Media Storm - Deborah Frances-White in conversation with Mathilda Mallinson and Helena Wadia

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Media Storm is a new podcast from The House of the Guilty Feminist. Episode 0. Deborah Frances-White Read the transcript: https://mediastormpodcast.com/2021/11/24/0-deborah-frances-white-meets-mathilda-and-helena/ Mathilda and Helena talk to Deborah about their new podcast, what it aims to do and how they came up with the idea. Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/helenawadia https://twitter.com/MathildaMall https://twitter.com/DeborahFW Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please welcome your permanent hosts, Matilda Mallinson and Helena, what are you? Thank you, Deborah. Now, Matilda and Helena, I am delighted to say that you're joining the House of the Guilty Feminist. What an honour. What is Media Storm? We're journalists, and this is an investigative journalism podcast, that we are taking a different approach to old stories that crop up time and again in our news. And that is by looking at them through the lens of the people who live those stories,

who are the people whose voices you almost never hear. But who are spoken about over and over and over again. If journalists do speak to people with lived experience, their accounts are often thrown in as case studies. And I remember having this mansplained to me once by a white male reporter at one of the whitest papers in the country. He said, Matilda, case studies aren't hard news. And I think that's the problem is that he saw these people as case studies. The people we speak to have more to offer than their experience. They have the expertise that comes with experience.

they have informed opinions, often more informed and less agenda driven than the politicians and corporate reps that do get all the airtime. That is the capacity in which we will be speaking to these people on Media Storm. So how did you come up with the idea for Media Storm? There's something called Right of Reply in journalism, right? It's the most basic principle that is taught to you pretty much as soon as you enter into any kind of journalism degree. Day one.

Day one, it's giving people the chance to, respond to comments or allegations about them. A lot of journalists seem to forget right of reply when it comes to minority groups. Now, a lot of people will probably say, oh, but the articles I read always have both sides and the TV that I watch always have both sides. But this principle of getting a comment from both sides has been distorted. You can, for example, have a both sides on the Mayor of London expanding the Ulaz charge. So some people will go, yeah, that's really important because we need to clear up London's toxic air.

Other people will go, I don't know, that puts too high a cost on people who require a car for work or family reasons. That's something you can have a reasoned debate about. Yet some editors and journalists now use the idea of both sides and apply that to fundamental human rights. We're now seeing debates on TV and in papers about whether black people really do face discrimination. We're now seeing debates of this. It's got to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if I turned on the TV and there was a debate of somebody saying, yes, we do breathe oxygen in and somebody saying, no, we don't. So when Helen and I were working together, we used to grumble whenever we were feeling frustrated by the style of coverage.

I think the peak for me was the summer of 2019 when, quote, channel migrants started trending again. Refugees and boats coming across the channel to Britain. We must have published 30 articles in a fortnight on. refugees, not a single one of which featured a single refugee. What that means is our readers are having this extreme form of immigration explained to them by people who've never done it. I felt like we weren't giving our readers very good information, maybe, and we were also failing on the first tenet of journalism. Why is it that this fundamental right of reply seems to have gone out of fashion? What's happened?

So look, in a digital age, journalists are immensely time pressured, and there are logistical barriers. If a news story isn't practically instantaneous, it's gone, you lost it, someone else has it, and it's got to get out on 15 different social media platforms, all with their own optimized keywords, hashtags, captions, blah. But that doesn't quite answer the question, because if you look at the groups that journalists do find time to question and those that they don't, the people being missed out are consistently, predictably marginalised groups and also groups that the media often profits off demonising. And on Tilda's point there, you know, there is such a significant lack of diversity in newsrooms. When media organisations fail to

address this lack of diversity and fail to address actually also unconscious bias and inclusion, the standards of reporting from those newsrooms suffer. They really do. I've been in newsroom of big organisations where I can count the people of colour, myself included, on one hand. I've pitched stories and been told, hmm, that's not really relevant. But really what those mostly male, mostly white editors are saying are, that's not really relevant to me. But if there were more non-white, female, transgender, gay, working class people at the top of these organisations, those stories are going to be relevant.

They are going to be talked about and they are going to really help people. And if you see journalism as something that helps people by delivering accurate and an up-to-day information to the masses, then you've got to include all the masses, you know? So what you're saying is the news that we read on our phones or watch on videos, that news is curated. Exactly. So exactly the same way that if you tune in to network television, the only dramas that you can watch are the ones that have been commissioned. And so if all the people commissioning dramas are only interested in dramas about posh white people, that's all you get. And then you think, oh, that's all the drama that's available.

As we have sought as a society to say, hey, we'd be interested in stories told from other people's points of view, and we've struggled with that. I think we understand that with drama. But with the news, we think, no, the news is the news. Turns out the news is not the news. The news is curated just like, say, BBC drama. Yeah. And the reason you think that is because journalists tell you that their objective,

I remember we had this debate on my journalism degree. We had a debate about whether objectivity was a real thing journalists could aspire to. And there was a divide. Half the class said, yes, of course. And half the class said objectivity is a myth. I wonder if you could tell me what you think the demographic of each half of the class was. Is it possible that the people in the dominant group who normally get a voice in the media thought that objectivity was possible? Yes.

And that the people who were not often represented in the media said, no, we think that objectivity is a myth. It seemed that the dominant group you described believe that everybody except for them superimposes their minority perspective onto the objective reality of how the world really is. Interesting. And I'm sure that there's going to be lots of white male middle class listeners who also want this perspective. Nearly all of the men that I know and certainly all the ones I'm friends with, they're hungry for these kind of stories as well. and they're also hungry to know what they don't know. We've all got unconscious biases. I have, you know.

I'm a tall white woman who went to Oxford. I've definitely got my blind spots. And so the more that I can be introduced to other forms of media that say, hey, the news isn't the news. The news is curated. Somebody decides what's a story and somebody decides what's a non-event. Somebody decides whose voices need to be heard and somebody decides whose voices are too hard to find. or are you an expert or are you a case study? And even the fact of calling someone who's a refugee case study implies,

well, they're not a person with views. They're somebody so other, their life is an academic study to us. Exactly. Could you tell us some of the topics you might be covering and some of the people you might be speaking to? Yeah, we are going to be looking at irregular immigration, which is just another way of saying illegal immigration without the factually incorrect and loaded overtones.

We will be speaking to, and this one comes with the content warning, rape survivors, people who are homeless, people who have suffered discrimination at work due to disabilities. We'll also be looking into how the pandemic was reported on and how that ignited further anti-Asian abuse and hate crimes. We'll be looking into how we talk about body image and fat phobia and drugs and the... the war on drugs. Also joining us in the studio will be people who've been in prison and even prison

officers exposing a frankly archaic criminal justice culture. We'll also be looking into trans rights and sex worker rights. So what's the tone of the show? What should people expect when they tune in? We kick off with an investigation. You, the listener, will be with me or Helena or both of us on the road. We'll take you to the scene of the crime, so to speak. You'll meet people with a kaleidoscope of experiences and we will use their insights to answer one big question that we think the media is failing to ask. So that sounds like it's got like a true crime feel to it. When you said the scene of the crime and I'm following you and going with you, I'm really

excited to come with you on your journeys to find out what's happening. Well, thank you. No, given that when we did raise this issue with an editor, the response was, you know, oh, it's so difficult to get access to these groups. You know, it has become so normalized to not even approach some groups for comments that I genuinely don't think journalists notice they're not doing it. So what we wanted was for listeners to feel like they're on that road with us to kind of see the process to spot the questions that aren't being asked

and be equipped with some tools as to how to answer them and who to speak to. Will it all be in the field? So in the second half of the episode, we'll then be able to kind of shake off some of that heaviness of the investigation. And we're going to be back in the studio with some special guests where we'll have a really open and honest and frank discussion about the way that the wider mainstream media reports on that topic. It'll be a bit of a roasting of some of the headlines

that have been doing the rounds in the previous weeks. So the first part of what we're going to get in the investigative journalist van with you and become investigative journalists alongside of you. And in the second part, it's going to be more like a great conversation in the pub, but with somebody who really knows. and has lived this topic. Yeah. I'm going to pop my headphones in

and pretend I am an investigative journalist. I have some fantasies. I am in a Trilby, though, a really, really... With a magnifying glass. I know that's accurate. Yeah, beautiful trench coat. I found a clue. Exactly, exactly.

There's a Scooby van in my mind. I don't know. I want to be out there on the trail with you and I'll be able to do that. But I'm also looking forward to spending that conversation with you learning from someone we wouldn't normally get to hear from. I just can't wait.

And I hope all our guilty of fabulous listeners are going to be just as excited as I am by this brand new podcast, Media Storm. One last question. Why is it called Media Storm? Well, if you want to battle through the storm with us and come out to a clearing on the other side, then you'll have to listen.

Or more militantly, if you want to storm the media with us, battering Rams, what else do you storm with? Storm the Bastille. You want to storm the Bastille of the media with Matilda and Helena. Tune in every week. What are you most looking forward to? the launch party. No, I'm kidding, it's not. The thing I'm most looking forward to is letting people

know that what you read in even some of the most well-respected media outlets may not always be the truth and letting people know that it's okay to be a little bit more critical of that. If the news is curated, let's question the curators. I'm so excited that both of you are coming in to say, hey, we also want to be architects of this space. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of Watergate-style news stories you break. I am right there with you. Thank you so much for producing this show with the House of the Guilty Feminist. It's a great honour. Likewise. Thank you. Pleasure is all mine. Follow Media Storm, wherever you get your podcasts, so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as

they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone you know, and leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps more people discover the podcast, and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can follow Matilda and Helena on social media at Matilda with an H, Mal M-A-W-L, and at Helena Wadiya. And you can follow the show via Media Storm Pod. Media Storm, a new podcast from the House of the Guilty Feminist, is part of the ACAS creator network. It is produced by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Samphar.