When the end came, it came very suddenly. For months, the Libyan rebels, supported by Nato, were striving to end Muammar Gaddafi's rule in Libya. For weeks that goal seemed to be coming closer, but for many Libyans a tantalising question remained: where was Gaddafi? For days, attention has been on his hometown of Sirte, where Gaddafi loyalists held out. Then yesterday, Sirte fell and suddenly, unexpectedly, Gaddafi was found. A dramatic news day, which posed many challenges. Our continuing commitment to coverage of Libya means we were able to provide on the ground reporting from Sirte. We are the only UK news organisation to have had a permanent continuous presence in Libya since February and yesterday, our correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse was the only UK broadcaster in Sirte as Gaddafi was killed, able to provide first-hand reporting of what happened, carefully piecing together the day's events. We gained big audiences for our coverage yesterday across platforms.

 

It was a confusing story. This posed another challenge. In the age of mobile phones, footage of the capture of Gaddafi soon started to emerge. We could not always be clear of its origins so it was important to make what checks we could and then be very clear with our audiences what we'd been able to verify and what we hadn't. The other challenge was posed by the nature of the footage itself - very graphic, some of it showing Gaddafi alive but manhandled and bloody and other footage and stills showing his dead and bloodied body. We judged that it was right to use some footage and stills, with warnings about their nature. Part of yesterday's story, especially in the first hours, was the swirl of rumour. The images of his dead body were an important part of telling the story to confirm reports of his death. Images of him alive but manhandled were also disturbing, but told an equally important part of the story about how his captors treated him and how far he himself had fallen. As the different footage emerged through the afternoon, it became an important way for us to piece together what happened - what were the circumstances of his death, did he die from wounds sustained in the fighting or was he captured alive and then shot? As different officials and eyewitnesses gave different accounts, the footage helped us share emerging photographic evidence with the audience.

We do not use such pictures lightly. There are sequences we did not show because we considered them too graphic and we took judgements about what was acceptable for different audiences on different platforms at different times of day, especially for the pre-watershed BBC1 bulletins. I recognise that not every member of the audience will agree with our decisions, but we thought carefully about how to balance honest coverage of the story with audience sensitivity. The News Channel faces a different challenge. We know that many people join the coverage through the day or only watch for a short while. For these audiences we need to keep retelling the story. But we also know that some people watch the live rolling coverage for several hours, and with the Gaddafi story this meant some repetition of the graphic images. It is a difficult balance to strike. For the website, we chose to use an image of Gaddafi's body in the rotating picture gallery on the front page. We recognise that it is hard to provide a warning on the front page and so while we felt it was an important part of telling the core story in the early stages, as time passed we found other ways to convey what had happened on the front page, with the most graphic images at least a click away and with a clear warning.

There were undoubtedly shocking and disturbing images from yesterday. But as a news organisation our role is to report what happened, and that can include shocking and disturbing things. We thought carefully about the use of pictures - which incidentally we used more sparingly than many other UK media - and I believe that overall they were editorially justified to convey the nature of yesterday's dramatic and gruesome events.

Mary Hockaday is head of the BBC newsroom.

Last year we were tasked with doubling the number of click-throughs to external sites from the BBC News website by 2013, as part of the BBC's Strategy Review.

This was something I discussed at a panel session I was taking part in at yesterday's News:Rewired conference, organised by Journalism.co.uk, and I wanted to write briefly here about our ongoing efforts to improve the ways in which we link externally from our news articles.

Having asked for the figures from our research team for my presentation, it was great to hear that we appear to be well on track to achieve the goal set for us.

Looking back at the third quarter of 2010, we had an average of around 2.9m external click-throughs per month from UK users. That period - last year's July, August & September - was around the time of the redesign of the News website. That meant, among other changes, that the 'From other news sites' and 'Related internet links' sections moved from the right-hand side to the bottom of news stories. And we have also been doing more linking to external sources from within the text of story pages.

The figures for the third quarter of this year show that all this has had an effect, and it looks as though we've been getting something right. The monthly average is now around 6.1m click-throughs i.e. more than double what it was last year. One caveat is that there have been some big news stories over this period, including the August riots, Norway shootings and Amy Winehouse's death. Another caveat is that we are using a different method to measure the figures now, so whilst the comparison should be pretty accurate, there's a small margin for error.

It's interesting too when looking at the figures, to see where the traffic goes - who are we linking to? Around one-third goes to other news sites via 'Moreover' - the technology behind the 'From Other News Sites' box which is included on many BBC News stories. The top destinations for external click-throughs in any month depends largely on what the top stories are for that period, for example in February this year there was news of the street-level crime maps being published (www.police.uk) , ITV footage of an elderly lady confronting armed robbers (www.itv.com) and stories about tickets for the Olympics in 2012 (www.london2012.com). Those sites all showed up high in our list of onward referrals.

And just to be clear, it’s not that we don’t want you to stay with us - we do, of course . There’s lots of great content around the BBC site, we're proud of it and want you to explore it, but helping you to find relevant and useful information , whether on other news sites or from non-news sources, is also a key part of what we should be doing as a news provider. From this latest snapshot of where we are with external linking it does look as though we are getting better at doing that, but there’s always room to do more, so if you have ideas on this, let us know.

Update, 10:49: Tuesday 11 October: Thanks for all the comments on this post, I wanted to reply to a few of them briefly:

Kit Green: No reciprocal agreements, we are assuming that by and large if we provide a good link, people will come back – at some stage.

Josh: You are quite right: The link should be www.police.uk to get the postcode search for local crime maps and data. Sorry about that.

Christina, Whitefall: Yes, point taken. We are acutely aware of the benefit and value of linking to source reports, and will continue to aim to do this whenever we can. There are sometimes practical issues which make this difficult such as when the report is under embargo at time of writing, or there is a paywall. But in principle I quite agree it is the right thing to do.

Horsenanny: Very glad you have found the site useful and informative.

Bluesberry: I don’t have a reply to hand on your South America query, but if you get in touch I can seek one.

Maddyn10, Shakygorilla1: We have been covering the US protests – for example here and on the related links to our other coverage from this story.

Eddy from Waring: Yes – quantity is a crude measure, but it is a start. Relevance and quality are clearly key. We measure clickthroughs, so the fact that someone has followed a link does at least imply some value.

Pratish: I have passed your correction on to WHYS.

David: On the reasons for the linking targets – there’s more here and in the link from that post to the Mark Thompson Strategy Review document.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.

The BBC has become accustomed over many years to relentless criticism from the Iranian authorities. Often the verbal claims made by the Iranian government and media are so exaggerated that we ignore them and rely on the good sense of our audiences in Iran and around the world to discount their wilder statements.

We are seeing the levels of intimidation and bullying as well as attempts to interfere with our independence reaching new levels - particularly since a documentary about the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei was aired.

In recent weeks the jamming by the Iranians of international Persian language TV stations, such as BBC Persian TV and the Voice of America's Persian News Network has intensified.

The jamming prevents Iranian audiences viewing a vital free service of information. In the past week alone, hundreds of Iranian viewers have sent emails and used social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to reach out to us.

They tell us how much they value us as a source of reliable independent news, ask us to persevere and to look for other - not prone to interference - ways of broadcasting BBC Persian TV.

Iran is a member of the United Nations body the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); as such the Iranian government is a signatory to international communications treaties that are designed to allow the free exchange of information and data, for the benefit of all.

The BBC and other international broadcasters have called on governments and international regulatory bodies to put maximum pressure on Iran to desist in this flagrant censorship.

The second category of direct action by Iran is aimed not at our audience but the BBC's own staff. Many of our Iranian employees who live in London are fearful to return to their country because of the regime's attacks on the BBC. But although those journalists are beyond the direct reach of their government they are now subject to a new underhand tactic.

Iranian police and officials have been arresting, questioning and intimidating the relatives of BBC staff. We believe that the relatives and friends of around 10 BBC staff have been treated this way.

Passports have been confiscated, homes searched and threats made. The relatives have been told to tell the BBC staff to stop appearing on air, to return to Iran, or to secretly provide information on the BBC to the Iranian authorities.

Six independent documentary makers whose films have appeared on BBC Persian TV have also been arrested in Iran. Although these film-makers have never been employed or commissioned by the BBC, they are paying the price for an indirect connection to the BBC.

These actions and threats against the BBC have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in anti-BBC rhetoric. Iranian officials have claimed that BBC staff are employees of MI6, that named staff have been involved in crimes, including sexual crimes, and that BBC Persian is inciting designated terror groups to attack Iran.

Whilst these claims are clearly absurd, the intensity of language magnifies the fears of BBC staff for their family and friends back in Iran. Given the vulnerability of those family members we have thought hard about drawing attention to this harassment. But this public statement has the full support of all staff whose families have been intimidated.

Our Iranian journalists have made their own decisions to work for the BBC, which they knew might cause hostility from their own government. But their families are innocent bystanders and it is outrageous that they should also be victimised.

This issue is wider than the BBC and is behaviour that all people who believe in free and independent media should be concerned about.

The BBC calls on the Iranian government to repudiate the actions of its officials. And we request the British and other governments take all necessary means to deter the Iranian government from all these attempts to undermine free media.

Peter Horrocks is director, BBC Global News.