Media Storm - S1E1 El Dorado: Why do refugees ‘love’ the UK? - with Steve Ali

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Transcript: https://mediastormpodcast.com/2021/11/29/1-1-eldorado-why-do-refugees-love-the-uk/ With headlines reporting ‘record numbers of migrants’ reaching the UK in dinghies, Media Storm heads across the Channel to find out why they’re coming. Reports this week show the government declined a Freedom of Information request to reveal their research on this very topic. It raises questions over the government’s repeated claim that accepting asylum seekers creates a ‘pull factor’ and encourages more people to come. With moves underway to criminalise the crossing, contain people in island camps thousands of miles away, and launch potentially fatal ‘turn-back’ operations at sea, we look at whether this ‘pull factor’ is really what’s causing the crisis. Writer, actor, co-founder of Refugee Media Centre, and real life refugee Steve Ali also joins us in the studio to discuss his experiences of seeking asylum and why he thinks the mainstream media reports on refugees the way it does - with a deep dive into some of this week's newspaper headlines. National asylum figures https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/asylum-and-resettlement-datasets (UK) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Asylum_statistics (Europe) Get in touch Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm is part of The House of the Guilty Feminist Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to provide tips and insights on business banking to entrepreneurs, no matter the stage of business you're in. Visit td.com slash small business advice to find out more or to match with a TD small business banking account manager. Have you ever seen who wants to be a millionaire? multiple times. You know, to get into the chair, contestants have to race to put items of a certain category into order. Mm-hmm. Fastest finger first. Is that what it's called? Why am I coming off like a huge, who wants to be a millionaire, you really? Oh, can I have the music? Do you know how the music go? Obviously, you know how the music goes. Obviously, it's my favourite show.

Why are we singing it? We'd have to pay for it. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-d-z-da. Oh, yes, very different that. Today we are talking about immigration. People entering countries without papers in order to claim asylum. So asylum seekers. I'm going to give you five European countries, and I want you to put them in the order of who annually is getting the most asylum seekers.

And I'm basing this off the most recent annual figures. In no particular order, your countries are the UK. France, Germany, Spain and Greece. Okay, Greece gets the most, then the UK, then Germany, then Spain, then France. No. Am I close in any way? Almost the exact opposite. What?

Okay, Germany gets the most, followed by Spain, then France, Greece, the UK. Wow. The UK is actually getting significantly fewer than half of what France is. Which is quite surprising, right? Very surprising. If you were to believe everything you read or see or hear in the media, you would get the impression that the UK is completely overwhelmed with asylum seekers. I used to work in the jungle, which is the refugee camp in Calais.

And one of the things everyone would always ask me is, why is everyone coming to the UK? The truth is, they're not? I mean, try this, okay? Try to put those countries in order of who is getting the most. and your asylum seekers relative to their population. So I'm going to put the UK a little bit lower down because of what I've just heard. So I'm going to go for Germany, France, the UK, Spain and then Greece. Okay. I'm trying to think if you got any of those right.

Greece goes straight to the top. Wow. Then you have Spain, Germany, France, and way down you have the UK. How come that is not reflected in what we read and what we see? People talk about the UK as if it's El Dorado, but it's more like a last resort. I get the question, why come here? But maybe what we should be asking isn't why does everyone want to come here? What we should be asking, and what papers aren't really asking, is what is preventing them from seeking asylum somewhere easier?

Well, let's find out. I'm off to Calais to ask asylum seekers what is pushing them. to make that crossing. And I'll see you back in the studio with a special guest to discuss everything around this media storm. We will be taking back control. Our asylum system is fundamentally broken.

How have we become this country who stand by while the refugee crisis is going? Because there are a few wretched souls on the other side of the time. What's the rest of the world doing? If the perception is that they're losing control on immigration, that could prove fatal. Welcome to MediaStorm, a news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Malinson and I'm Helena Wadia.

This week's investigation. El Dorado. Why do refugees love the UK? Headlines about channel migrants often start on our horizon, but the real news story lies beyond. On the outskirts of France's coastal towns, like... Calais and Dunkirk, like ramshackle refugee camps. If you want to understand why people are coming, there's one place to start. The jungle. Oh shit.

I'm just heading very off-road to me, a Kurdish man who's going to take us to his campsite. If I'm struggling to drive on this road, imagine what it's like sleeping on it. Okay, salam, and so on a jungle. Salam. It's muddy. He introduces himself by his full name, Jalmer Ali Mahmoud, then tells me everything I see will soon be destroyed by police. People are cold, he says.

They cannot have less than they have now. But he insists he's happy because he's out of Kurdistan, his home nation, which falls within Iraqi territory, and where he fears he'll be killed for political dissent. Now I can't see my picture, my back, Kurdistan. He's just showing me photos of his back with clear torture, injuries. This is in Kurdistan, you were jailed. Yeah.

Would you claim asylum in France? Never. Why not? I think police, Kurdistan, with police France, not different. If 10 years I am in jungle, I don't want asylum France. If 10 years I live in jungle. But one tent in jungle, better in Vela in Kurdistan. A tent in a jungle is better than a weather in the forest.

Yes, of course. Of course, because in Kurdistan I am near die. Yes. I don't like to leave you sad. No problem. Sometimes my mother, she said, she said, you can go back to Kurdistan. You, my son, I need your love. If changed government, I go back to Kurdistan.

If not change, I can't. I am dying. Jaume is not alone in his fear of French police. Over in Calais, I meet a group of Sudanese refugees, both men and boys, making a fire for the night. Yesterday, there was a group of Sudanese refugees who went to this lorry service station near the jungle. They call it the station of the devil. A security guard let his dog loose and he chased them, bit someone and drew blood, while another man fell and broke his leg running away.

I ask the UK to take all the Sudanese and refugees from the jungle. Being here is an unbearable struggle. We need rest. Please, with whatever way possible, save us from this situation. From these unleashed dogs, these unsanitary conditions, the police brutality, please, Please, please save us from this injustice. It seems the UK's hostile border policy

may not simply be keeping people out, but in some cases, cattling them in. You see, it's the UK that pays for most of this, spending nearly a quarter of a billion since 2014. I sit down with Chloe Schmidt-Nielsen from Human Rights Observers to understand this policy. The French official policy is, is one of daily violence to exhaust.

What kind of violence are we talking about? What has your organisation documented? Beatings inside police custody, tear gas leading to hospitalisation, dislocated shoulders, they're closed on, their phones smashed, their shoes stolen often as well, just a horrific level of police brutality and cruelty. These are, you say, being perpetrated by state officials. Yeah, it's not just individual racist police officers. It's because there is a general system of impunity at the border.

As long as the goal at the border is to stop people from going where they need to go, then it will be done through violence. So what do you think the solution should be, if not this militarized response? The solution that I can think of, at least, is to open the border in the same way that we don't. see any camps between France and Germany and why is that? Because there's no border controls. So it's that simple. But by open the border on the channel, what does that mean? It means allow people to take the ferry like everyone else. So for a lot of listeners, this would seem like a very radical policy, but maybe when you've seen the extreme violence that you have, as a result of securitized borders, you will be led to more extreme

conclusions. Exactly. Backlogs at the border affect locals too. While we're here, let's see how they feel. I want to help these people because all of us could be in the same situation, but they still have to respect the country in which they are staying. Sometimes they just break the window of abandoned buildings and go inside it. You're saying? Yes, it's good.

My name is Pascal. My name is Pascal. My heart is with these people who are in pain. starving. I'm here to support them. My name is Stephanie Dumont. It's a bit annoying when the migrants block the port on the motorway, which has happened in the past. Some are kind, some are not, but that's like the French. As a country, I do think we're becoming more and more racist. Of course, some people do apply in France, and then they get rejected. Either their fake refugees, as some politicians and media claim, or safe countries,

simply aren't offering enough spaces for everybody. The consequence, overspill. My name is Ali Reza. I'm 28 years old and I'm Iranian. I went to Germany and I applied for asylum in Germany. It's so amazing. I don't know why. In nine months, they send me a letter. You must go back to Iran. We understand that there isn't any reason for you to stay in Germany.

While I know my life is in danger in Iran, after that, I applied for asylum in France. They said, no, you must go back to Germany. Everybody in an English citizen, I see in some Twitter pages, your economical migrants or something like this. But we don't have any other way. I'm not idiot to cross the channel while I know it's dangerous. I know it's dangerous. But when I don't have any other ways, how can I do? You know, being homeless, being homeless, while you had a place in your country, you had, you had a normal life.

We had respect, we had everything. You're just thinking about go, go, go, go, go. Greece, go, Germany, go, France, go. Here is not your place. Can I ask, when did you learn to speak English? My mother told me, you must learn a second language. For the moment, English is the most important language. language in the world. Do you speak any French? Yes, a bit. And do you speak any German? Yes, I do.

And do you speak any Greek? Yes. That's very impressive. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if you know about Prophet Solomon. There is a story in Koran about Prophet Solomon. He could speak all of the languages and also, even with the bears, with the animal. I would like to learn all of the languages. It's so Oh, bonjour, how do you? Blah, blah, blah. Hello, Biggates. Allis good. Yasas, Tikhanis. Very good.

The whole medley. France isn't the only safe country in Europe that people are coming from. Ezra in Bahir, who are using pseudonyms to protect their children, are seeking refuge from Iraq. They're at square zero of the UK's asylum process. For them, it's a huge step back. They were in Austria for five years, and they had hope, Ezra tells me. Going to school, learning German, making friends.

They stayed through xenophobic abuse through years of limbo. They stayed even when something really tragic happened. The accident happened, this mistake, happened 26th of December, 2017. Ezra had to go to hospital for a chronic illness. They didn't let Bahia in the ambulance with her, and at this time Ezra spoke no German. And then they performed an emergency operation, a warning that this interview is distressing.

First four months, she was not move anything from her body, just ahead. After six months, she's just started to move a toe. Ezra was left paralyzed. Two, three times she tried to kill herself. Sorry. I needed the bathroom. They told me to go myself, but I couldn't move and they didn't believe that I couldn't move.

They said I was lying. My hijab fell off, and I asked for it to be put back, but no one responded. No one did it. They just didn't care. They took off all my clothes to run tests. Then they left the room and I asked them to cover me or to put my clothes back on and they didn't. They just left me like that until the morning.

Two and a half years later, Austria rejected their asylum claim. We lost her health. We lost her rights. Some people, they say, a political decision. And other people, they say they have just enough number from asylum people. But they not care about the human rights. This is the point. That's how they ended up in a dinghy on the channel. You move country to Austria, from Austria to Germany, from Germany to France, from France, on the sea, to UK.

This is hard. We thought about healthy of my wife and future for my children. We don't have rights in our country. we need building our life we're not waiting to take something no no never I need to build the future of my children

I need to make my wife healthy if it's possible I can't work and that's it we're not asked about something impossible just a human right for people to turn the page of Austria and open in the chat

and living in safety there's one more story I want to tell you and I'm sorry for the overload but understanding what is really meant by a broken asylum system is a lot more complicated than many media imply this is the story of two Afghan sisters separated by borders Sonia a British citizen brought to the UK by her husband long ago and Atier a 16 year old girl she is fleeing from forced marriage to a 70-year-old man.

She said to me, they sold me, and I will kill myself on the wedding day. We're using their first names only to avoid attracting their family's attention. Sonia has tried everything to bring Etienne over, but the Afghan resettlement scheme hasn't responded to her appeal, and the UK's child resettlement scheme ceased last year. I sit down with Sonia to call her sister, who's in hiding. Please answer my phone. The last time you heard from her. This morning,

honestly, if anything happened to her, I won't be alive anymore. The guilt that I haven't done enough for her. Finally, we got through. Doni, as the one of me, that I'm from her to find out of my room. She's saying the reason that I don't want to go out of my room. I'm scared that the people

that I've been sued to them, they find me. She's saying, I don't know what else to do. I'm just my only hope is to be with you. Etienne mutes herself, so we don't hear her crying. She's just turning 16, but deep down of her size, she's very depressed. And also in Islam, the girl should not die. virgin so what they do first they take your virginity

and then they kill you just help my child I am not going to call her my sister she has only me I think there are three things to understand firstly few are making beelines for the UK for many it's a last resort

secondly to apply for asylum you almost always have to get here first, illegally. And thirdly, compared to other wealthy European countries, not that many people are coming. So why do we think they are? And is the media responsible for this myth? Perfect.

One man who thinks so is Professor Joseph Tejay, calling us now from the University of Ghana. So this is a belief that is held by many people in the global north. The media has then put out that narrative. Say there is a mass exodus to Europe. And people are even thinking that if we are allowed, everybody will move to Europe. But this is not true. It's coming from the fact that they are seeing only just a small side of the issue,

only those arriving. They don't see the other side where other people are moving to. These are some of the things that need to be decolonized or need. need to be reformulated. That brings us to part two of our podcast. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back to the studio where we'll discuss all the cheerful headlines on marginalized, ostracized and systematically silenced communities.

Our guest this week is a writer whose words have appeared in the Sunday Times, GQ, evening standard and more. He's co-founder of Refugee Media Center. Olivia Coleman's sexy Syrian friend in Fleabag and a real-life refugee. It's Steve Alley. I would not see that coming. Which bit in particular. Olivia Coleman's what, sexy?

Well, we only tell the truth on this podcast, Steve. That's our job. So, Steve, what did you think of that investigation that we've just heard? The UK is really, really obsessed with the idea of being invaded. There is something really strange about it. Politicians talk about. Everyone wants a piece of us. Everyone wants to come here.

There is this arrogance and self-obsession that I have noticed and being in this country. Well, that is definitely not the perspective you get in your average mainstream media report, which is why we need to hear from more diverse voices and specifically from people with lived experience of the issues being discussed, which brings us onto what Media Storm is all about.

Media Storm is a podcast that seeks to provide the balance to the mainstream media. So some mainstream medias often forget to speak to people with lived experience of the issues, and these people tend to be from minority groups. So we want to provide a space for those people often found caught in the eye of the media storm. In this case, we're talking about the coverage of refugees and asylum seekers. So I think what we tend to hear in the mainstream media is stories of record numbers of migrants, crossing the channel. But do you think, Steve, that there is a tendency to speak about those seeking asylum without really thinking about who those people are? I think it's very gender-driven.

One of the most pervasive and most effective ways, an ignorant ways of uniting people, is creating a common enemy. I think that's what our governments have been doing in Europe, the rise of the far right. It's all about creating this fear, those dangerous creatures that are invading us. And I think what's important to note is the language. The categories of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, migrants are frequently used interchangeably by journalists, right? And they don't all mean the same thing. And often regardless of the political stance of a media outlet or a newspaper, they tend to use the same terminology as each other. certain topics start trending and they want to get those hits and those lights and those

views. So they start all using the same language in order to compete with each other. Yeah, I think let's have a little vocabulary 101 because I think it's really important for readers to know the meaning of the words being used when they're reading about immigration in the news. So the term refugee literally means anyone who's fleeing conflict, persecution, natural disaster. but legally it only refers to people who have been granted protection status by the country they've applied for asylum in. So if someone is referred to as a migrant, it doesn't mean that they're not a refugee. A term that editors are very relaxed about using is the term illegal immigrant. Legally speaking, there is absolutely zero statutory criminal offence against entering

a country without papers if you are applying for asylum. And statistically, most of the people coming across the channel in dinghies do apply for asylum. So when they're referred to as illegal immigrants, it's actually incorrect for most of them. Steve, I don't know. I wonder if you have any thoughts about whether there is damage being done because of that. The word illegal has very negative connotations. It implies crime, implies wrongdoing and completely takes out any sense of empathy. There certainly is an agenda behind that.

Do you think it is an agenda and or a lack of knowledge from some journalists? I think if we were going to give the benefit of the doubt, I think you can only give it for a certain period of time. But this has been going on for years now. I raise this with the editor at a paper I previously worked at. And he didn't ignore every point I raised, but at this point he explicitly said, yeah, we're going to ignore that point. because of the term illegal immigrant is just normalized in our vocabulary.

And, you know, we have to speak to people in a language that they understand because we are completely exempt from any responsibility of shaping the language that people... Or we want to speak to people in a language that we want them to understand. Because under the UN Convention, crossing borders when you are a refugee is not a crime. There is nothing illegal about it. And let's look at some of the other language that surrounds this topic. waves, floods, swarms. When we hear those words, what do we immediately think?

I think of a country being overwhelmed. Do you know what I mean? I think of insects, parasites. Yeah, you know, in Syria, in August, I think, if you go to the coastline, you find hundreds of thousands of jellyfish just washed up on the beach. They present it in that way as swarms

or indicates huge numbers of invaders. Whereas when you look at statistics, The numbers of refugees that come to the UK is so small in comparison to the number of refugees in Europe in general. Well, on that note, I have some statistics here that the number of people coming to the UK to claim asylum stands at less than half of what it was in the early 2000s. And the peak number of asylum applications was 84,000 in 2002. Well, in Turkey alone, they are over 3 million Syrian refugees. And in Lebanon, there are about 2 million. And in Jordan, there's about another million or something. I suppose the real question then is, is the media reporting on or creating the crisis? Plot twist. Because surely, the real question should be asked is, what makes somebody risk their life to get across the channel in a rubber dingy?

I think to round off this part of the discussion, Steve, as someone who has been falsely described as an illegal immigrant, what would you like people reading the news to understand about this type of migration? I'd like people to understand why there are no safer ways. This government talks a lot about resettlement schemes and how they have resettled more refugees than any other European country, which is statistically true, but it's an isolated stats per capita. It falls way down the list of wealthy European countries when it comes to resettlement. Applying for asylum and resettlement schemes is a very bureaucratic process. There is a huge backlog. So this government just keeps talking about safe and legal routes, safe and legal routes. Buzzwords, this government

is so big on those buzzwords. That doesn't really exist. Right. So it's more about more about the packaging than about the content. It is definitely more about the packaging. And then who's responsible for the packaging, the press? Right, let's take a look at the headlines now. It's been a big week. There's a lot to talk about. We're going to have to plow through.

Well, while we're talking about the coverage of asylum seekers and, like you said, the misinformation that often does the rounds in the mainstream media, I wanted to talk about how on BBC politics live a week ago, the head of media, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is a think tank that has been known to have some quite right-wing leanings. She said on live TV, if you cross in a dingy boat, then you are an illegal immigrant, that is a fact. Now, she was quickly corrected by a Labour MP who was appearing alongside her on the show, but she, you know, continued to maintain her apparent fact. once again this is just an example of somebody invited to speak without any lived experience

or apparently any idea of basic immigration law she refuses to accept that crossing the channel to claim asylum is not a crime in any way under any international law that is not a crime that's completely legal and the fact she refuses to accept that it's just so indicative for how rigid and how filled they are with their own biases and their own agenda and propaganda. And crucially around that table, there was not anyone with lived experience to provide any form of response

to the vast assumptions she's making about the psychology driving people onto those dinghies. Honestly, it's like getting Gordon Ramsey on to talk about meditation techniques or here's Morgan to talk about transgender people. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. Have you ever seen her?

but that doesn't have Piers Morgan in a discussion. That's a later episode, guys. That's later. That's episode four. It's like a lot of people who go and read a few Reddit threads and become experts on the pandemic and virology and all of that. It's just the same kind of people. This population of people coming across in dinghies has been lumped in with another category

this week following the bombing attack in Liverpool by Imad Al-Swalmean and the coverage there. Did anybody see the Daily Mail? mail comment by Dan Witten, directly linking dingy arrivals to this attack. Yes, I'm going to read out the headline. The atrocity Liverpool so nearly suffered, the thousands of undocumented migrants hitting our beaches every month, and the establishment conspiracy of silence that puts us all at risk. So when I read this title, it just seems so dramatic to me. And obviously straight up linking it to the migrant crossing and the channel crossing.

And I instantly thought about this whole thing. we had earlier this year about send in the Navy battleships to intercept those migrant boats and release the Krakken and all that. Like, what is happening? Were you really forgetting who are these people that are on these boats? Refugees are rational people with agency, but acting out of necessity. The authorities themselves said that they don't know whether there is a link between the suicide bombing and the hospital or the church around the corner.

And then you get the self-appointed DCI. Dan Witten, with his full-blown crime thriller type analysis on what the suicide bomber was trying, the moronic monster. Yeah, there was a lot of misinformation circulating at the start of this episode, one of which was that he was a Syrian refugee, and this was reported initially that he was a refugee in a few places. Maybe it's also the public misunderstanding what's meant when he's described as an asylum seeker, but it was picked up by right-wing commentators.

This man is a Syrian refugee, he represents the leniency of a broken asylum system that he was granted status. This was the narrative that we were all seeing. And in actual fact, what we later learn is not only was he not a refugee, his asylum claim was rejected in 2014, long before he ever converted to Christianity. Well, due to the number of headlines about the so-called Liverpool bomber's conversion to Christianity and the number of times it's been mentioned in various articles, I was actually genuinely shocked to hear that his conversion to Christianity didn't result in a successful asylum application. I'm not surprised you were shocked. It was really the impression we were getting. And that's not to say that there's nothing to

discuss here because, you know, maybe there's questions about the appeals process. For example, there's a very long telegraph article discussing this issue. You know, what do we have to learn about our appeal system that this man is still in the country? But there's a crucial context missing and I think it's tied into the fact that again despite countless interviews in this piece there is not a single one with anyone with lived experience no one who has been through the asylum system and the context we're missing is just how difficult that asylum system is by the home officer's own data 48 percent so half of the asylum seekers they reject have their rejections overturned on appeal they are wrongly rejected half of the people rejected are

wrongly rejected. And the language in this article, and I'm going to read out the headline to you, church under fire in wake of Liverpool suicide bombing for helping asylum seekers to game system. Now there's no right of reply in this article. And Steve, I want to ask you how you feel when you see language like game the system in the context of asylum. I see that the person who wrote this article has probably not spoken to anyone who had been through the asylum system doesn't know how the asylum system works. Well, how is that process of applying for asylum? Will you describe to us what that process is like for people?

Process of asylum in this country consists mainly of two interviews. In those interviews, you are being asked questions about the reasons you are here in this country, the reason you want to claim asylum in this country. The interviews are very, in a way, traumatizing to a lot of asylum seekers because those people have just arrived from the worst situations. having lived unspeakable things. And then the first thing they have to do when they arrive here is literally recount all of the things that have happened to them

in order to convince the home office to give them asylum. So imagine how grueling and in a way, ruthless, that processes. It's not a joke. It's a very strict system. You get asked so many questions. Interviews can go on for hours and hours. People that get asked to come. come back for more interviews.

How much of your life does this take up in terms of time? For some people, it takes any time from a few months to many years. I know people who are still in that limbo just waiting for their decision because the Home Office does take a lot of time to decide on these people's applications. I mean, refugees who have survived so many bad things, all they want is just gain a little of their dignity back. That all they want is just be a normal person again. They want to study or work or whatever.

No one is looking for an idyllic life anymore. No one is looking for that. Finally, Matilda, we heard in your investigation that the Afghan resettlement scheme that was planned to resettle 20,000 Afghans in the UK that was announced in August hasn't actually opened yet. This is kind of the opposite situation of what we were just talking about, whereas today there is a doth of headlines. We haven't seen much coverage at all on the fact that the Afghan resettlement scheme doesn't exist. And when you compare that to the hype at the time, when the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was happening,

we saw an unprecedented level of media interest, sustained media interest in a foreign affairs issue. I think that the media helps to curate this appetite we have for the right kind of refugees. helps to design the right kind of refugee. That interview, which everyone now has heard with the two Afghan sisters, that was a piece that I had commissioned by one of the main national papers. And I did that interview.

It was incredibly traumatizing for both sisters to do that. The only reason they did it is because they know only by having media coverage do you have a case. And after doing that interview, this paper dropped the commission because their story wasn't directly connected enough to the Taliban and what people wanted to read about were those fleeing the Taliban.

A lot of the coverage that was happening around the Taliban were just traumatising stuff, people coming on saying and talking about their traumas and plight, but not much of an actual stand with these people's situation. It was literally just using those people's trauma for their clickbaits and for their articles to be read more, for the headlines. And it's just, it needs to be fixed. Well, on that note, I think we should end with Steve.

I want to hear from you. If you could let the mainstream media know one thing, what would it be? Stop the gatekeeping. Stop censoring people by not giving people the chance or the platform or talking on behalf of people. just allow people with lived experience to express themselves. It's really simple. Just present both sides of the story.

Steve Ali, thank you so much for joining us. Steve, what social media are you on and where can people follow you? I'm on Instagram at the moment on my account as Steve underscore Ali. And thank you very much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to the first episode of Media Storm. We'll be back next week with episode two, pandemic of hate. We need to talk about anti-Asian abuse. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast

so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating, please and a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps more people discover the podcast, and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok at Helena Wadia, at Matilda Mal, with an H, and at MediaStormPod. Get in touch and let us know what you,

you'd like us to cover or who you'd like us to speak to. Media Storm, a new podcast from the House of the Guilty Feminist, is part of the A-Cast creator network. It is produced by Tom Salinsky and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Samfire.