Media Storm - News Watch: Behind BBC ‘bias’, Birmingham football ban, and keeping eyes on Sudan

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Welcome to Media Storm's News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. We’re taking on the right-wing hit job on the BBC. Why has one of the world’s most trusted news organisations capitulated to dodgy accusations of lefty, pro-trans and anti-Israel bias, when it gets just as many accusations from the other side? Learn about power structures inside global news and the battles for narrative control – while minorities continue to pay the highest price. After the break: ever thought we'd be talking about football on Media Storm? Maccabi Tel Aviv played Aston Vila in Birmingham. We highlight buried police intelligence showing overlaps between Israel’s hooligan and military forces, and breakdown how Sky News manufactured the key headline (‘no-go area for Jews’) that came to shape political events. Listen and learn to spot misinformation in realtime. The episode ends with Eyes on Genocide. Updates from Gaza, where the so-called ceasefire has entered its second month amid hundreds of Palestinian casualties; and from Sudan, where satellite imagery sparks fears that paramilitary forces are burning victims’ bodies in bulk. Like this episode? Support Media Storm on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you ready for the chaos? Here we go. Hi, Matilda. Hi, Helena. How are you ill again? I'm ill and I'm genuinely quite scared for this recording because our notes are chaos. Yeah, our notes are a bit all over the place.

They look like something from American Psycho. It's just like a web of like names and faces and question marks. Where the guy is like, has that board behind him and then he's like crazed and pointing at the camera. You probably don't know what I'm talking about. I have no idea what you're talking about, but we are crazed as to what will come. Listeners, your guess is as good as any. Yeah, so what have you been up to, Helena?

Well, like most of the nation, I've felt completely lost since Celebrity Traitors finished. It finished already. Yeah, it finished already. I can see that this is going to be another episode of Helena explaining pop culture to Matilda. Which is exactly what you would like to turn this podcast to full time. I know. Or if we ever had any other time, I would like to do an additional podcast where I just explain memes and TV shows to you. But that will never happen. Time? What is time? But, okay, there was also something I wanted to point out about celebrity traders, though,

through a media storm lens, because yes, even when I'm supposedly relaxing and watching TV, I can't turn my media storm brain off. Okay. This is this going to be embarrassing for me because I'm not going to know any names that you throw my way. I know Stephen Fry's in it. There's only one name I want to mention. It's Kate Garroway. Yeah, I know her because she presented ITV. Good Morning Britain. Yeah, exactly. She was an ITV news reader. Now she is a presenter of Good Morning Britain. And she was a faithful throughout the game. And she was truly useless at even attempting to work out who the traitors were. She mostly just repeated things that other people said. I'm sure you've seen the memes. Unless maybe you're Matilda. Now, naturally, she was called out by other faithfuls with them asking, why haven't you been putting any names forward of who you think might be a traitor, etc. And her defence was that she wasn't paying any names or theories forward

because she's a journalist and is therefore trained to be balanced. Okay, now no one's going to invite us to any parties because we sound boring. But like this to me truly sums up the problem in the brink. British media, like, claiming, just see Helena watching this episode, like the monologue unravels in her mind. That was literally me. My husband was like, can we just watch the show? But honestly, okay, Kate Garroway claiming that she could not come up with any theories or suggestions because she's trained not to have an opinion is exactly how inaccurate or extremist views end up getting platformed on mainstream morning debate shows like hers.

Like, if you're always going to be so balanced, you're going to be complicit. You're never going to be able to see good from evil and you're never going to be able to hold power to account. Yeah, you know what your theory holds up. I know exactly what you're getting at because there are traitors among our midst. Exactly. It's starting to sound really far right in the enemy within. The enemy within is, you know, hate, guys.

And we should be able to point a finger at it. We have to be able to point a finger at it. Exactly. And also, sorry, but if you're a Good Morning Britain journalist, a program that often questions some guests more than others or engages in like bad faith gotcha debates with minority communities way more than with powerful white male MPs, for example, then you're not balanced.

Like you're not a balanced journalist, so don't tell me that you're actually balanced. Did she lose? Oh, yeah. And that's the moral of the story. Now that we've had our pop culture fix, let's get on with the show. Wait, just before we do that, Matilda, I think you should tell people that someone's impersonating you on TikTok so that everyone can report them. Oh my gosh, yes. Thank you, Helena. Yeah, there's an impersonator account of me on TikTok, which at first I thought was just a bit like sad and weird.

weird because why would you impersonate me? But it's actually quite sinister because they are using my image and my name and my journalistic sort of reputation to ask for donations to be made to a private PayPal account. So this TikTok account has the username at Matilda Mallinson, spelled Mathilda Mallinson, like my name is spelled. That is the fake. The real account is at Matilda Mal, same as my Instagram and any other social sites. So please, I need your help reporting.

it. I reported it and TikTok said, oh, we don't see a violation here. So please find the TikTok account at Matilda Mallinson. Yeah, report it as a fraud or as a scam because I think that's the only way it's going to get taken down and it's really bothering me. Now let's get on with the show. On Newswatch today, the BBC is thrown into chaos with two high-profile resignations, but did the broadcaster capitulate to the right-wing press? Maccabee-Tel Aviv came to Birmingham and the media buried police intelligence and will end with eyes on Palestine. The BBC Director General and the news CEO are to resign. BBC News, that is an ideologically captured organisation that we are forced to pay for.

And Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from Aston Villa due to significant levels of hooliganism in the fan base, jeopardising safety. So Jews aren't safe in Birmingham. Welcome to Media Storms and News Watch, helping you get your head. head around the headlines. I'm Helena Wadia and I'm Matilda Malinson. This week's media storms, BBC bias, Birmingham football ban and keeping eyes on genocide. What the hell is going on at the BBC? BBC Director-General Tim Davy and Head of News Deborah Turneris resigned on Sunday. This was after a leaked memo which was written by former BBC advisor Michael Prescott and public in The Telegraph last week.

What were the accusations that resulted in the two resignations? There were a few, but I want to focus on three main ones. First, anti-Trump bias. Prescott said the BBC's coverage of the 2024 US election was more critical of Donald Trump than of his opponent Kamala Harris and included a misleading edit of a speech Trump delivered on the 6th January 2021 in a panorama documentary. The second issue, one-sided transgender coverage.

He says the BBC had often published stories celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity and had ignored certain voices. The third issue, anti-Israel bias in BBC Arabic. The criticism by Prescott is that several contributors to the BBC's Arabic service selectively covered stories that were critical of Israel. Let's start with the part that has garnered probably the most attention. In a panorama episode aired a week before the 2024 US presidential election, Donald Trump's speech during the 2021 capital riot was edited. Quickly for context, the capital riot took place on January 6th, 2021, where thousands of Trump supporters gathered at a rally organized to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election when Joe Biden won and which Donald Trump. insist to this day, was a rigged election falsely. These supporters then marched on Congress and attacked it.

Now, a bipartisan House Select Committee has investigated it and said that the attack was the culmination of a plan by Trump to overturn the election. They say that he did incite this violence and they say that it was essentially a coup to hold on to power. Those are the facts that Panorama was conveying. However, how they conveyed them is at the heart of this issue. Here's the original part of Donald Trump's speech.

And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down. We're going to walk down anyone you want. But I think right here we're going to walk down to the Capitol. And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. But I said, something's wrong here, something's really wrong, can't have happened. And we fight.

We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. And here's the BBC edit. We're going to walk down to the capital, and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. So the criticism is that these words were edited together from two parts of Trump's speech,

about 50 minutes apart, to make it appear that Trump had encouraged violence amongst his supporters. This is undoubtedly a failure of the BBC's editorial processes. However, we also need to be clear, Trump did encourage violence amongst his supporters. Trump became the first president in US history to be impeached twice after being charged with incitement of insurrection over the deadly storming of Congress. It's widely known that the criminal charges would have resulted in a conviction of Trump had voters not returned Trump to the White House in 2024 when he then got presidential immunity. In his speech, just before the mob started marching on the Capitol,

he used phrases such as, we will stop the steel, if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore, and we will never give up, we will never concede, it doesn't happen. Trump also pardoned the insurrectionists when he got back into power in 2024. And he called them patriots. So fast forward to the present day. Now we have a case of various reports saying the BBC Director General has resigned because they manipulated a speech by Donald Trump

which made it seem like he encouraged violence at the capital riot. Without any added context that this did actually have. So how did this seemingly quite minor editorial breach result in the two high-profile resignations? Well, this particular breach created a point of entry for those factions who have, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this, been waiting in the wings for the perfect opportunity to bring the Beebe down. The influence and brand recognition of the world's oldest, largest and most influential public broadcaster makes it a valuable commodity.

and its dominance represents a bloc to those who would prefer American-style partisan algorithm-determined news, in inverted commas. And the fact that this BBC era was against a powerful, patriarchal president, rather than an error against a powerless minority person or group, suddenly there's a huge problem, and the BBC is systematically biased towards the left wing and against the right. That really is for me the core issue, okay, because the BBC, in its obsession with impartiality, has met fire from both sides. Like, it often meets fire from us because, you know, when it comes to genocide, which we've seen over the last years, impartiality is kind of a negative position to take. Nevertheless, like, their mission to be impartial means that the BBC is really categorically not systematically biased to the left.

I mean, the left has taken defeat after defeat after defeat in this country if our national broadcaster was systematically biased towards it, that just simply would not be the case. And yet what we're seeing is the accusations of left bias take hold more than the arguably more like morally urgent issues of bias that causes minoritized and vulnerable groups to suffer. Why? Because of power. And what really, really angers me is like how spineless the BBC is in defending itself and in capitulating to this perception of it as like a lefty organisation when if you actually actually, you actually examine the structures of power inside the BBC, the story is very different. We are going to do that. But before that, I want to give some examples of exactly what you just

said, because seemingly all it took was an ex-presay in the telegraph for the BBC to capitulate to the right-wing press and fall on their sword. But when over a hundred staff members accused the BBC a pro-Israel bias, that was ignored. Reporters and staff members said that Basic journalistic tenets have been lacking and that every television report, article and radio interview that has failed to robustly challenge Israeli claims has systematically dehumanised Palestinians. Yet no one resigned over that apparent bias.

Yeah, when the documentary Gaza Doctors Under Attack, which examined the experiences of Palestinian medics working during the genocide in Gaza, when that was shelved and not shown on the BBC, as originally planned, claims of bias towards Israel were ignored, even though this documentary was then picked up and aired by Channel 4 and was one of the most important like documentations of the war to this date.

The Centre for Media Monitoring, which engages with the media to promote fair and responsible reporting of Muslims and Islam, found that Israeli officials were quoted more than twice as often as Palestinians, Palestinian deaths received a fraction of the airtime, and words like murder and massacre were reserved almost exclusively, for Israeli victims, contexts such as occupation or international law was frequently omitted. At the height of the controversy over Bob Villain's Glastonbury set, the BBC produced 56 online articles mentioning the band and the anti-IDF chant of its frontman, yet only one

article on an Israeli air strike that killed 20 Palestinians that same week. Again, where were the resignations over this? And when other minority groups, like, trans people, which I'm guessing we're going to get onto, when they say that they are misreported on to an extent that is increasing violence against them and suicide rates among them, or disproportionately reported on, given that they make up 1% of the population, a far higher percent of the coverage, they are ignored time and again. And here is the third issue I want to touch on today. The BBC's coverage of trans people was another of the issues brought up in the telegraph, and then subsequently by other right-leaning outlets like the Daily Mail.

But the headline the Telegraph led with was BBC gender correspondent tried to block coverage of trans-criticism. This was essentially a hit piece on a minority BBC reporter called Mega Mohan. Every line honestly made me more and more enraged. I'm really glad, Helena, that you're diving into this because I've seen a lot of debate and necessary interrogation of the accusations of bias when it comes to the Trump speech. and of the accusations of bias when it comes to Israel.

But this aspect of the Prescott report has largely gone unchallenged. Yeah, and I want to talk about this because this is essentially throwing a minority reporter under the bus. So the first line is, the BBC's Gender and Identity Correspondent, in double quotation marks, sought to block coverage of a campaign group aiming to protect women-only spaces the Telegraph can reveal. Firstly, putting Megamohan's job title in quotation marks is very insidious. That's her literal job title. You may not think that it should exist. You may not think it is important, but it does exist. And already, by putting it in quotation marks, they're kind of implying that it's some kind of lefty, woke, made up job, right? Secondly, a campaign group aiming to protect women's only spaces. Okay, well, that's already. factually incorrect. We'll get on to that in a second. The next line. Mega Mohan, who has held the specialist role since 2018, emailed a co-worker raising concerns about their plans to

film a debate by the group Women's Place UK. Miss Mohan wrote, there is some concern from LGBT Plus about giving this group a platform. They are seen as a more extreme organisation that we would be legitimising. This to me is literally an example of a journalist doing their due diligence. Because guess what? Women's Place entire campaign was essentially to bully trans people out of public life by advocating for restricting access to women's only spaces on the basis of sex, not gender. This group did have extreme undertones.

And it is not shocking that a journalist would raise this to a co-worker. So that quote of Megas, that's what the telegraph gave as an example of like the terrible thing that this so-called gender and identity correspondent did. That's just hilariously reasonable. Exactly. That's like exactly what Kate Garroway should have done more of during traitors. Exactly. It's completely legitimate to raise concern about organisations that you are going to give

a global platform on the BBC. She's not even saying don't include them. She's saying, like, please be aware of the risks that you are taking in including them. You're welcome for me for doing your homework for you. Exactly. The Telegraph article also spoke about. Ben Hunt, who was the BBC's first ever LGBT plus correspondent, and they said, Miss Mohan interviewed transgender soldiers banned from the US Army, while Mr Hunt wrote about

the distressing weights for children to have gender reassignment treatment at the controversial Taverstock Gender Clinic. The Telegraph could find no examples of the pair, having written articles that focused on people who are detransitioned, or expressed concerns around transgender women using female-only spaces. I'm sorry. Sorry. I'm laughing. It's just that it just sums up everything that is wrong with how the mainstream press thinks that we need to report on this tiny minority community. But what about the telegraph? Like, they would fail their own test. They would literally fail their own test. Tell me what you mean by that. Well, I suppose they don't think that they are beholden to the same impartiality standards as the BBC.

Maybe. Maybe that would be what the telegraph would say to that. But also, it is due impartiality, because if trans people are 1% of the population, then detransitioners are 0.5% of that 1%. So you wouldn't give them equal weight. Also, the BBC does cover those stories just because these individual reporters haven't, because they have a specific remit that they're fulfilling. Doesn't in any way demonstrate the point that Telecraft is using it to demonstrate. It's incredibly disingenuous Whereas if you take the telegraph As an outlet as a whole

Not only have their individual reporters Only reported on detransitioners And like single-sex activists The outlet as a whole has exclusively reported on that And almost covered issues Actually affecting trans people and trans rights Not at all Exactly

It's mind-blowingly Unself-aware Hypocrical And clearly incentivized with malice. Like, this is a hit job on the BBC, on a competitor that the Telegraph has been trying to take down for decades. And it just shows how minority journalists, journalists of colour,

are so easily thrown under the bus. Like, on articles that the Telegraph wrote about the BBC's bias, it was Megas picture that was used as headline images in a lot of those articles. And that's really sad. And really hard because also, like, contractually, these individuals are not able to come out and defend themselves and defend their journalism. And one of the most frustrating parts of this week's episode for me has been that the BBC has been completely spineless and done nothing to defend its journalism and to defend its journalists, even when many of these allegations, not the Trump speech in my opinion, but the other allegations are, like, really so unfounded. Exactly that. So let's conclude.

It seems only when the attack comes from the right that the BBC's partiality becomes a scandal worth investigating. But why is that? As we mentioned, the telegraphs reporting is based on a leaked memo written to the BBC board by former external advisor Michael Prescott. Prescott is a friend of former Prime Minister Theresa May's then-communication secretary, Robbie Gibb. And Robbie Gibb was appointed to the BBC board under Boris Johnson. regime. Gibb also happened to advise Gb News prior to its launch and led the consortium that bought the Jewish Chronicle, which he owned up until last year. The Jewish Chronicle, it might be familiar to listeners, not just because it has been a, you know, a respected British Jewish

news outlet, but because of a scandal last year when it had to remove a series of sensational articles relating to the Gaza War when it turned out that the journalist who was writing these, a man called Elon Perry, had a fake CV, basically claiming that he had access to Israeli military intelligence. What this basically meant was that the Jewish Chronicle was publishing articles based on fake or misrepresented intelligence planted to support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's negotiating positions in Gaza. So that's what you might know about the Jewish Chronicle, which was owned at the time by Robbie Gibb. Robbie Gibb is said to have been instrumental in appointing Michael Prescott as editorial advisor

to the BBC. And in the past week, no one has come out swinging harder in support of Prescott's leaked memo than the man whose government put Gibb in the BBC in the first place, Boris Johnson. The BBC has been caught out blatantly fabricating a quotation by Donald Trump, to make it look as though he was inciting a riot in 2020 when he was saying no such thing. I'm afraid, folks, I am going to be in the sad position of finally cancelling my licence fee payment, and I suggest you do the same.

And guys, this is the tip of the iceberg. It's probably not unwarranted to say that Boris Johnson made a series of appointments that led to the resignations we saw this week. And all I can say is that if you want to read into this further, read an article that was written for Prospect magazine titled How the Government Captured the BBC. It's written by Prospect's editor Alan Russ Bridger and it's incredible. We'll link it in the show notes.

Basically, this is a story about internal BBC politics. And those internal politics tell us a lot about the political forces in our world. It's a tug of war between right and left, between a powerful pro-Israel lobby and those critical of Israel's actions in Gaza. It is something you need to educate yourselves about. I guess I want to end this by saying that to me, even though the BBC has a lot of problems, it is critical that it survives. They should have re-edited that part of its hour-long panorama documentary on the January 6th insurrection, apologized and republished the program.

Instead, it fell to the right-wing press. We have seen populace and authoritarian leaders try and kill off public service media in favor of flooding the zone with clickbaits and misinformation so they can have all the channels in the hands of a few powerful billionaires and that will only lead us quicker and quicker into fascism. It didn't just fall to the right-wing press, it also threw its minority reporters to them. Okay, Maccabee-Tel Aviv went to Birmingham. So there was a match last Thursday, a football match match between Maccabee Tel Aviv and Aston Villa. More than 700 police officers from 20 different

forces were deployed near Villa Park that day. Why? Well, hundreds of pro-Palestine and pro-Israeli protesters gathered outside the ground. There were minor scuffles. There were ten arrests, including some for racially aggravated abuse on both sides. But the predicted chaos of tens of thousands didn't materialize. And West Midlands Police, the local police force, celebrated that the night passed without major incident. Now, all of this, of course, follows that police ban on away fans from Israel a few weeks ago, which was labelled at the time anti-Semitic across government and media. And then the police intelligence came out in a Guardian exclusive,

revealing that the main reason for the police ban had been the risk of violent extremism posed by the Israeli football fans, not at them. It was based on intel from police in Amsterdam about what had caused street violence in November last year when Maccabee Tel Aviv played AFC Iax in Amsterdam. Back then, the street violence that broke was also initially described as anti-Semitic and caused by locals against Israeli fans. Israeli president Isaac Herzog called it an anti-Semitic pogrom. Netanyahu said he was sending military planes to evacuate Israeli citizens. Plains which never materialised because, as I argued at the time, this was a PR ploy and a successful one.

And basically European politicians echoed these statements calling it anti-Semitic riots by Dutch locals. And then some of them had to backtrack and it was embarrassing because while there was some horrid anti-Semitic violence, we then learned that the day before the match, Maccabee fans had stormed through the streets tearing down Palestinian flags from local houses chanting death to Arabs and why is there no school in Gaza because there are no children left there? And the media? Well, Sky News doctored their local correspondence report to remove the emphasis on Maccabee hooligan violence. The BBC, among others, published a video shared by a local showing Maccabee fans attacking locals with the exact opposite caption. The local had to call them out repeatedly for anyone to retract it. The New York Times pulled an investigation by its

own reporter into the actual cause of violence. But we now know that Dutch police concluded this cause of violence was originally the Maccabee fans. So the narrative was tailored then. It was tailored again when UK police announced a ban a few weeks ago. And this week, it was tailored again. Okay, so let's zoom in. What headlines might our listeners have seen that you see as tailoring the narrative. So the most contested narrative running through this story, right? It is, was the ban made to protect Maccabee fans from racist locals, in which case it's kind of victim blaming, right?

Or was it made to protect locals from racist Maccabee fans? So first, let's look at the police's own intelligence report, which as of this week is now public in detail. The top item on the threat assessment is, and I quote, the potential for serious and sustained violence from risk elements of Maccabee fans. It also identifies a high threat of violence to those specific Maccabee supporters, the risk elements of Maccabee fans. Now let's look more closely at the demographic of those fans, because this is factual information that was reported almost nowhere except in specialist media. And it's really essential information for people to

materially understand the story and the risk that could have played out on Birmingham streets. You see, the sad reality is that in Israel, young people are essentially forced to serve in the military. If they refuse conscription, they go to prison. And there are people who do that. This is a highly radicalizing experience, and it personally implicates Israelis not just in an illegal occupation, but a genocidal one. Now, I'm someone who really thinks that radicalization is something people are victims of, but that doesn't undermine the threat level that they then come to pose. And it's really tragic. But a fact that listeners may not be aware of is that Dutch police told British police that over 200 Maccabee-Teleview football fans

who wreaked havoc in Amsterdam were directly connected to Israel's military. By many accounts, this also makes them possibly liable in war crimes, that that's a whole separate conversation, but it's a conversation that a lot of people think should be had, whether we should be arresting people who land on foreign soil. The intelligence also identified hundreds more Maccabee fans as experienced fighters, highly organised, and intent on causing serious violence. Now, this knowledge is essential

because this area of Birmingham, yes, is heavily ethnic minority and has a large Muslim population. And this knowledge was made privy to British government officials, and media, who not only fought to let the Maccabee fans come into this community, but to then smear that community as anti-Semites and throw Brits, their own population, under the bus. And by the way, like UEFA bands on Hooligan fan groups are not unusual. So this was really an unnecessary spin.

Yeah, a quick fact check. Many media reported claims by the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandi that, it is the first time since the early 2000s in this country that a decision has been taken to ban entirely away fans from attending a game. But that's actually not true. Away fans were banned from a 2022 Rangers versus Napoli game, a 2003 Aston Villa v. Ledger-Warsall game and a 2025 Celtic v Rangers game. This story is making me talk about football, so it's making me even more angry. Russia was also completely banned by FIFA and UEFA after invading Ukraine. Anyway, I was supposed to be zooming in on the headlines. Let's do that. So despite having all of this

intelligence, your typical corporate editors published unanimously one-sided opeds that completely ignored the intelligence. The telegraph had the most with headlines like discrimination wins on shameful night. The scenes in Birmingham shamed Britain. They were a disgrace to Britain. It got a bit repetitive. A despicable display of anti-Jewish sentiment in Birmingham and, quote, British Islamism is flexing its muscles more and more openly as it rises to power. God. But I'm not going to focus on the op-eds today because while publishing a dozen op-eds that unanimously ignore facts is clearly problematic. Opinion is opinion, and I want to talk about news here. Because many of these op-eds use the same phrase taken from headline news

to make their arguments. Here it is quoted in a spectator op-ed. The quote in the article goes, the hatred of a section of the local Muslim population has led to Birmingham being declared a no-go area for Jews. No-go area for Jews. So does it mean Birmingham was declared a no-go area for Jews? By who? Yeah, right. That is the question. Who declared this a no-go area for Jews, right? Here is a case study in how our media writes its own headlines. These news outlets say that this was declared by a member of government. Cabinet member, Ed Miliband, you'll find that headline across outlets. Here's the interview in which that happened. This is Ed Miliband being interviewed by Sky News's Trevor Phillips. The Maccabee fans are arriving in, I'm quoting again, Astin, a diverse and

predominantly Muslim community. Is Aston now a no-go area for Jews? No, and it can't be. And I'm very, very clear about that. And look, I believe we, we as a country, pride ourselves on our diversity, but also our tolerance and our hatred of prejudice, frankly. And so, you know, we cannot have a situation where any area is a no-go area for people of a particular religion or from a particular country. And we've got to stamp out all forms of prejudice, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, wherever we find them. Note the phrase no-go area for Jews. Those are the words. of Skye's Trevor Phillips.

Oh my God. Miliband never utters those words. And actually, in his answer, he clearly, like, deliberately expands his language beyond the crude term to include all sorts of, like, religious discrimination. But thanks to this line of questioning, Sky enables itself to publish the headline.

Aston can't be no-go area for Jews, says Ed Miliband, using quotation marks to ascribe those words falsely directly to Miliband. This headline is that, then lazily repeated by The Guardian, among other outlets. And so you see how the media weaves its own narratives, whether it's for clickbait purposes or for censorship and propaganda purposes,

which I would say with Sky News on this topic, it often is. There is an art to generating headlines, and listeners, you have to learn how to spot it happening in real time. This is so fucked up. I'm sorry, there's just no other way to describe this. this obsession by broadcasters to get the top line can be really damaging to our political climate. Even if journalists aren't directly putting words in MP's mouths like here, it incentivises them to say polarising things if they want to be rewarded with headlines.

Totally. I think it like completely corrupts our ability to have intelligent political conversation. And so often it means weaponising minority groups, like either stirring up fear against them or in this case fear in them like here Trevor Phillips not Ed Miliband tells Jews there's a no-go area for them in Britain and in doing so he conflates Jews with Israeli football fans and this is by the way something that Sky News repeatedly does on the subject of Israel I'm gonna I have to give one more example because it's just so outrageous they published a video interview headlined Jewish Aston Villafan says he has received death threat saying basically oh this ban against Maccabee Tel Aviv fans

means even Jewish Aston Villa fans don't feel safegoing. The interviewers with a man called Andrew Fox who Sky News captions as honorary president of Aston Villa Jewish Villains Supporter Club. Now this article was fact-checked and exposed by journalist Owen Jones.

Basically, there's no proof that this group of Jewish fans of Aston Villa actually exists. In fact, the man in the video isn't Jewish. Oh my God. He's an ex-British army turned political commentator and a fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a strongly pro-Israel think tank. In other words, an Israeli propagandist.

He's been a guest of the Israeli military at least three times. So look, I have to say this, because time and again on Newswatch, we have seen Sky News, act essentially as a propaganda arm of the Israeli state. The worst example for me was during the massacre of 15 paramedics in Rafa in March. Anyway, there was some... Wait, sorry, he's not Jewish. No, he's not Jewish. It was like a completely fabricated story.

Basically, constructing this false narrative that Aston, a high Muslim population of Birmingham was a no-go area for Jews. This is sowing religious and racial warfare in our communities. This is so dangerous. Helen is just shaking her head. Speechless. I just feel like, I don't know, there's always like no even comparison, but like if somebody went on a major news outlet and was like,

I'm Muslim and I'm defending. Muslims and then later they were found not to be Muslim. I think that would be like an insane scandal. Sky News still has the video up. They haven't removed it. But there was some great media pushback. This time around. Oh, thank goodness.

Here's Lewis Goodall, interviewing Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on LBC on Sunday. The reason was because of the hooliganism of those fans. Would you like to apologise to West Midlands Police? No, but I would like to commend West Midlands Police for the policing operation that saw hundreds of officers deployed onto the streets with care and sensitivity. It was absolutely crystal clear that the risk to the Maccabee Tel Aviv fans was high in their works. I'm sorry, Culture Secretary. Chief Superintendent Tom Jor told Sky News, we are simply trying to make decisions based on community safety driven by the intelligence that was available to us and our assessment of the risk that was coming from admitting travelling fans.

They have been clear this week that the primary driver around this was about the threat posed by those fans. And you said it was about anti-Semitism. That was wrong, wasn't it? It was not wrong. Why is Lisa Nandi doubling down? It's so weird. You know what?

It is so weird. Like I often find politicians' behaviour on this topic so confusing. Like, it goes against the intelligence. It goes against public opinion. like Brits across political parties back to the police ban. Yeah, politicians display more outrage at this ban than they have ever done about a single incident during Israel's extermination of 20,000 Palestinian children in Gaza in two years.

Weird is the word. That brings us on to Eyes on Palestine. Time for Eyes on Palestine. Why are we still doing this? There's been a ceasefire, you say. Well, the ceasefire entered its second month this week, with 242 Palestinians killed and 622 injured in what is still one of the most active conflict zones in the world.

That is why. And still one we're highly complicit in. But I do wonder whether we should take this chance to expand this segment from Eyes on Palestine to Eyes on Genocide and bring updates from some of the other man-made humanitarian crisis zones in the world, namely Sudan. Yes, I think that is a real.

good idea. We need to bring as much attention as possible on these humanitarian crises, Sudan and Congo. So I definitely agree we should expand this segment from now on. Okay. That's a commitment from us to you, our listeners. The update from Sudan is that in the past fortnight, the two and a half year long civil war has reached new levels of violence since the paramilitary, rapid support forces or RSFSA, seized Elfasha. Elfasher is the capital city in the North Darfur state that's in the west of Sudan. What we've seen from satellite images look like mass burning of bodies, an indication of the level of slaughter that has happened in these cities.

The RSF has closed a critical escape route out of the city and those trapped inside are being systematically kidnapped for ransom and executed if they cannot pay. Now, what's happening in Sudan, it's a complicated story. That's one of the reasons that it doesn't get the attention that it should. but we broke it down in an episode some time ago called Why is No One Talking About Sudan? And in that episode, we also hear about how involved the world is in this conflict and how closely connected you are to this conflict, again in ways that the media doesn't do a very good job of explaining.

So have a listen to that, but we will be bringing you more updates going forwards. Thank you for listening. We have a deep dive into capitalism. It's a big topic. Capitalism versus the news. And we have really good guests. Almost totally lined up, so we will wait for the big reveal. But make sure you tune in.

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. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow up. podcast so please do tell your friends and obviously 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 media storm pod media storm is an award winning podcast produced by helena wadia and matilda malinson the music is by

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