Media Storm - News Watch: Palestinian child murder trial, BBC Gaza doc, and is history repeating in Germany?

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Vote for Samfire to perform at Tramlines festival! Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. One murder trial unfolding in the US has all the ingredients for a media storm: a child’s 'grandfather-like' figure becoming his fanaticised murderer. But the killer was motivated by anti-Palestinian radicalisation, and for that the mainstream media itself should be on trial. Perhaps that’s why there’s not a whisper about the case in our press. But the death of Wadea Al-Fayoume is no less tragic than the death of every child in this war. We compare news coverage of different child fatalities, depending on whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian. And we question the BBC’s ‘spineless’ decision to pull a documentary covering the lives of Palestinian children. ‘Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone’ was taken offline after intervention from UK and Israeli government officials. Germany’s general election results shocked many due to an ‘unprecedented’ spike in votes for the far-right AfD. But zoom out on the history timeline, and a very familiar pattern emerges. Scroll through the interactive history Mathilda’s loving HERE. The Pope is ill: cue a scramble for power in the Vatican, avidly followed by Western media. But why are they so unfazed about the very same patriarchy they vehemently damn in non-Western religions? And finally: “Queen of Woke” Ash Sarkar rejects identity politics in a “spectacular Damascene conversion” - at least according to the Telegraph. And yet, their account of her new book doesn’t include a single direct quote... The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) The music is by @soundofsamfire Support us on Patreon! Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Peramount Woose. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies. Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS, Tony, and Ziva. We'd like to make up for own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition.

The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Hi Media Stormers. It's Thursday and you know what that means. We're dissecting the week's main stories.

Finding the facts behind the fearmongering. Calling 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.

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. Well, I don't think that the mainstream media was lying. I think we missed the overarching story. Welcome to Media Storms News Watch, helping you make sense of the mainstream media. I'm Matilda Malinson and I'm Helena Wadia. This week's Media Storms, Palestinian Child's Murder Trial, Patriarchal Popes, and is history repeating in Germany. Sorry, my phone buzz. Yeah, I can hear that.

Guys, always put your phone on, do you not disturb when you're making a podcast. Hi, media stormers. Hi, media stormers. So just in case, you haven't heard enough of our voices this week and two media storms a week isn't enough. There is a third podcast this week

you can hear us on. It's called The Sunday Roast. It was out last Sunday, and we basically roast the headlines of the week. So it's just a lot more of what you're. already know. You can watch it on YouTube. I had so much fun doing it. Yeah, we had to do some post-abocalyptic, would-you-ruthers. Oh, they were good, they were good, but also the stuff that nightmares are made of. What else happened this week? Annie Lennox commented on our real, okay? Sweet

dreams are made of these. This is so cool that I didn't actually look at it when I got the notification because I just assumed it was like some Annie Lennox fan or bot account. Yeah. But it was the Annie Lennox. The Annie Lennox. Your Rhymix legend. That might be cooler than doing karaoke with Los Campesinos. I don't want to put Los Campesinos down. No. No, I'm just actually so happy that you remembered the name of the band.

That was actually made me so happy. Helen was playing Los Campesinas when we were doing our research this week and it was really motivating. It is motivating, right. They're really political. Yeah. So I am slowly but surely bringing you over to the dark side. But yeah, very cool. Annie Lennox, thank you so much.

We love you. We've actually been really feeling the love lately. We have a lot of love this week, guys. You have been sending us such amazing messages and emails. There was Lena from Germany. I remember because I love that name. Honestly, it makes such a difference for us, and I log them all to take them to our fundraising pitches.

So it's actually really, really helpful. Yeah, also Gemma for DMing us on Instagram. Just a really, really nice message about our latest episode on anti-Semitism. And we had a bunch of new Patreon subscribers this week. Yes. George, Elena, Haley. Kelly and someone with the username at No 3x4. Thank you.

We also got an Instagram DM from a listener called George who said that he loves the podcast and finds it valuable and refreshing. Thank you. But he gave us some feedback which we're actually going to address here. He said in our episode of News Watch last week, we refer to Trump's involvement in Russia and Ukraine as peace talks between Russia and the US. However, he says, I feel this is a very compliant and generous description of those talks, especially as Trump has now blamed Ukraine for starting the war.

And do you know what, George, we couldn't agree more. I think that is a really fair point. Yes, so any more constructive criticism, guys, throw it our way. We're willing, we're able, we're open. Okay, let's begin. Matilda, tell me what caught your eye in the news this week. This week, I was waiting for the beginning of a murder trial in the US. and I'm almost certain you have not seen it in the news.

This is about the murder of Wadiah Alfayuma, a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy who was killed when he was stabbed 26 times in his home in Chicago. So this was October 2023. His mother was also stabbed and strangled, leaving her critically injured. Authorities have described the killing as a hate crime motivated by Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism

and an extremist reaction to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. But I think it should be noted as an extremist reaction to the news coverage of the war. Because the killer's wife, Mary, told investigators that the killer, Jacob Zuba, listens, this is a quote, listens to conservative talk radio on a regular basis and that he became obsessed with the war. Wow.

Suba was screaming, you Muslims have to die. when he barged into the house. And according to the family friend who testifies to that, he also shouted, you are killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don't deserve to live.

By the way, Wadia's parents, they're Palestinian, they both lost family members in the war. So this is textbook radicalization. The attacker also knew the family. He was their landlord. He had basically built a treehouse for the kid. The kid saw him like a grandfather.

And then he steadily became estranged and enraged over the course of the war unfolding in his media, a war he became obsessed by. So yes, textbook radicalisation, but he did not have to go to the dark corners of the internet to get there. Now I want to play this clip that I heard of Ahmed Rehab, who is the head of the Chicago office of the Council of American Islamic Relations. And he is speaking to Al Jazeera about his own national and local media coverage. in the U.S. where the murder happened.

This person, this landlord, Juba, was watching CNN. And he had been watching the news. You know, in the media, it was basically wall-to-wall coverage. And it wasn't very favorable to the Palestinians. As a matter of fact, a case can be made that it was really inciting of hatred of Palestinians, just the way that the coverage was, was, and how one-sided and biased and blatantly so it was.

Especially CNN coverage. I mean, I was actually on CNN with the uncle, of Wadiah later on after the crime had occurred. And I remember I wasn't watching much CNN at the time, but I was kind of forced to be sitting in the green room. And I was really shocked by how the entire hour that we were waiting, it was wall-in-wall coverage of every little detail of the families of the hostages, cameras in their homes, showing their family pictures,

their guitars up in the corner or what they liked to do, what they didn't like to do, which was all fine. But there was none of that given at all in terms of coverage of the Palestinian dead and maimed and injured. this place that were happening as we sat in that room. So very little humanization, very little attention given to the other side, but every little detail given to the Israeli side. So that fatal knock on the door, and again, as far as the mother's concerned, this is the landlord calling out knocking on the door, who's done that before. So she opened the door for him, and that's when

he barged in with a kitchen knife and started to lunge at her and chase after her child, had been she had been preparing for a bath and so he was unclothed sitting on the bed and she tried to protect her son and wrestled with this man and she was stabbed multiple times and then after he was able to essentially neutralize her in her efforts he went for the child and stabbed him 26 times killing him 26 times and he made this is a man who built a treehouse for this child that's right Such was the hate that had been built up and pent up from watching this coverage. So that was Ahmed Rehab of the Council of American Islamic Relations. Wow, my God, like how have, but how have I not heard that clip before now?

How have I not really read anything about this trial? Yeah, because the details are so harrowing. And honestly, in a sort of grotesque way, the media often loves murders with details like this. And it should be triggering massive media introspect. but that I think is the reason that it's not being covered because it is implicating for the media and the extent to which it's been ignored is really quite remarkable this trial began on Monday right now on Monday NBC was the only literally the only national US media that even mentioned it I've in the days since seen a sort of smattering of articles but they are all

them from outlets subscribe to Associated Press. So these are just a generic AP article that gets republished across various subscribers. None of them have actually dedicated reporters to covering it. And in our media here in the UK, by the way, there hasn't even been a whisper. So the absence of coverage often tells us as much as the flawed nature of coverage when it is happening. You know, it's like if you're not telling the truth, that's essentially lying. And there was something else that Ahmed we have mentioned in his interview that I found really significant. He talks about the role that dehumanizing propaganda always plays before a genocide happens in history. So in the case of Rwanda in the 1990s, this word cockroaches was

repeated, repeated until it basically became synonymous with the ethnic group that was massacred. Before colonial massacres, the word savages was a replacement for the word human or person or men or woman in every mention in popular and news media of colonial populations. In 1930s Germany, the word vermin was something that Jews became synonymous with. And vermin and language about vermin is something often used to refer to migrant populations today. Swarms of migrants coming to our shores. Yeah, of course. With Palestinians, you know, we saw descriptions basically of them as human shields and terrorists. All Palestinians are terrorists.

And that is a necessary pretext to genocide. It is a necessary complicity that media always has when genocide can occur. What strikes me about this as well is that it is a story about a child. And something I want to add to this story that you've bought to News Watch today is to, to specifically call out the difference in language when the media is reporting on children who have been murdered depending on whether they are Palestinian or Israeli. And I want to compare two headlines from the New York Times

and two headlines from the BBC. So in New York Times article headline, which was covering the story of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in January last year, read, Missing Six-Year Old and Rescue Team found dead in Gaza, aid group says. Compare this to the New York Times article headline

about four-year-old Ariel Bebus and nine-month-old Kaffir Bebus, two Israeli hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7th attack, who died in Gaza, and there's more to say about that in a moment. The headline reads, two tiny captives,

symbols of hostage crisis, to go home dead, Hamas says. And just quickly to compare the BBC headlines about the same stories. They read, Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help, versus, in single quotation marks, the smallest coffins are the heaviest. Israel grieves youngest hostages. There's a clear difference in blame, right?

And in emotion. It was, yeah. I mean, when you read the Beaver's headlines, I'm close to tears, as anyone should be with the story like that. Right, so Hind is found dead. The headlines are very clinical. Ariel and Kaffir are described in emotive language. We're allowed the space to realise how truly awful it is that these children have been killed

and were allowed to think about their tiny bodies by the way, as we should be. You know, the Beaver's children's mother, Shiri, was also killed. Their dad, Shiri's husband, Yarden, was also taken as a hostage and is the only member of that immediate family who made it back alive. And I cannot imagine or cannot fathom his grief right now and I want us to be emotional about the deaths of children

and about the deaths of this children's mother but I want that emotion and that grief to be extended to the children of Gaza and there was an opportunity actually you know for that to happen because the BBC was set to publish this documentary it's called Gaza How to Survive a Warzone and it shows the war in the Gaza Strip as experienced through the eyes of Palestinian children

they lead it and write it but this documentary has actually been pulled off What was the reason they gave for taking it off air? There was a backlash after the documentary came out because the boy, Abdullah, 13-year-old, who's narrating it, he is the son of someone working in the government of Gaza, which is, of course, Hamas led. His dad is in the agricultural department. He's a deputy minister. So the BBC has pulled it pending due diligence.

The thing is they knew this already. So they already did their due diligence before they ran it and they passed it, presumably because, well, the dad who's actually in the government, he spent most of his life studying around the world, including in the UK, before working in the only government that exists for his people in one of the most basic survivor sectors, agriculture, food, right? They probably decided, well, this man isn't exactly a terrorist

in the same sense as the separate military wing of the government. And so I think that it's less the nature of the backlash and more who the backlash is coming from that's actually at the heart of the government. this controversy, and that is not only members of the Israeli government, but also of our own government, the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandi has weighed in. So this raises huge questions about media independence and also questions for the Palestinian children who, you know, gave their time and literally their live terror and their personalities to making their story

get out there to the world and who now have been discarded and silenced for reasons they probably don't understand. And a question that was asked by a colleague, a journalist who I work with called Tamara Himani, she said, look, if anyone related to the daily administration of life in Gaza is censored as a terrorist, including this 13-year-old boy, then how can any Palestinian voices from Gaza be heard? I think it is such a loss of an incredible piece of journalism. When we see how powerful the reporting was around the Beavis children, it just shows how important it is to constantly put children at the centre of this coverage,

wherever those children were born. Also, you know, speaking about BBC's coverage of both Palestinian and Israeli children, I think what frustrates me is some of the coverage that discusses the deaths of the Beavis family. If you remember last week on our episode, Andrew Feinstein said that the media has become a vessel for the trumpeting of some of the worst successes in our politics rather than actually analysing them and critiquing them, they are simply trumpeting them.

Honestly, this could not be more true than in the coverage of these deaths. Israel has said that the Bibus children were deliberately killed by their captors in Gaza. In Israeli Defence Forces, IDF spokesman, said that forensic findings by an Israeli forensic chief, which have not been seen by the UK media, suggested the boys had been killed with bare hands. Hamas has said that the three Bieber's family members who died were killed by an Israeli air strike in November 2023. The evidence for this has also not been seen. However, headlines have been to use Feinstein's terminology, trumpeting Israeli lines.

An example from the BBC. Israel says forensics show Beavis children killed by captors. Another BBC, Israel Forensics Chief, says in single inverted commas, no evidence, Shiri Bebas was killed by bombing. New York Post, slain Israeli hostage, Shiri Bebus, had, in single inverted commas, no injuries consistent with a bombing, despite Hamas's evil claims, colon, forensics chief.

USA Today, killed. by bare hands, baby hostages' fates does anger amid fragile ceasefire. This is doubly horrific because the Bieber's family has actually spoken out and said. Firstly, like we haven't been told anything. Whatever the government keeps pushing

out these messages about how our children, how our family members were killed. They haven't told anything to us. We haven't been given any evidence of anything. As far as we know, there is no evidence of any of this. And it's actually just really traumatising the more that these rumours are spread, violent rumours, painful rumours are spread across media,

completely unverified and we're left justice in the dark as we ever were. And it is not the media's job to blindly repeat whatever government officials tell them. Like they have their own press releases for that. They have social media platforms for that. It is the media's job to fact-check it. And a headline that says, this happened and then adds at the end, according to... A forensics chief. or according to Israel.

It still makes people think that happened. It's bad journalism. I'm sorry. And single inverted commas do nothing to help. Yeah. Media Stormers, we have a special request for you. Samfire, who writes and produces all the music for Media Storm, isn't it great, has been shortlisted for Tramline's festival, and she needs us to vote.

It's one click and the link is in the show notes and it would mean so much to us if you just took a moment to vote for Samfire for tram lines and hopefully we'll see you there. When you support Movember, you're not just fundraising. You're showing up for the men you love.

Your dad, your brother, your partner, your friends. It isn't just a men's issue. It's a human one. That's why Movember exists. exists to change the face of men's health. From mental health and suicide prevention to prostate and testicular cancer research and early detection, Movember is tackling the biggest health issues facing men today. Join the movement and donate now at Movember.com.

Let's talk about what's happening in Germany, which just saw a swing right in its general election. Yeah, my partner, German, not very. happy, none of his family very happy. But he did send me a really fascinating piece of journalism, which I got a real kick out of, like as a history nerd, but not a real kick out of as a human being. Okay, that sounds very ominous. Tell me. So it's a timeline and it traces the ascendance of what was a hundred years ago an obscure extremist party in Germany to becoming a genocidal dictatorship between 1920 and 1933. but it's a piece of interactive data journalism.

So as you scroll down the page, certain terms, they change. It's just a couple of words of paragraph. So, for example, they change the dates. 1920 to 1933 becomes 2013 to 2008. And it also changes the names of some political parties. For example, it changes the acronym NSDAP, which stands for the Nazi Socialist German Workers Party. to the acronym AFD, which stands for?

Alternative for Deutschland. That's my best German accent. That is the far right party that just won 20% of the vote in Germany's general election. I'm going to rattle off like the key dates that stood out to me. Starting with the Spanish influenza, which ended in 1920. And as I scroll past it, it changed to the coronavirus pandemic ending 2022. This is rapidly followed by an economic crisis and influence. inflation in 1923 or 2020.

And during this tricky period, people increasingly lost faith in the mainstream political system. That was when the Nazi Party very successfully began to exploit these insecurities, blaming, well, not migrants like we do now, because there weren't very many migrants back then, but Jews, racism in order to radicalize. The issue was that mainstream conservatives who were losing votes to them, They didn't see this growing extremism as the result of propaganda, but as an expression of public opinion. And they therefore followed the shift to the right, copied these tactics, which led to a further split within the political mainstream centre. Now, both then and now, the SPD, which is the German centre-left party, they started out as the strongest in the government.

And their chancellor formed a coalition of several parties. But over a couple of years, these parties, which had very different views, they ultimately disagreed so much that the coalition broke down, and the government collapsed before its full term. This led to an early election. Now, all the while, the centre-right conservative party, today's CDU, which just won the biggest share of the election, they were mimicking the populist rhetoric of the extreme right wing. And they appoint their least moderate candidate to lead them in the election. That is, in this case, Friedrich Maetz, who is now Germany's chancellor. Meanwhile, they just viciously attacked the left. They decided that their main political enemy was not the far right, but rather the centre-left.

The early election that we've just seen in 2025, and which happened in 1930, saw poor results for the previous centre-left governed. The Conservatives became the main party, but the far-right, then the Nazis, today, the AFD, had a massive spike, winning one in five votes, exactly then, like now. So this is a pretty scary result. I'm scared. For the next government, the leading Conservative Party would, or will, still depend on the centre-left SPD to pass laws due to Germany's coalition system. But as the CDU's policies, that's the Conservative Party's policies, move further to the right, and as it levies its most vicious attacks against the SPD center-left,

this proves an impossible situation. People increasingly turn to what they see as an alternative political model. And before its time is out, this government coalition will collapse. By 1933, or as this model predicts, 2028, the extreme right wing takes power in Germany. And this is not just yet a done deal for extreme Nazi dictatorship. For some time, there are internal struggles within the far-right-led coalition between its more moderate and its more fascist wings. But the door has been wedged open for a strong man leadership candidate like Adolf Hitler

to begin bypassing bureaucratic safeguards and tweaking constitutional checks and balances and paving the way for a dictatorship. Behaviour you might recognise from somewhere else in the world, right? I'm really scared. I'm really scared. I'm sorry. Out of curiosity, does the article change Hitler's name to anyone specific when you scroll over it? Or is it left blank for now? It does. It changes Hitler's name to Hookers.

Now, anyone not from Germany might not know that name. No, I don't. Bjorn Hooker is leading the furthest right faction of the AFD. So the AFD's like current leader, Alice Vidal, she sort of lends it an air of civility. But within its ranks, there are members like Bjorn, who's been convicted for saying, in his election speeches, an illegal Nazi slogan. This is a slogan that was carved onto the daggers of the SA, like Hitler's Nazi militia. Great.

Yeah. So that's great. But I don't know, the reason I wanted to share this article of people, and I think that's just the bigger message, media storm message it has is the value of zooming out now and then putting things into their wider context because context helps us to understand incidents proportionally on the one hand and to pick out significant trends and I do think that's one of the biggest recurring themes in media storm is the importance of context please can you tell me something positive now you know what I actually can I think that's something that really went under the radar in

the coverage of the German election was that there was actually a really unexpected last-minute spike for progressives, non-mainstream progressive party. Yay! So the party is called Delinka, which is German for the left, and they campaigned

on a pro-immigration platform. A couple of months ago, they seemed fatally fragmented, but they managed to pull it back thanks to charismatic, socially savvy, new leaders, and they searched, yeah, to nearly 9% of the vote winning 60 seats in Parliament, which is not nothing.

9% is significant. But isn't that almost half the AFDs wins? Pretty much. But they didn't even get like a tenth of the coverage. No, no, it's true. Which says something in itself. It's like the Liberal Democrats here in the UK, they have 72 seats in our parliament compared to the Reform Party's five seats, but they literally get like zero coverage in comparison.

Yeah, actually zero. That's something our mainstream media should really check themselves. on. I was also reading about the German elections and something I found particularly interesting about the results was the breakdown by gender and age. So among 18 to 24 year olds, D-Linker Party, as you said, the left, they were 34% female, 15% male. And the AFD, 14% female and 25% male. And it doesn't surprise me because the presence of the AFD on TikTok, was massive and it allowed them to really promote themselves to young men. This big gender divide in the politics of young people,

it is being driven by these men's rights, brocass, manosphere-type people who are essentially a gateway into all right politics. But it was also very interesting because young men actually voted more or less in line with the country, but young women voted further left. So it is kind of showing us that these broadcast vibes are becoming mainstream views. So it all falls on women to lead the revolution.

Yeah, basically. Come on, let's go. And George. I'll listen to George. And George. We love you. Speaking of gender, I've got my next story.

Go on. As a born and bred Catholic, I think I'm entitled to share how ridiculous it is the ways in which our mainstream media rationalises the absurdity of the patriarchy of the papacy and the papal elections that we're likely to be facing soon now that, as you may have read, our Pope is very, very sick.

Yes, so the patriarchal element, is this because there's never been a female pope? No, I mean, there's never been a female Pope, but I don't know if people often realise this, there's literally not allowed to be a female Pope. Actually, in the Catholic Church, there's not even allowed to be a female pope. priest. Women are not even allowed to vote for the Pope because only ecclesiastical elites can vote for the Pope and women are not allowed to be anywhere in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. What? That makes me want to do it. I want to be the next female pope. Vote for heaven.

Wait, but isn't the Vatican City a country? Yeah, no. It is actually, technically, it's the smallest country in the world. It's a country. And it is a country here in the West in which women are 100% disenfranchised. And Western media, Western commentators, they're building up right now a lot of anticipation for the next paper election.

I've been reading comments here and there. But the ways that they find to like get around the complete fuckery of this is honestly entertaining. Like what? Okay, so this is the drama they're talking about.

There's like the pull of the progressives and there's the pull of the conservatives always. And our current Pope Francis, he's a progressive. He's done stuff like say maybe AIDS wasn't a scourge from God and maybe it's morally complicated to use condoms

to prevent AIDS rather than just being like hellfire and damnation. Oh, okay, that was progressive, okay? Yeah, that's progressive. And then there's much less progressive members of the papal system who see his current illness as an opportunity to take the Catholic Church even further back in time. And significantly, by the way, among this faction,

is the US Church, including Trump's ambassador to the Vatican. America, land of the free. Yeah, so the commentators right now, they're all speculating who might take over and is it going to be progressives or conservatives. It's like we've all lost our grip on basic standards. So there's media like La Croix in France,

praising the fact that Francis actually appointed a nun to a senior administrative role. Of course, not the electoral body, but, you know, he recognises that women... Can do admin. And then on the other hand, you have the Catholic Herald warning actions like this are a stretch too far and they might destabilise the system. These are religious, Western media, yeah.

But then you have secular mainstream outlets like the Hill in Washington, you know, saying Francis must brace himself from a battle from conservative slash orthodox factions. unheard describing it as a dramatic final chapter with competitors sharpening their knives. And I'm just reading this like, yeah, sure, it's dramatic. But honestly, where is your issue with the disenfranchisement of women in an institution

that not only is widely seen as culturally representative of the West, but in which women make up a majority? The only logic of denying women the right to lead or even vote for who leads is the belief that women are not, intellectually as capable as men. This is absurd. Clearly. Clearly.

And we would never afford this grace to non-Western systems, right? You always hear criticisms of like how backwards Islam is or how we don't want Muslim, too many Muslims changing our system here because of how they treat women. Often this is actually just racists appropriating faux feminism to justify their racism. If you actually care, you have to look that far for an antiquely patriarchal system you can criticise.

Western world, always throwing stones. Completely. Also, not to bring this back to Wicked, because I think we left that in last series, but... But back to Wicked. But back to Wicked. Have you seen Cynthia Arevo is going to be playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar on the West End? There's such an uproar about it. People are like, Jesus.

cannot be a woman. Jesus cannot be black. Jesus was brown. Jesus definitely wasn't white. Jesus also didn't break into song every five minutes. Like, where's your issue? That's so true. Yeah, I'm not going to go see her because it's not accurate because actually Jesus wasn't a musical theatre nerd. Jesus wasn't a superstar. He was the son of God. Okay, our final story for today's News Watch. Now, Ash Saka is a journalist, editor for Navarra Media, political commentator and author and she's promoting her debut book, Minority Rule, Adventures in the Culture War.

First of all, to start this story, I just want to tell you how the book describes itself. Minority Rule is the term Ash Sarkar uses to describe the irrational fear that minorities are trying to overturn and oppress majority populations. In her eye-opening debut, she reveals how minority elites rule majorities

by creating the culture wars that have taken over our politics. stoking fear and panic in our media landscape. Sarka exposes how a strategic misdirection of blame over who is really screwing everything up is keeping the majority divided while the real ruling minority of hedge fund managers, press barons, landlords and corporations remain on top

and it's facilitating one of the biggest power grabs in history. Very media storm. Now, naturally, Ash has been doing a lot of press in the lead up to the book coming out and she was on the newsagents podcast where she gave this interview that covered pretty much everything I've just mentioned about the book.

But she also discussed how the book's first chapter starts with not how the right have created minority rule but how the left have played into it. So Ash draws the distinction between the origins of identity politics which were actually very radical

and how it is viewed now something which is based on divisiveness and polarization and individuality instead of community. Now, the reason I'm telling you all of this is to call out a telegraph article that seized on this interview with Ash.

So the telegraph headline is the Queen of Woke just exposed the hypocrisy of the virtue signalling left. Subheadline, once a fierce advocate of identity politics, Ash Sarkar now seems to be repudiating the dogma.

The first couple of paragraphs of this telegraph article just, I mean, I'll just read them to you and you can draw your own conclusions because, okay, in what can only be described as a quite spectacular damascene conversion, Ash Sarkar of Navarra Media has rejected identity politics and the competing grievances it has given rise to. In an interview with Lewis Goodall of the news agents, Sarka argued what many have been saying for years, that much of the America-brained British left is destroying itself by embracing the politics of racial victimhood.

This includes adopting divisive theories of so-called white privilege fueled in part by the Black Lives Matter movement. Oh wow. Okay. So the impression I'm getting from this is, you know, Ash Sarkar, she rejects that white privilege is a thing. Either this telegraph writer has not listened to the interview and just written up what he thinks the interview was about. Or he has listened to it and just doesn't really care and has written up all he wants. As Ash later pointed out on social media, she said, you'll notice that this article doesn't quote anything I said directly. because if you listen to any of what I've been saying

or indeed actually read my book, you'll know that I say that racial oppression is real and has material impacts. That's just focusing on that. They never include a single direct quote. That is so unjournalistic. I've actually had an editor send me back an article before for even paraphrasing once

and then including a direct quote. You know, this was The Guardian. They say they never paraphrase. They only include quotes as direct quotes. No, there was not a single direct quote. There's no direct quotes. And what is so ironic was that, like, this telegraph writer wanted to demonstrate that lived experience is worthless.

But then by leaving out any direct quote from Ash, i.e., her lived experience, he's, like, completely misrepresented her book and her points. And the writer has essentially, like, used Ash's interview to spread his opinion instead of actually listening and responding directly to the interview. And just, you know, to quote Ash, because that telegraph article didn't, writing an entire article about what someone supposedly said without directly quoting them once is dog shit journalism.

It's actually embarrassing for the author because how weak must you think your own argument is if you can only win it by completely changing whatever the counter argument is. It's cringe. That's just embarrassing.

But on the finer points of Asher's view about polarisation and everything, that's really poignant for our deep dive. episode tomorrow, which is going to be looking at polarization and addressing all of those things with nuance and context and lived experience. And direct quotes. Time now for Eyes on Palestine, keeping our focus on events in Gaza, Palestine and beyond. The first thing I'd say today on this is that Israel isn't waiting for Trump's go-ahead

on his plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Saying it, for some, is enough. And we remember Trump's absurd proposal to relocate all Gazans and develop it into the Riviera of the Middle East, as was predicted by some people at the time. Many Israeli IDF forces, Israeli officials, have taken his words as a mandate already and are executing their own policy of forced displacement.

IDF defense minister Israel Katz said on Sunday, 40,000 Palestinians have been evacuated from the West Bank, and he vowed Israel will not let them back. Last week, he also announced the establishment of a new directorate within his ministry tasked with enabling Garzans to relocate. So, yeah, I guess today I want to say that when Trump says it, the parameters of what is acceptable shift. And this stuff starts happening under our watch. So that's what I think we need to watch at the moment. I agree. And something I wanted to bring to Eyes on Palestine is that also it's important to highlight positive stories when we see them. And after two years, some children and students in Gaza have been able to return to school and are now beginning a new school year.

And of course, they may not have school uniforms. The classrooms are certainly bearing the scars of war. and many of these children are dealing with enormous trauma but education is resilient and seeing children get back to school is a start thank you for listening tune in tomorrow for the first ever reunion of me Jess and Nathan my co-travellers on Channel 4s go back to where you came from

where we will be talking about not just the show but much bigger themes about polarisation and how to bridge massive political divides on some of the most heated topics in society right now. 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.

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 a podcast, so please do tell your friends. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helen O'Woddia and follow the show via at MediaStorm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfair.

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Hubline. It's good to know. Just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.