Media Storm - S4E5 Media racism: Faiza Shaheen, Palestine coverage, and the limits of representation

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

This week, Faiza Shaheen announced she has resigned from the Labour Party, after a shock email revealed she had been deselected as a candidate in this year's General Election. The Labour Party candidate selection committee called into question tweets that Faiza had 'liked', some from 10 years ago. But behind the apparent distractions of old tweets is something far more sinister: what Faiza has described as “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia, and bullying". Are people of colour held to a higher standard in public and in the media? We discuss this, how the routine dehumanisation of brown skinned people has lead to desensitisation when it comes to coverage of Palestine, and why we need to push beyond 'representation'. Plus, your round up of the headlines through a Media Storm lens - Government policies putting a dampener on Pride Month, a hidden story about Israeli interference in the ICC that didn't make it to the mainstream, does the media gives Nigel Farage a free pass, and was the viral AI-generated 'All Eyes on Rafah' image 'slacktivism'? Joining Helena this week is GUEST HOST Coco Khan (Pod Save the UK) We are joined in the studio by Sharan Dhaliwal, founder of feminist South Asian magazine Burnt Roti, and Shaista Aziz, ex-Labour councillor, journalist, and director of The Three Hijabis. Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Support Media Storm on Patreon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Hello and welcome to Media Storm. We're back in the studio and it is once again guest host Coco Con. Hi Coco.

Hello everyone. It's me. Coco, I'm back. She can't stay away. So it's Pride Month. Oh my God. Happy June. It's Pride Month. It's a time dedicated to uplifting LGBTQ plus voices to celebrating queer culture to supporting LGBTQ plus rights. How have the Tories decided to mark Pride Month, Coco?

Exactly as we expected by taking your rights away. Happy Pride Month. Let's roll back to the 70s. So the Conservative have promised to rewrite the Equality Act so that protections enshrines on the basis of a person's sex apply only to their biological sex. Right. So Kemi Bagnock, the Women's Inequalities Minister, said the new law would allow organisations to bar transgender women from single sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events.

In classic conservative style, they don't explain how this would actually make things better for really anyone, even if they are marginalising and harming an already vulnerable group. You know, if apparently that is good for someone else, so they don't necessarily explain how that is. And they couldn't even be drawn on the question, which is, will we have to bring our birth certificates to toilets? So that's really telling you something. But let's hear from the experts, Mermaids, the charity that supports transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse young people

said in a statement that the Equality Act is world-class legislation that took almost a decade to develop and has been working well for 14 years. Under the Act, trans people can legally access single-sex services based on their gender and services can exclude trans people whether or not they hold a gender recognition certificate if it is a proportionate thing to do to achieve a legitimate aim. It is not necessary to redefine sex in the Equality Act for service providers to provide a range of services. This is something they routinely do already. I was scrolling on Twitter and I found it very interesting how it's so quickly changed from

we need to protect biological sex. We need women-only spaces to, we should just scrap the Equality Act altogether. Yeah. It so quickly gets so extreme. Is this just a culture war? Are we calling it what it is? Is this just them leaning into cultural war pre-election?

That's my personal belief, you know. I think that it is politically expedient for them and it's working well for them to just hit the hate button. Well, last year, Charlie Craggs, a trans actress and activist, was on Media Storm and she kind of hit the nail on the head about the Tories using trans people to try and win votes. Here's what she said. The Tories are so desperate to stay in power

and we are currently the most valuable porn they have right now. now in that we are the immigrants of the early 2000s, the gays of the 80s. We are the black people of the 60s. We're the, the porn they have held over the heads of all these white working, I say this as a white working class person. I'm from a council state down the road in Labroth Grove. But like we are the porn that they have over the UK. And it's not just trans people.

Like we are one of the many poems. But currently I feel like we're the kind of the hot topic because we're the smallest community, with the community with the least history of resistance as well. and the least support, I guess, as well, just to be frank. But there are other pawns as well where, like, if they're not going to use the pawns, they're not going to win the election. I've said porn so many times. Every time I say, I'm like, I feel like I'm saying porn, porn.

But yeah, it's like, I'm not going to say porn again. But, yeah, that's why, that's how it works. Or that's at least how I see that it works. Yeah. Because what works for the government or what may work for the government as a scapegoating device works for headlines hugely as a commercial device, because if there's a lot of emotion stirred up around this debate, people are going to click on that headline,

people are going to buy that paper. So it's kind of a vicious cycle of political incentive and press incentive feeding into one another. Well, it wasn't just election pledges based on demonising the trans community. The final act of government before Parliament dissolved pre-election was the passing of emergency legislation to ban private prescriptions for puberty blockers to treat under 18s. So in the final minutes of the last parliament,

the Health Secretary Victoria Atkins introduced new rules and these rules would be effective for three months. The government argued the laws were necessary to address risks to patient safety. Before this intervention, private clinics could prescribe puberty blockers even though they are no longer available on the NHS in England unless children are participating in a research trial. These emergency measures close that loophole. New prescriptions have been paused in Scotland too.

I mean, it just feels mean. There are already horrendously long waiting times for trans people to access healthcare. And in the last minutes of the last scrap of power you have, you're going to focus on one percent of the population. And I think as well, you know, one of the things why I feel like all of us should be interested and care and active in our support for the trans community, not just because it's right and moral and ethical and what world do we want to live in,

but also because, you know, you can see when their rights are being eroded, it will be ours next. And, you know, stuff like using our healthcare system as a political football, what's next? IVF, access to abortion. You know, you can just see it. The writing's on the wall there, isn't it?

Yes, I agree. It's going to come for, you next, but it's already come. Yes, because something that is so underreported in this area is that, cis children have been using puberty blockers for years. Puberty blockers have long been used to treat precocious puberty. That's a medical term for early puberty in cisgender children safely and without any controversy for years.

Well, here on Media Storm, we talk about stories that go underreported. And today I wanted to talk about a big, big story that didn't seem to make it very far in the mainstream media. An investigation by The Guardian has revealed. that Israeli intelligence has spent nine years interfering with the International Criminal Court or ICC. Now, this war on the ICC by Israeli intelligence started in January 2015 when it was confirmed that Palestine would join the court after it was recognized as a state by the UN General Assembly. The ICC also launched an investigation into alleged war crimes in Palestinian territories in 2021. And it's been revealed in this investigation that the former head

of Israel's foreign intelligence agency allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the ICC in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning the war crimes investigation. Okay, this is a huge story, but it wasn't picked up by mainstream news outlets.

A scan that I did yesterday showed us that the places it was reported on were the French paper Le Monde, the New Arab and the Palestine Chronicle. Why? I mean, I can't answer the question why. I certainly feel that it's a dereliction of duty. I definitely think that I think these are really, really important stories that need to get out there.

And I think something that I really worry about, and I'm aware I just sound like a naive idiot, but like courts, working, good. I think that's a good thing, right? I genuinely am concerned that the basic fabrics of what holds this mess together, certain institutions, rule of law are being eaten away at And a story like this that reveals how there's a sort of meddling that goes on behind the scenes,

I think it's really important so that we can all club together and say no to this sort of behaviour. Because the only way that any of that is going to stop is if people know about it and stop it, essentially. You know, we can't just rely on the goodwill of states to stop manipulating institutions for their own ends. They're just not going to do that. The only way they can do it is because it operates in darkness. So I think it's a total dereliction of duty from the press. And it really does make me very, very sad. I completely agree.

And I was wondering, because it was like a guardian exclusive investigation, was there like a restriction on other places reporting on it? But it doesn't work like that, does it? Well, I mean, in terms of restrictions, I don't know. But definitely something that I've been looking at just in terms of my own journalism work is how basically people don't share, press don't share. It's like a territorial thing and arguably a market thing. Right? Like you ultimately these companies are private companies. And whilst they have a public good or they certainly should recognise their public good, they also need to sell papers, own rights to staff, make money and to continue going. I actually think about so many scandals that like, you know, journalists hold individual pieces but nobody is willing to kind of share them and open up. I don't know if this is the case here. I think, you know, one of the things we're going to talk about in this podcast is all the problems around reporting on what's happening in Israel and Palestine. But definitely I think there is something to be said about, like,

Like, why not just share guys? Wouldn't that make it easier? Another story we want to talk about, or more specifically, the way this story has been reported on in the media is the fact that Nigel Farage is standing for election in Clacton days after ruling himself out. And he also said he will become leader of Reform UK,

which is the right-wing former Brexit party. Oh, sorry. I know. I hate talking about this man. Okay, this is good. I'm glad you've said that, okay, because we hate talking about this man. So I don't want to talk about this man. I want to talk about how the media has talked about this man. Okay, has the media, especially the broadcast media, played a role in promoting Nigel Farage

and constantly platforming him without any real scrutiny? I mean, I think it's undeniable that they played a role. I mean, if you compare, like, how other leaders from other parties, more mainstream parties, I mean, like, you know, Nigel Farage has never had a seat. in commons, you know, if you look at how much they're interviewed, I mean, it pales in comparison of how much time this guy has. He is very much a darling of the media

and he's arguably a creation of the media and he's a smooth operator and he knows that and that is why he's back and I am genuinely a bit afraid of him. Oh my gosh. I mean, last week, Farage was on question time and this is reportedly his 37th time on BBC Question Time. This is despite not being elected and reform only gaining two seats at the recent local elections.

I think as well, you know, when we talk about exposure, of course that's across all media, but a lot of his media has been TV. And there's this thing as well where TV producers, and I wouldn't like to cast aspersions about TV producers, although I would just mention that when they do a class analysis of people that work in TV, they are predominantly from a certain class, and I'm sure your listeners will know what one. But like, he is considered entertaining. And that is, for me, I feel like that should just be like removed from television news completely.

You know, I think, or certainly be downgraded in how important it is. People think television producer people think he's great crack or he's like, you know, funny or he tells it how it is. Obviously, if you're like black or brown, you just watch him and you like break out into hives. So we have a different perspective maybe. But, you know, and I think that's also factors into some of his exposure, his huge amount of exposure people think he's good entertainment he makes for a cracking debate it's all by people who clearly are not going to be impacted by the policies that he he kind of heralds it generally speaking i've had enough of him and i hope i never have to see him or mention his name ever again

i know i know your point about entertainment him as an entertaining figure and the media forgetting like really really forgetting his harmful harmful policies and his harmful words and the things he has said and the things he has done and how he spearheaded Brexit and now barely even speaks about it anymore. You know, he did a lot of harm, still continue to do a lot of harm but it's like, oh, it's so funny because he went on

I'm a celebrity. Is he that funny? Is he that? I know that humour and charm is subjective. I get that. But also I'm like, really? What's so good about him? Just he wears yellow trousers? That's it. He dresses like his toad from Toad Hall. That's it. That's all you need. Wow. Well, this actually leads us into

what we're going to be talking about today because people like Nigel Farage, usually powerful male figures who are spreading misinformation on the reg get treated almost like cartoon characters, like silly buffoons. Yet they're repeatedly afforded with opportunity after opportunity.

But who doesn't get given the same grace, people of colour, especially women. There's been weeks of confusion over Diane Abbott's future in the Labour Party and this week parliamentary candidate Pfizer-Shaheen resigned from the Labour Party after a shock deselection. It leads us to ask the questions the media seem to want to avoid.

Is there a double standard? Are people of colour under more scrutiny from the public and the media? And are we desensitized to suffering when it comes to brown skin? Pfizer-Shaheen said she was dumped from the candidates last night. Continue to contribute to a party that seems to think so little of people like me. To my mind, there's only one way to describe those marches. They are hate marches. In Gaza, where more than one million people have been forced to leave Raffa in the South.

The Conservative Party is facing allegations of Islamophobia. Welcome to MediaStorm, the podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Cocoa Khan. This week's Media Storm. Media Racism. Pfizer-Shihin, Palestine coverage and the limits of representation. Welcome to the Media Storm studio.

We are so lucky today to be joined by two very special guests. Our first guest is the director of the anti-racist movement, the three hijabies. She's a journalist, writer and inequalities campaigner who was a labour counsellor for six years before resigning from the party in October last year. We'll be speaking more on that later, but for now, welcome Sheaester Aziz. Hi there, so lovely to be with you all. Our second guest is the founder of the UK's leading South Asian culture magazine,

Burnt Rottie. She is also the founder and co-director of Middlesex Pride celebrating the unheard LGBTQ plus community in the heavily immigrant Middlesex area. You can also read her debut book, Burning Myrime. which is out now so welcome to Sharon Daliwal and also my mate just for clarity I feel like it's important to just in the interest of transparency of Sharon's my mate yes thank you for having me thank you and also a very jealous person here who wants to be your mate well you are now

yes you are you are we're online mates yeah exactly okay online mates is real mates now guys yeah we're at 2024 okay well um yeah I'm really excited for this conversation and And the first story that we're going to break down today is about Pfizer-Shaheen's deselection from the Labour Party. Now, who is Pfizer? She's an academic and economist, has worked in the field of addressing economic and social inequality for years. In the 2019 election, Pfizer very nearly defeated the Tory candidate, Ian Duncan Smith, in the area of Chingford and Woodford Green, where she lives and grew up. It was the highest ever vote for Labour in that area. Pfizer was again selected by her local party in 2022

to stand again for Chinkford and Woodford Green. But last week, she found out via an email from Labour's NEC, the National Executive Committee, so those are the people who choose candidates, that she'd been deselected. Why? A series of 14 liked tweets from over 10 years. And we are going to talk very briefly about the tweets because I'm passing Phil in the mainstream press,

we haven't accurately heard what these liked tweets actually were. So Pfizer liked her colleague's tweet saying that he was running as a green councillor. This was in 2014 before she had even joined the Labour Party. She retweeted a list of companies to boycott to support Palestine also in 2014. Another tweet that was brought up to Pfizer as an issue was speaking about her own experience of Islamophobia in the Labour Party. And the like tweet that's probably got the most attention is this. Above an old John Stewart sketch from The Daily Show about Israel and Palestine,

there was a tweet which made reference to the Israel lobby and how non-stop harassment, that's a quote, non-stop harassment, discourages people from speaking out online due to being, and again, a quote, immediately assailed by scores of hysterical people who explained to you why you're completely wrong. In her interview, Pfizer apologised for liking the tweet and said she didn't remember doing so.

Now, many people have pointed out that Pfizer doesn't have anything to apologise for. After all, every country has dedicated lobbyists. Many people have said that the tweets are a distraction and Pfizer's deselection is part of an ongoing purge of the Labour left, which the Labour Party denies. Pfizer has since written about what she calls a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying,

adding that Keir Starmes Party has a problem with black and brown people. On Tuesday, Faser announced she resigned from the Labour Party and is deciding her next steps. We may well know her next steps by the time this pocket comes out, but as we're recording, we don't currently know them. Shaisa, you were a member of the Labour Party up and quite recently, what do you think is behind Pfizer's deselection? So I think that the institutional racism in the Labour Party has erupted like a volcano.

Institutional racism exists all across our society in multiple organisations. It definitely exists in our political system. So for me, what we've been seeing in the last week in particular, but it goes way deeper than that, is a manifestation of this institutional racism. Now, I resigned from the Labour Party intentionally last year after Kier Starrma's horrific rhetoric around endorsing the collective punishment of Palestinians when he gave an interview on LBC Radio, and I made a conscious decision to resign.

And I'm really pleased that I did that. I had no option. That for me was a red line. And I think what we're seeing now is a red line for lots of other people. So the treatment of Diane Abbott, or the mistreatment, I should say, and the mistreatment of Pfizer-Shaheen really do see. speak to the hierarchy of racism that Keir Stama's Labour Party is overseeing. Now, of course, the Labour Party needs to eradicate anti-Semitism. We need to eradicate anti-Semitism across society.

We also need to eradicate all forms of racism, including Islamophobia and including anti-Black racism. And what the Labour Party is doing, they are not taking racism seriously. And what that basically does then is pit minorities against each other. And what we have seen horrifically since the start of the bombardment of Gaza is a 300% reported cases of Islamophobia. Disproportionately is impacting Muslim women, particularly those who choose to wear a headscarf, a hijab, so women who look like me and indeed other women.

We've also seen a massive rise in anti-Semitism. So what the Labour Party is doing really is pretty much sending a message out saying that one form of racism we want to tackle, another form of racism we're going to turn our back on and close our eyes just pretend it doesn't exist. You mentioned the word distraction.

In my piece for The Guardian, I talked about the brilliant Tony Morrison, and she says, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work, and it keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being. And this has been pretty much

what Pfizer-Shaheen has had to do. You know, the interview she gave on Newsnight was devastating to see a shell-shocked woman of color, a Muslim woman who's dead. Medicaid, more than four years of her life campaigning in the constituency where she was born and raised, reduced to someone who was so visibly traumatised. So let me ask you about the media's role in this. Obviously, Media Storm, we'll always like to interrogate the media's lack of scrutiny in this area. And one of the arguments for Kirstama's very clearly inconsistent treatment is that he's just extremely scared of the press.

He's really, really scared of the likes of the Daily Mail and the sun and anything that is even, you know, something that they could get a handle on is something that he has to eliminate. And the fact of the matter is, is the media don't like black and brown women. Do you think that is a fair assessment of what's going on here? No. Kirstama, in a few weeks' time, is due to become the next Prime Minister of this country. If he says he doesn't like the media, then basically I think that's very disingenuous. And so I think what's happening here is Kirstarmer might think that by introducing a cull of left-wing

candidates and high-profile women of colour that he is playing to a certain gallery. But it is misfiring because this is not the way to behave and it's certainly not the way to get your message across and to show that you are a serious politician who is serious about governing the country and the interests of everyone. I mean, yeah, to say the least, it's misfiring. Obviously, ethically it's abhorrent. But also, you know, this whole election campaign, when we're talking about Labour, we're talking about this.

It's a total own goal. Absolutely. And Sharon, let's bring you in here. So we've seen plenty of examples of MPs who have been allowed to run for Labour this year after they've made and apologised for allegedly racist and anti-Semitic remarks. The thing that maybe they have it all in common

is that they've got white skin. So, I mean, is it just different for people of colour or people of colour under more scrutiny in the public and the media? Well, yeah, absolutely. It seems so, at least, because all the evidence shows that way. We have, for example, there's,

There's Luke A. Kirst who wore that, can you swear on this? Yes. He wore that T-shirt that said, I'm literally a sinus shitlord. And he's fine, you know, there's nothing that's happened to him, no repercussions off the back of it. But then you have women of colour who have all had repercussions for liking a tweet from 2014. So, yeah, there's different standards for different people, obviously. And it's definitely women of colour, people of colour, will be treated differently. Well, I find quite interesting about the way that Pfizer's deselection has been talked about in the mainstream media.

is that first of all, if I was just a reader, a consumer of the major media and if I was glancing over headlines, I would think that the story is that a Labour candidate has been deselected because she liked anti-Semitic tweets. And there was kind of no other context that was presented unless you read beyond the headlines, which, as we know, not everybody does. The second thing I find really interesting is that last Friday there was a rally in support of Pfizer-Shin where hundreds of people, and her local area in northwest London gathered and they spoke in support of her. We really didn't see that in the mainstream press. So I know that the PA News Agency was there and they spoke to one supporter

and then snippets of those kind of conversations made it into an article in the evening standard and in the independent. But in terms of what her supporters were staying, what people were fighting for, what they were calling for, their opinions, that was covered maybe a little bit in local media and otherwise just not at all.

And I think that says a lot. If you're covering Pfizer's deselection, but you're not covering the local support for her, what narrative are you putting out in the mainstream? Well, it's not clickbaity enough, is it, to then say, you know, she has support. You know, what's clickbait is, you know, she liked anti-Semitic tweets.

And so that's what people are going to click on. That's what people are going to read. Because it's all about, you know, getting the readers. It's getting the numbers. You know, it's not about telling the actual story, is it? I think that's why that Newsnight interview was so powerful because for anyone that read this stereotype, they see a Muslim-sounding name.

They don't know anything about Pfizer's opinions. They know nothing about her as if she's got a brown face and a Muslim name. That's all they know. And they jump to that conclusion and then they see her on the screen. And what you see is someone who is not this one-note character that's been drawn in a racist cartoon, but a mother, a human, a person, someone you'd get on with, someone you'd have a cup of tea with. But actually, you don't get the opportunities to show your humanity.

I think that's a thing that's worth. being said. Yeah. And I mean, if we're talking about the dehumanization of brown people, you know, the next topic that we have to talk about, although some media outlets seem to just not want to talk about it at all, it's Palestine. And I mean, we have seen some of the most horrendous, shocking, disgusting acts of violence against the people of Palestine before October 7th and certainly since after October 7th, Oxfam say the daily death rate in Gaza is higher than any other major 21st century conflict. Over 36,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October.

Those numbers are absolutely horrific. Thousands remain unaccounted for. The number of children killed is higher than from four years of world conflict. Nearly all children in Gaza are at risk of famine. I mean, yeah, you see these numbers written out like this and you wonder why we aren't all just drop-downing tools right now and doing something about it. And I guess the question you asked is, are we desensitized?

I mean, I think we are. I think we definitely are. I mean, look at images of poverty porn from charities. It's always, you know, non-white people who are sick or who are in need. And they always are. It's saying that non-white people are always in need, you know. And so we've seen these images on the tube, on the TV, like forever. I can remember them from when I was a little child.

And so when you see it now, it feels like you've seen it before. It doesn't feel you do become desensitized. And then like you see the difference with, for example, Ukraine, you know, when you saw those images and you saw the reactions that the media had to it, that, you know, the government had to it. It was very different. It was very different. And it's because it's not something we're used to. You're right. It's become normalized to see like the Middle East in rubble. It's become normalized to see brown people. suffering. And so people think that that's just all it is. I'm a former international aid worker.

I spent more than 15 years working. I worked extensively across the Middle East, including Gaza and including the West Bank. And I'm also a journalist. And I can tell you the first time I set foot in the occupied West Bank, I was absolutely stunned because I thought I had an idea of what was going on the world as a journalist and someone who really lives and breeds current affairs and news. I had no idea what was going on because mainstream UK news, does not tell you a truthful story, a nuanced story about what is happening to people. So people don't know what's going on because of the way this story is told. They're confused.

I have to say horrifically, all of that has changed in the last eight months because for the first time, Palestinians are telling their stories. And they are filming everything because Western journalists can't get access to Gaza either. And it's the first time they're actually hearing and seeing and understanding. what's going on. And this is why there is the level of outrage that we're seeing, but also the reason why we have the rise of the independent candidate in this election. In fact, before I came on to have this conversation with you, I saw a clip circulating on social media where Angela Rainer, the deputy leader of the Labour Party,

is somewhere in the north-east of England, and a group of white people who used to vote for labour have confronted her about Palestine. And again, the media distortion is that only people who look like me, or, you know, brown women who look like you, are challenging what's going on in this. They're not. There's massive numbers of people who are absolutely horrified by what they're seeing. I'm so glad to hear you say that because it's always been a personal bugbearer of mine, how people try to categorise support for a ceasefire as being a concern for minorities,

when actually this is a mainstream concern. And, you know, lots and lots of people care about this. Across ages, across classes, it's the big moral question of our time. It is really not hard to be a human being and to believe that everyone's life matters. It really isn't. And the tragedy is that the divisiveness of our politicians means that we are all being tempted to shunt us into one corner or the other, right? If you believe in the life of Palestinians, then you must believe in Hamas. If you believe in X, you must believe in Y.

It's absolutely shocking. I think we had a real life example. of the politician's stand on Palestine in last night's TV debate. So we're recording this on Wednesday. The debate, the ITV debate between Rish Sunak and Kirstama was on last night. And there was a question from the audience member about the awful scenes in Gaza. And then it was immediately picked up by the moderator, the ITV moderator, and put back towards the two leaders of the parties.

And kind of like reframed by the moderator as about the Hamas terrorist atrocities of 7th of October, and then what unfolded after. So, listen, the violence against Israeli civilians, that was rightly spoken about. But Israel's violence against Palestine was dumbed down to, and then what unfolded after. Whereas that was what the question was about. I mean, the question was changed and reframed and the meaning was lost. I don't think there was any other situation in the world where this context, there'd be an attempt to shut this context down. In February, at the George Polk Awards for journalism,

the award for foreign reporting went to the staff of the New York Times for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. Last month, the New York Times again was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for exposing the horrors Hamas inflicted on Israel on October 7th and the devastating toll of Israel's assault on Gaza. It's important to say, as they did in 2021, for reporters in Afghanistan, and again in 2022 for journalists in Ukraine,

that the Pulitzer Board honoured media workers in Gaza with a special citation. But even putting aside if the New York Times coverage was good or accurate, what does it tell us that these awards were not given to the Palestinian journalists actually reporting in and from Gaza? Well, it shows that, you know, the journalists aren't put to a higher standard. You know, they're just saying that these are like all the other Palestinians

that we don't care about. And so why would they award them, really? And they're doing so much work. that we know about what's happening in Gaza right now is from them. I mean, I sat down with my dad recently and he doesn't, he has social media, but he doesn't really understand it. So he doesn't know what he's looking at. And he watches the news. And so everything he knows about what's happening is from BBC or it's from Sky News. And I sat down with him and I had a conversation and it was about two hours later that we kind of came to an understanding that he should stop

doing that and just like, you know, have conversations with people instead. And he didn't know the history either. That's the issue as well. We have a lot of generations that don't know what's happening, a lot of older generations. And I think that question also speaks to the heart of the problem with the media. One of the problems is that like essentially the agenda is being driven by everybody else. Progressive voices are super up against it because of a client journalist landscape, billionaire backers owning the media, horrible internet, disinformation farms. It's just, it feels like, 24-hour news cycle. It's all the time. Yeah. It's really challenging. What's up and misinformation.

I mean, we know from our immigrant communities and stuff. Like everything's just forwarded from WhatsApp. They love WhatsApp. And it's, oh God, they love it. They have their groups. They have like 50 groups each. You know, for me, this really speaks about the white gays and how we are always viewed through the eyes of whiteness and white supremacy and the white

gays. And one of the things that a lot of mainstream journalists have been going on about is not being able to get access to Gaza, which of course, you should be able to access Gaza. However, let's just sort of deconstruct that a bit. Does that mean then if white people can't get access that then the rest of the stories that are being told by the people are not real?

They're not truthful, that we can't trust them. We know when we look back in history, journalists will not be remembered fondly. I'm talking about Western journalists, I should be specific. And there will be many lessons that we will need to learn about how we cover historical legacies. Yeah, I also think that the special citations, that the Pulitzer Prize gave, you know, to Palestinian journalists

makes them very faceless, faceless and nameless. Yeah, like their lives matter less, isn't it? Exactly. If a journalist dies in the field, you know, there's normally a massive outcry. You know, there will be, depending on whose paper it was that they were from, there'd be a front page, you know, there'd be like a sort of wistful thing on the BBC. But just death after death after death after death, nothing. You don't even know their name.

Former Home Secretary Soella Braverman has called free Palestine protest hate marches. These protests, which are still happening regularly, call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. This came to a head last November when Braverman wrote in the Times that she does not believe the marches are a cry for help for Gaza, but instead an assertion of primacy by certain groups, particularly Islamists, and that some of the group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas. This is Islamophobic, racist language that was said by them, member of our cabinet and printed in a national newspaper. I mean, in contrast, protests in solidarity with Ukraine were welcome, Downing Street was

lit up in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. I mean, the irony is glaring, right? It is. It's so obvious. I mean, you couldn't make it any clearer that you don't care about people of colour. That message, we don't care about people of colour, was delivered by a woman of colour. I mean, that's relatively new, that little tidbit, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, here's the thing. Look, at one point, we did have the most racially diverse cabinet in history.

Rishi Tuna, Swellabweller, Svala, Bavid, Prasie Pizel. Is representation enough? Does this help the British Asian community? Well, no. I mean, not at all. It depends on which Asian. If you're talking about very moneyed, conservative. Yeah.

Are you talking about wealthy, higher caste, you know, Asians who, if they were in India as well, would have incredible wealth and power. and would also discriminate against people there as well. Like, they're not doing any different here. I mean, they are people of colour. They are one of us, but they don't represent us, you know? And I remember when Rishi Sunak came into power and there were so many people that were like, oh, isn't it great to have this representation?

It's like, no, this isn't a TV show. This is our lives, you know? This counts. This is like about legislation. These are the things that are going to change our lives. Like, we know that this person, because of their beliefs, They're not going to help us. They're not going to help other people of colour.

Yeah, I think there's such a dangerous narrative around this. So I think it's wrong to dismiss the fact that Rishi Sunak is the first Prime Minister of colour in this country. That is very significant. And so is the rest of the story after that sentence. They have helped to cement the most horrific policies that disproportionately devastate and implicate people of colour. and working-class people of colour, those from the Windrush Generation, for example, those who have been standing up with the Black Lives Matter movement, for example,

those who are standing with the Palestinians. To have a room full of people who are brown is not a win, if they are going to be churning out even more hateful policies, even more dangerous rhetoric. At the time, I remember many commentators saying, oh, we should all be celebrating them. No, because to call on all people, of colour to celebrate them, that's the form of tokenism.

One of the things I always think about is like, you know, a policy as horrific as the Rwanda policy, if they were all white, could they have delivered that to the public? I think a lot of people would have been like, smells racist, seems racist, but because they are brown faces, and obviously James Cleverley, the black man, and I think that's intentional. I think they always make the Home Secretary a person of colour because they are pushing the most racist.

I don't know. I mean, what do you guys think? I feel like you hit the nail on the head. I think you got it. I think you got them. I got it. That's a gotcha moment. Let's go.

It's always that thing about, oh, let's get a person who's brown or black to deliver these messages because then when we are accused of racism, we can push back. And again, this goes back to the beginning of our conversation. Racism is never by individuals. It is about systems of power. And it's about how those systems of power are abused. And it's also about how individuals in a system swallow the system whole. and they become the system.

I agree. I think we should use the word racist more. We should definitely say that more and call people out more than we already are. We get scared sometimes to say racist or white or things like that. We should be saying it a lot more. Definitely.

The mainstream media is definitely scared of that. Racial undertones? Yeah. What are the other ones? Racialized language. Oh, God. Yeah. There's so many of them.

It makes me think of a makeup counter where they're trying to. It's like, what are you? Much. Here's your audition. We're racialized tone. I'll go for the pretty Patel. Sometimes we talk about the media and politics separate,

but they all feed into each other. So when you analyse all the hatred that Diane Abbott got in that one year, 50% of all vitriol was directed at her. So then when they analysed her investigations, they also, like, you know, when there was criticism of her and there was an investigation, A number of the criticisms had been fabricated, were made up. There wasn't actually anything there. And actually those criticisms were almost part of the abuse.

So it kind of creates a vortex in which punching these women of color is acceptable outside of the media space in their workplace, in their personal life. Everything becomes fair game. I find it really scary, which I suppose is why you do what you do, Sharon, is to sort of create an alternative space for that. Yeah, create an alternative space for safety, but also to then, like, propel people to, like, you know, move into the mainstream media and take space there as well. Because, I mean, when I first started writing, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't study it or anything. But I really wanted to get into journalism. I really wanted to start writing books.

But I knew that every time, I knew because I experienced it, but every time I'd pitch something that was ethnic, because that's my experience, I would hear back from an editor saying, no one would really be interested. in this or it's not for us and then I wrote it in Bernardi and everyone loved it so I was like you know people do want it yeah yeah but you know who's replying to those emails it's like not for us love penelopee love theodora love augustine clementine it's always the same set of people absolutely the lack of representation in our newsrooms overwhelmingly in this country in particular class is at the i think the foundational point when it comes to lack of representation in newsrooms and then race and gender and disability and everything else, right? But the vast majority of journalists continue to be educated in private schools,

a bit more than 90%. They go to, you know, Oxbridge overwhelmingly, and they have a narrow view on the world because they don't know anyone. They've never met people who look like us. And then they go swanning off into countries and telling stories. They don't speak the language half of the time. We've got a very narrow, defined group of people telling the stories. And where we do have representation, we do.

not have enough of it at a senior level. So is one of the potential solutions then to get more people of colour into newsrooms? I think it goes beyond that. I mean, I was going to say it goes beyond that 100%. I think the structure of journalism needs to change. I think the hierarchy of power needs to change. I think the standards, journalism standards need to change. So many things need to.

You can't just place a journalist into a fucked up system just because they're a person of colour and think it will do good. You know, you have to change the system as well. I think there's a lot of lazy functions in newsrooms. And surely journalism is about being curious and wanting to tell stories that then enable people to understand the world better and understand each other better. And you might form me a dreamer,

but that's what I think journalism is about, right? That's what stories are about. And this goes back to Palestine again. The minute Palestinians have started to tell their stories a massive, huge group of people across the world are like, wait a minute, what is going on? How come I didn't know this, right? Because human stories matter. They enable us to relate to each other and to understand each other.

Thank you both so much for joining us. Tell us where can people follow you and do you have anything to plug? You can follow Bert Rodeemag on Instagram and Twitter. We just got our Instagram back after it was hacked and held ransom. please follow it, give it some love, because it gave me a lot of anxiety. And we have our new issue coming out in, I would say when, but I just need to just finish it, quite frankly. So maybe in a couple of months, maybe by the end. Who knows? It'll be out soon. Keep an eye out.

You can follow the three hijabies on X, which is our handle is T-H-I-J-A-B-I-S, so they're hijabies. And we're launching our new website in time for the Euros. And keep an eye out for us because we'll be doing some commentary, social commentary around football, racism and misogy. What did your ancestors really do all day? Beyond names, what were their lives like? With Ancestry's global historical records, you can discover incredible stories about how your ancestors lived and worked. And for a limited time, you can explore select occupation records for free.

Imagine finding your great-grandfather's RCE MP records or discovering your ancestors' name in the UK and Ireland nursing register. Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. Before we continue, I wanted to tell you about a podcast we absolutely love listening to. It's the Art Persists Podcast, a series of conversations with artists and activists from around the world who talk about their lives and work that drives social change. If you're interested in arts, culture or human rights, or just want to hear more about feminist performance art in Chile, protest art from Hong Kong, political cartoonists in Sudan, and so much more, then this podcast guarantees to leave you inspired and with a greater understanding

of how artists are using their work to voice the changes they want to see in society. Search the Art Persist podcast wherever you get your podcast. We highly recommend you check it out. Welcome back to MediaStorm. We wanted to give you some more lived experience and analysis on the topic of representation and media racism. In MediaStorm's second ever episode, we spoke to journalist and author Zing Zing and podcaster and producer Hussain Kesfani. In this clip, we were discussing East and South Asian representation on screen and how pop culture representations can influence our news media. Here's what they said.

Hussein, do you have any thoughts about, for example, how South Asian or South Asian men are represented in the media? Yeah. With all these types of events, it always starts off with like, oh, this is another Muslim terrorist, the same kind of rhetoric about immigration, and this is what happens when you let refugees come into your country and so on. Then when, like, more information comes out, you can see how people are not only trying to go back on their own stories, but they're still trying to weave their own narrative.

The affordance of mental health is given to certain people, but for others, it's very much like, no, you were motivated primarily by theology, you were more. motivated primarily by race and so on. And I think to answer your question about like South Asian men and in the aftermath of like terrorist attacks and also in other stories like, you know, grooming gangs, for example, right? Immigrant men and particularly dark-skinned immigrant men who are like threats to your nation and like threats to your race and threats to the spiritual health of your country,

it's always largely like fixated on this idea of the immigrant savage, the foreigner who just by virtue of doing something morally apprehensible is not subjected to the, um, individualistic moral failings are afforded to like people who are white or people who are not come from immigrant ratgarans or like who are not Muslim. It's always sort of framed as culture wars and it's always framed as like clash of civilisations. I guess the point that I'm trying to say is that when it comes to people of colour, very often these people are commodified and they're sort of used to particular ends in order to kind of tell, their objects that are there to tell stories rather than individuals who have agency over their own actions. I think

British Asian people are seen as perpetual foreigners. That's how I feel anyway. You know, if we watch, I mean, not so much now, there's a lot of new and varied representation, I think, coming up in TV and film. But, I mean, before it was what, cab driver, newsagent, terrorist, geek. I mean, what?

I had bend it like Beck and then nothing for 20 years. That's how I feel. I think a lot of it has to do with what's commonly known as the model minority myth, which is basically stereotypes of Asian people, such as Asian children being geniuses or like musical legends at the age of two. Those myths kind of portray Asian people as polite and quiet and law abiding in a place that isn't really their home. The whole modern minority myth is used as a kind of wedge to drive home the differences, to suppose the differences between different ethnic communities, right?

You know, the academic achievements of East Asian people are used as a kind of stick to be other communities with to say, look at this ethnic minority, they've done really well, look at their college admissions, you know, they're acing schools. So what excuse does your community have? Well, if you only tried harder, if you assimilated better, then you could be just like these guys. And to basically kind of perpetuate the idea that if some immigrant groups do well and others don't, then that's a problem on them. It has nothing to do with their relationship to the state. It has nothing to do with their history. By extension, then there is no obligation. for the state to do anything proactive to, like, help them in their experience

or to help them in terms of, like, how they kind of navigate, like, quite a hostile, you know, a pretty hostile environment. That was Zing and Hussain, and if you want to hear the full episode, you can scroll down and search Pandemic of Hate. We need to talk about anti-Asian abuse. Now, at the end of every media storm episode, we give listeners a little take home. Something to think about, talk about, and let us know what you think about it.

This week, we wanted to talk about the AI-generated All-Eyes-on-Raffer image that has been shared on approximately 50 million Instagram stories. The image showed an aerial view of a camp set out in orderly rows of tents. In the middle, some lighter-coloured tents are arranged to spell out all eyes on Raffer. A clear blue sky with cottonball clouds is in the background and snowy mountain peaks. The image went viral the day after Israel's offensive in Rafa, but there has since been a bit of controversy. First of all, maybe let's chat about why we think that particularly went viral.

It's easy, right? It's part of the Instagram Ad Yours feature. So the technological functionality, i.e., if you see it and you want to share that yourself, there's an easy mechanism to do that. And sometimes those, you know, a few extra clicks can genuinely cause drop off. and they did a very good job of ensuring that that drop-off didn't occur. Also, algorithms on platforms like meta, you know, Facebook, Instagram, they're designed to filter graphic violence,

which is actually why a lot of content about Palestine has been filtered out why we're not seeing it. And so this image did not get flagged, unlike real images, which are more graphic, which might be restricted or removed due to these content policies, yeah, this could just be spread more freely. Okay, so first of all, did you share it? I did not share it.

I definitely do share about Gaza, Raffer, just in general. I try to regularly remind my friends and followers. And so for that reason, I didn't really need material. I kind of had some. So I understand why others who perhaps are not as plugged in, certainly don't work in journalism, for example, you know, they don't know what to share. And that was useful for them.

Yes, okay. I had the same thing. I didn't share it. But I had a lot of other things that day to do with Raffa on my stories. I did see so many people sharing it. Did you see the high level of... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I...

To be honest, my first thought was like, oh, this has got around the filters. That was my very first thought, because I know that the filters has proven to be a really, really big problem. I think actually, for anyone listening, it might be worth going back and checking your own Instagram filters because you have to now go and physically opt in to receive political. content. So I thought, oh, this was quite a neat way of getting around it. I understand the

criticism which is like, oh, this is almost like clean and serene about a brutal war. You know, we should bear witness to the horrors. And I do understand that. But I wonder if, you know, those things, whether it needs to be an either or, you know, you can do that whilst also participating in something that's going to get around the filters and go quite viral. Is that necessarily a bad thing. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, listen, I understood a lot of the criticism. Raffa looks nothing like that AI generated image. You know, the skies are not blue. The skies are grey with smoke from Israeli bombs. There's no orderly rows

of tents. There's blood. Like, that is the harsh reality of it. But if it encourages people to speak up, maybe even for the first time, is that a bad thing? I feel like, you know, if that is the the absolute extent of your advocating on this issue, then I think maybe that isn't really good enough. I think there's more that can be done. There's, you know, even just like charities you can fundraise for,

resources that you can share, point to certain journalists. I think there's things that you can do relatively easily. So I think if it ends there, then I do understand the criticism of it being selectivism. But another thing I think about, I think unfortunately, like the public being invested, in this. Sadly, all the institutions aren't working. Diplomacy is not working. Nothing's working. And, you know, to a certain extent, this has now become a public opinion battle. Do you know what I mean?

And you have certain players who are trying to spin support for peace as being a fringe position or a crazy position. And in a way, you know, doing this kind of shows, no, this is not a fringe position. this is what the majority want and that does have power and it is a power that I think shouldn't be underestimated particularly given the failures of other institutions and other frameworks.

I really like that take and I really liked what you said before about maybe it can be both. It doesn't have to be good or bad. Maybe it can be both things. Maybe it can be useful and also maybe it doesn't go far enough. I mean listeners, let us know what you think.

You can email in MediaStormpodcast at gmail.com or all socials at MediaStormPod. Thank you for listening. Next week, it's a little bit different. We're going to be bringing you a special investigation into the lack of transparency in trials for rape and sexual assault. It's going to be a tough but very important listen.

Thank you to our Patreon supporters who have helped fund this investigation. If you want to support us on Patreon, the link is in the show notes. 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 and a review.

It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helen Awadier and Matilda Mallinson. Katie Grant is the assistant producer and the music is by Samfire. You can follow us on social media

at Matilda Mal at Helen Awadier and follow the show via at MediaStormpod. Listen and hit follow on Spotify.