Media Storm - News Watch: Farmers' 'tractor tax', Trans awareness, Amsterdam attacks

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Introducing: Media Storm's News Watch! 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 farmers (protesting the UK’s new inheritance tax), football fans (bringing the Israel-Palestine conflict to the streets of Amsterdam), and food (sandwich fillings just too woke for the Daily Mail to handle). It’s also Trans Awareness Week - so we’ll highlight some vital stories about transgender rights that the mainstream media must have *accidentally* missed. And finally: things to think about when reading headlines on the murder of Harshita Brella. The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). The music is by Safire (@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 MediaStorms Newswatch, helping you to make sense of the mainstream media.

I'm Helena Wadier. And I'm Matilda Malinson. This week's media storms, farmers, football fans, and food that's too woke for the Daily Mail. Hey, Helena. Hello, I'm looking forward to discussing another week in unhinged news. Look, I don't want to push. Conspiracy theories that the world is being run by an elite circle of paedophiles and sex predators. Okay, sorry, where are you going with this?

Have you seen Trump's nominations to his administration this week? Oh yeah, it's pretty hellish. Yeah, he's now looking to be one of only three accused sexual assailants in the US government. And one of them, the guy pegged to literally be the chief law enforcement officer in the country, the Attorney General of the US. His name is Matt Gates. He's been investigated by the House Ethics Committee for involvement in the trafficking of a 17-year-old.

He supposedly had sex with a 17-year-old at this drug-addled party and she was a victim of trafficking. He may or may not have known her age until after the sex. All of this has been documented by two women who supposedly paid to have sex with at that party as well. But anyway, he's very cleverly gotten around the investigation by resigning as congressman. The Ethics Committee can't investigate anyone who isn't a congressman.

So, you know, it's not constitutional for them to continue this investigation. I actually think that Trump is like messing with us now. Like, let me see how far I can push this. Wow, well, this is a really cheery topic to start the episode on. But also, this is kind of the reason why we've decided to do Newswatch. The news is so complicated. And we want to help make sense of it. Exactly.

And so every week, we're going to pick apart these headlines and we're going to bring you perspectives that you may not have come across, but help you to make sense of some of the chaos. Let's start this week with the farmer's protests happening here in the UK. Okay, this is actually very interesting. I guess I should just give the background, which is the Labour government has introduced a policy which will reduce tax exemptions for agricultural land.

Basically, up until now, farmers have been able to pass on their properties without any inheritance tax. Now, for anything over a million pounds, they will now have to pay a certain amount of inheritance tax when passing on those properties. So this has been criticised by some because they're saying, well, this is really harmful to family farms. Already, it's not necessarily very financially rewarding running a farm. Why is your kid going to take on the business if they have to pay inheritance tax? on top of, you know, living the quite bad in some life that some farmers live. But there's also some people upset

because this is closing a loophole for wealthy landowners who want to avoid paying inheritance tax. And this is, of course, Labor's intention in changing the law. So this quite ethical farming cause that can pull on the heartstrings is being piggybacked on by some very wealthy people

who basically just don't want to pay tax. And that's made it a very powerful movement here in the UK, at least as far as the headlines are concerned. Right. So this is what actually confused me, because when I saw that thousands of farmers were marching through the streets of London to protest this law, I was thinking immediately, this must be a law that is making the lives of working people and working class people harder. But when I delved into it a little bit more, it doesn't really seem like that. what it is. No, I mean, up to a million pounds, a property will still be inheritance tax-free. I thought you'd be tickled to Helena by comparing some of the coverage of these protests to coverage of, say, climate protests. Oh, go on. So the sun, which called climate campaigners

eco-fanatics who deserve to be locked up, is presenting those protesting, this new inheritance tax as British heroes. Their front page has Jeremy Clarkson with his arms folded staring down the lens of the camera. I mean, no, it was so interesting the type of people who joined the farmers or the wealthy landowners, however you want to describe them on this march, Jeremy Clarkson, Katie Hopkins.

I did see some of the policing of the protests as well, which I found very interesting. There was literally footage of tractors mowing down police barricades and actually like driving, albeit very slowly, towards police officers. The police officers didn't really seem to mind so much, you know, as opposed to, let's say, women at a candlelit vigil. And you're so right to point out these people who were joining on the marches,

like people with very, very public political profiles. Something that it points to, I think, is the co-opting of farmers' rights by the right and in turn the far right to push ideologies that actually have little or nothing to do with farmers. There may be some concerns with this tax by family farmers and farmers with first-hand testimonies should be listened to, but obviously reasons for much of the outrages, landlords, hence why the Telegraph has published a personal guide to tax evasion

for its disproportionately wealthy readers. And look, I'm actually pro having potentially some subsidies, some tax exemptions for farmers if it encourages us to eat a more localized diet and to be more subsistent agriculture. But I think that cause has been undermined by many on the right who claim to champion farmers' rights. And I am talking about Brexit here. Like Brexit, for many farmers, has had quite a detrimental effect. It's lost them subsidies. It's lost them the powerful EU farmer lobby. It's led to labour shortages. It's led to labour shortages. It's led to to market pressures with cheap meat being imported from New Zealand and Australia.

But some people have gotten rich off Brexit. And one of those people is Nigel Farage, who, of course, is now making headlines posing as a champion of ordinary farmers with this tax law. And I'm going to make you laugh, Helena, with the G.B. News headline. Oh, God. Nigel Farage pays tribute to Britishness of protests as he stands with farmers. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and the thing is, what this headline actually tells us is the far-right piggybacking of farmers' rights

isn't because they actually care about agricultural causes or economic protections for farmers. It shows that the only thing they're championing is to do with immigration and personal political gain. He has not delivered promises of economic protections. What he has given farmers or people who he sees as belonging to that social. category is like a misdirected channel for their frustrations, migrants and Muslims and people of colour. Something I wanted to talk about is that today, as we are recording, it is Transgender Day of Remembrance. And last week was Trans Awareness Week. Now Matilda, which papers would you say are really aware of trans people? I mean, if it's awareness of trans people you're asking about, I wouldn't say

there's a shortage of that in the news because mentions of transgender people has multiplied tenfold in the last few years in British papers. I would say that these are disproportionately unfavourable though. And for all of those mentions, I didn't see anything about trans awareness day or week in the mainstream media. I only saw it on social media. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that these papers that really love running stories about trans people, and when I say running stories, I mean more like promoting culture wards about trans women in bathrooms or changing rooms or any room or existing or breathing, etc. They just failed to mention trans awareness week

or indeed today, transgender day of remembrance. But the outlet, Queer AF, who is run by the amazing Jamie Wareham, who has been on Media Storm twice, most recently on our episode about Pride Months. You can scroll back and listen to that. But Queer AF and other LGBT Plus outlets were basically the only outlets to report that 350 transgender people have been murdered so far this year. What? The only mainstream outlet I saw reporting that was Forbes. Wait, so tell me a bit more about this figure. Where does it come from?

So this year's Trans Murder Monitoring Project has tracked 350 murders of trans people in the last year, which the report's authors say is a significant. significant increase since last year. And the really sad thing is that these numbers are likely only the tip of the iceberg. You know, for many reasons, one of those being mistrust of police, for one thing, so maybe a lot of these aren't reported. The data this year shows that one and four of those killed were under the age of 25, 15 of those who were killed under the age of 18, and 93% were black or brown trans people, which just shows how transphobia and racism completely indefinitely. intersect. And aside from this just being a really sad and terrifying story, it's a media storm story because it shows that media outlets like the Times and the Telegraph who overreports on trans people. Because remember, trans people are about 1% of the population. Here is a story so important and so harrowing and that needs to be reported about the very specific and real threat that trans people face from other people. people when it comes to that it's radio silence the next story i want to talk about is the story that dominated headlines a couple weeks ago about the violence that followed the football match between iaxe amsterdam

and maccabi tel aviv media storm has done a review of the coverage and how it evolved in the days that followed This is what happened as it was reported across the mainstream media. These are clips from Channel 4, the BBC, Fox News and France 24. Have a listen. All right, so this is the breaking news out of Europe, and this is some ugly stuff here now. Israel is evacuating those who want to leave Amsterdam after what amounted to street fights. Now let's turn to the Middle East because the Israeli military says it's preparing to immediately deploy a rescue mission to the Netherlands. after violence broke out following a Europa League match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Iax, Amsterdam.

Amsterdam had been bracing for violence ahead of the match, but when it came, its scale and nature were shocking. Israel said that Israeli supporters were attacked at a very violent incident as they left the ground. As ever, with these things on social media, you need to be a little careful, but it's quite clear that there were people who were beaten. Police said men on scooters hunted down Israeli football supporters to beat them. There's several Israeli families who claim that they have not been able to get a side. of life from their loved ones who went to watch this match. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands is horrified by the anti-Semitic attacks. These scenes have been described by the Dutch government as horrific anti-Semitic events.

Amsterdam's mayor laying the blame with what she called hateful anti-Semitic criminals and banning all public demonstrations for three days. Pretty outrageous stuff, right? Like this is harrowing. I remember my first reaction. It's as what unprovoked, anti-Semitically motivated violence. Now, of course, we know a little more. We know what they left out.

Here's a clip from a Dutch local speaking to Middle East Eye about what happened in the days before the match. The Makup Beefans have been here since Wednesday and they have wreaked havoc everywhere. They've been chanting horrible things about Arabs. They've vandalized numerous buildings. They've ripped off Palestinian flags. They've been inciting for violence.

and they have only been protected by the police. This has made me feel incredibly unsafe. So this is a classic media storm case of stop and think, what voices are you not hearing? Because in all of these reports, there were interviews with pro-Israel politicians and Maccabi football fans and correspondence based in Jerusalem, but none of them had voices of Dutch locals

who were being terrorized in their own homes for expressing support of Palestine or being Muslim or looking Muslim. In reality, days before the violence, Maccabi supporters from Israel had marched through the streets of Amsterdam, attacking people they perceived to be Arab or Muslims, tearing down and setting fire to Palestinian flags, and chanting hate speech.

I might have to repeat it, but this is hate speech. It would be chants like, fuck the Arabs, or why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there. God, that is God. Jealous idol? Well, yeah, this was not really the story told. Two weeks on, I want to look at how some of that coverage was corrected or how some of it was changed. Okay, I'm glad you're talking about

this because I saw on social media that Sky News had done a report on the violence and then had subsequently taken down that report and replaced it with a new edited version. Yes, it's actually, it was a really good case of accurate coverage at the beginning. So, Sky's original report, with their local correspondent in Amsterdam, reported the violence as being initiated by the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, a club already known for anti-Arab racism and aggression, but they pulled that report and published a note claiming the video didn't meet Sky News' standards for balance and impartiality. Now, that tweet has also since been deleted in the chaos of this rewrite. But the new video that they

uploaded in place of the original, was heavily edited. And if I was to pinpoint the main change in it, it was downplaying anti-Arab racism. Actually, the original caption had said Maccabi Tel Aviv fans tore down Palestinian flags and chanted racist anti-Arab slogans. The new caption removed any mention of anti-Arab and instead focused on anti-Semitic violence. the new video had inserted into it a lead interview with a Dutch politician calling out the anti-Semitic violence quote it also had a testimony from a Maccabi fan saying the violence was reminiscent of October 7th but no statements from victims of Maccabi hooliganism and for me the straw that broke the camel's back was how the new rapport ended so I want you to

listen to this, the final line of the original Sky report. Dutch, Israeli and British leaders denounce the attacks as anti-Semitic and even referred to it as a pogrom. But their statements failed to mention the assaults by the Israeli hooligans against Dutch citizens. In the edited version that they released in place of this, they removed that last bit. They removed. But their statements failed to mention the assaults by Israeli hooligans against Dutch citizens, and they just ended it with the Pogrom comparison. Wow, that is so sinister. And so then we have to ask what changed in that time between the original report and the

edited report. And that is that politicians took action to frame the narrative themselves, starting with Netanyahu, who announced that he was going to fly military planes to Amsterdam to rescue Maccabi supporters. The ridiculousness of this plane is exemplified by the fact that the mayor of Amsterdam said, what, he's gone over my head, he actually has no authority to do this. And of course, these planes never materialised. This was a publicity stunt by Netanyahu and an incredibly successful one at that,

because the first news report I watched was like, Netanyahu is flying planes to Amsterdam to rescue targeted Israelis. So this was like a way to seize control of the news agenda with a seriously dramatic headline. But it is not just Netanyahu's agenda that is revealed here. The most common quote included in European, an American news report was from the Dutch Prime Minister who called out this anti-Semitic violence. The Dutch government is dominated by the far-right Party for Freedom, the PVV. Now they follow this script that is common among far-right all over the world, championing Israel and pretending to care about anti-Semitism, despite their dodgy records of anti-Semitism. historically, and using those causes to push islamophobic, anti-migrant agendas,

the PVV, literally then use the narrative to threaten to strip the citizenship and deport Dutch Moroccans for starting this violence. And I would say shame on our media for not identifying this, even those who have corrected themselves. And there have been some corrections, one of the worst examples of inaccuracies in the original coverage. There was footage from an Amsterdam local which showed Maccabi supporters attacking Dutch citizens, which was captioned with the exact opposite, claiming it showed Maccabee supporters being attacked

in the BBC, The Guardian, CBS, Wall Street Journal, like build New York Times everywhere. Some of them, like The Guardian, have corrected. As far as we can tell, we've seen no correction by the BBC, CBS, Wall Street Journal, so, you know. But even those who did correct, or amend their original reports, they did not question themselves about how it is

that the narrative was able to be so quickly and so heavily dominated by one side. And the word that we're all tiptoeing around here is Islamophobia. Because remember when the UK far-right riots happened, how slow anyone was to call them Islamophobic, even as mosques were being vandalised and hotels, housing asylum seekers

attempted to be set on fire. For days, you had Muslim campaigners, Zara Sultan in the House of Commons begging politicians and the press to call it is themophobic, and for days they declined, calling it thuggery instead. Compare that to how quickly what happened in Amsterdam was singularly characterized

as motivated by anti-Semitism, not anti-genocide or any of those things. And then we really start to see the imbalance in this media narrative. Okay, the final story that really caught my attention this week that I want to talk about is the story of Harsita Brella. Now, Harsita was 24 from Corby in Northamptonshire, and last week her body was found in Ilford, in East London, in a car boot.

Now, the prime suspect is her husband, Punkage Lumber, who detectives believe has fled to the country. and currently at the time that we're recording this, his whereabouts is unknown. It's also been reported that a police spokesperson confirmed that Hashita had previously been the victim of domestic violence and was made the subject of a domestic violence protection order at Northampton Magistrates Court in September. And Northamptonshire Police has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police conduct because of this previous contact with Hashitabrella. Now, you and I know, and our listeners know,

especially from doing our episode on how the media reports on domestic abuse, that the media does have a problem with framing, especially when it comes to fatal domestic abuse. If you remember our episode with Janie Starling from organisation Level Up, we spoke about headlines that often reinforce a romantic narrative or that present as sympathetic to the perpetrator or frame the victim as having done something wrong, like he killed her because she had an affair.

And alongside all of that, we also spoke about sensationalist language. And this headline from the Daily Mail on this horrible story about Harshita Brella's murder just made me so angry. So in all caps, the headline was Carboot murder tragedy. Oh, God. Do you want to give us the media storm breakdown of everything wrong with that headline? It's sensationalist, right? It's true crimey.

It's leading with the sensationalist detail of the car boot. The words that actually really annoyed me was tragedy. Because tragedy is like normally something out of a person's control. Like, oh, it was so tragic that she stepped off the pavement at the wrong time and got hit by a bus, right? Do you understand what I'm saying? It's like it takes accountability away from Punkage Lamber, her husband, who allegedly killed her. And also, like, it's not a tragedy. It's an outcome, a predictable outcome, of a violent and controlling man's actions.

And beyond anything, it's just so disrespectful. There's no mention of her name. There's no mention of who she is alleged to have been murdered by, which is, I would say, a key detail. Like, sorry, did the car boot murder her? Yeah. Or, like, was a car boot murdered? Like, what is a car boot murder?

I mean, it's this classic violence against women and girls. Where are the men? Where are the men in headlines about violence against women and girls? Okay, listeners, that's our news watch for the week. We hope you found it helpful. Okay, but just before we go, can I please just give you the most unhinged headline of the week? Okay, go on. It's from the Daily Mail, obviously.

Shocker. Now, Gen Z are waging war on our sandwiches. How younger Brits are ditching English classics like ham and mustard. in favour of fancy woke fillings. What the fuck are woke fillings? What I don't know, what do you think is a woke sandwich feeling? Is it like tofu sandwiches, like Suella Braveman's? Oh, the tofu?

Tofu eating wokerati? Or is it like anxiety with some crunchy chopped feminism? Like, I don't know, what is a woke filling? Dasty. Oh, they'll eat a BLT, but only if it's a bisexual, lesbian, transgender sandwich. Do you want to actually know what the woke filling was that they're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was chicken.

Chicken? Thank you for listening. If you want to support MediaStorm, 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 Samfair.