Media Storm - News Watch: Another general election, ICC arrests, GRT discrimination, and... Wicked

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Join Mathilda and Helena on their weekly news debriefs! We'll pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media - helping you consume the news critically. This week, it’s hypocritical calls for another general election (while legitimate calls for another Brexit referendum were ignored), Musk interfering in UK politics (we've moved from X to Bluesky, follow us!), a BBC headline about the ICC arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu that failed to dig deeper, accusations of discrimination against Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities from Greater Manchester Police, and Helena tries (and fails) to explain Wicked to Mathilda. The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). The music is by Samfire (@soundofsamfire). Follow us @mediastormpod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi Media Stormers, it's Helena and Matilda. The news is chaotic as hell. It's terrifying. It's confusing. It's conflicting. Basically, it's a domster fire on Trash Island. So how are we meant to make sense of it all? How about we do it together?

Every Thursday, we're bringing you a news roundup. The main stories dissected. finding the facts behind the fear mongering, cooling out the most unhinged headlines, and helping you read the news critically. It's your essential guide to the mainstream media. This is Media Storm's News Watch. You look at some of the fake news on these platforms,

there's just so much out there right now. Some breaking news to bring you now. People want to be able to express opinions. I understand that. I have only one objective, which is to make sure the BBC is truly impartial. I don't think that the mainstream media was lying. I think we missed the overarching story. Welcome to Media Storm's News Watch, helping you to make sense of the mainstream media. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Mallinson. This week's Media Storm. Another general election,

ICCRS, and some questionable policing. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Media Storm's News Watch. Hi, Matilda. How are you? Hi, Helena. Bit sleepy. We are tuning in very. early in the morning. Mm-hmm. But don't let our adorable pajamas deceive you. Mainstream media, we're coming for you. Helena, what did you get up to this week?

Obviously, like all musical theatre nerds, I went to see Wicked, obviously. Obviously, I didn't. And we were actually, Matilda and I were actually discussing whether we thought our listeners were musical theatre nerds or not. So please, I don't know, fill out a poll. I feel like they are. I feel like most good people. people are musical theatre nerds. I would like to be one, but just like I can't lie. I know I'm not going to go see Wicked. It's just not in my DNA. Okay, to be fair, it's only part one and it's two

hours, 40 minutes. Oh, there's another one. I wish you guys could see Missilda's face just then when I said it was only part one. She looked horrified. I have to do this again. No, genuinely absolutely loved it. But this might be controversial to other musical theater nerds. Perhaps maybe they should have just done it all in one. Wow, I can't believe that. I feel like you're a traitor to your kind. For some reason, I just kind of forgot that there would be kids in the cinema, even though this film was, I guess, also made for kids.

My God, children are annoying. But I did kind of see a media storm story out of this. Are you just trying to talk about musical theatre even more? Yes, that would be my ultimate aim, but I'm actually being serious. Okay, so did you see that after the premiere of Wicked in London, and naturally the photos were everywhere, right? Mm-hmm. So they were splashed on front pages,

but there was something missing from these front pages, and thank you to At Belusa Trish for pointing this out, because this is where I first saw this pointed out, that front pages of like the Telegraph, the Times, the Daily Mail, not a single picture of Cynthia Arevo. They're all of Ariana Grande. Wait, so for the wicked novices like me out there, am I right in guessing, Cynthia Revo,

is the black actress playing the Green Witch? Yes. She plays Elphabert, who is the main character in Wicked. And Ariana Grande, you know, plays Glinda, which is probably the second main character. Yeah, not a single photo of Cynthia Revo on most of the front pages. And if we're like not being cynical about this, you could say, well, Irene Grande is just more famous, people are more interested in seeing her. But if we are being maybe a bit more cynical, this probably comes into that unique blend of sexism and racism

that we've spoken about before, misogy noir. Black women encounter this all the time. Cynthia Areva, she's the main character and she's a Tony Grammy and Emmy Award winner. She's an Oscar nominee. She's the main character in Wicked. And if nothing else, this is such a missed opportunity

to promote visibility of black female stars and it was completely thrown away. Exactly. It's quite interesting. I see what you did. I have a story. Go. I subscribe to the Telegraph's front page newsletter.

Thank you for doing that, so I don't have to. You're welcome. On Tuesday, it casually took me through the headlines, at least as casually as the Telegraph ever does. And then it threw in this. P.S., a petition calling on Sarkir Stama to hold another general election, has garnered over 2 million signatures. Do you back another general election, vote now?

And it hyperlinks to a page on the telegraph inviting people to vote on a second general election. Okay. So I just felt like their calls to basically legitimize a second general election in less than four months would be a lot more credible if they hadn't repeatedly attacked calls for a second Brexit referendum. and called it an attempt to overturn democracy. So that petition at the time got over six million signatures and a million people on the streets. And I just found some examples of comments published by the Telegraph at the time.

They called this a gross betrayal of our democracy, a disaster for Britain and a delusion by people's vote zealots. I mean, honestly, the short-term memory of our news cycle never ceases to amaze me. Also, a little bit of digging by the mirror revealed a more sinister truth to this general election petition. It debunked identities behind thousands of the signatures, which came from places outside the UK, including countries like China and the UAE. And by the way, only British citizens or UK residents have the right to sign. Oh, wow. It also revealed that, like, there was some key missing information from the telegraph's anecdote.

For example, the fact that the number of signatures had more than doubled. overnight after Elon Musk shared it on X with the outrageous caption, quote, the people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state. Oh my gosh, this is actually really, really scary and really sad. Yeah. I mean, if people remember, Musk previously clashed with Kirstama, UK Prime Minister, when he was claiming there was two-tier policing, quote, in the U.S. UK amid like swirling conspiracy theories that police were treating white far right rioters more harshly than ethnic minority groups. And Kirstama accused him of basically fanning the flames of

racist violence on our streets because he then went on to claim that civil war was inevitable in the UK. Yeah, that's actually so sinister though. Musk has brought his way into the White House but is now clearly trying to meddle in UK politics as well. When does it end? When do we stop listening to Elon Musk. Right. And I think that that is where we tell listeners, we are migrating from X to Blue Sky, which is basically Twitter 2.0. And we're following countless journalists and news outlets who are sick of Elon Musk's power abuses on X, which is basically his personal fake news machine. So if you're out there, people, follow us on blue sky. Okay, so something that caught my eye this week is a BBC World Head

And tweet or X? The headline said, Netanyahu arrest warrant, damned by Israel, welcomed by Palestinians. The tweet was, ICC decision damned by Israel, welcomed by Palestinians. You look a bit confused already. I just think. Yeah, I want your immediate reaction, yeah. Yeah, I've got a couple of thoughts, but my first thought is no shit. Yeah, right.

So for reference, judges at the International Criminal Court, or ICC, have issued arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The judges said that there were reasonable grounds. The men bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war. The charges focus mainly on the Israeli strategy of starving the civilians of Gaza and depriving them of medical and other necessities. What you maybe didn't see reported as much was that in this ICC decision, a warrant was also issued for the military commander of Hamas. I just want to read the first two paragraphs of this article. It goes, the announcement of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court, ICC, for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has triggered a furious response from across Israel's political spectrum. By contrast, it has been welcomed by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and ordinary citizens in Gaza. Yeah, you're right, this is such crucial missing context because, I mean, that's why I said I had many thoughts.

Yeah, one of them is no shit because Gaza is literally being pummeled and needs any intervention it can take. But my other reaction is like, this implies that the ICC is one-sided in this debate. that is playing right into the hands of an orchestrated campaign to delegitimize this court to allow Netanyahu to continue his war crimes. Exactly, because the article also failed to mention that the ICC decision has also been welcomed by countries that are signatories to the ICC. Which is like 124 countries, I think. And two EU countries, Italy and the Netherlands, have said openly

that they will arrest any of the men on their territory, several other European countries promised to comply with the ICC's rules without specifying necessarily that they would arrest someone, and EU foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrell, said the ICC decision was binding on all EU member states. The BBC article then directly quotes Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who condemned the ICC's decision as anti-Semitic. The BBC simply quotes this,

and doesn't investigate his claim? Actually, I'm so glad you've brought this onto our radar because I had mentioned there is a very orchestrated campaign right now to undermine credibility in the ICC. And that makes this an area where the risk of disinformation is so high and it's coming from the top. So I don't know if you saw Helena, but in response to the ICC arrest warrant,

Robert Jenrick, the runner-up candidate for the Tory leadership, tweeted, quote, the ICC has no credibility as it turns a blind eye to the crimes of tyrants like Khomeini and Putin. He uses this as grounds to describe the ICC as a kangaroo court. I'm sorry, the ICC literally issued an arrest warrant for Putin last year, Janrik, when you were in the cabinet of a country that is partied to the ICC. Also, Khomeini died in 1989. Oh my God. I can only assume he's actually talking about Ali Khamenei, Iran's current supreme

leader. For someone who wanted to be a leader of the free world, you don't know very much about foreign affairs. Oh my God. Ignorance is one way to describe it. That's the kind reading. But, you know, this could also be deliberate disinformation. Yeah. I mean, I actually feared the same thing. This tweet of generics was viewed tens of thousands of times on X. It could just be a shameless attempt by him to spread disinformation, to undermine the court, to followers that he clearly believes don't have access to better info or fact-checking. Yeah. Actually, can I just add one thing, which is when I was on social media, I saw a clip,

which was from a couple weeks ago, but I feel like it's really relevant when we're talking about Gaza reporting. It showed a doctor who is working on the ground in Gaza speaking on CNN and schooling presenters as to why it's just not accurate to call what's happening there a humanitarian crisis, which kind of implies it's a tragic but unavoidable accident and not a deliberate strategy of famine, collective punishment and genocide. Here's the clip. This humanitarian crisis with the additional factor of Gaza's about to enter the winter, which often brings heavy rain to the region.

Kate, in all honesty, a humanitarian crisis is what you deal with when you have a hurricane, what you deal with when you have an earthquake. You have an insult and a humanitarian response. This is my career. This is what I do for a living. Every single person who does this for a living will tell you the same thing. This is different. This is not a humanitarian crisis.

Kate, and I'm going to say it very clearly for your viewers to hear, this is genocide. When 70% of the population that are killed are women and children, when the population is starved of food, of water, of medicine, When you have attacks, repeated attacks on all the hospitals, the clinics, the aid distribution sites, the humanitarian aid agencies that try to help, more UN workers have been killed in Gaza than in UN's history. When you have over 900 families that have been exterminated, that have been taken off of the civil registry, killed, when you have over 17,000 children that have lost one or both parents,

when you have bakeries, aid distribution sites, churches, mosques, schools, these are the types of places that are being targeted. And so it's really hard to hear it over and over and over again framed in the way that it's being framed in the media, which frankly, Kate is very misleading. History books will be written on this. media agencies will have to reckon with their major role in the genocide of an entire population and in the destruction of humanitarian law and rule of order.

That was Dr. Tanya Hajj Hassan speaking on CNN. The next story I want to talk about is a story that was underreported and it also reveals a sort of chronic oversight. by news media. Now, this was about accusations of discriminatory and heavy-handed policing at Manchester Christmas markets this weekend by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Charities. Now, this was reported in centrist and leftist papers, including the BBC Guardian Manchester Evening News, who broke the story, and I saw it on ITV. But beyond that,

you probably didn't see it. It was a total blind spot on the right. So here's the story. videos on social media and seen by Manchester evening news showed gypsy and traveller children being stopped from attending the Christmas markets by police and forced back onto trains out of the city now many of these were teenage girls in dresses shown being ushered by officers onto trains they can be overheard shouting that they don't know where they're going

one girl says you'd think we killed someone report racism GRT, a hate incident reporting site, also claimed that some younger children were separated from their siblings and the Traveller Movement said the incident had left children upset and distressed with parents deeply concerned about the treatment that their children have faced. It said these children were simply trying to enjoy the festivities like everyone else, but instead they have been unfairly targeted and marginalised. That's really sad.

Yeah. But it feels like it was only a matter of time until all. something like this would happen after the police crime sentencing and courts act? I thought exactly the same. This was a law brought in by the Conservative government in 2022. And it was controversial at the time because it included measures specifically increasing police powers to target gypsy Roma traveller groups and criminalising GRT community's way of life.

Now, media storm's issue with this story is not just that it was underreported this week, But it highlights a topic that has been continuously neglected and should have been kept a close eye on. Yeah, and actually it goes further than that because in our previous investigation into why public attitudes towards GRT communities in the UK were getting worse, people from the GRT community told us the mainstream media had played a huge role in adultifying GRT children and stereotyping them as threatening and criminal, which is exactly what Greater Manchester Police seemed to. have done this week. That's so true. I think we should hear some of their voices.

As much as it was incorrect up until the 60s, we were portrayed as these kind of magical, otherworldly people, which has its own problems. But when you look at it from a media perspective since the 60s, the media representation of us in that time has become awful. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. You want some beef? Yeah.

I'll give you some finger. It's bigger. Satter and Gypsyer Snatch Now there was a problem with pious or gypsies What are you doing, pardon? Get out of the way back Can't really understand much of what is being said

The most watched sitcom of all time now is afterlife of Ricky Jervais Shit, what? And Mickey the Gypsy is a comedy character who sleeps with someone's wife My ex-wife Mickey the Gypsy Is dirty? Is he violent? Punches out people for no reason

Absolutely psycho Then you factor in that there aren't any gypsies anywhere No directors, no screenwriters we're not in the media, so we have no saying how we're portrayed. You're always aware that people sort of seeing your piking and your gypsy and you receive that from a very young age. Dish honest people, sort of like scum of the earth with no morals. You grow up sort of being learnt in a way from your family

to hide who you are. not to make people aware that you're a gypsy because you know that straight away that they'll change their opinion of you. Straight away, they won't trust you. People don't understand our community's actually being wiped out now. Our whole existence is illegal now.

Everyone's just at a point of trying to make the best of what they can and huddle their families together and try and look after ourselves while we're all slowly picked off. That was from our series two episode on Gypsy Roma Traveller Communities. You can scroll back to listen. So has Greater Manchester Police responded to these accusations? Sort of. They have said that they were monitoring a significant increase in footfall due to the Christmas markets.

They don't address or acknowledge GRT communities specifically, But the assistant chief constable did say, I'm quoting here, we understand there are feelings of mistreatment and confusion amongst the groups of people for being turned away yesterday. And we are determined to address these concerns by working closely with the mayor's office to engage these communities in Manchester and further afield. This is really funny. It's like amongst the groups of people engage these communities.

I guess they can't actually acknowledge which communities they're talking about by name as then they would be admitting to targeted policing. That's so true. Yeah. And also, if they were trying to engage those communities, we would know at Media Storm because we sourced recruitment data from police forces around England and Wales.

At the end of the Uplift program last year, uplift was the biggest recruitment drive the police had seen in half a century. And it was pegged to help diversify the police force. I just checked the data to see how Gypsy Roma traveller applicants fared in Greater Manchester.

Guess what I found? Oh God, what? Not a single Gypsy Roma traveller person applied in the region, despite Roma people having a relatively high presence there. Wow. So much for trying to engage the communities.

I want to end Newswatch with some positivity. Yay. Charlotte Meyer was featured on our episode, Rape Off the Record, The Price of Open Justice. Charlotte is a survivor of sexual abuse, who's now a vocal activist. She began campaigning for accessible court transcripts after really experiencing the inadequacy of the justice system firsthand.

Oh, this was such an outrageous story that came our way. It basically revealed that survivors of rape and sexual assault who go through the court system, are often pressured or advised not to actually attend the trial because apparently it could sway the jury against them. But then if they want to find out what happened in their trial, which normally does result in an acquittal, they have to pay money for the court transcripts.

And I'm not talking small change. One of our interviewees was told that if she wanted the transcript of the trial, she would have to pay upwards of £20,000. Right. it's outrageous, it's an outrageous story and Charlotte has really been like a driving force behind getting this open justice and you can view the campaign

just search open justice for all. Charlotte was recognised this week in glamour which is really exciting in an article titled 10 incredible activists working to end male violence against women and girls. It just made me feel really good that articles like these are pointing to people like Charlotte who don't have huge followings and aren't really, you know, like the face of these campaigns

on social media, for example. Charlotte is doing really grassroots level work to help survivors of sexual abuse. And it's just really nice to see that recognized somewhere in the mainstream. Yay, well done, glamour. I do have one final thing to add before we say goodbye, which is that tomorrow, on Friday, UK MPs will vote on assisted dying for the first time in nearly a decade. And you were going to see so much reporting on this over the next week. This is potentially a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change what is one of the most punitive

laws in the liberal world on assisted dying. So MPs need to hear from you. Please, please, if you haven't already, listen to our episode, re-released a couple weeks ago, where we speak to terminally ill people about the law. And that, by the way, is important because terminally ill people are the people this bill is actually designed for. But as usual, their voices have been downplayed in the debate.

And it's such an important debate. So go have a listen. Thank you for listening. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes. And a special shout-out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much.

And if you enjoyed the episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends. And leave us a five-star rating and a review. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia, and follow the show via at MediaStorm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Malinson. The music is by Samphire.