91Èȱ¬

Viewer Jamie Woolley wrote to The Editors yesterday, saying:

I was concerned by two reports on the Ten O'Clock News [on Tuesday] or, rather, how they were juxtaposed. A report about consumption of the Earth's resources was swiftly followed by a piece about the bouyant state of British 4x4 manufacturing. While over-consumption cannot be laid solely at the door of the car industry, there was a complete lack of irony in the reporting. It's the same in the press - the liberal press is hard on the aviation industry for their contributions towards climate change yet still carry travel supplements. I realise the role of a programme like the Ten O'Clock News is to report on the news, not comment but sometimes, where one issue has a direct impact on the other, I wish the dots could be a little more joined up.

Jamie's comment is well made. One thing we've been trying hard to achieve on the Ten is to pull together different strands of a story - so perhaps the irony of climate change and 4x4 stories being on the same programme is something we should have pointed out.

When is a poll not a poll?

Well probably when it's a survey.

On last night's Ten O'Clock News Evan Davis presented the findings of his survey of a few hundred Polish migrants living in the UK (watch the report here).

The Poles questioned thought we Brits are lazy, friendly and eat terrible food. They also revealed that many of them are earning less than the minimum wage, they often share bedrooms and are generally hostile to the prospect of a new wave of migrants from Romania and Bulgaria. (.)

All undeniably interesting, but not a poll. There are all sorts of rules governing official opinion polls, such as sample size and selection. So what are we to do? Call it a Survey of Poles? Surely not. Did we have any realistic choice? Surely it had to be called a Poll of Poles. What would you have done (honestly)?

We did obviously make it clear that this wasn't a scientific poll - in fact Evan called it in his inimitable way, a "straw poll of Poles". My guess is that our viewers shared Evan's sense of humour.

So - we awake to news that a major terror plot has been thwarted. Security sources claim that the group, who have been under surveillance for months, wanted to explode as many as 10 planes, probably somewhere over the Atlantic.

Thousands of travellers are stranded, planes have been cancelled and the country's security threat has been raised to its highest level. There are a lot of questions we'll be trying to answer during the course of the day, for example:

• 1 - How close were we to "mass murder on an unimaginable scale"?
• 2 - Have the security services found any explosives?
• 3 - Why did the police decide to swoop today?
• 4 - Were they members of a foreign terror cell or were they British-born?
• 5 - How will this change the way we fly? Will we have to get used to flying without any hand luggage?

There are plenty more - let us know what questions you'd like answered, or if you can answer any of these.

Have you been emailed about ? Or maybe ? If you're like me you've probably been sent both.

There is an enormous online campaign by both sides to persuade the world that the media is biased one way or another in its reporting of the Lebanon/Israel conflict.

Yesterday the story took an unexpected turn. Reuters announced that it has dropped a freelance photographer after, Reuters claim, he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut to show more smoke (details ).

"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," , the head of public relations for Reuters.

But what are the chances of the online community believing that? On Newsnight tonight we'll be discussing the images the public sees, how they are chosen and whether they are manipulated.

Leave a comment and let me know what you want us to include in the programme.

UPDATE, TUESDAY 1015: Click here to watch the item that went out last night (including an interview with Paul Holmes from Reuters).

Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight

It's become a cliché that new technology has changed TV, for ever.

In some ways the biggest change is how much closer we, as programme makers, are to our audience. If you email us during the programme the chances are that, if I'm editing, I'll read your message almost instantly. So on Wednesday night Ian emailed me during the programme to say: "Why is your interviewer standing while Menzies Campbell is sitting?"

Now unfortunately for Ian, the item (watch it here) was prerecorded, so even if I had agreed with him that should sit, which I didn't, there wouldn't have been much I could have done. None the less, it's much easier for you all to tell us what you like and dislike, and the truth is we do read it. I recently found slumped in front of his computer. He looked despondent and when I asked why, he briefly showed me his email inbox.

Let's face it, it's not that difficult to guess 91Èȱ¬ email addresses - and a hell of a lot of people take a punt on his. I didn't read any of his messages but I can reassure you all that, from the look on his face, he had.

Anyway, communication from you to us is not new. What I think is new is that we can now know what you are talking about and interested in without you ever telling us. Sounds sinister but it's not really. It takes seconds on a site like to discover what people are talking about and searching for. This has begun to make an impact on the programme.

So, for example, late on Monday night the most talked about subject was 's appearance on America's , in which he said that we are in the midst of a Third World War.

The next day we contacted Gingrich and that night he repeated his claims on Newsnight (watch it here). So in that sense blogging had an immediate impact on Newsnight's running order.

Also, we know what you are saying about us (really, we do).

If you write anything about Newsnight, or about me, on a blog, I'll probably find it via Technorati. So for example, I know that there's a whole debate going on about Ming Campbell's performance on Newsnight - the question being asked is whether Ming is the Lib Dems' Iain Duncan Smith... see or .

The thing I find strange about all this is that often people who write blogs, or contribute to them, somehow think that they are involved in a private forum.

I recently came across a comment claiming Jeremy disliked recording . I posted a response and the blogger seemed appalled - "the 91Èȱ¬'s watching us - spooky" was his reply. But if you write something about us on the internet surely I have every right to read it and respond - that's not spooky.

I had to confront this the other day. We often have students with us on work experience. Twice in the last 6 months I've come across blogs in which people trailing the programme have written things about the team. When I approached one of these people, her reponse was that the blog was supposed to be just for her and her friends!

It wasn't the confidentiality issue that bugged me, but that anyone would think that we as programme makers don't have as much right as everyone else to read what you're all writing, especially if you are writing about us. So, what do you think? Stick it on your blog and I'll respond.

Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight

Peter's on holiday this week. We sent him to an isolated cottage in south-west France with his family. He has no internet access and we confiscated his mobile phone.

So in his absence I thought I'd write a few thoughts this week. I'm probably way behind the internet curve, but I only recently discovered the joys of ...

Here at the 91Èȱ¬ we're obliged to take copyright issues extremely seriously. Producers are constantly in fear of broadcasting uncleared pictures, or discovering, as we did the other day, that five seconds of archive was to cost us over £1000 (you can imagine how that went down with Peter when he found out). Well, on Wednesday morning I came in to find an email from the agent of rock photographer - he'd spotted an uncleared picture we'd used in Robin Denselow's obituary of Pink Floyd's .

Mick was extremely gracious and only charged us a small fee. However it got me thinking - how does YouTube get away with it? Newsnight's Syd Barrett film is on YouTube for anyone to find - and for anyone to judge whether Mick's photo was worth paying for (I'd argue it was). So, who put our film up there? Has Mick seen it and if so, who has paid him his small fee for the use of his picture? So far 1,125 people have viewed the film via YouTube, admittedly a small number, but none the less, surely copyright is copyright?

On Tuesday the producer of the item, Rebecca, had great difficulty in finding clearable pictures of Syd that she could use. In fact the film came close to not being broadcast - at 11pm they were still looking for shots of the rock recluse. But had Rebecca looked on YouTube and searched for Syd she would have founds reams of footage - everything from homemade tributes to a stalker movie someone made discreetly following Syd around Cambridge.

Now how much of this material is infringing copyright? And what would have happened if we'd just taken it and reused it on Newsnight? I guess I would have received a load of emails asking for money. So why is there one rule for us and another for YouTube? Perhaps someone could explain.

In fact if you search for Newsnight on YouTube you'll find a whole range of our films and discussions. Currently, over 20,000 people have watched Kirsty's interview with Pete Doherty - a smaller number (71) have watched Peter Marshall's expose of British corruption in Saudi contracts - or as described on YouTube: "An exclusive and gutsy report from the beebs flagship news programme." As more and more people get their TV over the web, these questions are bound to become more important.

Mick's agent is about to get very busy.

Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight