Media Storm - News Watch: Trump’s bid for Gaza, Congo’s conflict, Axel Rudakubana's missed misogyny

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Welcome to the first episode of Media Storm series 5! Helena questions Mathilda about her motivations in taking part in a Channel 4 documentary about polarised immigration opinions, called Go Back To Where You Came From. Then it's onto our 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. This week's news - like last week's and probably next week - is the Trump show. But how much are the media playing into his hands by making all world news about Trump's actions? And how do we sort the fascism from the frenzy? We also decipher Trump's call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which is dressed up as compassion. Other stories we cover: Why is everything except male violence to blame for the actions of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana? Plus, we look at reporting on the rebel M23 forces who have seized the eastern city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo - and why this reporting under the 'Africa' tab of your news page is not as far from home as you think. Finally, why all reporting corrections should be splashed on the front page... The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Follow us @mediastormpod Support us on Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Details and tickets at Festival of Authors.ca 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. People want to be able to express opinions. I understand that. I have only one objective, which is to make sure the BBC is truly impartial. I don't think that the mainstream media was lying.

I think we missed the overarching story. Welcome to Media Storms News Watch, helping you make sense of the mainstream media. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helen Oudia. This week's Media Storms, the Trump show, Congo's conflict and new plans for Palestine. everyone. Hello, Matilda. Hello, my croaky voice. Hello, your croaky voice. Hello, all of the lovely gems joining us in the studio today. It just has to be that the first week we're back, we both have colds. It's a little jam party in here. I feel like that's quite a sweet way of looking at it.

Oh, that's really nice spin. Anyway. Anyway, you're here. Faithful Media Storm listeners will remember that last series, Matilda was away for a couple of weeks. We had Cocoa Kahn in as a replacement co-host, not that anyone could replace you. Yeah, don't rub it in. And we covered topics such as policing, media racism and World Refugee Day. And we were having to be very secretive

about where Matilda was and what she was doing. But as you might have seen on social media, we can now reveal that Matilda was working on a pretty controversial channel for a documentary called Go Back to Where You Came From. And what is this show? A four-part, prime time series that will be airing 9pm Mondays for all of February. It takes six Brits, two groups of three, each group, two people, very strongly anti-migration,

and one person sympathetic, guess which one I was. It would be a real turnaround if you were anti-migration after everything we've said on media store. I'm actually undercover. And my group went to Somalia and the other group went to Syria and we each traced what would be a common refugee migration trail for us through Africa and for them

through the Middle East to Europe and the UK. And the idea was to have people with wildly different views not just confront each other's views but confront the realities of refugee migration in a way that they may not have been able to or guided to before. You know, I remember when you were approached about doing this show and we were both nervous right yeah like we were both so nervous a lot of red flags

yeah yeah and you know I was worried that this was going to be one of those kind of shows where mostly privilege mostly white citizens were put in situations to try and like play the refugee and I know that you shared a lot of those concerns um so how can a show actually replicate the refugee experience it can't categorically no one who has citizenship or safety or anywhere to call home, will ever understand what it is to be forced to leave your home and to have nowhere in the world that you are safe. This is just not something that can be replicated.

And you know what? That's not actually what they're trying to do. Although that is how they are marketing it. We are not experiencing the refugee situation. We are witnessing it and we are meeting people who are experiencing it and we are talking to them about it. We're also airing our very, very different views and over the course of this four or five weeks that we're filming

trying to bridge them at least that's really what I was trying to do for me so yeah that was a chance to fight polarization because I do think like polarised views are one of the biggest obstructions to refugee rights they are using shock and entertainment to reach audiences who would never watch an educational documentary about immigration and that is really really key because the main reason I became a journalist in the first place is because of the massive gap between what the refugee crisis looks like in the media

and what it looks like on the ground. And if this show is going to reach those people and show them something that they definitely aren't seeing, then that is why I decided to do it. And listen, okay, look, so before I became a journalist, I worked in television production and development. And I know the way that these things work, right? And part of my concern initially was like,

well, why do we need Western white people to go to a place where there's high numbers of refugees in order for us to like feel some empathy. But the fact remains that right now, that is how the world of mainstream television documentary works. And another thought I had was that maybe if, you know, you hadn't done it on some kind of principle, who might they have replaced you with, you know, somebody who isn't as passionate about bridging polarised debate, somebody that isn't as passionate about how refugees are represented in the media. So, you know, I understand now your motivations for doing the documentary. And I'm glad that our listeners can hear them, you know, directly from you.

But anyway, a part of the way, as I said, that television documentaries work is to have a catchy title. And this documentary certainly does go back to where you came from. It's pretty damn sensationalist, right? And on Media Storm, we often criticize sensationalist headlines. So is this different? Oh yeah, I mean this title is as a sensationalist as it gets. It wasn't the title that I was told, but I was aware that it could be titled, something like this. Look, why do I have a problem?

Why do we have a problem with sensationalist headlines? These are headlines that stir up fear and hate in order to, you know, make money from clicks or whatever. They also present something as fact that's not fact. You might have a headline that says like trans people coming for our classrooms and then you read the story and it's like about a teacher using inclusive pronouns. but most people don't read the story, they just read the headline and that leaves them with an impression. What is this title, go back to where you came from, going to do? Is it going to give someone a piece of false information? No, it might be triggering.

That is something that I understand. And to be honest, I'm not in a place to argue that. I'd actually be much more interested in your views on that. But what it is going to do, as far as I'm concerned, is reach the people who maybe most need to watch it and get their attention. Yeah, I mean, it was like pretty hard seeing that phrase being brandished everywhere because like that phrase has been said to me online or whatever other spaces because of my skin color. And actually a part of me also initially thought, well, why are we giving a platform to these people's views? Like some of the views on the first episode that I've watched were pretty horrible and difficult to hear.

and I thought, should we be giving them a mainstream space platform for these views? But then I thought that it's actually important because it's really easy to dismiss those people who have those views as angry Twitter bots or, you know, people who sit in a dark room and just post things online. But actually what this show kind of showed me is that they're not. These are ordinary people, a truck driver, a chef. And I actually ended up finding it pretty helpful as a way to underline. understand that this is a reality and we should be facing it. And also, there was a disclaimer before the show went out and Channel 4 said, this show contains racist language, this show contains sexist language.

And I thought that was pretty good because they weren't saying, this show contains language that some people might find offensive. They were straight up saying, like, this is racist. Like, there was no debate about whether or not some of the views were racist or not. So I thought that was pretty good. Yeah, you know, these views are out there and they, do need to be aired and addressed no frills. And this is not just platforming these views.

This is not a show that is like, oh, we are giving the platform. We are giving them like the headline slot in a lecture hall or whatever. This is a view that says we are confronting and challenging these views. And everyone, including me, who went on this show,

went on with the expectation of having our views challenged. And the truth is, if you have views that are founded in reasonable grievances and concerns, then we can talk about it. And if you have views that are founded in misinformation or unfounded stereotypes, then they will collapse in the face of the truth. And, you know, as expected, there has been some criticism, including from charities,

including charities that Media Storm really respects and has worked with before. What do you think of their criticisms? Oh, look, I expected it. I had all the same questions. I actually found, I was scrolling through my notes on my phone, I found a list of questions that I sat down with the producers and had them answer before I agreed to do this. and a lot of it was the same as charities. You know, are people going to be filmed without their consent

in positions that may be humiliating for them or that may damage their asylum claims legally? Are people going to be compensated for their time? All of these questions I asked production and I was satisfied with their answers. I was probably also the most annoying cast member during production because I was continuously asking, have you had permission from this person?

Yeah, they were a step ahead of me all the way. They had an amazing legal team And while I didn't totally see eye to eye with everyone's directorial agenda, the person steering the ship on this, she was fantastic and so empathetic. And, you know, not here to push any agenda, just here to get the truth out and do it in a way that is compassionate and responsible. And hey, listen, the Daily Mail gave it one star. So if the Daily Mail hates it, it's got to be a good show, am I right?

And you know what? the ultimate reason why I decided to do this is because, and this is something again that I asked at the beginning up front, at every stage of the way, refugees, people who are living it are given the platform to speak. We, the Brits, are not the voices of authority. We are there to ask questions, but the authoritative platform is given to the people living it every step of the way. And you know what? Not only is this, one of the only media that is platforming people with lived experience and trying to reach audiences across the political spectrum. It's actually one of the only media that is doing that at all.

So that's what it came down to. Time for the news. This week's news, like last week's news and probably next week's news, was the Trump show. I honestly got a bit bored of seeing Trump's name everywhere, but that was after experiencing every other emotion besides autumn first. And you know what? I had to wonder, how much are we just playing into Trump's hands by making all of the world news about what Trump is doing, because it wasn't just US news, it was

world news too. And how many of these executive orders that we're seeing every day in our headlines are worth our attention and our alarm and how many are not? Obviously this week we've seen developments in Gaza, which we will get into. This is a really, really major story, but it could have easily

gotten lost as just another unhinged thing Trump said or did in the media shitstorm of the past fortnight. There is this thing, right, called Omnibus Politics. It's massive policy dumps by people. politicians who want to drown out some of the most sinister causes of alarm in a flood of red herring policies. I want to know which of his policies are good and which are bad,

but it's hard to know because Democrats and most media commentators who aren't really supportive of Trump haven't been very good at prioritising. You know, everything is fascist, everything is unconstitutional, everything is disastrous for everyone. Well, no, it's not. Some of it might be though and you're making it really hard to work out what so today i want to try so out some of the fascism from some of the frenzy nice one example is the washington plane crash yes trump politicized a national tragedy when he broke from a long tradition after a national disaster of seeking unity and instead immediately sought to sow division when he blamed the train crash without any evidence, instantaneously, on diversity initiatives.

Oh, yeah, those bastard diversity initiatives, they'd be bringing down planes. Yeah, and that coincidentally was always going to be one of his administration's main targets. This was like the first opportunity. Now, of course, every media fact checker jumped too. Great, except what does they fact check? I read the BBC Verify fact check. Generally, BBC Verify, a really, really valuable service. they did this whole piece elaborating on whether or not there were diversity initiatives in place, how far reaching the diversity initiatives were.

But I'm like, sorry, wait, that's not the question that needs fact-checking. Right, that is literally the red herring. That's the red herring. The question should have been, not was there DEI, but was DEI anything to do with this plane crash? Right. The article didn't even fact-check that. Trump said jump, we jumped. And this beats to a wider issue, which is that when there is somebody like Trump in power,

who consistently lies, who consistently says outrageous, unhinged things, it's almost like the media can't keep up and they can't call them lies because that will come with a lot of legal trouble. And so they have to say kind of unfounded claims. And this is exactly what Trump wants. This is what he wants us to look at, his unfounded claims. And specifically, unfounded claims about minorities, easy villains, villains that distract from complicated systemic problems or maybe corruption.

In this case, right, minorities, a transgender black hawk helicopter pilot had to actually post a proof of life video last week when all these social media accounts started falsely accusing her of causing the deadly Washington air crash. Oh my God, I didn't even know that. And also, you know, while the media are busy fact-checking this claim about diversity initiatives bringing down planes, they miss key things. and what the media maybe should have been talking about or looking at is the link between this major aviation disaster and the people in Trump's cabinet. Oh, what do you mean? The FAA, which stands for the Federal Aviation Administration,

currently has no head, no boss, no administrator. Michael Whittaker stepped down as FAA administrator on January 20th, which was the day of Trump's inauguration, after clashing with Elon Musk. Why did he clash with Musk? because Musk's company, SpaceX, is regulated by the FAA and was fined $600,000 for safety violations. Wait, was this before the crash?

Yes. Whitaker was only a year into the job when he announced his intention to step down. So he had several years left on his term. And, you know, it's not proven, but people are widely saying Musk pushed him out of the job. And his resignation clears the way for Donald Trump to name his own replacement to run the agency. and Musk, who's reportedly helping the Trump administration vet candidates into certain positions. Also, you know, in this time, Trump has also fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard. He's gutted the Aviation Security Committee.

And so there's no concrete proof right now that these firings or this pushing out led to this aviation crash. But possibly that is the thing that the media should spend their time fat check. rather than Trump's blame of diversity. Right. I just think the media needs to be really aware. How often are we falling in to Trump's trap, looking at the things Trump wants us to look at and not looking at the things he doesn't? I want to talk about Axel Ruder-Cabana.

The 18-year-old was jailed last month for a minimum of 52 years for the murder of three children in Southport last. July. Elsie Dot Stankum, who was seven, Phoebe King, who was six, and Alice de Silva Agir, who was nine, died after being stabbed repeatedly by Ruder Cabana at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class. We'll remember this story absolutely horrific and a lot of blame has been placed on a lot of things. If you remember when the news first broke, what agenda was pushed by the right? Oh, blame refugees. Right. It was like an invented asylum seeker who was

actually like named as the attacker. Right. So social media posts alleged that the attacker was an asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the country by boat, claims that people like Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson co-signed, while Darren Grimes of GB News criticised MPs for calling for more refugees to be allowed in on the same day as the attack. Oh, it's just, it's so awful. And you know what?

I feel like even since those completely falsified lies have been. proven wrong. The misconception hasn't gone away. It's maybe even just increased. I've seen it loads even more on social media lately. Yes, you're right. A UGov survey conducted last month showed that a quarter of Britain surveyed now falsely believe that Axel Ruder Cabana is a Muslim, an immigrant to the UK and was motivated by religious terrorism. FII, he's not an asylum seeker, he's not Muslim, he was born in Cardiff. So immigration is being blamed? Yeah. Then you've got political parties blaming each other. Reform UK's Nigel Farage blamed Kirstama directly and said the government are responsible for the most astonishing cover-up. And Kirstama? Well, he blamed Amazon, the place where Ruder-Kabana was able to purchase a 20-centimeter kitchen knife when he was just 17, despite existing laws which prohibit the sale of most knives to under 18s. And the Prime Minister has said that new restrictions of buying knives online will now be put in place as a result of this case.

Right. But here's the thing. Knives didn't cause him to kill those children. Immigration didn't either. And nor did Amazon and nor did Kirstama. What caused him to kill those three girls is fundamentally a problem of male violence. And what we need to be addressing is the ease in which boys can become excluded from school, isolated, access harmful and violent content online, be radicalized online and then repeatedly failed by the authorities every step of the way

and then they commit attacks usually against the most marginalised or vulnerable people in society, women and girls. No motive for these attacks has been officially stated and the judge in Bruder Cabana's case confirmed the offences did not reach the legal definition of terrorism because he did not kill to further a political religious or ideological cause. Is misogyny not ideological? I think it is. Because we have to look at what we know about this person.

We know that Rudy Cabana had a fascination with violence. He had an obsession with viewing and collecting violent material online, including material about school shootings and stabbings. He began exhibiting anger issues in adolescence, took a knife into school, attacked a kid at his school with a hockey stick. and he was excluded from school. Several local agencies had various levels of contact with him, including the government's anti-extremism prevent program.

And we know he deliberately and purposefully targeted a Taylor Swift themed dance class with little girls as victims. Violence does not happen in a vacuum. And if we continue to address the symptoms, not the causes, is we won't be able to stop it from happening again. Yes, we need protections on who can buy knives online. But we also need to be looking at who is buying knives online and why. I feel like we have all of these, you know, ideologies that we demonise often with other agendas at play.

And the one that's often running through so many of them is male ideologies against women. I mean, I don't want to, this is not to generalise, but this exists, right? Whether it is Islamism or whether it is neo-Nazi, far-right ideology, misogyny is often like a running theme. Why are we not looking at that as an ideology, a form of extremism in and of itself? And also, people might look at this and say, yeah, well, I've seen loads about violence against women and girls in the media. I've seen loads about that because, you know, this week we had a flurry of articles. But have you seen the coverage from this week?

Oh, God, tell me. So this week, a watchdog has said that violence against women and girls is a growing problem. Okay. So here's some of the headlines from the week. BBC News, violence against women and girls growing, comma, says watchdog. ITV news, violence against women and girls is a significant and growing problem, watchdog warns. Violence from who? Yeah, wait.

Violence from who? I just have this picture of this black cloud and it's like, I am violence against women and I'm just just growing and growing. Wait, what? And I just happened to be here. Also, I read that BBC news article from start to finish. There was not a single mention of man, male or men. Not a single mention.

In what world? In what world is male violence against women and girls declared a national emergency? And then yet we can't actually seem to talk about what's causing it. Yeah, we need to call it out. And men, women, all of us apart of that, this is our shared fight. If you are a man and you're listening and you are thinking, what on earth do I do? We have an episode from last series called Violence Against Women and Girls is a man's problem. We had two amazing guests.

Men. Men. We allowed men into the studio to speak about masculinity and to speak about isolation and loneliness and exclusion. And yeah, that's a great place to start if you're interested. 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 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. The Hulu original series Murdoch Death and the Family dives into secrets, deception, murder, and the fall of a powerful dynasty. Inspired by shocking actual events and drawing from the hit podcast, this series brings the drama to the screen like never before.

Starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette and Jason Clark. Watch the Hulu original series Murdoch Death in the Family. streaming October 15th on Disney Plus. Next story, as if the world needs more warfare this week has seen another major war threatening the world order. In DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, rebel M23 forces seized the eastern city of Goma in a bloody conflict that saw at least 900 people killed. A ceasefire was declared on Tuesday to ease what has rapidly become a dire humanitarian situation. Now, what is widely recognised by pretty much the world except for the Rwandan government is that Rwanda, the country next to DRC, backs the M23 rebels and has actually supported this territorial seizure with thousands of Rwandan troops.

This is also just the latest in a string of Rwandan-backed insurgencies that have sought to accept. exploit mineral-rich eastern DRC, violence that has not only seen hundreds of thousands of Congolese people displaced just this week, but millions over decades. Bombs have fallen on the camps where they are sheltering, sexual violence is used as a weapon of war, and for what? Now, significantly, among DRC's many natural resources are minerals like cobalt and in this area, Colton, an ingredient used in mobile phones all over the world, which is where we, Western onlookers, come in or should come in.

Now, it's possible that you did actually read about this African crisis in Congo in the news this week. But did you read about how in Kinshasa, the Dioces capital, people protesting against the crisis, attack not just the Rwandan embassy, but the US embassy, and the French embassy. You see, many of them blame Western governments for enabling this crisis. Many critics say that governments with economic and historical relationships with the Rwandan government have whitewashed their reputation over years and given them impunity on the world stage.

Do you remember, for example, that Rwandan deal that our last Tory government had as their sort of main policy of pride? Please, let me forget. I'm trying to forget it. The idea was we would deport our asylum seekers to Rwanda. Yay, problem solved. And to do this, our government had to hard insist that Rwanda had strong humanitarian credentials. They actually tried to write into law that it was a safe country for refugees. And even though Labor has now shut down this scheme, the idea has been toyed with by European political parties, such as in Germany, that they might take up the abandoned Rwandan deal. This is just one way that our governments and our political elites are.

giving Rwanda's president, Paul Gagami, a sense of impunity in this thorny issue with Congo, with their own vested interests. And of course, economic gain is among them. Last year, the EU signed a strategic minerals deal with Rwanda. Rwanda basically is a key supplier to the West of metals that power our tech and green energy revolutions, metals that Rwanda doesn't actually have mines capable of producing. So this is like blood diamonds, but it's blood colton. Exactly. In short, this African war happening over there on the African tab of your news page

is actually not as far from home as you might think. And I do want to take a moment to commend great reports this week in the Times, Al Jazeera and New York Times on those connections. But overall, this relationship between that African war and these Western prophets were pretty meager. You know what, though? I was, when you started talking about DRC, I was all ready to criticise the lack of coverage about the rebel forces seizing GOMA. But actually, truthfully, I've seen a lot of coverage. I've seen coverage on the BBC in The Guardian. And I don't think that it's the lack of coverage that needs to be criticised.

I think it's the lack of response. The response from government, sure, but also the response from us, from citizens here in the UK or here in the West, members of the public. and it reminded me of what South African comedian Tats and Conzo said on an episode of Media Storm last series and it was an episode about breaking out of the Western worldview. This was our episode on South African selection.

Yes. And Tats on this episode talks about what happens when people say, I can't believe this is happening. And I just think it's really relevant to this story. So here's what Tats had to say. the difficult thing to do is okay what am i going to do as a citizen the only way that people are going to give a shit is if it affects them guys go on to the world news and watch what is happening just in other countries if you did you would see there's so much to care about that it's easier

to not that's what happens to human beings but the postulating and thinking hey is this really happening? I can't, you know, in terms of Gaza and Ukraine and even the states, when people go, I can't believe this is happening. I want to slap them in the face. Because how long must you live to believe that this happens and your government does it? You live in the UK.

You live in America. Us who live in South Africa cannot be responsible citizens and still be baffled about why things are the way they are. Okay, give me our final News Watch story for today. This is while we were away, but I have to mention it. Okay. Front page article in The Telegraph, also published in The Sun, The Times, claiming one in 12 people in London are illegal migrants. One in 12?

Yeah, yeah, someone in the studio. Okay. Basically. Actually, though then, just last week, five days after the original article, there was a small correct. you probably didn't see on the Sun's website. It read, in fact, the figures cover only 7 million people, not the 4, 9 million London population. Okay, pretty bad.

Further, the 1 in 12 figure included some legal migrants. For instance, those given indefinite leave to remain, and some British-born children of migrants. What? Yeah. So, I'm sorry. So you're basically saying, oh, sorry, we just have to issue a correction, our entire statistic and story is incorrect, are bad.

And that, by the way, was the end of the correction. There was no like, oh, this was a mistake because we're mathematically challenged or, oh, we actually set out to lie. Like, there was just no explanation. It's just like this happened. I have two points. Firstly, what this tells us about immigration data today.

Immigration data, as it appears in our headlines, you may as well just ignore it. There is no integrity left in this. And it is coming from, there is this like unholy marriage between anti-migrant politicians, think tanks and media, which in theory should be acting as checks and balances on each other, right? Fact-checking each other's information, before publishing it, before using it to implement policy. However, when they have this shared agenda, which they do, the anti-migrant agenda serves them all so well.

You know, politicians get to paint villains that distract from their failures and present them as saviors. Think tanks get legitimacy and they get funding and the media gets these fearmongering headlines that get them clicks. They also will get to go to each other's Christmas parties and shag each other and just like feel a bit better about being racist and classist. So yeah, you just can't believe these numbers anymore. And honestly, whenever I see one, I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to stay awake or night and fact check this because if I don't or if someone doesn't, they will just go through and they will just pass. And thank God in this case, someone did fact check it and someone went to the effort of calling it out and a cruise. correction had to be filed. The thing is, though, and I agree with all your points, but like, even if someone does the

work to falsify the data, what actually happens? Like, I saw the original article, but I didn't see that correction. Right? And that's the problem. Lies spread way faster than the truth. And so the second thing this tells us is about media regulation, about correction culture. It's so insufficient. This tiny correction guaranteed none of the people who published the original headline published the correction and no one who saw the original headline saw the correction. I think that if you published a front page story and that is wrong, you then have to publish a front page story saying

we were wrong, right? You have to publish the correction where you published the original fake news story. That would be absolutely incredible. It would because it would be embarrassing. It would rightly undermine your reliability to your readers and it would therefore actually incentivize you not to do it in the first place. Yes. And this is exceptionally frustrating. because the misinformation can get printed and the correction can be buried and then the damage is done. And it's not the first time we've spoken about this

on Media Storm. It actually reminded me just now of an episode from series one. Okay, so we're talking like back in 2021. I think it was our fourth ever episode of Media Storm. And I remember it was some outlandish claim about trans people printed in the Times. And then I had researched that statistic that they'd printed.

And I researched it, till the cows came home and I couldn't find it anywhere. So I emailed the Times and I said, where did you get this statistic from? Anyway, I've just realised that like over three years later, I'm still waiting for the response. And then, anyway, I realized this kind of like yesterday. And then this led me down a rabbit hole

of like searching corrections and clarifications on the Times website. Okay. And, okay, we are 38 days into 2025. and there have been 20 corrections listed on the Times website. That's what you said about they would have to print their clarifications on the front page. Yeah, yeah, that would have been half of their stories or 2025. 20 front pages, we were wrong. Now, on News Watch, we're dissecting the biggest stories of the week.

And the issue is, is that there's something going on that should be the biggest stories. story of every week. And that is what has been happening and is still happening in Palestine. Western governments, including our government, complicit in what has been called a genocide. And it doesn't feel right to not mention Palestine on every news watch. So each week, we're going to keep our eyes on Palestine. Okay, so this week, what do our eyes need to be on? Well, yes, there was a ceasefire in Gaza. But now, Israel has increased their attacks in the West Bank. And the fact this is happening under the guise of any kind of ceasefire in the war on Palestine

actually shows how manipulative Netanyahu is. Now, this week, Netanyahu flew to the US as the first foreign leader invited by the new President Trump. We are beginning to see each's plan for the Middle East. For Trump, it is basically evacuate Gaza and America will take control and develop it into the region's Riviera. i.e. his personal property paradise. For Netanyahu, the plan is to turn attention to the West Bank. Trump reportedly gave Netanyahu a green light to annex parts of the West Bank in exchange for this Gaza ceasefire deal.

And Trump did all of this whilst kind of claiming credit for the ceasefire deal. So like anyone who thought Trump would be the stop the war president needs to look closer. So rather than a peace plan, what we're seeing now is just two. world leaders taking their chunk of what is already the most contested territory in the world. It is like just another territorial claim in the land of Palestinian people. And for Gazans, well, they've, you know what, they've already faced a joint war for their land by Israel and the US because US is fully complicit. Provided arms all the way throughout. Exactly. Trump has said that pretty much all the 2.2 million residents of Gaza would love to

settle in a different piece of land if only they were given the opportunity and he's going to give them this great great piece of unidentified land yeah this is ethnic cleansing dressed up as compassionate intention yeah and also you know taking an entire refugee population and putting them in another chunk of land isn't that how this crisis all started in the first place is that just me I just think the hypocrisy of countries like the US who take proportionally so few refugees also telling countries like Jordan and Egypt who already take proportionally way more than the US does that the moral thing to do is take more refugees

and in this case refugees who actually want to go home when these governments and politicians are normally telling refugees who really need sanctuary that they have to go home. There's just like no pretense at logic. Right, they're literally like, go home unless you're Palestinian. And just to refocus on the West Bank where Israel has increased violent operations,

I wanted to highlight one particular story that just didn't get the coverage it deserved. And that is that, on the 25th of January, Leila al-Qatib was shot by an Israeli soldier. She was shot after the soldiers fired into the family's home in a village south of Jenin. Layla was two years old. I'm bringing this up here to say that the horrors of the Palestinians perpetrated by Israel continue and will continue after the ceasefire and while Western leaders stay silent. And while we are celebrating a ceasefire, children are still being murdered. And that's why I'm bringing this up here because we need to keep our eyes on this.

Thank you for listening. Tomorrow we have another episode dropping featuring a deep dive into how the media reports, if at all, on FGM. Joining us will be Dr. Layla Hussain and Ifra Ahmed. He might have seen in episode one of the Channel 4 documentary Matilda took part in. Our deep dive will be out from 5am tomorrow. If you want to support Media Storm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-out to everyone in our Patreon community already.

We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed 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 Helena Wardier and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast

produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire.