Media Storm - Live show! 2023's biggest media storms - Luis Rubiales and Spanish football's sexism problem

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Hey listeners! We've launched a Patreon. If you want to support us for a small monthly fee, head to patreon.com/MediaStormPodcast This is part three of Media Storm's LIVE SHOW at London Podcast Festival! Join us as we look back at the biggest media storm's from 2023 - this week, we talk about the ongoing sexism row in Spanish football, after Luis Rubiales 'kissed' football player Jenni Hermoso without her consent following Spain's World Cup win. With special guests Times journalist Manveen Rana and comedian Athena Kugblenu. Follow: •Manveen Rana @ManveenRana •Athena Kugblenu @athenakugblenu •Helena Wadia @helenawadia •Mathilda Mallinson @mathildamall •Samfire @soundofsamfire Get in touch: •Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod •or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod •or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod •like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod •send us an email [e-mail] •check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm was launched by the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. 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

Hi Media Stormers, it's Helena here. We're back with part three of our live show that we recorded last month at London Podcast Festival. Hey everyone! Welcome to Media Storm live at King's Place! If you were there, you'll know that we looked back at three of the biggest news stories from 23 and discussed if the media did a good job of covering them. Last week, we released our live chat about how the Titan submarine implosion was covered in the media, and before that, about how the Hugh Edwards' BBC presenter scandal unfolded.

Scroll back on our feed to have a listen if you haven't yet. This week, we're releasing our chat about the ongoing sexism row in Spanish football after Louis Rubialis kissed football player Jenny Homoso without her consent. If you don't remember the story, don't worry because we run through it. We recorded the show in September, the day that it was revealed that comedian Russell Brand had been accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse. One of our guests, Times and Sunday Times journalist Manvine Rana, worked on that very story, and you'll hear it referenced in this episode. I present the stories of our Times podcast for the Times and the Sunday Times, and I've been a journalist for far, far too long. As well as Manveen, we were also joined on stage by the hilarious Athena Cook Blame.

I'm a stand-up comedian and comedy writer and most of the TV shows I write for have been cancelled. So thank you, you're welcome. Thank you so much to Manvine and Athena for joining us. And thank you to King's Place for hosting us. Now, we know for everyone it's been a really shocking and devastating week in the news. And next week for our series finale, we'll be diving into the themes arising from the atrocities we have seen unfold in Gaza. themes of oppression, resistance, militancy and terror. We're finalising that extensive investigation at the moment.

In the meantime, here is our final instalment of our live show at London Podcast Festival. And we hope to see you there next year. So the Spanish women's football team won the World Cup over the lionesses. We will forgive them. Unfortunately, the coverage didn't really focus on their victory so much as a sticky question of consent. Why? Because Spanish Football Federation President Louis Rubialis grabbed player Jenny Homozo on camera and planted a kiss on her mouth. And I say kiss in inverted commas, because we'll get onto it. But Homozo said she didn't consent to this. She didn't like it.

And she has since filed criminal complaints. Now look, this funeral has not died down for more than a fortnight now. And what's happened since? Spanish women have taken to the streets to protest, not just this, but a long history of sexism in their country. Rubialis claimed to be the subject of a witch hunt. He was suspended by FIFA for 90 days. Homozo and her teammates vowed not to play for their country again unless he resigned. Homoosa said she'd been put under continuous pressure to defend his actions. The Spanish Football Federation accused Homo of lying in a bizarre defense where they said

that she lifted him off of his feet. Didn't see that. Ruby Alice's mother went on hunger strike. What a mummy's boy. And Ruby Alice has not directly apologised to Hermosa at any point. But finally, after two weeks of maintaining he'd done nothing wrong, he has resigned, and as of yesterday, he was given a restraining order. So for us, this raised quite a lot of general wider questions

around how journalists should report on cases of contested consent. And a lot of it hinged on language. So it's described as a kissing row. It was frequently written that Rubialis had resigned because of a kiss. The reaction was like, how ridiculous this was a one second kiss. Why should he resign? Why should there be criminal charges? But of course, Homozo didn't see it as a kiss.

She said she saw it as assault. So should we be calling it a kiss? Should we be calling it assault? Should we be calling it alleged assault? This is really interesting question for you, Mann vene, right now, because you've just broken a story that some of you might have. read about with Russell Brand, having been accused of multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. And you know how tricky a topic it is for journalists to report on. I mean, what did you think

of the language used in this, and more generally, how do you think we should be approaching questions of contested consent in our language as journalists? I mean, it's just incredibly tricky. It always will be. You know, the problem is that we have so many connotations with any of those words. You know, we talk quite. quite often about stealing a kiss as if that, you know, that's fine. And so when you sort of see it on this, you think, oh, well, it's just a cheeky thing. And the problem is that just confirms precisely his opinion that it, of course, this is standard. This is normal.

It's difficult, I think, for the journalists, though, because you can't call it out until the victim calls it out. And she immediately, you know, there was a locker room chat that was recorded, she was like, well, she certainly didn't like it. But, you know, she had just won. and you know she wasn't sort of immediately calling it an assault so I think it was quite hard for anybody else to but clearly it just made everybody watching like the world watching just go oh my god that's awful and then very slowly we started to realize

that this is a man who has a reputation she isn't the first person to have complained about him other people had you know they even try to sue people who had complained about him sort of suing the victim rather than doing something about the person and they as the Spanish Football Federation. The Spanish Football Federation also put out statements they claimed

had come from her that she had nothing to do with. So it's really hard. If you're in the media and you're trying to untangle this, you're seeing official statements from the Spanish Football Association telling you that she says it's fine. You're like, you know, I mean, I can't impose my values on her and tell her this really isn't. You know, that's just as bad. It's really difficult. and you know we've just we've just done the russle brand thing that again that was difficult for very different reasons you know you're asking people to come out and talk about again i mean this was the problem with the footballing thing too you know her career hinged on this he's already tried to sue other footballers who've complained you know if if you think that this could be at the crowning

moment you know this is the most glorious moment in your career it could all be over because you've just sort of stated the obvious you know that's incredible incredibly hard. And this is a man who is so powerful. It took weeks for him to resign. And it looked like the entire football association was backing him through most of that fortnight, which was really bizarre. So it's really hard for people to speak out. And I think as a journalist, you have to be very conscious of that. We had women speaking out about Russell Brand. We have a podcast dropping right now. And it's just really hard. You know, the lawyers came back to us with a statement late last night

sort of saying how are we supposed to answer this litany of questions that you've put to us when you've deliberately anonymised the women I was like well obviously this is a man who has a cult following of six million people

obviously we're going to protect them but they were like you know how is he supposed to know who you're referring to? It was like well that doesn't help your case but you know that's the difficulty that we're sort of dealing with And, you know, there are always questions,

editorial questions around anonymising people, but if you don't, it's really hard for people to talk about this stuff because as much as we think the world has changed post-Me-2, it still impacts people's careers, it impacts people's families, it impacts so much of their lives. It's really hard to expect people to speak out when quite often they're the ones who will face a backlash for doing it.

Yeah, and Ruby Alice was her employer. I think that that was actually a word that wasn't used nearly enough in the coverage. This was her boss doing this. also think it was interesting about anonymizing people, not anonymizing people, is when women don't come forwards with their names, you get that kind of response. When they do come forward with their names, people say, oh, they're just fame hungry, or they're just money hungry. It's like a victim of that kind of sexual assault harassment can never win. But I actually do think that

the media has a huge problem with failing to use accurate language when it comes to this topic in particular. And actually, we spoke about this on our previous media storm episode about gender-based violence. And the media uses language like non-consensual sex and like underage women. Like when Epstein was, you know, under Fyfer's sex trafficking charges, so many mentions of underage women, underage women. I mean, call me crazy, but an underage woman doesn't exist. It's a child. But they're so scared about using the accurate language. And when they fail to use accurate language, they afford grace to these perpetrators. They're saying kissing, Raoul kiss, you know, Louis

Ruby Alice has resigned after a kiss. It's like, no, it's a non-consensual kiss. Can we even say that? Can we go that far? It's quite frustrating not being able to use accurate language. I mean, I saw a reporter on the street and it was filmed that she

was groped. This was a couple of days ago. Yet all the reporting had to say allegedly groped. We're like, we saw it. We just saw it. I'm going crazy. That's how I feel. And talking about feeling like you're going crazy. I mean, Ruby Alice and his team tried to spin the narrative

so hard that the kiss was consensual even though we all saw what happened on video. Ruby Alice then had an hour and a half interview with Pearz Morgan because obviously Pierce Morgan is the authority on consent and sexism. I mean, excuse me while I gouge my eyes out.

But in this interview Ruby Ellis, he draws on very popular myths about sexual harassment and sexual assault. He said, well it can't have been harassment because there wasn't any desire in it and it that's a myth we see in the major media all the time that harassment and assault is about desire it's not it's about power and control and there was there was an amazing line where he said i kissed her as i would kiss my daughters and i thought my god somebody

send round help yeah for real you need to know anymore and i mean do you think that the media were complicit in this public gaslighting of of jenny homo and and really of all of us that watched the video yeah so you know i think we're all very media savvy here, so we know that the media play a part in upholding status quoes in society that we don't like. One of those things we don't like is patriarchy. And one of the ideas that exist in patriarchy is that men are entitled to our bodies. And if we do something, it's because we've inspired that behaviour, it's on us, or we haven't, but we should take it as a compliment. And even if we kind of know what that is wrong, it's in the ether.

And so the ether with regards to the way the newspapers talk about these things is the language they use. So, for example, underage woman, non-consensual sex, which is rape, things like that. Well, you know, they had sex. She didn't consent, but it was still sex, yeah. That's what they're trying to insinuate that. This is just a bit of hanky-panky. You know, she probably didn't realize what was happening.

Maybe something was on in the background. More 24-hour news. I don't know. You know, that, and you saw that play out with this report. What I would say, though, is that the way Rubiardis spoke and the way the Spanish FA behaved made it very hard for the media not to uphold these norms, because they were just support on the shit he was saying. Right? Like, they couldn't not unsay the things he said.

What they could have done is critique it more and really uphold his position as an employer and stuff like that. But let's be very clear. Okay. A kiss is an intimate thing. Okay. If I kiss you on the lips, your fiance's in the front row. He could quite easily come up and give me a spack and go, excuse me, love. She's made a mind up, leave her alone. A kiss. With somebody kisses you on the lips, that is an intimate thing. Okay. There should be no question that the word assault should have been used, even if it was alleged assault. There should be no question that he should have been told

by his team, look. You know what? You got excited. I don't know why he got excited. Spain and won the world cut loads. Do you know, like, you're quite good at football. This is not a big deal for you. But whatever. But for some reason, he was so invested in his own entitlement, and the Spanish FAA was so invested in a hold on his entitlement, that they just went on this madness.

So I think the media were in a difficult place because they were just reporting what they said, which was madness. and just watching it again I mean it's not just that he kisses that there's like a little pat at the end as if I mean like that just sums up

exactly the whole patriarch like it means awful but in the days that followed they sort of put out stuff saying well she'd given him permission we watched it she literally walks past and he grabs her

what was the permission conversation you have to report on that you have to say he has put out a statement saying without being able to say we all saw it when did that conversation happen You know, was it beforehand? Then what is object?

This is supposed to be objective reporting or you have to report on it. And that makes us that media storm really question, what is objectivity? Like, is objectivity really giving, you know, equal weight to the statements, the legally backed statements, you know, curated statements of the powers and authorities versus the lived experience, that first-hand experience, is objectivity, impartiality? Yeah, yeah, let's give the same amount of space to that as we do as we do to that. We are legally bound, annoyingly, to put out all of the sort of legally backed statements, but we kind of leave it to people to figure out for themselves what they think happened.

I mean, you know, I'm assuming because it seemed absurd that she had deliberately given him permission when clearly in the statement straight after, in the locker room she was sort of saying, she didn't like that at all. But, you know, I don't know. Perhaps they'd had a conversation beforehand. So it's really hard for us to judge it for them. But all we can do is put out the information that we have, including, the terrible statements and hope that people make up their own minds.

I think something else we can do, though, is contextualise properly because I think this was reported largely as an isolated incident. And while a lot of us can see what happened for ourselves, really there was a huge amount of the public that thought it was overblown and absolutely ridiculous to have the scale of response and the resignation because of a one-second kiss. But the fact is this wasn't about a one-second kiss. this is a campaign by all players of that team

to have a change of leadership and institutional change in the Spanish Football Federation. They have been calling out sexism, homophobia, excessive control and corruption. For decades, they've had multiple strikes and the media only became interested in it because of a one second kiss. And so I think context was not reported.

I didn't really know about the wider context of the Spanish football. players, you know, campaigns against this control and sexism and homophobia until quite a long time after this, you know, this reporting had been out. I just don't think that was... Can we do a little test here? Yeah. How many people in this room, give me a cheer if you knew that most of the first team refused to play in the World Cup because of the conditioned they were trained under? Give me cheer if you knew. I mean, that's a really dip. I mean, this is, you watch, you listen to a podcast called Media Storm. Okay. You, you know, you, you know, you, you know.

know your business. Can you, the World Cup is the pinnacle of your sport. It's the World Cup, okay. The Women's World, it's the biggest World Cup we've ever had, okay, and you cannot condone the conditions you're working in so much to the point you don't want to achieve your dreams, right? And no one talked about, but people, to be fair, it was spoken about low, without the whole tournament, people couldn't stop talking about it because they played so well, you

know, and I actually have a theory which is completely made up and obviously, like, take it out. But I think he was, he kissed her because he was like, you can't do anything about this. Look what you've done. You've campaigned. You've left the tournament and you still won it. So we were right.

And here's a kiss on the lips to prove it. I mean, I don't think that's that wilder conspiracy given the nature of the assault is about power and control. Yeah, look how he's behaved since she's been called out on it. Well, we are the centre of conspiracy theories here. Manveen has been accused by Russell Brand's lawyers of being the conspiracy. Yes, no, we are part of a conspiracy. Halloween is on Disney Plus

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We are hitting on our hour deadline do we have any thoughts from the audience about this story? I just want to say, like, I think my reaction to it straight away was just how depressing it was, that they'd just gone out and did this amazing thing, as much as the lioness is lost, and that was very upsetting, like, that this became the narrative straight afterwards. And I was really angry about it to the point where I'd research that she hadn't,

because I'm in PR, so I'd do that bit. So I was going back and looking she hadn't, from what I think I understand right, she didn't want any of this this just kind of happened she was being forced into making comments and stuff like that um it can be so easy sometimes just to like just be like oh another thing that's just happened but it's not a small thing so i think it's getting that balance right of um it's not entertainment it's not news you know this is a conversation that we do just becomes slightly to denserised to sometimes so yeah thank you While undoubtedly he unequivocally overstepped the mark,

if he had turned around and apologised, as opposed to saying it was consensual, would you have sacked him? It's a really interesting question. I mean, I wish we had an example of that so we could know the answer. Unfortunately, the reaction to this is so often defensiveness. I mean, we encounter this as journalist all the time.

if you are ever prying a story that implicates an institution or an individual, you are met with defensiveness. Media Storm has just broken this investigation into policing, which has statistical evidence of racially discriminatory recruitment practices. At the beginning, the police institutions, they tried to discredit our data. This is their data that we access through freedom of information. They said, yeah, this data is not valid. And then after three weeks of, you know, continuously pushing it,

analyzing it, bringing in experts, bringing in lived experience, they have not only admitted to the data, but they've actually called us in to review the data with them. And so the knee-jerk reaction you get is defensiveness. And that was the case here. And I really like to think that actually if the response was, oh my God, I'm shocked that I had that impact on a person, I'm horrified and I'm really sorry, that that could be journalism at its best, because that might open a discussion about how we have a culture in which treating women's bodies in certain ways is very, very normalized. And it's common and it doesn't take a bad person to cross those boundaries. And we need a cultural shift that takes everyone with it that says, oh, I could be part of the problem and I'm going to come with you.

And so to see someone say, I have been part of the problem and I need to change could really be the momentum swing that we need. need and I like to think that there is a scope for forgiveness. I mean, there has to be a scope of forgiveness. None of us are perfect. Unfortunately, I just can't think of any examples of that. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I was going to say that you had a bit of that around me too where suddenly a lot of people came out and sort of said, oh, I'd never been aware of how people might respond to something I've done. And, you know, it felt like you were having an honest conversation, but most of the time I'd say actually it's, you do get apologies, but I very rarely believe them. I think this was really interesting

because it was this Spanish macho thing of I'm just going to say what I think and I'm never going to back down. We've gone the other way where I think we kind of know and there are PR individuals across the industry who will tell you that the moment you're in a crisis

apologize because the news will stop following you so a half-hearted apology comes out the news sort of decides there's nowhere else to go with it and stops reporting it and it's gone and it's as simple as that and I think actually good journalism should look at exactly that, should look at the context. You know, this was a man who, this wasn't the first time he'd been accused of wrongdoing.

You know, there were corruption charges, there was particularly around sort of behaviour with females. There were allegations, even from his own uncle. You know, there was clearly something going very wrong. The female team had just managed to get their manager's act, who was a mate of his. You know, there was a lot going very badly wrong for that team, which is, again, I sort of think, you know, as an England supporter, I still think bravo them for winning. you know if he had come out and issued an apology I'm not sure that would have been reason to think

let him survive in this case yeah just on that we're not very thoroughly invested in the idea of learning moments generally where all of us whether we're right or wrong about stuff and I think the problem with learning moments is that it's really nice being right right and it's really nice being in front of someone who's wrong and when someone says actually I've learned a lot

from this interaction and I'm going to address my behaviours it's like but I have so much more to say and I think on the other side people are learning moments which would scary because then you have to think about all the other things

that you didn't get caught doing you know and but you know like if we're going to if this art of moral justice that we're going to go for is going to take us to a better world that you have to go through learning moments

and say oh it was wrong when we did X it was wrong when we used to do Y oh tell when we used to Zed that was terrible right but um until we get to those points until we get to the idea of normalising being wrong and learning from that. I can't remember her name. There's a black right wing

commentator, Dominique Samuels, is it? Anyway, she's often used to write articles that are pretty distasteful championing right wing things and now she's realized that what happens is the Daily Mail had a story actually came out last week. I think the byline times broke it. The Daily Mail get white writers to write heinous things and then they put black faces on the top of the article. So basically that it's like sort of a black a faced article and Dominique Samuels was asked to do something for Not on Hill Carnival and

she was like well I didn't write it and they're like it doesn't matter here's some money just put your face on it and she was like I don't agree with this and she finally learned oh my god I'm being used okay and then she said I've learned from this I think I'm going to think more about my presence in the media spaces everyone was actually quite not everyone but generally it was like oh my god this is a learning moment for you you realized how you've been used and you're hopefully going to change for the better or maybe just think on your actions and and also how bad agents can give you platforms that you take because you want to benefit from the exposure and you care about the exposure more than, you know, what is right. But we don't get out

enough, though there's learning moments. And I don't know how to, I mean, maybe I could have some more public ones myself. I don't know. It probably does involve for more forgiveness. Having more learning moments does probably involve having more forgiveness. And I think you raise a good point because we don't necessarily express a very forgiving attitude all the time. Thank you for listening for our final investigation of the season. We'll be speaking to international resistance fighters and exploring the line between terrorists and freedom fighters. That'll be out on the 26th of October.

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