You only have to look at the poll in today's Times, suggesting widespread support for the Prime Minister's action at last week's summit, to see the depth and power of Euro-scepticism across the country. Like any highly controversial subject, it is always challenging for an impartial news organisation to report without inflaming strong views on either side of the debate.

Trust must be at the heart of the BBC's relationship with its audiences and that is why we listen carefully to the range of feedback audiences give us. We've had some criticism of our coverage over the weekend claiming it was too "pro-European". I've watched, heard and read a great deal of what we did and without any sense of complacency, I think we reported events fairly and accurately and tried hard to capture a very wide range of views about last week's summit.

It is not our job to hail any summit on any subject as a "triumph" or a "disaster". Our role is simply to report and analyse events and their fall-out.

Nobody disputes that there was a big row in Brussels last week or that the Prime Minister's approach left him standing alone among European leaders - but there is considerable disagreement about whether or not that is a good thing and what it might mean politically and economically. Our job is to explain what happened and interrogate the different perspectives taken on Mr Cameron's stance so that our audiences can judge for themselves.

So on Friday and over the weekend we attempted to discover just what it was that the Prime Minister had vetoed, which safeguards he was seeking for the City of London, and what had changed for the UK and for Europe. We questioned a wide range of politicians and we picked up the unease among Liberal Democrats, which burst into the open with Nick Clegg's appearance on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday.

We've backed this up with analysis of the political and economic implications by our most trusted and respected editors: Nick Robinson, Gavin Hewitt, Robert Peston, Stephanie Flanders and a host of other correspondents.

Almost inevitably, this process leads to politicians having to field some uncomfortable questions from BBC interviewers. We don't do that because we have some hidden agenda but because the public expects us as an independent and impartial broadcaster to hold governments and opposition parties to account.

Over the weekend news programmes have featured in-depth interviews with George Osborne and William Hague for the Conservatives, Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, a range of Euro-sceptic voices and some highly critical Labour politicians. All have different views, all have been allowed to express them - and rightly so.

It is the nature of contentious subjects - Europe, climate change, the Middle East - that they polarise opinion. Among those who feel strongly about them, BBC News is often accused of "taking sides". We must always be open to criticism of course - we don't get everything right. But criticism, however ferocious, should never deter us from focussing on the basics: telling the story accurately and fairly, testing it against a wide range of opinions and challenging all those opinions with rigour.

It's not an approach that makes us popular with everyone of course, but it may explain why audiences have remained so loyal to BBC News output over many decades.

Helen Boaden is the BBC Director of News

Let's look at the facts about Newsnight. Over the summer, 13 editions have attracted over a million viewers on average as people have sought out an intelligent, lateral take on the news of the day. In the last two months, 11 million people have watched Newsnight - that's one and a half million more than for the same period last year.

Those strong audiences are not a surprise. Time and again, Newnight's discussions have set the agenda and made compelling television: Steve Coogan on phone hacking; Harman v Gove on the cause of the riots; Sir Hugh Orde on political interference in policing; David Starkey on race and culture.

Newsnight's sharp debates, witty insights and testing interviews may challenge or infuriate. But they rarely bore. Neither does the range of films from the Newsnight stable: Sue Lloyd-Roberts fearlessly going undercover in Syria; Paul Mason following in Steinbeck's footsteps exploring America's underclass; the investigations into the use of undercover police posing as protestors. They show journalistic skill and confidence of a high order.

Does Newsnight face challenges now which it didn't ten years ago? Of course it does. There is simply far more news and analysis available round the clock now than then. It's much harder to make an impact with any single piece of journalism. But even against a massively changed media landscape, the Newsnight brand retains real power. On big days Newsnight is attracting significant television audiences and viewers through the internet, the iPlayer and other digital outlets. It also has a passionate twitter following.

Newsnight remains a vital part of what we offer our audiences. We know they value its distinctiveness and its depth. As the news cycle gets faster and fiercer, there's never been more need for its unique and invaluable take on world events.

Helen Boaden is director of BBC News

The extensive BBC News coverage of the TUC rally in central London featured interviews with major figures on the march, protestors and critics. Supporters were challenged regularly - and robustly - on their alternative to the Government's programme and the Cabinet Office Minister Frances Maude featured prominently throughout a day of rolling news. We also tried to set in context the relatively small scale of the violent demonstration and to put across the views of the vast number of peaceful marchers.

Despite all this the BBC finds itself criticised by one prominent MP and several newspaper columnists for being biased towards the protestors - at exactly the same time as fielding complaints from people who thought that we were too hard on the demonstrators and their cause. This was a big news story and feelings about the Government's economic programme run high on both sides.

It is perfectly true that it is sometimes difficult to strike the correct balance and I hold my hands up when we don't get it right. On this occasion, though, I think the BBC did serve its audiences appropriately and thoroughly.

Anyone who thinks differently doesn't really understand how the organisation works and how seriously we take issues around balance and impartiality.

That's why, for example, we've planned our coverage of the spending cuts so carefully - to make the choices facing the government clear to our audiences and ensuring we cover the "whys and wherefores" of the spending review. It's how we always approach our reporting - whatever the subject.

The licence fee is the public's money so people are clearly fully entitled to their opinion on our coverage. And if they want to criticise it, of course they can and indeed will do so. There was one such example in the Daily Mail yesterday. There'll always be people who express views about our coverage particularly at a sensitive time politically. That's part of the warp and weft of living in a democracy. Our job is to ensure we remain absolutely impartial and present the facts to our audiences - without following any agendas.

For the broad audience BBC News is as respected and as valued as it's ever been. At big significant news moments such as the General Election and for everyday news and analysis audiences turn to us in huge numbers to help them make sense of the world - both at home and abroad.

That's because our audiences trust us and our specialist journalists like Nick Robinson, Stephanie Flanders, Robert Peston, Hugh Pym and Mark Easton. When stories are complex, highly charged and politicised, audiences rely on our specialists to give them context, assess evidence and test opinions without fear or favour.

Our presenters take professional pride in holding the powerful to account through fair but tough questioning. All our journalists - on and off air - are acutely aware of their responsibility to be impartial. That's why, for example, we report the problems of the BBC as we would any other institution. And that's why our trust ratings remain so high. And in a healthy democracy our audiences would not want it any other way.

Helen Boaden is director of BBC News

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When I started my career in broadcasting - at Radio Tees - a commercial local radio station in Middlesbrough - we'd never heard of digital. Nor of the internet. Channel 4 was about to kick off but there was no Sky News; no ITV 2 and certainly no BBC News Channel - formerly known as News 24.

Today, as you will know, on average every person in the UK spends approaching half their waking hours using communication tools like PCs, laptops, mobiles, TVs, radios, iPods and other digital devices.

Last week, 5.5 million people tuned into our US election programme with David Dimbleby. Interestingly, we don't know the precise figure for 1979's programme but we can be pretty certain it was many, many more.

What we are seeing in television is audience fragmentation - the natural impact of greater audience choice in a multi channel age. When people have a lot to choose from, they go off in all sorts of directions. It means that really huge audiences for television news on all channels are a thing of the past.

You can see this quite clearly in the figures. In 2006 - in homes with digital television, news viewing fell by a third. And the numbers watching current affairs fell by half.

Interestingly, soaps don't suffer the same decline.

And all this in the context that analogue television switch off begins this year and ends in 2012. In just four years, we're fully digital.

Today, and increasingly in the future, audiences want the news at the time they want it; on the platform most convenient to them and tailored to the subjects or agenda they find most appealing.

So the biggest challenge for us is about our relationship to the people who matter most - our audiences.

It's about capturing and keeping their hearts and minds. And for audiences who want to join in, that means including them in the process of making the news.

Our journalism is now fully embracing the experiences of our audiences, sharing their stories, using their knowledge and hosting their opinions; we're acting as a conduit between different parts of our audience; and we're being more open and transparent than we have ever been.

If you're in any doubt, let me take you on a tour of some recent stories.

I'll start with the London bombings. It was of course a terrible tragedy and a profoundly shocking event. But for Newsgathering, what happened on 7 July three years ago marked a watershed: the point at which the BBC knew that newsgathering had changed forever. In one sense it was just an example of what might be called "accidental journalism".

No one who set off for work that fateful morning had any idea that their mobile phones would capture such dramatic images.

But accidental journalism is nothing new. When Abraham Zapruder took his Bell & Howell movie camera to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963 he had no idea he would capture the most iconic example of citizen journalism. He recorded less than 30 seconds of film - the assassination of President Kennedy.

Zapruder had no doubt about the exclusivity and value of his film. It was sold to Life Magazine for $150,000 three days later.

But compare his one film with what happened on 7 July. Within 24 hours, the BBC had received 1,000 stills and videos, 3,000 texts and 20,000 e-mails. What an incredible resource.

Twenty-four hour television was sustained as never before by contributions from the audience; one piece on the Six O'clock News was produced entirely from pieces of user-generated content.

At the BBC, we knew then that we had to change. We would need to review our ability to ingest this kind of material and our editorial policies to take account of these new forms of output.

We were better prepared for the Glasgow airport bombing. Here too, the mobile phone images captured the drama long before conventional news crews could arrive. I was actually at Glasgow and became part of that newsgathering process. Using only my mobile, I was able to get on air immediately.

Later, I actually found one of the men who had wrestled the burning man to the ground and got him on air at once.

It brought home to me as nothing else could how simple digital technology had transformed the process of what we do. When I was a reporter - before mobile phones - live reporting like that would have been much, much harder requiring us to shepherd our interviewee into a phone box to get him on air!

But if these are a kind of accidental journalism - a canny use of domestic technology to get the unexpected story - other kinds of experience sharing are more deliberate.

In September last year, a group of monks and pro-democracy activists led a series of demonstrations against the military rulers in Burma. As the protests took hold, the demonstrations grew in size and thousands of ordinary citizens joined in.

The BBC, like other news organisations, was banned from entering Burma - we couldn't find out what was happening.

But despite a crackdown on the internet and mobile phone networks the BBC was flooded with pictures, video, texts and e-mails from Burmese citizens who told us what was really happening on the ground.

This was citizen newsgathering - simultaneously transcending boundaries and confronting authority.

One contributor in Rangoon told us: "When monks and people reached the mid-level platform of the Shwedagon Pagoda around 12:20 PM, they closed the doors behind and riot police started to chase them and beat them up. Then about 200 were hauled off onto the trucks and driven away. About 80 monks were taken away."

As Burma demonstrated - and I found out for myself in Glasgow, one of the most important tools for the citizen newsgatherer is the mobile phone. Mobiles present a lightning-fast and convenient way for communities and audiences to engage with news organisations.

That was demonstrated in another country from which the BBC reporters are banned: Zimbabwe. On the day of the recent elections there, the BBC asked voters to text in and tell us their experiences at the polling booths. Those texts gave us a really broad diversity of experiences from right across the country.

The situation at the booths appeared to be calmer than expected; but what emerged from many was the high number of people being turned away when they turned up to vote because their names were missing. This again gave us a rich and first-hand addition to our conventional journalism.

In some ways, the most successful combination of conventional and citizen newsgathering was the coverage of the floods that swept across the UK last year. This coverage won an award for innovation at the Royal Television Society. It was truly greater than the sum of its parts. It provided our audiences with crucial public information when they really needed it.

It's no surprise then that the BBC has gone from passively accepting user-generated content to positively soliciting it. It's not just a "nice to have" - it can really enrich our journalism and provide our audiences with a wider diversity of voices than we could otherwise deliver.

As well as voices we might not otherwise hear from, there are stories about which we would never have known.

A new strand on Wales Today - "Your Story" - features stories contributed solely by individual viewers and followed up by the programme.

While World Have Your Say is one of a number of programmes which tries to encourage a global conversation based around the programme's blogs and e-mails.

We are just launching a video Have Your Say where audience members can contribute their opinions by video some of which will undoubtedly make the conventional News bulletins if they are strong enough.

For many of our audiences, this has opened their eyes to something very simple: that their lives can be newsworthy - that news organisations don't have a monopoly on what stories are covered. Indeed, that news organisations have an appetite for stories they simply couldn't get to themselves and they value information and eye witness accounts from the public - as they always have done.

In May this year, an e-mail arrived from a BBC viewer - a worker at Heathrow - that claimed that foreign workers employed airside at UK airports did not have to undergo full mandatory criminal records checks. The story turned in to an exclusive lead for Newsnight, was followed up by several papers, led to questions in the House of Lords and a change in government policy.

It was a more proactive request for contributions that led to a lead story on the 10 O'clock News, after the outgoing head of the army had voiced concern about conditions in armed forces housing. Journalists were unable to film on MoD premises. So the programme used the BBC website and sites that soldiers use - and offered families affected an open platform to tell their own story. The material sent in exposed the squalid state of much of the soldiers' accommodation.

We were then able to show the pictures we received to the Army - and they had to respond. Again, user-generated content became the core of the story.

Technology is allowing us to generate stories we wouldn't otherwise get - and develop them in ways that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

So much for stories. But what about opinions? Of course, for many years members of the public have been able to share their opinions through the media. Phone-in shows have been a staple format on talk radio for decades.

Now, with blogs in particular - but also podcasts and videoblogs - the ability of the public to express opinion in public has exploded - especially in the USA - and they no longer need to be "hosted" by broadcaster.

This has had a number of effects on traditional media.

The appetite for opinion is clearly there - but it has put pressure on the traditional framework of impartiality and objectivity for organisations like the BBC. The quantity of views, and the means by which they are expressed, has grown significantly. So too have the benefits of being seen to embrace and support public discussion.

The challenge for news organisations is in learning how to integrate the opinions of their readers, listeners and viewers in new ways.
And we're still learning. Some commentators have said that blogs have undermined the value of the columnist or op-ed writer, because there is excellent commentary available for free on the web.

But I feel the opposite is true at the BBC. The blogs of senior BBC correspondents are drawing huge numbers of people into sharing the expertise of our specialist editors and engaging in debate with each other.

Listen to some of these figures for October - this past month. Nick Robinson, our political editor, got one and a half million page views for his blog. Justin Webb, in Washington, got two and a half million.

And Robert Peston, our business editor? In one month...just under eight million page views.

And, of course, people aren't just viewing - they're blogging. Adding to the debate, posting their opinions, challenging our coverage, suggesting new avenues of approach.

But it's worth looking at the numbers here -

Take Robert Peston's blog on who benefits from the cut in interest rates. On the day of publication, it had 182,000 page views. And 253 comments.

This highlights the difference in the audiences between those who are happy to read what others have to say and those self selecting minority who want to join in the debate themselves, knowing that the environment can be robust and that people might disagree with what they have to say.

These numbers are also a useful warning not to set too much store by the tone of the comments. Those who join in the debate are by definition a vocal minority. They certainly have a place in a vibrant and impartial news environment but they need to be kept in perspective.

Now it's an accepted tenet of the modern journalistic landscape that someone out there will always know more about a story than we do. That's why the notion of developing networks has become increasingly important.

The iPM programme on Radio 4 recently constructed a temporary network to build a "map of the credit crunch".

Listeners were directed to the programme's website and asked to say which aspect of the credit crunch most affected their lives. Fuel prices affected most people, but some clear regional differences emerged - and these insights then informed all of the BBC's journalism and helped all of our programmes avoid stereotypes.

Sounds simple. But for me it was important: a radio programme - using "crowd sourcing" - on its own website - to generate important stories and insights about the effect of the economy on specific areas of the UK.

Of course, news organisations also have to adapt to the many networks that already exist.

It's thought that Facebook now has over 90 million active users; that 65,000 videos a day are uploaded to YouTube; these have been joined by sites like Flickr, Twitter and many others. For journalists, these networks represent a good source of information and specialist groups.

The newspaper design guru Mario Garcia told the World Association of Newspapers, "Social networks are the new cities. If people choose to gather there we must be there too." And he's right.

There are opportunities in all these networks to engage new - often younger - audiences who are not consumers of traditional news. And branding opportunities too: the BBC and the FT offer headlines on Twitter; Reuters has a bureau in Second Life.

And so news organisations are learning how to use the technology and the sites that encourage citizen newsgathering to support their traditional purposes of providing professional journalism as widely as possible.

If good journalism is to survive it's essential we all adapt in this way.

But it does raise interesting issues for us.

The need to be able to handle all this user-generated content is affecting the way we structure ourselves. We have established what we call the UGC Hub - a seven-day, 24-hour operation at the heart of our newsroom.

The hub has 23 staff and works with every part of BBC journalism. Four staff from Have Your Say work solely on moderating blogs and debates. And it's needed: on an average day the hub will handle 12,000 e-mails and around 200 pictures. On a big story day those numbers go through the roof. Some 7,000 pieces of video came in to the hub in one week during last July's floods.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury said on the World at One - a lunchtime programme - that some aspects of Sharia Law were inevitable in the UK, more than 9,000 contributions had arrived by teatime. These responses were then fed back in the output later in the day.

Sometimes we bring it on ourselves. We recently ran a feature on "Broadband Britain" and gave people a way of testing their broadband speeds and then plotting it on a map. Within a 36 hour period we received 65,000 contributions.

The hub is now a fundamental part of BBC journalism, providing a rich memory bank of case studies and a pool of potential story ideas.

I think we've probably always underestimated the media literacy of our audiences - especially those from the babyboomers downwards. But the simplicity of digital technology means it's never been easier for audiences to "make judgements about our judgements".

Again, it's not really new to hear what the audience thinks about what we do. We have always had duty logs and letters through which the highly motivated could register their disapproval - or occasionally their pleasure.

Today, if I get 50 complaints on the duty log about something on our News, then I think we've clearly got to look at the way we did that story. It may be that we are perfectly happy with our final judgement.

But I know that 50 people bothering to ring in probably represent a lot more who were fed up or annoyed but didn't take the trouble to tell us.

A few years ago when I was controller of Radio 4, I announced that I was devoting all of the Boxing Day FM schedule to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter. It was front page news on every paper and I received over 200 letters of bitter complaint - most of them demanding my immediate resignation.

That was quite a high number then. Today with e-mail, that probably would have been thousands. The interesting issue then would have been whether or not the weight of all that complaining would have changed my decision.

When we said we were going to show Jerry Springer The Opera on BBC Two, we received more than 60,000 complaints - most by e-mail. When we said we would show a glimpse of the Danish cartoons on the News, Radio 5Live was subject to an organised text campaign by angry Muslims.

In all those cases, we stuck to our guns and made our judgements based on our values of being independent and impartial.

The BBC has a fundamental commitment to freedom of speech and expression - within the law and within appropriate boundaries of taste and decency (and of course there is much audience debate about where those are drawn).

That commitment is there because free access to reliable, impartial information is fundamental to a liberal democracy and that is what the BBC is here to serve.

But the sheer volume of e-mail and text traffic possible because of digital technology could have the effect of bullying a less confident organisation.

And certainly bullying by blog is a phenomenon that many newspapers are struggling with in relation to their columnists. It's one of the darker sides of the great push to more connection and transparency.

Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of comment on a myriad number of blogs specifically about the BBC and especially BBC News.

For us in journalism, one of our most important responses to this kind of debate has been to launch the Editors' blog, where our programme editors - the people who actually decide what is in the Today Programme or on Newsnight or on the Ten O'clock News, write about the editorial dilemmas they face and their particular judgements.

This section of the BBC website received over a million page views last month.

I am incredibly proud of the Editors' Blog and of my team for being open and transparent with the public.

But as time has gone on, it's clear that in one respect at least, this is a double edged sword. Call us paranoid, but we increasingly have a sneaking suspicion that some of our competitors in the newspaper industry pore over our Editors' Blog to try to pick out phrases and opinions to turn into critical copy.

This doesn't remotely put us off doing it - but it certainly makes us very realistic about the risks and benefits of transparency. Indeed, I long for the day when the editor of a major newspaper - especially a tabloid - writes the occasional blog honestly outlining the reasons behind his or her editorial decisions.

But we are here to talk about democracy. I've touched on how we are using digital technology to establish new relationships with our audiences.

But we are acutely aware that the formal political processes need to be brought into this world too.

To that end, we are about to launch an important new site called Democracy Live.

This will offer live and on demand video from all the main UK institutions and the European Parliament. Users will be able to search across the video for representatives and issues that are relevant to them. They will be able to find out more about their representatives in the institutions and follow their contributions.

The site will also offer detailed guides to how the institutions across a devolved UK work and what powers they have, all the must know information about issues in the news and blogs from our political editors, plus a range of ways for users to comment and contact their representatives and institutions.

And while this will make for a compelling mix on the site, we also want it to be a shareable resource, with video and text content that users can take and place on their own sites or blogs.

So: are there risks to all this engagement with the audience? Of course.

We must always be cautious of over-interpretation - of concluding too much from the select few that interact with us online. As yet they are still but one sub-set of our audience.

And we absolutely must beware of how one of the strengths of the internet - its speed - can become a terrible weakness if the information is not true.

Let me give you a very small example I've seen for myself.

Recently, the BBC declined to publish an internal management review of its coverage. The decision was based on principle, not on its contents.

One commentator suggested the report was 20,000 pages long!

Now the BBC is famed for its bureaucracy, but that would make it 20 times the length of War and Peace.

This error went round the world and back again on the web - unquestioned.

Of course, in reality, our document is not 20,000 pages. It's 20,000 words.

This is not an especially damaging piece of misinformation - but you take my point.

That's not to deny, of course, the impact that bloggers have made and the real stories they have broken. But too often, perhaps, readers of internet journalists are left to their own devices to sort fact from fiction.

Tim Berners-Lee himself fears that his original goal for the web - to link credible information worldwide - could be destroyed.

He has warned:

"The medium can be perverted, giving you what seems to be the world, but in fact is a tilted and twisted version."

Mainstream journalism must guard against running the same risk. In order to survive, journalism must be trusted. And to earn trust, it must be accurate and fair.

Equally, we will always be faced with issues about taste and decency - we saw that with the mobile phone pictures of Saddam Hussein's hanging.

The evolution of technology will undoubtedly raise all sorts of challenges.

Some mobile phones already allow live broadcasting - it won't be long before they all will - and that will bring with it some critical issues around editorial control.

And we must always be alert to hoaxes - most news organisations have been duped at some point, despite the strict controls we have in place.

We must guard against mindless interactivity replacing genuinely useful debate and insights.

We must careful not to encourage citizen journalists to take risks in dangerous situations.

We may find that issues around copyright and ownership of material require more time and resource than we imagined.

And we must continue to consider the motivation of contributors and ask why they are telling us this.

But as I list this roll-call of reservations, they only serve to reinforce something I've always known: that the key aptitude for any editorial leader is good judgement. It was when I joined the BBC; it still is today.

And it is precisely good judgement that tells us that it makes sense to embrace interactivity and citizen newsgathering in its various forms.

There are great and positive opportunities for journalism and for reinforcing citizenship. And "we" can't wait for "them" to come to us. Smart news organisations are engaging audiences and opening themselves up to the conversation our audiences clearly want.

I am conscious that my view is that of a director of News of an organisation that represents what these days are called the mainstream media.

It wasn't long ago that bloggers and traditional news organisations were at each others throats. In truth, many big organisations were slow to respond and saw the internet as more of a threat than an opportunity.

But where the bigger players lacked a degree of humility and agility, the blogosphere appeared to lack a focus or clarity of purpose.

Now, these various elements that make up the modern media are learning to live with each other.

I hope I have demonstrated that the BBC is embracing these changes as positively as we can and should. I believe it's essential for the development of our journalism and our public purpose of informed citizenship.

But BBC journalism is also rooted in some core values - truth and accuracy, impartiality and diversity of opinion, independence, reporting in the public interest and accountability to audiences.

So embrace change and modernise we will, but those traditional values will always remain the lode star of BBC journalism.

Essentially, a reduced licence fee settlement, together with tough efficiency targets, mean that we need to radically change the way we work to best serve our many different audiences. In the biggest overhaul of BBC News in 15 years, we are going to become truly multi-media. You can get an idea of what we have in mind from my speech to the staff of BBC News.

We may be reducing posts in News but we don’t plan to reduce quality. As you can see from our list of investments, we’re putting money into good old-fashioned journalism as well as new services via our web. We treasure our specialist talent because we know their skills, expertise and range of contacts add immeasurably to our authority and distinctiveness.

Under our plan, they all come together to deliver their work in audio, video and online. And our big programmes – Today, Newsnight, Panorama – will continue to deliver their excellent journalism on radio and television but with the best websites we can offer, allowing audiences a truly interactive experience if they want it.

Most change is difficult and at times, painful. Undoubtedly we will not find the implementation of all this to be plain sailing. But standing still is not an option because our audiences are changing and we must change with them. As the brilliant architect of our plan, deputy director of news, Adrian Van-Klaveren, wryly pointed out to me today: “This is just the end of the beginning.”

Welcome – thank you for coming here or tuning into this. You’ve heard Mark Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons talk about the coming six years for the BBC and I am going to give you more detail about the plans for News. I’m sorry that this is going to be a long speech with no jokes because there’s a lot to tell you which is serious and it’s important for me to be as clear as I can.

First let’s talk about the reason BBC News exists – to serve our audiences – and let me talk a little about how audiences are changing the way they consume news and information.

• Consumption of Television News is in decline though I think we should be pleased with how audiences to our big bulletins, especially the Ten, are holding up in a very competitive world. Lots of audiences have stayed loyal but we really struggle to get the younger and C2DE audiences. We've lost 2 million under 35s from TV News since 2001.
• Radio is increasing – remarkably - but under pressure and Online is growing sharply but not enough yet to compensate for the decline in TV viewing.

This pattern of consumption really gets to the heart of our current challenge. There’s a revolution going on in the way people get their news and information driven by digital technology and the growth of on demand platforms like the web. We can see that revolution happening in our own figures: the BBC News website is reaching a weekly unique average of 6 million users in the UK. BBC mobile has reached an all time monthly high for News, Sport and Weather at 2 million users. And seventy-five percent of consumers of news on mobiles are under 44 years old – compared to 25% for the television news bulletins.

Those are real successes. But we urgently need to build on them as our competitors rev up. Newspapers such as The Telegraph and The Guardian are bringing together their print and online operations, moving into podcasting and even broadband television. Sky is putting video at the centre of its websites while Google is expanding and refining its news aggregation service. And we have a powerful new competitor in Channel 4 Radio on DAB and the web.

We can’t afford to rest on our laurels. And fortunately we start from a very good place.

Firstly and most importantly, we are the world’s most trusted provider of News. People rely on us to deliver accurate, fair, impartial and accessible news and current affairs whatever the pressures upon us. We need to hold that trust very dear and make sure we never abuse it.

Across our News and Current Affairs output, we currently reach 80% of the UK’s population every week. By 2012, we aim to have maintained that 80% reach and still be rated number one for Trust and Impartiality. That’s a pretty tall order in a highly competitive world. It means we can’t afford to stand still.

We already have a great track record in keeping ahead in technology. Those who remember the John Birt savings regime may have hated it at the time, but it put BBC News in an incredibly strong position. From those savings came News 24, the BBC News website and Radio 5Live - as well as the creation of the best newsgathering operation in the world and a special place for News and Current Affairs at the heart of the BBC.

Once again, we’re at a moment in our history where we have to make a radical shift in response to our audiences. We have to overhaul the way we do things in BBC News from linear production to non-linear. We have to deliver the journalistic quality people expect of us on the platforms they increasingly take for granted – from mobile phones to YouTube; from digital radio to podcasts; from red button TV to the iPlayer.

We’ve already invested in this new world – both for the technology and for the changing stories we need to cover. We now have a wide range of audio podcasts and have started to develop our on-demand services, like SMS text alerts. We’ve developed both the User Generated Content hub and Newswire. And we’ve invested in our journalism with the new Sports Editor, Mihir Bose, and the Manchester Investigations Unit, which has produced a string of good stories like Allan Little’s report on the conditions facing migrant workers.

But – as Mark Thompson made clear - our savings are not at an end. Over the coming five years, we have to live within a Licence Fee that’s much smaller than we’d hope for - and tough efficiency targets. And from within that smaller pot, we have to take money to invest in the digital future.

In essence, we in News are going to have to find a total of 155 million pounds of savings over five years – that’s an average across News of 3.5 per cent savings a year on Licence fee funding. In return, we’ll get back 75 million pounds between this year and 2012 for investments in our future.

At the heart of our investment plan is My News Now which is crucial to giving people the information they want, when they want it. We believe that in a broadband future, the web will become the chief platform for getting our content out to our audiences. As someone put it “everything will bounce off the web”.

We’ve had a cracking good ten years with our website but it now urgently needs to be updated and overhauled for a web 2.0 world where audiences expect a high level of personalisation and complete ease of navigation.

So through our investments, we’ll be creating major new teams which will develop both video and audio on-demand content. This includes everything from News updates and breaking news to specialist subjects which we know some audiences love – like Technology. We’re investing more in our User Generated Content which has strengthened our journalism through its fresh insights and stories. We’ll build our weather service on the web and further develop the sites of our big brand current affairs programmes like Today, Panorama and Newsnight.

On key topics and issues like health for example, we’ll pull together everything we do including audio and video, into one place on the web so that audiences can find their information easily. And we’ll create new teams to come up with ideas about what audiences will want in future on the new platforms, be it mobile phones or big screens.

As I’ve said, we struggle to reach the Young and C2DEs so
so we’re investing in the new 8 o’clock summary on BBC1, a much better Newsbeat website as well as the new BBC teens service, BBC Switch.

We’ll put more money into reflecting all parts of the United Kingdom through regional journalists working across all platforms. And we’ll strengthen our investment in countries which are increasingly important to the news agenda, notably China and Afghanistan.

And there will be investment in technology which will help us achieve better delivery of material to and from the field.

All these investments – which will pay for technology and coverage as well as people - will create over a hundred new jobs and will be crucial in maintaining the relevance and value of BBC News to all audiences.

But obviously there’s a major challenge here. How are we going respond to the audience revolution in the consumption of news and current affairs – which will only intensify – with less money? How are we going to maintain the quality people expect of us, on the platforms they want – within a much tighter financial regime?

Well the answer is easy to say, but hard to do.

In essence, like the rest of the BBC, we’re going to produce less content overall but aim for much greater impact by making it go further across all platforms.

When I became Director of News I talked about getting rid of “stupid duplication” and I think everyone has made real headway on this over the past three years.

I’m not daft – I know that sometimes you need several people working on the same story simply to make sure we get it first and we get it right. But the truth is that time and again, people in News still complain to me of too much duplication, too many levels of decision making, too many hands touching a single piece of output and not enough sharing of good material.

In the leaner world of the new Licence Fee – we simply can’t afford inefficiency and unjustifiable duplication.

So to make our news simpler and more efficient without damaging its quality, we’re going to change what we do and how we are organised.

We are going to create a multi-media newsroom; a multi-media programmes department a multi-media newsgathering and a multi-media political newsgathering operation at Millbank – all supported by News Production Facilities.

When I arrived here , I was very struck by how much News Interactive and News 24 were sometimes regarded as the outsiders of BBC News. They were just about acknowledged but certainly not loved or given the credit they deserved.

Three years on, they are both even stronger and utterly central to what we do, and we will continue to put them both into the heart of our Newsroom operation.

I am equally sure that some in Radio regret that the bulletins and the programmes are going into different parts of the new structure.

But the truth is that we can’t make the relationships that we think are critical for a new, multi media world without breaking some of those that have worked successfully in the past. However, we will put arrangements in place to make sure that we preserve the best and most important parts of the existing relationships.

So, how will this newly shaped BBC News work ?

I’ll start with the multi media newsroom which will be run by Peter Horrocks, as this involves the largest amount of change. The new Newsroom will include this output.

By bringing our core news services together in one department, our aim is to simplify and speed up decision making, doing less overall but focussing on quality and distinctiveness against the competition on all platforms. Of course, we won’t forget that different audiences need different things. It’s not going to become one homogenous, bland BBC News. The 1800 Bulletin on Radio 4 is not suddenly going to have the same agenda as the Six on BBC 1. The Ten will still have a distinctly different feel from the Six. But there undoubtedly will be much more sharing of material between Breakfast, News 24 and the One and between the Six and the Ten where it’s appropriate.

We really want to reduce the demand on Newsgathering to get the best value from the limited resources we have. And we want to help staff in the new Newsroom develop a range of multi media skills over time.

Decision making should be faster and sharper through the creation of a Multimedia Day Editor, who will oversee the department’s journalism and ensure we get the maximum impact across all platforms. This person is really important and will resolve conflicts within the Newsroom as well as helping us manage the demand on Newsgathering. It’s not a new post but an additional responsibility taken in turn by senior Newsroom editors from TV, radio and Online.

We’ll streamline output by creating a single television team looking after News 24 and BBC1 bulletins based on the first floor. Staff will work across all output but there will be dedicated effort for the Six and the Ten. News 24 will broadcast from N6, while the Six will move to TC7.

All these changes will mean a simpler and more coherent commissioning process with material shared more effectively across TV News. The simplification also allows relatively higher savings at senior editorial levels, retaining as many producers as possible.

A new Media On-Demand area will focus on the commissioning, production and publication of audio and video content for On-Demand platforms. As I’ve already said, this is a key area for new investment though it will mean the phased closure of the existing AV unit as its functions become part of the new operation.

We’ll simplify how we do things by having decision makers in the same place on the first floor, this will mean a simpler and more coherent commissioning process with material shared more effectively across TV News

The Newsroom has taken the biggest share of our efficiencies at five per cent a year over five years. I know some of you think that is incredibly unfair. The phrase Year Zero has been used by some in Television News. Equally, others think this is all simply a take over by Television News of Radio and Online.

On the money front, I think it’s easier to make significant savings if you’re a new department embracing new ways of working and bringing together teams which overlap.
It’s also worth remembering that the Newsroom is getting the highest level of reinvestment through My News Now. So it’s not a simple story of the newsroom losing out but of the shift from linear to non-linear output which we believe is vital and urgent.

I can also see why Online and Radio fear a Television takeover given the power of TV in the dynamics of any newsroom. But our new Newsroom will have failed if it short changes our radio bulletins or website. There’ll be no brownie points for those who focus solely on the big Television Bulletins for example. Indeed, the creation of the Multi Media Editor is precisely about making sure everyone in the top team has an investment in making this work for all platforms.

The other new pillar in BBC News will be the Multi Media Programmes department which will be headed by Steve Mitchell. Here are some of the big brands which will be going into the new department.

This new department will bring together our major daily and weekly current affairs brands outside Political Programmes, our investigative journalism and our big interview programmes – as well as those services for audiences we find hard to reach like Newsbeat and the Asian Network. It will be the powerhouse for the kind of original journalism which distinguishes the BBC from all its competitors – be it a brilliant interview on Today or Hard Talk, a joint Panorama and 5Live investigation; a collaboration between Newsnight and File on 4 or a great grass roots story from the Asian Network which crosses to Radio One and the World Service. What’s more, the Programmes Department will have the benefit of the best and most sophisticated websites for its key programme brands – the so called Gold Sites.

The Programmes Department will of course get a good service from Newsgathering – the idea that programmes like News Night or Today being stranded without the right Newsgathering talent on a big story is plainly ridiculous and will not happen. But it won’t all be one way traffic. The Programmes department will be expected to ensure its original journalism and interviews are widely shared across BBC News.

I believe that the creation of this new multi media department is a huge opportunity to capitalise on our original journalism and our people. By joining up in this way, we can make much more of the exceptional current affairs expertise we have to find and break genuinely new stories and to add analysis and insight to the main agenda. No other broadcaster in the world has our rich portfolio of programmes. And frankly, up till now I don’t think we’ve made the most of their collective power. The Programmes Department should change all that.

The savings target for the Programmes Department is just over three per cent a year over five years – overall less than for the Newsroom because they have less intrinsic duplication. As with the Newsroom, there are different targets for areas commissioned by Audio and Music, the Global Division and Vision.

For Television Current Affairs, this is a big change. Like Radio Current Affairs, they’ve long cherished their independence as a free standing department. But the economics of the new Licence Fee as outlined by Mark and Jana Bennett this morning, make that an unrealistic ambition.

All the channels will still fulfil their Statements of Programme Promises but there are likely to be fewer opportunities for Current Affairs, as a department, beyond its core output. However, the total picture of Current Affairs from all its suppliers remains strong - with of 48 Panoramas a year plus 8 hour long current affairs specials, 12 and a half hours of the One Show, 13 and a half hours of This World and some strong Landmark series on BBC 2 and seasons on BBC 3.

In this situation, I don’t think TV Current Affairs can sustain itself as a small stand alone department. But its journalism is too important for it simply to become merged into Vision Studios, although its funding will continue to come through Vision. That’s why I have made it a key part of the new Programmes Department.

In this way, I’m confident that TV Current Affairs will get all the editorial backing it needs to continue do tough and challenging journalism which upholds BBC News values.

However, it can’t afford to lose touch with the production processes of long form Television. So the department will physically sit alongside Factual where staff will have the chance to work on a range of Factual projects as well as Current Affairs.

I hope that these changes will mean that TV Current Affairs will benefit from an even closer connection to BBC News and our journalistic ethos without losing its vital creative connection with Vision.

For 5Live there’s a different challenge. There are two things going on: the move to Salford and the need to save money. By 2011, Radio 5Live will be based in Salford. We plan to have a vibrant and cohesive Radio Station with a clear remit to report the whole of the UK. At that point, it would be taking parts of the a core audio service produced by the Multimedia newsroom in London and adding a marginal amount of bespoke versioning by using material from within its own programmes. That’s along the lines of the model already followed by Radio One in Yalding House and the Asian Network in Leicester.

But because 5Live must bear the brunt of the savings on News from by Audio and Music, we have decided it makes more sense to start that new arrangement right now. That means responsibility for collating 5Live’s bulletins and summaries from a core audio bulletin will move from the Newsroom into the programmes that contain them. We’ll also integrate into 5Live all the out-of-London radio reporter effort currently managed across Radio News.

There’s also some change ahead at Bush House.
Formally, the newsroom and World Briefing will now be part of the new Newsroom while Current Affairs, The World Today and News Hour will be part of the Programmes department.

Operationally, World Service News and Current Affairs will work as a team so there will still be movement of people between different areas. These arrangements will allow us to maintain and enhance the quality of our output for World Service as well as offering more possibilities for collaboration between radio and online activity. It will put us in a great position for how we will want to work when both News and World Service move to W1 in 2012.The World Service savings target for output over the next three years will be 7 per cent in total and in Newsgathering five per cent in total over the next three years.

So, we have the new multi media Newsroom and the new multi media Programmes department and of course we have Newsgathering which, along with Millbank Newsgathering, has an efficiency target of 3% a year.

The difference in targets is deliberate. Although not immune from the efficiencies, it is essential that Newsgathering remains equipped to service both the new Newsroom and the new Programmes Department. We can’t afford to jeopardise our story-gathering capacity or specialist content.

Specialism is at the heart of what makes BBC News distinctive and authoritative. But we need to make much more of it across all platforms. By bringing together the specialist journalists currently working for News Interactive with those working for Newsgathering, we can create specialist units which are genuinely multimedia.
These will concentrate on these subject areas – though the titles here aren’t definitive.

The Newsgathering Sports News team will transfer into BBC Sport with whom they already work closely on a daily basis. We hope that will improve the impact of our sports journalism.

In the future, clear decisions about priorities will be even more important than they are now.

Our aim is for the new Newsroom to talk to Newsgathering with a much more coherent voice than currently. And the Programmes Department will have a figure whose job is to be a single point of contact with Newsgathering for the varied range of output in that department.

However, it will still be important for Newsgathering to use its usual good sense and judgement about how to prioritise between the Newsroom and the Programmes department should conflicts ever arise.

Finally there are two other departments:

Millbank – the home of our Political Newsgathering and Political programmes like Question Time, remains extremely important for the BBC. In future, it will fully integrate its website operations into the rest of its activities.

And News Production Facilities, which will continue its responsibilities for technology, support and operations across News.

So there you have the new shape of BBC News – and the senior team.

Our range will be narrower at the margins – though still far richer than any of our competitors – but its quality should be as high as anything we do now. And through multi platform working, all our audiences should have more chance to enjoy the best of our work.

The reality is that we have to get used to a tougher financial environment. Because of the smaller Licence Fee, every part of the BBC will have less money in six year’s time than it has now. But Journalism will in fact be getting a higher proportion of the BBC’s total spend on content in six year’s time than it is now.

It’s true that within the Journalism family, we’ve made strategic decisions about where to invest most money. And Nations and Regions and their ambitious plans for a comprehensive broad band service across sixty different sites – My Local Now - have been given more investment money than News or Sport. I was part of that strategic decision and I think it’s the right call. My Local Now is as fundamental to the long term success of the BBC and its journalism as my News Now. It’s an entirely fresh way of delivering local news and information and it forms a great complement to My News Now and My Sport Now.

My Local Now will give a great news and information service to an audience which we in News find very hard to reach – the C2DEs. They form over forty percent of the population and right now, they don’t think the BBC gives them enough value in our journalism especially in our local coverage. My Local Now aims to change that.

And it’s also worth remembering that over the next six years, the British public – through the Licence Fee – will pay six billion pounds for BBC journalism. That’s six billion pounds guaranteed to News, Sport and Nations and Regions.

Now it’s true that there are a lot of calls on that six billion pounds. But I imagine that there are several poor countries and most of our competitors who would give their eye teeth for guaranteed income on that massive scale.

As we enter what will undoubtedly be a period of turbulence for BBC News and the whole of the organisation, it’s worth remembering how we look from the outside. How we look to the people who pay our wages and that six billion pounds of guaranteed income for all of BBC Journalism. And it may be worth reminding ourselves – possibly with a touch of humility – that the Licence Fee is a privilege, not a right. And we should never take that privilege for granted.

Everyone in the BBC - including all of us in BBC News - is going to have to get used to the fact that we’re becoming a smaller organisation. That means we’ll be doing less original output and that will feel very odd. Nothing in our DNA is about doing less.

But as we get used to that, we’ll discover that what we do deliver for our audiences can be just as good as now – possibly even better - and that BBC News can still make a real difference to their understanding of the world.

And that is the point of all of this. We must never lose sight of how our audiences are changing.

There’s a phrase I sometimes use: “You can’t sack the audience. But they can sack you. “

Whether we like it or not, cheap digital technology means audiences of all ages have more choice than ever before and with that choice, comes the freedom to find their news from any source in the world.

If the BBC is to remain the world’s best and most trusted source of news for people who can get their information from anywhere, then this is the moment when we start on our difficult journey of change into a truly multi media world - while never losing sight of our values or our journalistic purpose.

I honestly believe that BBC News has everything to gain from the changes I’ve outlined. Yes – it would have been easier to be doing them in a more benign financial climate; yes, there are likely to be set backs and difficulties as the changes work through. Nothing in history has ever worked 100% first time and we must be open, honest and flexible when things go wrong.

And certainly for those whose jobs are at risk, I am acutely aware that this is a painful and anxious time. Nothing I say about the future of the BBC is of any comfort if your job is closing. And since most of us find most change difficult, the coming months of uncertainty are likely to be tough for everyone.

But we have to deal with the world as it is not how we might like it to be.

Looking ahead, the potential prize for BBC News is huge and incredibly important.

In our online, radio and TV news services, we’re already the market leaders in UK journalism. By coming together in the way I’ve outlined – in an equal partnership – I have no doubt that we can create the best multi platform news service in the world, founded in our reputation for trust and our values of accuracy, impartiality and fairness. Our audiences deserve no less.

Our competitors and our enemies would love to see us flinch and slowly fade away like an empire whose time is over.

We mustn’t let that happen.

We owe it to our audiences to embrace the changes in technology - as they are doing - and take this new world in our stride.

Radio 4, 8am: "The Conservative leader, David Cameron, is considering radical plans to cut 14 billion pounds in red tape and regulation -- put forward by a senior figure on the right of his party, John Redwood. Labour says it's evidence the right has regained control of the Tory agenda."

Radio 2, 11am: "The Conservative leader, David Cameron, is considering plans to cut fourteen billion pounds in red tape and regulation, put forward by the senior right-winger, John Redwood. Labour says it's evidence those on the right are back in control of the Tory agenda. Mr Redwood wouldn't be drawn on specific details of his proposals."

BBC News website, Ceefax and Digital Text: "Tory leader David Cameron is looking at plans to cut £14bn in red tape and regulation for UK businesses. The plans have been put forward by John Redwood - one of the most senior figures on the Tory right - who called them "a tax cut by any other name". The focus is on easing regulation such as data protection laws, rules on hours, and health and safety regimes. Labour claims the proposals show the party is lurching back to the right in the face of disappointing polls."

Five Live, 11am: "Labour has condemned the latest review of policy carried out by the Conservatives as a lurch back to the right wing of politics. The review -- led by John Redwood -- identifies ways of deregulating business. The secretary of state for business, John Hutton, said the Tories were now more right wing than they had been under William Hague and Michael Howard.

News 24, noon: "The Conservative leader, David Cameron, is considering radical plans which the party claims could save businesses 14 billion pounds a year. The proposals would cut red tape and regulation, including data protection laws, and health and safety legislation.

BBC One, Lunchtime news, noon: "Good afternoon. The Conservative leader, David Cameron, is considering radical plans which would cut fourteen billion pounds in red tape and regulations for businesses in the UK. They've been put forward by the former Cabinet minister, John Redwood. Labour claim that the right wing is taking control of the Tory party."

BBC One, 6.05pm: "It's being called a 'tax cut by any other name'. The Conservative leader David Cameron is considering a radical programme of cuts in red tape and regulation."

BBC One, 10pm: "The Conservative leader David Cameron is considering a radical programme of cuts in red tape and regulation, especially for small businesses."

In addition, John Redwood was interviewed at length about his report by Peter Sissons on BBC One and News 24 on Sunday morning, on Five Live on Sunday, and on Radio 4's World Tonight on Monday. Naturally we included in our coverage the reaction from the Labour party, and also from the LibDems, the CBI and the TUC. There can be a temptation sometimes to present stories as merely matters of party politics, but despite what the Sun says, we believe that we gave good consideration to the substance of the proposals.

I’d like to start by firstly thanking all the people here – broadcasters and journalists – who have stood by the BBC during the long 114 days of Alan Johnston’s captivity.

We are of course overjoyed that Alan has been released but we are also hugely grateful to everyone inside and outside the business who have shown him and us such support and solidarity. It really made all the difference.

Now... there’s a paradox about the BBC. From the outside it can often seem overbearing, over confident and frankly, at times, overwhelming – like a great big elephant apparently hoovering up audiences and stomping all over markets and shareholder value.

From the inside, it’s very different. There the BBC often feels less like an elephant and more like a mouse. Inside the organisation, we sometimes feel we’re too timid, too slow, not modern enough. And in that mode, you can forget the three billion or so of guaranteed income; forget the 80 years of glorious history with its extraordinary record of innovation and imagination; forget the organisation’s unique ability to unite the nation, if not the world, on the big occasions.

Over the years, BBC insiders have often had a frankly baffling ability to see their own situation in negative terms. Talk to any of the BBC leakers that crop up on Media Guardian and they will whisper that morale has never been so low, management has never been more out of touch and the future has never been bleaker.

It’s all a little perplexing given the real privilege and power of our unique position in the media marketplace.

Yet there are real challenges facing the BBC and my part of it – BBC News. And today I want to share some of those and talk about how we are planning to survive them and thrive.

Firstly the threats: what keeps me awake at night fretting now that Alan Johnston is safely home.

Well it’s not the obvious concerns like the new licence fee.

You will have noticed how our language on the licence fee has changed. Where once we called it “disappointing”, now we use that all-purpose management euphemism “challenging”. And in that shift we reveal the journey we’ve been on from dismay to disappointment to a new sense of realism. As Mark Thompson said on Monday, our much tighter funding along with the government’s proposed 3% efficiencies per year over the next five years, requires a change of size and of attitude. The BBC of the future will still pack a powerful punch but it will be smaller.

Do I hear the sound of hollow laughter from some of you at the very idea of the BBC shrinking itself? It is genuinely radical I know. But we recognise that the economics of our new situation will inevitably determine our size.

For News it’s likely to be an uncomfortable and difficult time as we adjust to a thriftier world. The BBC will always protect its journalism but no-one is immune from the pressure for efficiencies. We are working hard on ideas which we hope will meet the efficiency targets. I can’t talk in detail about those proposals because they need approval from the BBC Trust before we can implement them. We expect the Trust to give their judgement in the autumn.

I don’t relish another round of job losses after three years of Value for Money cuts. No-one in BBC management does. But I am a realist and I can confidently predict that within five years, BBC News will be somewhat smaller, even more efficient and as Mark Thompson has outlined, packing a punch in a multi-media world.

So I do worry about the money but not obsessively.

Because I started my journalistic life in a commercial radio station that nearly went bust – I actually took voluntary redundancy and walked into a BBC job the next week - I know exactly how lucky we are at the BBC to have guaranteed income at all. I thank God for Lord Reith and the remarkable resilience of the licence fee.

So what other real issues should I be fretting about?

Well there have been suggestions that our precious licence fee should be top-sliced. Clearly if that proposal is serious, there’s an argument to be had - but that’s not my biggest concern.

Nor is the new regulatory framework we are learning to enjoy at the BBC. No-one could dispute that the new BBC Trust is keeping us on our toes and demanding a greater accountability and transparency from us. And since those are things our journalism often points out are missing from other organisations, it’s not unreasonable that the BBC should have to demonstrate them.

And even the growth of new and daunting competition isn’t my top worry – though it comes quite close. And by competition I don’t just mean the tried and true competitors whom we love to beat but hold in real regard like ITN, Sky and CNN. It’s also the new boys on the block. I worry that a recent survey of the most trusted news providers in the world showed the BBC was top, followed by CNN. But it was Google – which doesn’t actually provide any of its own news but aggregates everyone else’s – which those surveyed decided was their third most trusted news provider.

So what is my top worry for BBC News – if all these aren’t enough?

Well it’s really about our relationship to the people who matter most – our audiences.

It’s about capturing and keeping their hearts and minds.

The one thing that we need to guard against more than any other is the possibility that BBC News could become a heritage brand – living on past glories and brand value but increasingly irrelevant to a significant part of the audience.

It’s not that people don’t think News is important

It’s just that gap between what people say and what they do.

Now that may sound daft when at the moment we reach 80% of the adult population with BBC News on TV, radio or online. But the picture is complicated:

TV consumption is dropping as we all know. And the online services aren’t yet making up the gap.

And with particular audiences, it’s clear that like other broadcasters, we are struggling. It’s not a disastrous story – we know that 70% of 16- 24 year-olds are connected to BBC News in some way every week.

But the ways they get their news are definitely changing.

Fewer than 25% of 15- 24s watch 15 consecutive minutes of BBC News on TV in any given week.

For the record, I am not someone obsessed with “The Young” – I used to run Radio Four so I know the value of the so-called “older demographic”. I also recognise - as perhaps more of us should - that we are an aging population and we ignore that trend at our peril.

But if BBC News is not to slip silently and gently into a service for the Saga generation, it needs to connect deeply with the interests and habits of the young whilst being confident enough not to feel it is simply led by them.

In our search to find new ways to connect to this vital audience, we are lucky to have a fantastic model in Newsbeat on Radio One which is the epitome of a confident news service utterly in touch with its audience but unafraid to give them the difficult, public service stuff too. For example, if a story on the European Union is really important, Newsbeat will find a way to do it with as much intelligence and insight as they would a major entertainment story.

And it’s often Newsbeat listeners who alert us to important stories with wider implications. It was Newsbeat listeners who told us about the army equipment failures in Iraq. Why? Because among Newsbeat’s audience are a large number of squaddies and their friends and families. And they trust Newsbeat to tell their story.

But of course we need much more than Newsbeat. And in recognition of that fact, we’ve recently completed a major piece of work which we’ve called Creative Futures. You will have seen and read both Mark Thompson and Mark Byford – the Head of BBC Journalism – talking about it.

What that revealed was that while many of the young may rate the BBC, we can’t assume, as we did with their parents, that at a certain point they will simply migrate to being BBC News consumers. They are growing up with far more choice in terms of their news providers.

What’s more, we have to ask ourselves how much they will actually want the kind of News that we like now once they are adult.

In all honesty, I don’t think most teenagers have ever really been passionate about news. I certainly wasn’t. But we’ve relied on them becoming more interested as they took on financial and family responsibilities.

That may happen again. But we can’t assume that today’s under-25s are as interested in civic society and the wider world as their parents were. They certainly don’t seem to share the baby boomer’s enthusiasm for marching in support of social and political change.

But we have to be careful here. Their reluctance to vote and their apparent political apathy does not mean that they aren’t interested in what’s going on around them. Our research suggests they feel passionately about all sorts of issues – but they expect to get their News in ways that work for them.

Remember: this is the generation of Facebook and YouTube - which can seem a tad trivial and self-obsessed to an older generation. But they are simply a way of life for many teenagers in Britain today.

So how are we planning to woo the next generation into News?

Well no-one pretends it’s easy but we are working on several fronts.

The heart of our approach is the strategy you need with any audience: start where they are, not where you would like them to be.

So we know that the penetration of broadband is higher among audiences which currently consume less journalism (the young and those in digital TV homes).

While 16-24s are watching less TV than their counterparts in previous decades, they spend three times as long using new media than over 25s.

We also know that in the US, the internet is the primary source of news for people under 30.

So you will be unsurprised that our major focus for reaching the young is interactivity via the web and mobility. We have plans – still to be approved by the Trust - to build on our prize-winning website to create a service we are provisionally calling My News Now.

This will be a service which allows highly sophisticated personalisation – so whatever your age or interests, you can get the subjects and the styles of news which you find attractive – when you want them, for the present moment or to download for later. There will be audio and video on demand and aggregated pages on a huge range of specialisms.

This should also be a service which offers you incredibly detailed information and news on your local area.

And of course, all of this should be available as a mobile service – as long as we do it with sensitivity to those already in the market place.

But interactivity isn’t just about personalisation. It’s also about reshaping the relationship we have with our audiences so that those who want to engage directly with the News – and that will often be the young – can do so easily and effectively.

Our user-generated content hub – the rather pompous description of the desk that takes in the texts, e-mails, stills and video which our audiences send us – has been expanded and expanded but is still struggling to keep up with the huge amount of material that our audiences send us. The 7 July London bombings demonstrated that there were hundreds of newsgatherers out there who could collect images which we couldn’t.

And last Saturday’s attack on Glasgow airport was another sharp reminder of the newsgathering capacity of the general public with a mobile phone camera or video.

This kind of two-way relationship is now so important we are opening our UGC hub for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But as I made clear earlier, it’s not just about the way we deliver news; it’s also about what we deliver.

And this requires a really subtle and often difficult balancing act between being inspired by what the audience is interested in – without being led by it.

Let me be quite clear. If the BBC ever simply followed audience taste in an unthinking way, we should hand back the licence fee. We are not a market-led organisation. We get the privilege of the licence fee to give people more than they expect. It is our job to make news judgements about what is important and significant - as well as what is popular.

And part of that balancing act is clocking where subject work best for audiences. So on Radios One and Two and the Six O’clock News on BBC One, there is a genuine appetite for intelligent news about big brands, entertainment and major developments in the lives of superstars. Whereas on the Ten O’clock News on BBC One, there is much less appetite for entertainment news.

Lord Reith might not have liked it – he had a problem about the very idea of entertainment on the BBC at one time – but if we are to remain relevant to a new generation, we have to engage with subjects that once seemed quite alien to us and apply our usual values and journalistic rigour.

Once upon a time the BBC cringed when a major Royal story hit the headlines and we left it to the newspaper review to tell the public what was happening. Now we have two incredibly effective Royal correspondents who manage these stories with confidence and all the journalistic rigour you’d expect from an story on the BBC.

Eventually of course, we can envisage a world where many audiences have abandoned news on channels altogether and will simply log on to connect to the range and type of stories they feel like watching or listening to that day. They won’t bother to find out what the BBC thinks is the most important – top of the bulletin – story. When that time comes, tensions about where and when entertainment news appears on air will disappear.

But I think that day is some way off.

In the meantime, we will be pursuing as much innovation as possible within the idea of interactive news via broadband. It’s not just about connecting to the young now. It’s about making sure that when they are middle aged, they feel engaged with the BBC because it’s absolutely not a heritage brand. It gives them news they trust in ways that are convenient and in a style that resonates with them.

And that word “trust” brings me finally onto our values.

Because when I worry about us becoming a heritage brand, I never worry about our values.

They are perhaps old-fashioned, though I would never claim that the values of accuracy, impartiality and fairness are ours alone. I have far too much respect for our domestic competitors.

But in a highly crowded news market place where there is pressure on everyone to make impact, there could be an inevitable drift towards views not news in all parts of the media.

And we know that some audiences like that. The Fox News model works incredibly well for a lot of viewers.

But for the BBC to earn its money – and continue to have outstanding trust levels – I can’t ever see a time when we would abandon impartiality as our core value.

At its crudest, it means we don’t take sides either implicitly or explicitly. That may not make us friends in parts of the press, the chattering classes or indeed parts of the audience – but it’s the bit of our heritage brand we lose at our peril.

So – if you ever think of me lying awake at night fretting about the future of BBC News – remember that what I am really worrying about is the most fundamental and important question of all. How we keep the engagement, the interest and above all – the trust - of audiences now and in the future.

I saw it myself: I was watching coverage of the absolutely riveting final PMQs (you can watch it in full here, or download highlights here) with Tony Blair on The Daily Politics when it suddenly cut away in the middle of his valedictory statement to a couple of trails and the tennis.

As a consequence, we only learned later that we had missed Mr Blair talking about his fear of the House of Commons, and a unique moment when both sides of the House gave him a standing ovation. A lot of you were taken aback and upset by the switch - and certainly Andrew Neil and the production team were deeply disappointed not to share this with you after the care and passion they put into the programme on such a special day.

After looking into this, I can at least reassure you that this was cock up rather than conspiracy. A wrong scheduling decision was taken for which the BBC can only apologise. Believe me, no one involved would have wanted you to miss any part of this important event. Thankfully, News 24 was also covering PMQs live so we hope viewers were able to switch there.

Since that time, there have been tenacious and determined efforts by members of BBC News both in London and in the Middle East to try to achieve his release. Our colleagues in BBC Scotland have offered Alan’s family their practical support. There have been diligent and sustained efforts behind the scenes by representatives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and we have pressed our own contacts for all they are worth. It is a slow, difficult and frustrating process where rumour and speculation abound but there is almost no hard evidence about what has happened to Alan. However, we remain optimistic that he is safe.

We are extremely grateful for the support offered to Alan and his family and friends by journalists and News organisations around the world. There have been marches and rallies in support of Alan demanding his freedom. Every Monday at Television Centre and at Bush House, Alan’s colleagues come together to hold a short silence to demonstrate our solidarity with him. And in Gaza itself, Palestinian journalists have gone on strike to show their revulsion with what has happened and to demand action from the Palestinian Authority. They are also holding a round the clock vigil.

It is a measure of the man and his work that so many members of the public who have no direct connection with him, have also rallied to his cause. Prayers were said for Alan in many churches over the Easter weekend and over eight thousand people have signed our online petition asking for his immediate release.

Today, he will be in our thoughts as the hard work continues to secure his safe release.

For an organisation committed to impartiality – which means we don’t take sides – we try to reflect all and every opinion in an argument. In practical terms, that meant that early in the year we showed enough of the Danish cartoons to give audiences an idea of what infuriated some Muslims. But we did not show them fully. We felt that would have caused gratuitous offence. Consequently we got it in the neck from both sides. Some called us cowardly for failing to defend free speech; others said we were offensively provocative in showing anything at all. Five Live was targeted by a systematic lobby campaign against the cartoons being shown and there was a small demonstration outside Television Centre. Being impartial, we reflected both sides attacking us on our own airwaves and quietly braced ourselves for the next such row.

It came in the form of an entirely inaccurate newspaper report that I had banned Fiona Bruce from wearing her cross on air. As I am generally not in favour of banning things and issuing edicts, the allegation that I had done so in this case came as something of a surprise to me.

The real story is much more mundane. At a seminar on impartiality run by the BBC’s Governors, I was asked what I might do if a Muslim news reader asked to wear a headscarf on air. I honestly replied that although I wouldn’t be very happy if it distracted audiences from what she was saying, I had recently noticed Fiona wearing a cross on air. Since I had no intention of banning that, I didn’t feel I could ban the headscarf. To do either would have been a sign of partiality.

Many disagree with me on this. Some think the cross is part of British culture and therefore acceptable while the headscarf is definitely not. Others think we should ban the lot – thus fostering a secular view of the world which many would regard as taking sides against religion. You can see how tricky this may become for us.

I don’t see any sign of the passion about identity and Britishness diminishing soon. Indeed, with a certain combination of circumstances, it could all become much more heated and divisive. For BBC News, that means yet more fine judgments and challenging decisions lie ahead as we try to serve all our audiences fairly and impartially.

Roll on 2007!

Nick was an outstanding journalist and broadcaster who touched the lives of the Radio Four audience through a range of programmes including The World At One. This was already very clear from the evidence of vast audience interest in and sympathy for Nick’s condition when he was diagnosed with cancer.

We knew therefore that there would be very, very many people who would want to know the news of his death and who would be saddened by it. In this context it was appropriate to lead the programme which he had presented since the late 1980s with the first news of his death and to carry a special, extended edition so that we could carry other news in full within the hour as well as a proper tribute. Later programmes on the network did not lead with the news about Nick.

We understand that for a minority of the audience the coverage was excessive - but not for the majority, as is clear from the massive feedback we have received via e-mails and phone calls. For example, more than 2,500 comments were posted on the Have Your Say site. Moreover, the story was one of the most read pages on the BBC News website yesterday in the UK - in the top four.

This wasn't a case of grieving colleagues having their news judgements distorted by a sense of their own loss; we took a considered view about the most appropriate way to handle the news of his death.

The facts are simple: the e-mail was sent by a manager to the newsgatherers in our Westminster office exhorting them to focus hard on a major issue of public interest – the so-called Cash for Peerages Inquiry. After encouraging them to work their contacts and dig deeply into the story to ensure BBC News – and our audiences – got wind of any new development first, the e-mail went on to offer £100 to anyone who could get us a genuine scoop.

It was a wry one liner and a complete “one off” at the end of the e-mail, mischievously playing on the idea of cash incentives – the issue at the heart of the current controversy on party political funding.

Was it a good idea to encourage our reporters to go the extra mile to be first with a story? Absolutely yes. Was it a good idea to offer a cash bonus? No. As soon as senior managers like myself became aware of the e-mail yesterday we made it clear that it was wholly inappropriate. No bonus has been paid in relation to this story and no bonus will be paid in future.

We are fully committed to providing impartial, fair and balanced reporting at all times. We know the public trusts us to deliver impartial and accurate coverage and we take that trust very seriously.

The context of the one liner offer was the normal journalistic desire to obtain and broadcast news first. That’s what our audiences expect of us, particularly on News 24, Radio 5 Live and the BBC News website, and that is what we will always strive to provide.

According to the Mail on Sunday, and other recent press reports, we have admitted that we are an organisation of trendy, left-leaning liberals who are anti-American, biased against Christianity, in favour of multiculturalism, and staffed by people who wouldn’t know an unbiased fact if it hit them on the head.

The Mail on Sunday based its story on a leak from what it called a “secret” meeting of BBC executives and governors, and claims that it was our former political editor, Andrew Marr himself, who confessed to the liberal bias of the organisation. His take was reinforced by Jeff Randall, who until recently was our business editor. “If they say it, then it must be true” was the thrust of the story.

Well I was one of the people who was at the "secret" meeting. and I have to say the reality was somewhat different to the way the press are reporting it.

For a start, this wasn’t a secret meeting... it was streamed live on the web. The meeting was made up of executives, governors and lots of non-BBC people like John Lloyd from the FT and Janet Daley from the Daily Telegraph. It was planned as a serious seminar to investigate and understand better the BBC’s commitment to impartiality in an age in which spin and opinion riddle much of the world’s journalism. The seminar was part of a bigger project kicked off by Michael Grade earlier this year to re-examine the underlying principles of impartiality in the digital age when boundaries between conventional broadcasting and the new platforms will increasingly disappear.

To keep us all on our toes, a rich variety of formats was used during the day. I was on a "Hypothetical" – where a panel of people in charge is given a series of mounting “real life” crises and asked how they would handle each of them. It was fun, occasionally illuminating, and often very challenging.

There was for example a heated debate about the whether or not a Muslim newsreader should be allowed to wear a headscarf. Jon Snow was all in favour. BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb was vehemently against. I had deep reservations because I felt a scarf would be a distraction from the news but pointed out - in the interests of debate - that if we banned the headscarf, how would we justify that cross which I was sure I had once seen Fiona Bruce wearing. From this discussion emerged the wholly untrue newspaper story that the BBC had banned Fiona’s cross.

The point of the Hypothetical is to generate discussion, debate and ideas. The situations aren’t real; the discussions aren’t binding and they certainly don’t define BBC policy.

There was discussion of the BBC’s culture and some provocative points were made.

Jeff Randall made a few good jokes about the occasional examples of political correctness he found among some BBC colleagues. I remembered an incident about 15 years ago when a freelance reporter working for me on a programme about bullying in Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution asked me if it was acceptable to broadcast what they had discovered: that most of the bullies in Feltham at that time were black and most of the victims were white. Not only was it acceptable, I told the reporter, if he had evidence of this he had a duty to report it. And so we did.

Andrew Marr made some comments about BBC culture being more liberal than the rest of the country – points he makes in his book on journalism.

The main thing is, however, they were both giving their personal opinions. That is entirely their right and what they had been asked to do in the interests of discussion. I disagree with them. I found their claim of liberal bias unconvincing – based on anecdote and attitude rather than evidence.

The BBC employs more than 20,000 people across the UK. It is not a chattering class club of the kind depicted by the papers. It is a hugely varied organisation with many different cultures and a huge variety of opinions on every single issue among its staff. What does unite BBC staff however, is a deep commitment to BBC values and at the heart of those values is a commitment to impartiality.

When I first joined the BBC I asked a very experienced and subtle journalist what was meant by BBC impartiality. “It means we don’t take sides,” he said. “We don’t take sides either explicitly or implicitly. We test all opinion toughly but fairly and we let the audience make up their own minds.”

It’s a simple but absolutely correct definition which audiences see, hear and read in our output everyday. In the end, the personal views of our staff are not the point. The issue is that their views and opinions never stray on air.

And that’s where the broad audience comes in. What really counts is not what a group of BBC executives and VIPs think, or indeed what a few columnists believe. The important thing is whether or not our audiences think we are biased. And on that the evidence is robust.

Asked recently which of the four main broadcasters they would term "trustworthy", nearly two thirds - 60% - cited the BBC. In contrast, 26% said ITV, 16% mentioned Channel 4, and 14% Sky. (Mori, 2006)

That research is very cheering but it never allows us to rest on our laurels. Impartiality is not so much a fixed point as a process of open mindedness which should be the basis for everything we do in journalism.

Part of that open mindedness is being tested in exercises like the Hypothetical which ran at the impartiality seminar. No one has all the answers on any subject and debate and discussion are vital if we are to ensure that impartiality remains a living reality rather than an empty claim.

It’s a shame that the newspapers have made mischief with the seminar, but we won’t let this small storm put us off trying to get impartiality right.