Media Storm - Q&A Special: Ask your hosts anything!

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

This week your Media Storm hosts Mathilda and Helena answer all your questions - from hellish headlines to book recommendations to life with or without a fringe. Some current affairs are covered, including the Manchester synagogue attack and an update on the flotilla detainees. But we also dive into personal, professional and even philosophical questions. Plus, we even put on our Agony Aunt hats and advise on listener dilemmas: from trying not to look like a ‘conspiracy-theory-nut’, to taking on teachers at your children’s school. We didn't have enough time to cover all your questions so there will be a Q&A PART TWO very soon, we promise. If you want to submit a question, you can do so by signing up to our ⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi Media Stormers. Welcome to this very special Patreon-led Q&A episode. I'm so excited. Guys, there are so many, there are so many questions. We didn't have to make up any. Thank you so much for all of your questions. It really means a lot to us. and Patreon really means a lot to us.

Yeah, Patreon for people who are not aware is a platform that enables you to directly fund creators like us. We have a basic sort of subscription model. You can sign up to the price of a cup of coffee a month and help provide Helena and I with the caffeine fuel we need to keep Media Storm going and also some of the money. Yeah, also that little thing. But it is super important to us.

We love chatting to you. If you sign up to our Patreon, and there's direct access to Matilda and I. You can ask us questions any time. There's so many questions. I don't know if we're going to be able to get through them all. We might have to split this in two episodes. But let's just see how we go.

Okay, well, let's start then. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Mallinson. This week's Media Storm. Oskirts, anything you want. Anything. Anything you want.

Whatever you want to know. Nothing is off the table. Okay. Our first question is from Marie. What is your favorite act of microfeminism? I love this question. Okay. So I refuse to move out of the way of a man on the street. So is microfeminism just like an everyday act that one woman does or one feminist does? Exactly. A small act of feminism. So once you start, honestly, once you start noticing how often women have to move around men on like, pavements or public transport. It is wild. So I literally refuse to do it. I just stop in front of them until they move out the way. How do you get anywhere? What about another one? I always think about names with feminism. So like for all my wedding invitations, if I was inviting a heterosexual couple, I wrote the woman's name first. Yes. That's feminism. Okay, that told me what my

favorite act of microfeminism is, which is that my husband took my surname. Yes. Got married. Friends here in the UK are like, wait, wait, no way. And so it's, it's, starts a conversation that it's actually crazy that it isn't already a conversation. Like when a couple gets married, when a heterosexual couple gets married, you discuss, oh, is the woman going to take the husband's surname or are they going to double barrel or will they just keep separate names? But you never discuss will he take her name? And that is insane. It is insane that that is not on the table. Love it. It's a great conversation starter. Okay, next question. Okay, the next question is from Jamie. In recent episodes, you've name-checked a couple of

journalists at high-profile newspapers whose work you respect, but they sounded like they were in pretty senior positions and had been there a long time. Would it be possible for someone to start a job at a news outlet next week and produce good journalism? Or do the internal structures now make it impossible? Oh, I think yes, it's always, always possible to produce good journalism inside a mainstream or legacy newsroom. Those newsrooms are full of fantastic journalists and amazing stories. I think a lot of it depends on the people around you in the newsroom, the people who are in a higher position than you, helping you and not hindering you.

You know, if you have a line manager that's pushing you to come up with fresh ideas and someone who doesn't like steal your stories or hate you, not that I'm speaking from experience or anything, then, you know, it's going to be easier. You've got to stand your ground, but, you know, it is possible. You do have to stand your ground. I remember the first piece I had published that I was really proud of and it was I think one month into my first proper job. I had basically decided to go into journalism, I know, two years before from the inside of a refugee camp I was working in because of all the stories that weren't being published or were being published

terribly and inaccurately. And then yeah, one month in I got my first piece. published and it was about the impact of COVID in this exact refugee camp. And I thought, God, I set out to like get a piece in a mainstream paper that wasn't horrible and I've done it. I would caveat that by saying that I spent many nights up putting it together because it was something I was commissioned to do in my working hours, but I was given the space to do it in my own time. During my working hours, I was publishing pieces about like why everyone is going crazy about strawberries on TikTok. Right, right. Exactly. I would say some of the pieces I'm most proud of were the ones I did in my quote unquote spare time. Yeah, unpaid in our spare time.

And so it should not have to work like that. Like it shouldn't have to work on junior journalists slaving away in order to do the journalism that actually made them go into the industry. But that is the reality. And there are a lot of, I would say a lot of people go into journalism because they actually have a sense of social justice and they have a sense of accountability and so there are people definitely doing that. For junior journalists, you can push to get what you want and you can push back against publishing stuff you don't want, but it gets easier the more confident you get and you get better. Like you just get better at journalism. Okay, next question. What can we do as people on the ground about rising bigotry in the press in politics and society? Generally, I'm personally

tired of seeing unchallenged racism and transphobia, sometimes even before I've had my breakfast that morning. I'd really love to convert that anger into action. That is a big question. Okay. But we have answers. I heard Gina Martin, um, incredible feminist, activist, workshop facilitator who was on Media Storm in our very first series. I heard her say recently, put your feet where your mouth is and that just really stuck with me. If we really care about things, if you really care about something, turn up to every single protest because there needs to be a visible presence. Now, of course, I understand that not everybody can protest if you have disabilities or you broke your foot or something. But you can sign petitions, you can

email your MP and crucially, you can talk, just talk to people, talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to people who have a different opinion to you, ask them questions. Like if a friend or family member says something that could be using your example, transphobic, ask them, what do you mean by that? You know, say, oh, I don't see it that way because of X, Y, Z. Open a dialogue and just find some common ground. It sounds small, but it really does challenge people's perspectives, even in the smallest ways.

Another thing I think you can do is boycott, product boycotts. If a brand that you use does something transphobic or racist or, I don't know, advertisers on a hate-filled platform. Stop using it. As an example, the BDS movement, boycott divest sanctions, has proven to be really pretty successful in terms of boycotting products that directly fund Israel's military. Similarly, companies that do good support them. Put your money where your mouth is. Look, I do think we're at a junction in society. I have a very two steps forward, one step back view of history. And I think that we are entering a one step back, a slide into fascism and silence is not enough right now and the time has come to choose like which side of

history you want to be in but look I don't actually even like this phrasing choose which side of history you want to be on because I think we need to take people with us and not just like save our own souls and run down the right road this is really really important division is dangerous and polarization in our society this is radicalization like you can inadvertently play into the radicalization of others. So if you have the energy, always start with patience and understanding when you encounter a point of disagreement. Here people's grievances. Work out the topics you can do this for. Like where it is genuinely traumatic or firsthand, I don't expect people to have that grace. Leave it to others. Feel your righteous rage. We need anger as well.

but where you have the energy and privilege to start from a point of empathy, always do so. There is a science to de-radicalisation. For example, recently I re-recorded a reel I made. It was about how our media had immediately republished propaganda claims by Israel's government that the flotilla, the Gaza flotilla that I was on, wasn't carrying aid. I said, I did the fact checking for you because I was there as a journalist. Here's the footage to completely falsify the propaganda you've just reprinted. My partner watched it and he said, could you redo it but less angrily?

I think it will track better. I was actually quite offended because I liked it. But I thought about it and I did. And it's, I don't know, it's got like a million views and I'm really, really glad that the tone it goes out with is not. It's a little bit sarcastic, I'm not going to lie, but it's not angry. And so I would say, in your activism, ask, are you pushing more people away than you're bringing with you? This is important. Okay, next question from Marie.

Any advice on how to make people aware of the lack of real reporting by the mainstream forward slash legacy media without sounding like a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist? With friends, I usually have the time to go into nuances, but you don't always have that luck. Sometimes you don't have enough knowledge on a certain topic yet to immediately give all the facts and figures. But saying, I wouldn't trust most mainstream media to give you the facts can easily sound like you're a conspiracy theory. I love that question. Yeah, that's so true. That's a battle. You know, once again, at MediaStone, we've never wanted anyone to not trust the mainstream media to give them the facts. We just want people to be able to read the mainstream media, you know, with a critical eye. And on the whole, you know, the mainstream media does give facts.

They're just too often buried under bias. So maybe instead of saying, I wouldn't trust the mainstream media to give you the facts, maybe try saying, have you thought about the bias of this article? Because then that helps people try and understand the outlets, alignments, you know, who owns them and to read beyond those kind of clickbait headlines. Okay. Examples, specific examples and evidence. When we started Media Storm, it was with a really specific and singular point of criticism.

Why doesn't this article speak to anyone it's actually talking about? Hundreds of articles on refugees, not a single refugee quoted. Thousand culture war fodder items on trans rights, not a single trans voice. This breaks the first rule of journalism, so it is not hard to argue that this is not good journalism. This argument we have found to be so strong. I took it up in my first workplace. This is where Helena and I met, and this is where we became co-warriers on the topic. So I wrote to the editor with several criticisms. One, why do we use the term illegal immigrant to describe something that has no basis of criminality under the law?

Two, here are 50 articles we published this week about asylum seekers, none of which speak to a single asylum seeker. So his response was like, one, oh, I didn't know that the law was like that, but we've got to, you know, use the term illegal immigrant because it's so normalized. It's the term everyone understands. Two, oh, yeah, that's pretty hard to argue with. Like, maybe it is bad that we publish those articles without those voices. I can see that's a problem. That was the one point he really just, like, accepted. So my point is, if you want to help people understand that the media they rely on is not as reliable as they have probably we've been raised to expect it to be. There is a way to open that door and I would go in

with a really, really specific example. Okay, next question. Lauren, what are your favorite fiction books or what is a great book you've read recently? I love this question. Tilda's always reading. Yeah, I don't know, I realized a few years ago that I was only reading news or nonfiction and I was like very disturbed by this and I made it a rule to only read fiction and I've been doing that for a few years now. So I've got a long list. Hannah, can you go first? Because I've got to look up some authors. Okay. She knows them so well. Books to recommend Google. Okay, so I would say my favourites are probably girl, woman, other, by Bernadine Everisto. I also really liked The Power by Naomi Alderman, even though I know it has flaws.

More recently, I've enjoyed The List by Yomi Adagocke. I enjoyed in case of emergency by Porna Bell. And not to be like a complete East London cliche, but I enjoyed tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zeven and I'm reading evenings and weekends by O'Shea McKenna, just like every other person on the overground in Hackney. But honestly, like, I go through really big fiction slash nonfiction phases for about five years. I was only reading nonfiction and, like, feminist literature, essays. Like, I love Roxanne Gay's writing. I'm reading Sean Faye's Love and Exile. Just finished Fern Brady's autobiography called Strong Female Character, which is such a good book about being

misdiagnosed and about how women with autism are still massively misunderstood. This answer kind of makes it sound like a really big bookworm, but honestly, during my English literature degree, I swear to God I read one book in three years. Oh, but I do have one final thing to say, which is a plug for my friend's book, which is coming out in January. It is fiction. It's called Family Drama by Rebecca Fallon. So keep an eye out for it because I think it's going to be big. Okay. Okay. Not a hot take, but I just discovered or rediscovered Gabriel Garcia-Makez and if I was stranded on a desert island I would take a hundred days of solitude with me. I will read that again and again in my life. I like books that really

take me inside a subculture or like a historical culture that is real but that I know nothing about but that I can learn a lot from. So Arundati Roy, the god of small things that destroyed me. They're There by Tommy Orange. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. What a name. Olga Tokachuk. Tukukuk, how do you say her name? She is one of the best writers ever and she writes Drive Your Plow and I read that and I was like,

why don't we have more novels where the protagonist is like a crazy old lady that's just genius. Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah. Shimamanda got me obsessed with exclusively reading novels about women in West Africa for a long time

but my favourite remains her half of a yellow sun. Is that like enough for now? Oh, more than enough. More than enough. I'll be reading all year. Our next question, had to hide some of the details to protect the identity of the person and the school in question,

but a patron has told us that their child's secondary school is holding a careers fair, and one of the presentations is from an arms company who supply drones to Israel. Now, we have fact-checked this. The company presenting at this careers fair does indeed have a partnership with the British Ministry of Defence producing armoured drones, which have previously been in regular use over Gaza. So this patron says that the arms company has a factory near where this person lives that's been the scene of many protests. However, their child school is incredibly multicultural and they really feel angered by the inclusion of this arms company. Our patron says they have been given an evening's presentation in a few weeks and I would like advice on how to approach senior management at the school about this.

I'm so shocked that companies with such ethics are allowed to present in schools anyway, any advice would be appreciated. So this is tricky. I guess the first thing I'd say is we don't have children so we don't have experience with dealing with schools or senior management. But what can you do? Yeah, you can make the school aware. You can calmly ask senior management, you know, do you know what this company manufactures? Bring stats and facts with you if necessary.

Like print them out on a sheet if you want. And if they go ahead with it, I would take further action. I would say, I'm not going to allow my child to attend this session. You can also ask other parents to boycott the presentation with you because if the school doesn't pull the evening presentation, well, they can't give a presentation without an audience, right? There is power in community and parents joining together. But I don't know, Tilda, what do you think? I guess I would have a slightly different approach. I agree this is really upsetting.

I'll be furious. But this is also the world we live in. So is it a learning opportunity? I mean, these kids are in secondary school. Presumably they're old enough to have these conversations and actually that is a necessity and they will confront career choices with these ethical dilemmas throughout their life.

So if the school wants to include this session, I would say a part of that session needs to be focused on the ethics of the job and that needs to involve tough questions and it needs to come from the school. That doesn't need to be your burden. The school will need to prepare a line of questioning I would say for the representative of the sector of the company,

with specific examples relating to this company, to the genocide in Gaza, and generally an industry that profits from war. And then I would say the kids can make up their own mind based of that, as they will have to do so in the real world. I did actually put this question to my husband this morning because he is like a pacifist or an aspiring pacifist. So when he was growing up in Germany, God, he's like sounds like a million years old. There was mandatory conscription.

And, you know, he conscientiously objected, so he had to explain his reasons for doing so. And he says, for him, the bigger philosophical question is, how do you raise a pacifist? Or how do you raise someone who objects to systematic violence? Because manufacturing war is a massive business. There's good evidence to believe that these endless wars are happening because so many people are financially invested.

Like there are too many people in this world who have an interest in warfare, somewhere in the world, being a constant. Since the war in Gaza began, stocks in weapons producers have gone up. Is that a reason to invest in weapons manufacturers? No, it's a reason to raise a pacifist. We've got a question that is about a story this week. What do you think about the reporting around the synagogue attack in Manchester.

Okay, so for those of you who don't know, last Thursday, two people were killed and we believe three are still in a serious condition after a car ramming and a stabbing attack outside a synagogue in Manchester. The perpetrator is 35-year-old Jihad al-Shameh, a British citizen of Syrian descent. The two victims are Adrian Dolby

and Melvin Kravitz. Adrian Dolby died after being hit by police gunfire. This is when they were trying to take down the attacker. Now this was a targeted attack and it's been treated as terrorism. I can definitely praise the speed of the reporting because it's such a horrendous thing to have happened and it's scary to think that it could have been so much worse had it not been for the heroic actions of many people that day inside the synagogue who blocked the entrance to the synagogue where the attacker was trying to enter.

Yeah, just to start this, I think a place of worshipped being attacked, any place of worship being attacked is horrendous, let alone on one of the most important days in the Jewish calendar. I know from my Jewish friends that people are scared. People are thinking twice about going to their synagogues and that's incredibly upsetting and a sign of the deepening divides at play in the world today. But aside from the speed of the reporting, and I guess, guess the gathering of the eyewitnesses, which are central to the investigation, I don't think that

the headlines or articles or reports have actually helped heal those deepening divides. And I was particularly disappointed by Channel 4 News, who I have to say we very rarely call out on Media Storm, but their headline was police to be given more powers to restrict protests in wake of synagogue attack. Now, this directly links. the synagogue attack with protests. And of course, the protests that they're talking about are the protests calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, protests calling on members of the global Sumid Flotilla to be protected.

This is a direct link and it is unacceptable for our mainstream media to be perpetuating that narrative. Divisive, yeah, would be the resounding takeaway for me. How did I find the coverage? Divisive, like we talked about earlier, this is dangerous, dangerously divisive times. I can say that this occurred just after the flotilla abduction and the first releases. And so media had scheduled interviews with people, civilian activists who had attempted to get aid to Gaza

and had been blocked from doing so unlawfully. And they cancelled these interviews. Because of the synagogue attack, they said it wasn't appropriate anymore. The government did this as well. They came out and they actually tried to link the attempt. to the activism on the flotilla and to pro-Palestine anti-genocide protests. And what this does

is this feeds a cycle of violence. It locks these issues into conflict with one another. When they are the same, people are fighting hate and violence and people want to break the cycle of violence. The flotilla was a pacifist operation, so pacifist that every single individual was trained to not aggress even in self-defense. If you are violently attacked, you do not rise. That was the mantra and the training of the flotilla.

So to imply that this is responsible for violence is to fundamentally miss what is actually responsible for violence. It was similar with, you know, the 7th of October reporting a lot of what I saw was that the burden of explaining and answering for rising anti-Semitism is repeatedly being put on those who are opposing genocide and violence. This is backwards. And actually it's anti-Semitic. That in itself is anti-Semitic because it erases the Jewish people who are week after

week marching in those pro-Palestine marches, a huge Jewish bloc who are standing in solidarity with Palestine and against the actions of the Israeli government. Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic and our media need to break that cycle. And Jewish people also, by the way, on board, the flotilla who were singled out by Bangavir, Israeli foreign minister in the prison, individually lectured that they were terrorists by him

for being Jewish, being targeted for being Jewish. Yeah, we are seeing deepening divisions. Listen, only on Saturday a mosque in Peace Haven was set on fire with two people inside. Thankfully, they managed to escape. It's not the first attack on a mosque in the UK

in recent months. In September, masked individuals held paving slabs through the window of Elaf Mosque in Stockport. Also in September, a mosque in Staffordshire was graffitied with anti-Islam slogans. In Scotland, a mosque window was smashed. Just yesterday, Zaytuna Community Mosque in Birmingham experienced an act of racist vandalism. Now, if you don't know about these incidents, you need to ask yourself why. Where were these incidents in the media? And if they weren't there, why weren't they there? And these divisions will continue to get worse if the media chooses to fuel them.

them, as we have seen in the wake of the Manchester Synagogue attack. The coverage we need is about community sticking together. So a little praise for the Guardian who led with the headline, We are one community. This will not break us. Manchester reacts to the synagogue attack. It was a piece about how residents in Manchester insist that their diverse neighbourhood will stick together. Now, not everyone in the piece had the same views about Israel and Palestine, but at least it was a focus on bringing people together, not driving them apart. Did you lock the front door? Check.

Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web. Uh, I'm looking into it.

Stress less about secure. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more. Conditions apply. What is your favorite part of your work? Great question. My favorite part of work is when my perspective gets shifted on a topic when talking to a guest. Not necessarily something that I disagree with, but when I learn something.

something that I just didn't know before. It's such a good feeling. And when I think about something in a different way, also feeling like I'm making a difference, like when people say, oh, listening to media storms really help me. It just feels really good. It does feel really good. We love your messages. My favorite thing about my work is that it pulls me out of my comfort zone again and again and again. And I love being out of my comfort zone, but it's hard to step out of my comfort zone. So I like I have a job that pulls me out. And that brings me face to face with people who have totally different life experiences to me. And being able to exchange ideas with people like that is such a source of self growth. And I will always be immensely grateful

for every encounter like that, even though sometimes they're difficult. is there an episode you've done that has changed your perspective to jump out to me one would be our episode on sex work um not because i was anti sex work before doing the episode but just because i got a way better understanding of what work means and the role that work plays in our society and also a way better understanding and shift in perspective of what it is like for sex workers in the real world another episode that shift in my perspective would be our episode we did on sanctions. I just had no concept that sanctions could be a negative thing. So yeah, what about you? As to your sex work point, I would say that my dad talks all the time about the episode on sex work and says that it completely, completely transformed his view on it. For me, fat phobia was one that really stayed with me. It's something that I

just had never thought about in terms of how mainstream and acceptable a form of bigotry and hate it is and how devastating its consequences are. Pedophilia. Oh my God, I mean, wow. Yeah.

We did, okay, maybe that needs some explaining. But this was an episode about people clinically diagnosed with, or self-diagnosed with paedophilia, which is a clinical disorder by most definitions, but have never acted on it, people who are entirely crimeless and will always be entirely crimeless, but don't know how to cope with a condition that they get absolutely no help with. And if they seek help with it, then they will be reported. That was

really eye-opening. Incredibly eye-opening and took a lot of empathy in order to do that episode. And actually, like for that episode, and also an episode we did about terrorism and the fine line between terrorism and freedom fighting, both of those really changed my perspective, but not just on the topic, on the public, on our audience, because I think with both of them, I was really bracing myself for a backlash. And so many people wrote in to say,

thank you for doing this episode, this really changed my perspective. I struggled with it at the beginning, but I sort of came to and now I'm recommending it. I just thought that like restored so much faith in people's ability to have open minds to question hard learned stereotypes and that was a really optimistic learning. Jamie says, oh, kind of on a similar note, are there any topics that you've tried to do episodes on but have not been able to perhaps because you couldn't access the right interviewees

or you couldn't find a way to frame the conversation that fit. with a media storm approach. Very good question. I mean, as we just described with unoffending paedophiles, I don't think we shy away from anything. Yeah, we don't try away from anything. On a few occasions, we've really struggled to get the guests.

We've normally prevailed. One outstanding episode, which we really want to publish, is about Yazidi women. Yazidi people are a Kurdish-speaking, religious group, indigenous to mountainous areas of the Middle East, have been incredibly, incredibly persecuted. We have actually got a really amazing episode

with some really amazing interviews, but we have not published it and we will not publish it until we have the most important voice and really what we need as a Yazidi woman. It's been difficult for a lot of reasons. Trust in media is incredibly and deservedly very low. But if there's anyone that you know

who might speak to us, then do let us know if you want to hear that episode. Okay, a little fun question here. How did having a fringe go for you, Matilda? If you remember, I think we started last series with the revelation that Matilda got a fringe. Yeah, I'm not a fringe, like personality, I would say. I didn't, I like the fringe. Yeah.

And then the fringe sort of stopped being a fringe and I didn't really think about it because I don't know what to say. Like, it wasn't like the maintenance was a problem for me. I think with curly hair, you can just kind of let it do its thing. But it just doesn't feel like my personality is fringe. Yeah, I agree, actually. So well-recognised. Also, I'm not going to lie, I'm thinking about getting like a little curtain fringe situation next week. So I'll keep everyone updated.

Don't worry. It's the most important part of Media Storm. Our next question is from Corrin. He says one of the things you do really well on MediaStorm and your Newswatch segment is call out mainstream newspapers and media for biased or misleading reporting and headlines. When we as individuals see that ourselves in the news, what more can we be doing to challenge that? Complaints to the news agencies themselves often are ignored or take weeks to get a response by which point the story has. moved on and the damage by the reporting is already done and posting or sharing anything on social media drawing attention to that can feel a little like shouting into the void.

Great question. Side note, Corrin is my mate and an avid media storm supporter. Hi, we appreciate you. Corrin also sent me four more questions, one of which was about my husband's hair care routine and another of which was about football in which it honestly took me ages to work out that it was even a question about football because I didn't even understand or recognize any of the names or the words in the question. Like honestly, even reading the question 10 times. I was like, I don't even understand what team he's talking about. So yeah, I know we said no topic off limits, but my God, football is off limits for me.

Rijive has beautiful hair. That is true. Rijive being Helen's husband. I would quite like to know the answer to that question. Okay. I will get Rijive to record a special Q&A where he exclusively. talks about his hair care routine. In terms of Corrid's actual question, what can we do as individuals to call out media

mishaps? I still think it is worth making a complaint to Ipso. Definitely. I definitely do think that, like, Media Storm and others in the industry, we follow up on these complaints and publish and shame outlets with the most complaints, the daily mail, and we shame individual reports that have the most complaints, GB News being overtly homophobic. it gives us material to do what we do. And these complaints, you know,

these are not top-down establishment criticisms that GB News can use to present themselves as like anti-establishment. These are grassroots, individual, humans who hate what they do. It is actually hard, even as a journalist, not to feel a little bit ashamed when that happens. I understand, though, that filing a complaint at Ipso, when Ipso actually doesn't really have any power to really change how the press behave.

is frustrating and doesn't always feel like enough. I feel like we might have to move away from newsroom accountability and towards individual accountability. Like if I wrote an article or a headline that was really misleading and then somebody tagged me individually on social media rather than like, let's say I was working with them standard, like tagged the evening standard. If they tagged me individually and said, this is wrong, I feel like I would feel a way greater responsibility or sense of shame.

So maybe it's about calling out journalists individually. Yeah. I'd say maybe message them privately first. Maybe an honest mistake. But yeah, then tag them if it's like a repeat pattern and or you get no reply. Honestly, though, what I would say about these news outlets is they need to feel it financially. That's the only way they are going to pay attention. There are boycotts.

Stop funding hate is an organization that tries to make hate unprofitable by persuading advertisers to basically pull their support from publications, news outlets that spread hate and division. You can subscribe and they have calls to action. And it really does work. Like very recently, stop funding hate got the kitchenware company, Lakeland, to pull their advertising from GB News. So it really does work. I hope that helps.

And I'll get Rijiv to DMU, his hair care routine. Please. Also, recommend Media Storm to everyone you know. That's probably the best way that you can tackle this from. problem in the media. So true. We also have a question from Ritty. One of the aspects of media storm that stands out so much is the empathy that both of you have for every single person you interview. How do you maintain that empathy in a situation where you're speaking to someone you completely disagree with? And how can listeners bring empathy to any discussions with those on the

other side of the political spectrum, which may be more and more important over the next couple of years. Another great question. That is lovely. I would say an example that like jumps into my head is the episode we did about the rise of the far right. And I think going into that episode, you know, I was a bit scared and I was kind of just frustrated because that is a problem that directly affects communities of colour. And it takes a lot of empathy to understand why somebody might be racist, right? People can say to you, oh, like we need to live. lead with love and care, but like if somebody's being racist, you want to be like, well, I can't do that, you know, kind of easy for you to say. The thing that made me have empathy

was finding out how they were radicalised and it was subtle and it was incessant and it was slow. I didn't have a choice in the matter. They got radicalised to the far right. And now that I know that, I can use everything in my power to call out the way that the far right operates and I can bring more attention to that issue and that all came from empathy. Yeah. And I think it's actually quite easy on Media Storm because our remit is to talk to the people who are spoken to last, right? We generally are not interviewing the power brokers, government officials, people who profit from this hate. We're generally into. viewing normal people.

That makes empathy easier for me because I genuinely do not allocate blame for the spread of hate at the doorstep of most individuals. But I would say that when I get into conversations with people that I consider genuinely accountable and responsible, I am not actually famous for always keeping my call. But that's just an honest answer. Me neither. okay this one is for matilda do you have an update on the people detained in israel from the flotilla and how are you feeling um i feel oh the first day that i was okay was yesterday before then

i i was not okay um but yesterday was the day that almost almost everyone um on board the flotilla that i was on board was released and that leaves six maybe six seven people still inside. There's a few of us who've been like really ardently tracking this and our numbers don't all line up. So we're a little bit concerned about that. This is probably when attention is most needed. But I feel much more okay to give that attention

without just feeling really deeply traumatized and emotional and attached to so many people inside. There has also been a new wave of boats that was illegally abducted last night. Seized by the Israeli military at about 4.30 a.m., 120 nautical miles from Gaza. so well into international waters. Not that any of these boats have ever been abducted by Israel in Israeli waters.

So I will continue to report. But I am feeling much more okay now than I was in the days leading up to now. So thank you for asking. And what I would also say is the story of these people's detention is not about these people, right, who are on board the flotilla. They have almost all been released because the governments of the world even if they don't support what they did, can't really allow them to be illegally detained, and that is not true for Palestinians.

And I just want to share the testimony of one participant, and when she arrived back home in Finland, this is a friend called Shifa, and she said that the thing that most disturbed her during her imprisonment in Israel was that there were the names of Palestinian men written inside her cell, and they found this cloth, which they used to clean, and it had the name embroidered into it, Abu Allah.

That means Father of Allah. And she says, I am home, but where is Abu Allah? Where is Allah's father? What have they done with him? And I do think that needs to be the resounding story here. And this next question kind of fits in with the previous question, which is from Lila. And they say, I was wondering how you manage your energy to keep doing everything you do and to still find joy when times feel so dark.

I hate that low energy or poor mental. health issues can get in the way of taking action for things I care about. Any tips on how to find a sustainable balance in any aspect of life actually would be gratefully received. Really important question. Therapy. Therapy, go to therapy, be in therapy, everything in life in therapy. For real, I have been super anxious and overwhelmed.

And I bought up in therapy about how I was just kind of struggling to find. function as a, well, as a journalist, but also just as a human being in the world that we're in at the moment. And my therapist was like giving me all these techniques, breathing and listening to music. And I was like, what? I'm not allowed to breathe. I'm not allowed to bring me. I don't have time to breathe. But you do have time to breathe. And also, we were talking in that session about the concept of radical acceptance. Like, I have to accept that there is racism in the world. I have to accept that occasionally I'm going to be scared walking down the street. I have to accept that there is a genocide going on in Palestine.

These kind of things are really difficult to accept. But if you radically accept them and then you use your energy not to be overwhelmed that these things are happening, then you can use that energy to figure out what you can do about it. I didn't know what you meant when you said radical acceptance, but it makes sense. I've been giving a lot of secondhand therapy to Matilda recently. Yeah, I'd love to be able to recommend therapy, but I have always postponed therapy, even on occasions where I probably definitely needed it.

But I have Helena, so why do I need the therapist? Yeah, can you pay me 200 pounds an hour? I also find that joy comes in community. You can make very big changes with very small actions. Okay, so maybe you don't have the mental health capacity or the energy to march and approach. protest for hours, but maybe you make dinner for your friend who is tired after marching for hours. Maybe you send someone a playlist of songs that make you feel in an activist mode.

You know, that is still community, that is still taking action, that is still giving back. So it also say, like, don't be so hard on yourself. Community is actually like the answer to this, I think. What I would say is I have worked in some pretty harsh environments where people have not always been able to. to strike that balance and I am of the belief and I have always been of the belief that that balance is essential and I have always tried to force people to have fun. An example I would give would be working in Dunkirk which is where many, many asylum seekers hoping to reach the UK are living in states of absolute destitute homelessness and there's no infrastructure at all state or to be

honest even charity to deal with it and um those of us who were there trying to do so were just flailing around um they are still there and they are doing an amazing amazing job mobile refugee support support them that this is a fantastic organization but look when i was there and and it was still quite new and like finding its feet everyone sorry guys i love you everyone was just clinically depressed and had no coping mechanisms and when i came home i found it really hard to be home i found like I couldn't get excited to go to some party or like I felt guilty and I just can get excited about it and then I thought I'm losing the capacity to be helpful to anyone like this. Firstly, why should my friends feel judged but for having a good time by me because probably

they did feel that way? That's not right. And I thought about why, why am I doing this? Like, why do I care about refugee rights? And the reason is because I think that everybody deserves to have a good life everybody deserves to have the basic space safety and essential needs to then experience joy and fun and love and laughter and if that's what i believe then that applies to me as well and there's no guilt in having a good time joy is also very radical yeah our next question is from elsa we believe that's how we say your name we apologize if we're not taking it correctly. They say, I would love to know what outlets and media platforms you recommend using that

report things better and things that the mainstream media don't pick up on. My default has always been the BBC, but I know that isn't the best. What about social media platforms? Are there any that are useful and or not horrible? Good question. If you are looking for news on a specific topic, for example, LGBT Plus news, I would go to outlets like Queer A.F. We've had Jamie from Queer AF on Media Storm before. It is just really truly brilliant and you can also support them for a fee each month. Similarly, stories revolving

around women, sexism, misogyny. I would go to Cheer Up Love. We had Eliza from Cheer Up Love on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. We're talking about social media. I also think something that is so underrated is using pop culture to help us digest the news. Oh, you would, wouldn't you. Well, of course I would. But genuinely, social media platforms like shit you should care about, St. Hoax, they break down the weak stories. And it's also really freaking funny. Real housewives, blowdeck. What's that restaurant one you look? Hand-a-pump rules. Really reliable information sources. Oh, my God. Don't be so sarcastic. I have learned so much from reality TV. You are very emotionally intelligent.

Thank you. I can't even give you. Yeah, I can give you that. But other bigger platforms, not social media-led, the Byline Times. Yeah, they literally have a media storm column, so that tells you all you need to know about their standards. Also, open democracy, the intercept, also local media like the Bristol Cable. Press Gazette is a good one. Press Gazette reports about the media.

Okay, look, one I really love is the new humanitarian. This is a news outlet that isn't swayed in its content by culture war, fodder or like petty surface level politics, their defining line for what makes a story worth reporting is human rights. Where are human rights in jeopardy and let's report it? And crucially, they tell that story via local correspondence, local reporters, local experts, their network of journalists around the world is incredible and definitely one you want to be exposed to. I would be very careful in the selection of news outlets you read of mixing in non-Western world views, right? Western media has some really great things about it, but it is so insular

and it is so unaware that the global majority do not see the world, in many cases, the same way that we are taught to see it, that they are reporting it, mix in some Al Jazeera, but like there are also non-Western, Western outlets now like DropSite News in the US. They have a great Twitter feed if you want social media, or Middle East Eye, which I also report in, and their Instagram and their TikTok is unparalleled. If it comes to social media news, I would say, find individual journalists you like and follow them. I mean, Mekhi, he has an Instagram account called Sudan updates, and he aggregates updates from Sudan, which is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.

On YouTube, I like, last week tonight with John Oliver, it's basically media storm with visuals. But look, I think a note, Helen and I would probably also agree on regarding the mainstream news, like the BBC, is read it as well. we're definitely not saying don't read it. The whole reason we have this podcast is to help people read it better and we read it. Yeah, no media organisation is perfect, but I still do trust several mainstream outlets like the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent. And it's important to read those, just read them critically like we do on Media Storm.

Oh my God, Helena, have you seen the time? You are going to be late for work. Oh my God, I have to go. There's still so many questions. we're going to have to roll over and do another Q&A episode, I guess, in a few weeks. Okay, yes, we will do part two of this episode as soon as possible. But if you have submitted a question and you haven't heard it yet, don't worry, we will get to it at some point.

We'll do it in a few weeks, though, because we've got a deep dive lined up next week and a few more in the pipeline. See you soon. 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 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 Awadier, and follow the show at MediaStorm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Malen The music is by Samphire.