing of one of their own turned into a saga of police incompetence, the most recent chapter of which resulted in the acquittal a week ago today of a man called Nicky Jacobs. He's never spoken to the media about what happened that night P.C. Blakelock was hacked to death, nor what it's like to be arrested for a crime you did not commit. Now he has talked. Talked to Kurt Barling". Interview with Nicky Jacobs.
4. Self employment: "One woman and lots of other people's dogs. How working for yourself is the new big thing in employment...Has entrepreneurship taken off, or is there another reason?" Interview with Nicola Smith, TUC & Allister Heath, editor of City A.M.
5. Central African Republic: "'So now, the only thing we want is for there to be no Muslims in the Central African Republic'. From the horrors of the civil war in the Central African Republic, the story of a Christian and a Muslim leader working together to prove it doesn't have to be an eye for an eye".
   [closing credits: Irish folk dancing]



Thursday 17/4
1. Labour hires David Axelrod: "A Newsnight exclusive: We reveal the man who sent Obama to the White House twice has been hired to work his magic on Ed Miliband. What chance the American campaign guru David Axelrod can deliver a winner? - 'Ed Miliband understands the struggle that people are going through in Britain to make a living wage, to support their families, to retire with some dignity'". Interview with Frank Luntz, pollster and political strategist & Rachel Sylvester, The Times.
2. The Trojan Horse Letter: "All this week the maelstrom over an alleged takeover plot of Birmingham schools by Muslim hardliners has been intensifying. The decision by the Department of Education to appoint the former head of counter-terrorism to investigate the accusation {sic} facing 25 schools did nothing to calm matters. It was described as 'desperately unfortunate' by the chief constable of West Midlands Police. Accusations of the segregation of girls and boys within classes, related visits to 15 schools by Ofsted, the supposed banning of sex education, have all become part of the mix. Now Newsnight has discovered documents that reveal concerns over extremism in one school were flagged up four years ago."
3. Ukraine: "Will today's agreement in Geneva stabilise the country?"
4. Marine le Pen: "She is the most successful right-far leader in Europe and she tells Newsnight she still wants to court Nigel Farage for her team." Interview with Marine le Pen, leader of the Front National.
5. Death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: "And the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died. We reflect on his life." Interview with author Ian McEwan; writer A.L. Kennedy; & Gaby Wood, Telegraph Head of Books.
    [closing credits: old radio broadcast of a nightingale singing and a cello playing the Londonderry Air

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