Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has passed a law that will ban foreign media from operating within the country. Al Jazeera is one of the main outlets on the ground providing reportage, and the most watched network in the region—so what impact will the closure of their operations in Israel have on the ability to get news out of the war zone? Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber are joined by journalist and humanitarian Khaled Mansour to discuss where genuine news reporting from the conflict will come from with the ban in place. Also this week: in the past, UK political parties have relied on backing from Murdoch-run news media to ensure victory in general elections. Journalist and author Tom Baldwin discusses with Alan and Lionel whether that will be the case in the next election too. With the media landscape vastly different to previous elections, do the Times and the Sun still hold the power to sway the population? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gavin Esler and Michael Crick dissect GB News' bias and lack of balance, discussing Tory MPs interviewing each other, shallow reporting, and regulatory challenges. They explore Off-Com's role, political implications, and the impact on the upcoming general election. The conversation critiques the channel's lack of impartiality, calling for more balanced journalism and coverage of diverse ideas.

In any war, counting the number of people killed is challenging. So, too, is understanding how they died. In Gaza, where the still-rising death toll already includes 13,450 children, these figures can be obscured by biases, allegations—and the realities on the ground. In this week’s episode, Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger are joined by leading statistician David Spiegelhalter to discuss how to shed light on casualty numbers in a war situation.  Also this week, George Brock joins Alan and Lionel to discuss a small yet significant development in the future of local news. George is a professor of journalism at City, University of London and has previously worked at the Yorkshire Evening Press, Observer and Times, where he was managing editor and Saturday editor. George explains how the Guildford Dragon has secured charitable status, and whether this could be a possible model for local news across the country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Journalists are often taught that “when a dog bites a man, that is not news; when a man bites a dog, that is news.” But, according to former Guardian journalist and professor of sociology at Manchester university Gary Younge, sometimes events are newsworthy because they happen often—journalists just need to get curious about the reasons why. For example, after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a US justice department report revealed that every time a police dog bit someone in the city of Ferguson, the victim was black. Perhaps dog bites man is the story after all. This week Alan and Lionel speak to Gary, who recently gave the inaugural Rosemary Hollis Memorial Lecture, about the lack of diversity in both race and class within the journalism industry. Broadsheets, he says, are the “internal memos of the upper class”. So, what can be done to open the field and make the industry more inclusive?  Journalist and writer Simon Nixon also joins Alan and Lionel to discuss the latest twists and turns in the story about who will buy the Telegraph, as Jeff Zucker and Andrew Neil get involved in a war of words about the control of the newspaper empire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alan and Lionel sit down with AG Sulzberger, chair and publisher of the New York Times. AG took over as publisher of the New York Times six years ago after many years as a hack. His term coincided with that of Donald J Trump, for whom the Times was public enemy number one. AG stood his ground, telling the president to his face that his anti-press rhetoric was “not just divisive but increasingly dangerous”. He and his team have taken the Times and transformed the digital offering, adding millions of subscribers worldwide. And he’s responsible for bringing a simple, yet addictive word game, Wordle, to a mass audience. Recent weeks have seen the New York Times come under fire from several angles, yet AG continues to champion independent journalism. Alan and Lionel ask him if he believes he always get it right? This episode of Media Confidential is sponsored by Bridged Media. Get started for your AI pilot by visiting www.bridged.media or book a free strategy session at founders@bridged.media Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vice and BuzzFeed were once at the forefront of the digital media revolution—Vice alone was once valued at nearly double the New York Times! But now, both firms have shut their news operations, Vice has closed its flagship site, and further cuts to staff numbers are expected. BuzzFeed’s former UK editor Janine Gibson, now weekend editor of the Financial Times, analyses why these millennial media giants became so troubled. Plus, writer Peter Pomerantsev chats about a forgotten master of Second World War propaganda and discusses contemporary information manipulation, touching on Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny, Ukraine and Donald Trump. Enjoy one-month’s free trial to Prospect’s digital content, and get full access to rigorously fact-checked, truly independent analysis and perspectives. No commitment—you can cancel at any time. Click here to subscribe: https://subscription.prospectmagazine.co.uk/1mfd/prospect-magazine/mcpod1mf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An investigation by Hope Not Hate reported this week that Paul Marshall, owner of GB News and UnHerd and frontrunner in the race to buy the Telegraph, had repeatedly liked and re-tweeted racist and Islamophobic content. In this special bonus episode, Alan and Lionel discuss who decides whether someone is fit to own a major UK newspaper, what Ofcom can do to uphold standards—and what could happen to political discourse in the United Kingdom if Marshall’s bid succeeds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does the word “PRESS” on a flak jacket keep a journalist safe or make them a target? In this week’s Media Confidential, we focus on the sobering death toll of reporters covering the war in Gaza, as highlighted by the annual report of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Alan and Lionel hear from the CPJ’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg and speak to AFP’s Global News Director Phil Chetwynd, who has a team reporting from inside Gaza and who highlights an incident when journalists were seemingly targeted by Israeli guns. Alan also gives insight on dealing with Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, whose latest high profile court proceedings began this weekEnjoy one-month’s free trial to Prospect’s digital content, and get full access to rigorously fact-checked, truly independent analysis and perspectives. No commitment—you can cancel at any time. Click here to subscribe: https://subscription.prospectmagazine.co.uk/1mfd/prospect-magazine/mcpod1mf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The podcast delves into media bias, 24-hour news impact on mental health, and whether President Biden should be on TikTok. They also discuss Taylor Swift's potential influence on the US election and explore the dynamics of BBC Question Time and Fiona Bruce's techniques.

Amid great concern over the provision of local news in the UK and beyond, could organisations such as the Manchester Mill and the Bristol Cable challenge famous old papers in some of Britain’s biggest cities and calm long-term fears of areas becoming “news deserts”? Alan and Lionel hear from Joshi Herrmann and Sophie Atkinson from Manchester Mill about whether their community subscriber model is the way to fund commercially sustainable journalism capable of holding powerful people and institutions to account in local and regional “patches”. There’s also an update on “Gibb gate”, comment on the latest limp Ofcom ruling pertaining to GB News, plus analysis of Tucker Carlson flying to Moscow to interview the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Enjoy one-month’s free trial to Prospect’s digital content, and get full access to rigorously fact-checked, truly independent analysis and perspectives. No commitment—you can cancel at any time. Click here to subscribe: https://subscription.prospectmagazine.co.uk/1mfd/prospect-magazine/mcpod1mf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.