Media Storm - S4E8 General Election, Gen-Z, and propaganda in the papers

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

It's VOTING DAY! How did you pick who to vote for? Hopefully not by relying too heavily on our mainstream media. Listen to this episode to find out why! It’s a dose of media literacy that is so essential, especially in this year of elections. We speak to CEO of independent press regulator Impress, Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, and TikTok journalist Sophia Smith Galer, about the party politics of our papers, the cringiest MPs rapping on TikTok to try and sway a Gen-Z vote, and how actually engage young people in politics. Plus, no-filter host of Saving Grace podcast GK Barry joins Media Storm to talk about her latest project 'The Turnout'. Take note, if enough young people vote, Alastair Campbell will be forced to watch an episode of Love Island with her. Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Support us on Patreon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hello, hello, hello. Hello.

You might be able to tell from our voices we have had a long weekend of Festivaling. Eleanor, you were actually caught on screen. Festivaling. You actually made quite a lot of media appearances this weekend if I was keeping correct tabs on the BBC's Gastropay coverage. That is correct. I was actually caught no fewer than four times

in the front row of The National for those people who don't know I have a slight obsession with the Saddad rock band The National and I had pushed and weaved and ducked and dived my way to the front barrier for their headline set of the other stage

and it was beautiful and momentous but yeah I didn't really think about the fact that it would be live on the BBC so I yeah have been caught losing my mind and if you watched anything other than Helena on the BBC Glastonbury footage this weekend. Here's what you might have seen in the news.

Lucy Lettby has been found guilty of the attempted murder of a premature baby. Andy Murray is out of the Wimbledon singles and the date for the trial against rapper Slow Tye, who is accused of two counts of rape. Was set to begin this week, but proceedings have been delayed again until November. The all-important second round of France's snap elections takes place this Sunday. junior doctors have been striking and the euros, they're well underway. But of course, the biggest story

and the one we'll be talking about this episode is that today, the UK, is heading to the polls. Have you voted yet, Helena? I have not. We record very early, but I am going straight after this. I will head to the polls as well,

straight after this. Who am I going to vote for? You know, I think I know how I'm going to vote for, but I actually don't know for sure that I know who I'm going to vote for. I feel like I might change at the very last second. It's an interesting one this year, I think. I think this year more than ever people are maybe actually looking at their actual candidates

who will be standing in their local constituency, maybe more than a party as a whole. You know what? I actually wonder if the Tories deliberately scheduled the election for the week after Glastonbury because all the lefties are just going to be too hungover to actually make it to the polls. Still hungover by the Thursday If they've been partying really hard Which, you know, the proper anarchists do Gastonbury though is quite a hub for socialist ideas

So maybe all of the left wing voters in the UK Are feeling really riled up and ready to go Okay, it's actually interesting that you did say that Because I did go to a few, you know, talks You can take the journalist out of her podcast studio But you can't make her not go to a talk on transphobia in the media at Glass and Brie. I just like feel for your husband

who was probably like dragged along to them semi-conscious. That was literally exactly what happened. But I did actually have a weird experience at one of the talks which is actually kind of relevant to the upcoming election. I swear I don't just want to talk about Glass and Bree.

Okay, okay. So I went to see Quajjo-Twenaboa. You might remember Spokal Media Storm last series about the housing crisis and what that is and campaigning for affordable social housing. So Quayjo was on a panel at Glastonbury's Leftfield with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, a representative of the London Renters Union

and a representative from the Museum of Homelessness. And this talk was all chaired by John Harris. He's a Guardian journalist and podcaster. I thought something was a bit off at first when this Mr Harris said at the beginning how great it was to see so many different people in the audience because, I mean, for all the things that Glastonbury is, right?

Fun, magical, exhausting. It's pretty white. It's pretty white. Like, it's certainly not diverse in terms of the clientele who attend Glastonbury. So then after the panel discussion, which was great, there were audience questions. And somebody said, you know, it's great that we're talking about how to fix the housing crisis. But shouldn't we be talking about how under capitalism housing will always be seen as a commodity rather than a human right? don't we need a real, you know, radical societal overhaul?

This question was passed to the rep from London's renters union, who gave a really good answer saying that, yeah, generally they agreed that is what we need. You know, while we're doing that, here's the other things that we can do. A short while later, another question was asked along the same lines by a young woman, but I guess this time was a bit more directly. She basically said we need to dismantle capitalism and we need to look at communist Cuba for solutions. The reason I'm telling this story is because I was honestly quite taken aback by John Harris's, the panel chair's reaction.

Fair enough, like time was running out, it was getting to the end of the talk, it was a very similar question to one that had already been asked. But he got so irate, so quickly, and the situation just escalated. So he starts talking over this young woman asking the questions, starting with, you know, all right, we've had this question, can you hurry up? But then it escalated into, all right, let's give the mic. to someone who actually has a proper question and then he basically just starts like a really scathing attack on communism and Cuba

and he just starts completely undermining her point including by saying well you might want to look at Cuba's record on gay rights but he's not one of the panelists he's the moderator right he's the moderator then someone else in the audience again a young woman starts shouting

I guess in solidarity for the person who had asked the question and backing her up and then this escalates into the moderator telling her to fuck off. What? Yeah. He said, and while you're at it, why don't you just fuck off?

This is not in the spirit of Gastonbury. No. And then throughout whatever was left of the panel, he kept making jabs, you know, like, well, as we look ahead to vote next week, which is something we can do here, unlike in Cuba. And it's like, okay, I get it.

Like, you think that communist Cuba is not a good example of a functioning society. That's absolutely fine. But you're the moderator. He was putting his opinion above anything else that was happening on that panel. I mean, I wasn't there, but it sounds like he was maybe slightly abusing his power as moderator to get the last word in. That was my experience of it that I have to say. The rep from London Renters Union, who was on the panel, actually said that they wanted to address what had just happened

and that it's only by disruption and bravery of the two women who spoke their minds that any real job. change comes about, you know, and that those who clapped her out of the tent, you know, after she was told to f-off, should be ashamed of themselves. And this rep really made the point that real change isn't polite. Like, real change doesn't come just from voting. And real change often doesn't look pretty and real change is often disruptive. But what it really showed me was that, I mean, I saw both sides of it. Yeah, time was running out.

There was a similar question asked, but he wasn't really focusing on the, that, he was focusing on the content of the question that he personally did not agree with. I actually think you're right. This is a really relevant story for this general election episode. This stage is called left, what's it called? Left field. Left field, right? So it's a stage for left-wing politics, and presumably everyone in the room has that in common. However, we see a massive divide, a rupture, aggression. People shouted out of the room within that supposedly shared left-wing space. And I think that

tells us what's happening in society that's almost more relevant than the traditional left-wing, right-wing divide. It's the divide between those who believe in the system and those who don't. Those who believe change can come through the centre and those who believe radical system overhaul is needed. For many people on the left, Starma and Labour Party have become that centre ground now, especially as the Conservative government over the the last, you know, decade of their rule has shifted further and further to the right. Exactly. This is actually so interesting now.

I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about the mainstream media and the newspapers and their political endorsements. Because normally in the run up to a general election, the papers will announce endorsement for a party. And what I think we're seeing is those papers making their endorsements less based on traditional left-right divides and more based on this centre versus radical divide. I was quite surprised to see the Sunday Times come out in support of labour. They are traditionally conservative backers in the run-up to a general election. But I don't think this was so much the Sunday Times swing to the left,

so much as anchoring to the centre. In their leader article where they announced this endorsement, they condemn the political chaos of their former favourites, the Tories, recommending instead, Stama should be praised for hauling his party back into the mainstream. Yes, exactly. I think we've seen that this election is not so much about traditional left-wing right-wing, but about mainstream or non-mainstream. On that, there is an issue, I think, because when it comes to media storm and how the mainstream media is covering the election, I think the media has become really so fascinated and obsessed by the changes of this election. That the last few weeks of the election coverage,

all of the headlines have been about polling and polls and not picking apart the policy. And that is a real problem. I mean, for one thing, polls just have such an embarrassing history of being wrong. I remember in 2015 when the Conservatives won a majority, that was such a shock. My brother had bettered that if they got a majority, he would get an eyebrow piercing.

So he got his eyebrow pierced. I need to have to remove it with pliers. But, you know, then next year it was the Brexit referendum. That wasn't predicted. And then the next year, Theresa May lost a majority. That wasn't predicted. Like, it's just... So why are we looking at polls so much?

Yeah. Why are we so obsessed, exactly? Yeah. We're like predicting how people are going to vote, rather than making sure they have the information they need to vote properly. And have you seen any other articles or news pieces about the election that need to be called out through a media storm lens? Mm, yes.

Okay. I think our papers need to be really careful of letting party. campaign lines become headlines. And I'm thinking of one story that really riled me up, which was a telegraph front page article, headlined, migrants in Calais wait for Labor win. And I read that and I was like, how, where have I heard that? Oh, wait, I heard that out of Rishi Sunak's mouth. And I read the article. And indeed, the only, you know, quote was from Rishi Sunak saying, they are queuing up in Calais waiting for a Starma government so they can come and stay here. So they had taken this campaign line and made it their headline. But the headline said, oh, migrants are doing this.

And the article claims migrants have told the telegraph something to this effect, but it doesn't include a single quote from a migrant to actually qualify or justify this claim. So there was not a single shred of evidence for this outrageous headline, but they wrote it anyway. Yeah, it was literally straight out of Sunak's mouth. Wow. I mean, that in itself just shows why media literacy in a year like this is absolutely crucial. It's so important that people are able to read beyond headlines like that telegraph front page to understand the issues that really exist and matter to them.

That's why today you'll hear from media and social media experts who will help Helena and I muddle through the media storm that is our general election. We'll talk about the party politics of our papers, the cringiest MPs on TikTok and how to bring young voters back into the fold. Plus, for our lived experience segment later in the episode, we've spoken to content creator, TikTok star, and no filter host of the podcast, Saving Grace, GK. Barrie. Picking up a different podcast mic more recently, GK has been speaking to young voters and campaigners about the Jenny Leck to find out why some young people in the UK aren't in. in politics and what we can do about it. So stick around for that, plus an update on what's coming up this series on Media Storm. We hope you're listening on your way to a voting booth. Britain will go to the polls on the 4th of July for the first time in four and a half years.

A moment the country needs and has been waiting. You simply can't trust Labour to keep our country safe. People are dismayed by the lack of integrity and honesty in politics today. The jury central office are warning of Labor being in power for a generation. Welcome to MediaStorm, the podcast that starts at the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson and I'm Helena Woodyer. This week's Media Storm. Party lines or headlines.

General election, Gen Z and propaganda in the papers. Welcome to the Media Storm studio. We are so excited to be joined here today by two very special guests. Our first guest is a qualified barrister and media regular. expert who began her career in New Zealand before moving to the UK. She is now the CEO of the independent press regulator in press. Welcome to the studio, Lexi Kirkconnell Kaurana. Thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be here. Our second guest is a journalist, author and content creator credited with pioneering journalism on TikTok. Her reporting for the BBC and Vice News have won her awards around the globe. And her videos on TikTok and Instagram have been viewed more than 160. million times. Welcome to Media Storm, Sophia Smith Gala. Thank you for having me. 160 million.

Sometimes I feel like the viewing figures on TikTok just kind of go beyond comprehension. A lot of those are going to be my mum as well. I bear that in mind. The first thing that we need to talk about today is the importance of media literacy, which sounds like a dull knock-off school subject, but actually as we're here to persuade people

is really fun and really sexy and really important. It's about learning how to tell truth from lies when it appears in our mainstream media. Lexi, first, could you just define for us the term media literacy and tell us why it's so important? So yes, media literacy is one of these big terms that people like to load a bunch of meaning on. And I think people are a little bit intimidated by it

because it does sound like a school subject or a PhD and you have to do all this learning around it to get it right. Whereas actually media literacy, I think of more as like a muscle that you build over time. And it starts with creating a little bit of friction and a little bit of pause when you're doing your doom scrolling, watching the TV, etc., etc. In doing that, you are able to just stop and think, right, why is this being presented to me? What are the questions they should be thinking about when I'm watching this?

Are there potentially interests behind why I'm being presented with this? Maybe they're political, maybe they're financial. Does the person actually know what they're talking about? Have they sourced the information they're letting me know accurately and from a reliable place? So it doesn't have to be this big, scary, learning exercise. It can just be as simple as forming really good habits. If media literacy is like a muscle and doom scrolling is one way that you can exercise it, then doom scrolling is like doing your daily workout.

I like that spin. That makes me feel so much better about having to install a Instagram blocker app on my phone. I'm just trying to think about how to sell media literacy and I think I found my pitch. Yeah, I like it. I mean, it's so important, but it's also so underrated. Why don't people think of media literacy as a vitally important skill, Sophia? Even just defining it, I don't think it sounds like the sexiest of topics. I think whenever we speak about anything being something literacy, how do we do it in a way which doesn't sound like,

Your Greens. I think a lot of content, even so much sort of fact-checking content, fighting misinformation, it's very much Eat Your Greens content rather than it actually being highly compelling, entertaining, engaging material that teaches us media literacy without us even realising that's what we're learning. I think that the best content in the space does that. We don't even realise it's giving us a media literacy lesson when it is. One of the reasons that it's so important though is because reading our news, I feel like is easy to confuse news and opinion. We supposedly distinguish between news articles,

factual articles, and opinion pieces or op-eds. But the truth is much more complicated. So last week, there was a former Daily Mail editor called Jordy Greig, and he gave a lecture about being fired from the paper. And he strongly hints that the reason he got fired was because he was willing to give the Tories too much negative cover. This was coverage that we all read coverage about Tory slees, about ministers using their positions to lobby companies that were giving them hundreds of thousands of pounds, or about

Boris Johnson and his wife using taxpayer funds to pay for like a lavish refurbishment of No. 10 Downing Street. So important stories. But Greek said that the Tory cabinet expressed its displeasure and two weeks later he was fired. What this story tells us is that it's not just how newspapers cover a story that matters, but whether they choose to cover it at all. Someone is making these decisions. So this raises the general question about who are the powerful people

at the helm of our newspapers. Yeah, we met working at the Evening Standard and when we started there, the editor was George Osborne, who was, you know, Mr. Osterity, the chancellor for the Conservative government. And when he came to the end of his position, the editorship went to Emily Sheffield, who is the sister-in-law of David Cameron, who was George Osborne's boss.

And the owner of the paper, also the owner of the Independent, is a man called Evgeny Lebedeff, who's a close friend of Boris Johnson's, who threw Boris Johnson's Celebration Party after the election, and then who was made a lord by the very same man. I don't know if newspapers are transparent enough about their political affiliations, and the personal links between their owners and editors and political figures. Lexi, do you think these links are even okay in the first place? Oh, like, absolutely not. That's the kind of obvious thing about the media class and the political class that exists in Britain.

And, you know, my experience as an immigrant coming over to this country was that we would all heard about the partisan British press. But until you're here and you live it and you see, you have no idea, people often have these kind of weird tribalism relationships with news here in this country. People will talk about I'm a Guardian reader or I'm a daily mail reader. And that will tell you more about who they are in their political alliances than if they were to say, oh, I'm a Labour voter or a Tory voter, right? It has always been a real surprise to me that the British public aren't up in arms all the time

about the relationship between the political class and the media class. But unsurprisingly, you know, they both have vested interests in keeping those relationships under wraps, not being transparent about it. So they've quashed every opportunity that where's the public have had to try and shine a light. You know, sunlight's a bit disinfectant on these kind of issues of corruption. 100%. I mean, I've been transparent about one of the reasons that I left Vice News when I did. You know, there were several reasons, but one of them was that there was a story that we were unable to publish at the time because it was about LGBT. refugees leaving Saudi Arabia and because of links within Vice News, a deal that was inked

that we didn't even really know about somehow impeded that story from getting published. So I've seen it, I've seen it from the inside. And when you do broadcast journalism masters, you learn about how effectively what we have in the UK is the opposite of the US in terms of they are allowed to have really partial broadcast media and actually way less partial newspapers. And we're the opposite. We have extremely partial newspaper industry. And then we have the BBC. We have public service media. We have all these rules, off-com rules that are placed upon broadcast media. It's quite scary to think that I had to get to master's level to get that kind of awareness around the news industry before I even

entered it. That's something I believe everyone should be getting at school. It's so true because children grow up in households and as you pointed out lexie households have quite tribal relationship with papers so there will probably in that household be one paper that is the only news you're seeing and that is what you take at face value for your entire childhood and adolescence unless you receive early education about it now obviously this is an election year and we have seen actually quite an extreme example of this blurred line between political news and political propaganda. So some MPs have been distributing campaign leaflets

that were formatted like newspapers and they have titles like Tombridge Wells Telegraph or West Dorset Courier. Now in the run-up to this election, the Press Gazette has counted nine faux newspaper-style leaflets by the Lib Dems, four by the Conservatives and one by the Green Party. Most of them disclose that they're paid for by parties

but this is often in relatively small print and a number of journalists and media groups have been getting upset about it. What do we think of political parties doing this, peddling their own faux newspapers during elections? They're absolutely having a laugh. And they're laughing at our expense, right? Because this is exactly the type of thing

that undermines all those media literacy efforts and they know what they're doing and they've got no justification for doing this whatsoever. I have a handy solution. The bit where they have to disclose, this is paid from the Conservative Party, for example, they have to enforce a font size. 72, something like that. I agree with everyone here.

I don't see a justification for it. Like, it's just quite obviously giving political propaganda the fake credibility of factual news. But some journalists did disagree. Like I saw on Twitter, the political correspondent at the Daily Express wrote, Oh, it doesn't confuse readers. We don't need faux shock and outrage about it. And I thought, well, I agree only to the extent that if the Express declared outrage about this happening, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on because one of the only reasons political campaigners can get away with this

is because our papers have totally blurred the line between news and opinion. Devil's advocate. Yeah. This is also my opinion. But I do value and enjoy the fact that we have the, option of very impartial broadcast media and partisan press. I would advocate people read more than one paper, so I'm not saying that you only read at one sort of news source from one viewpoint, but I think it's immensely valuable being

able to read diverse perspectives, where opinion and analysis, because that does help inform where I stand, often far better than dry, boring, often, sadly is the case for impartial news copy, but it is the case. I want to be told what to think by people I admire. I totally agree. And I think that that is so valuable. But for me, the issue is when partisanship is not declared, when opinion is dressed up as news. It's not just op-eds in which the partisanship comes through. It is headlines. It is news articles that are framed as if they are pure fact and they're not. And without media literacy taught in schools, people reading it, I don't think. think, no, that it is just one side of the story.

For me, that's the problem. Yeah, I think what's really interesting is that when people think about partisanship, they often think about it as just political partisanship, right? It's about political parties and which ones the newspapers endorse. And I think that's just such a narrow way to think about partisanship now because there are so many aspects of public, personal, and civic life where you can have partisanship. look at how LGBT plus reporting has totally distorted.

We need to understand what the editorial position is around so many aspects of public life and not having that transparency makes it really challenging. I mean, hands held up, Media Storm represents its own kind of partisanship in that we bring people lived experience voices. We don't claim to be providing a totally, you know, balanced version of the story. we aim to be correcting an imbalance in the rest of the media. So we bring something that is particular, that's okay, and there's space for that. But we do have to be very clear about the role that we see ourselves as playing.

Yeah. So I guess the question now that we have to ask, though, is how do news outlets get away with so much? Isn't our press carefully regulated? We have ipso for newspapers and magazines. We have off-com for broadcasters. why aren't these regulators then putting a stop to bad behaviour? Basically for the last 70 years, the newspaper industry has been broadly unregulated. And every decade or so, there is a big scandal that leads to this groundswell of public support to regulate the industry.

And then they set up complaints bodies, ombudsman, which ultimately fail. And we're now in the seventh cycle of this. And we're at this point now where we've been told for the last two of these inquiries, this is the last chance saloon. This is never going to be allowed to happen again. And yet the political class and the media class erode all of those proposals for a reform, quash them. And we end up back in the exact same place. So when you ask that question, is the press regulated? My answer to that is just no.

And I can say that sitting here as a press regulator. No, they're not. So your team at Impress basically decided to create a whole new system of press regulation. Yeah, I think what's really interesting is that rather than being set up by the government, rather than being set up by the industry, we were set up by civil society. It's a really interesting model. It's a really transitional model that says, why don't we create standards for and by the public rather than by newspaper editors? We don't need the permission of the industry. We don't need the permission of the government.

You know, we've been really, really encouraged by the fact that hundreds of news publishers have signed up to this because they want to do the right thing. But it's still a minority of the industry because there's no requirement to adopt this kind of regulation. So what we need, really, is the public to demand it. In that scenario, what we can build is a better media ecosystem overall. So when it comes to election reporting, one of the biggest issues is to do with the future. mainstream media's failure to engage some young voters in the conversation. This is a general problem with news that isn't just about elections. Over the last 10 years, the number of under 35s claiming to be extremely or very interested

in news has halved from 64% to 32%. That's according to the Reuters Institute. So when it comes to elections, what we often see is young people not voting. And this is terrible for democracy and for our country's future because those young people are the ones who are going to be voting with the country's future in mind. So in a minute we're going to talk about the role of media in fixing this and social media. But first, let's just talk about the role of politicians because they consistently seem to neglect young people and the issues that match to them.

When I was on the brink of voting, uni fees were tripled at the click of the finger by a coalition government who literally promised us they weren't going to do that. And it's not just that. Today's defining issues for our young people are climate anxiety. and the housing crisis and these were the first policies to get ditched by both Conservatives and Labour in the run-up to the election.

I think you've just explained very well how if you just look at their policy record, we're not prioritised or valued much at all. And then if you look at their decision ultimately to avoid the platforms that matter most to young people right up until when the election campaigns began. So that's when the majority of the main. political parties all onboarded onto TikTok.

They only did that when Rishi Sunak announced that it would be the 4th of July that we'd have the general election. So Nigel Farage, who leads the Reform Party, he has three times as many TikTok followers as the Conservatives and the Labour parties put together. Why are mainstream parties losing young voters to fringe parties? Did they completely then underestimate the power of TikTok before they just all decided to hop on board the train.

I think the dumbest thing that political candidates did was not join TikTok years ago. In 2022, Nigel Farage joined. They should have thought, crap, we need to get on there as well. The election gets announced

and we see all these political parties flood the app. Candidates have been doing like raps on TikTok. Oh, it's so cringe, man. So bad. Nigel Farge hasn't. Right. The comic content is very in line with the general personality that he puts forward.

It's extremely authentic. A rap someone does when they've never done one in their entire lives and probably never will again, it doesn't quite have that appeal. People go to TikTok for personalities. They do not go to them for organisations. So if you are just going to put out memes rather than centre on building up candidates who can have their own audiences, who can create even hyper-local content that goes straight to their constituencies, It's not necessarily about getting millions and millions of views.

It's about them getting the views that matter within the constituency that's going to vote for them. We just didn't see any of that. And I am talking TikTok 101 from 2019. I'm not even saying anything that's like news just in. Algorithms change for 2024. This would have worked in 2019. They didn't do it.

They didn't do it in 2020, 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023. It's been years. What have they been playing at? You're right. It's so disingenuous to... open these TikTok accounts just as an election's coming up because then you are only interested in engaging the people on TikTok for their votes. You're not interested in engaging with them as their policy makers. And this is the issue maybe with political outreach on social media.

Yes, it's so important. We need to figure out how to engage young people in the conversation. But memes, you know, it's so easy to make a meme about Rishi Sunak announcing National Service being like Lord Farkad from Shrek. Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make. What it doesn't do is promise them anything real. It's so patronising. You just think, like, do you think we're stupid or something? Like, do you think that young people who are on these apps, like, can't see?

see through exactly what you're doing? I mean, they can, right? Really important to point out that there have been political candidates who have taken TikTok seriously and have been on there a while and have reaped rewards from doing so. Zara Sultanah is an example of a Labour Party politician who took TikTok seriously early on. Lots of the videos are actually speeches that she's been making in Parliament. You know, this is high quality content that's serious. it doesn't have to resort to being silly or making incredibly short content

to game the algorithm and to liking you. She's an example for other candidates. And the point is that this is not party strategy, right? This is individuals making that choice. Again, to bring it back to this issue of the relationship between the political class and the media class, it's because these parties prioritise

traditional mainstream media as part of their communication strategy because they still believe in the influence of these media outlets and swaying elections and voters. And it's such a out-of-touch view of the media landscape and how consumption works now, right? So who was the first person that Rishi Sunak met externally after he was PM, Rupert Murdoch?

And how many meetings did they then go on to have with newspaper owners across the country rather than sitting down and thinking about if I want to communicate with my public, if I want to communicate my policy and my leadership and my vision, why don't I meet the public where they are? I agree, Lexi, I think it is definitely about those elite ties between political elites and media elites. It's about entitlement. They are so well set up with this backdoor access to huge platforms.

And that's how these mainstream centrist parties have been operating for a long time and how they think they can get away with continuing to operate. And then you have people like Zara Sultana, who you mentioned, Sophia, who is trying to come in through the system, trying to go with labor, not come in through the fringes, but she does want radical change. She wants the change that young people want, the people who are frustrated want. And she's trying to get on TikTok to say things that most people in the Labour Party would probably be afraid to say. But it's so hard to move these centre organisations. You know, the media as well, when they come out and endorse parties for the general election, they rarely flicker from Labor Conservative, from the two-party system.

I think the sun is in a really awkward position right now. They're one of the only papers, maybe the only paper who hasn't really announced their endorsement because they're always, always Tory, but they know their readers are just not going to want to vote Tory and everyone in the media has resisted endorsing Farage. but so Farage has to come in through these alternative media routes he has to get on TikTok early and he has to speak to people in a language they understand and it's working.

So these, you know, elitist media political ties are maybe starting to work to the disadvantage of these parties that have become complacent and entitled and that everyone is now lost faith in. I think we would all agree in this room. We're really seeing the death now of that class kind of stitch up though, right? Because when we look at anyone under 35,

they will tell you their main news sources are not mainstream broadcasters or newspapers. Their mainstream news sources come from social media sources. And so for us, as millennials and Gen Zs, as we start to age up, I think the system is going to experience a real shock. I think for us it's about wanting to be there where that happens and make sure that ethics and accuracy and integrity are wrapped around what emerges. If we are entering that new territory, you know, social media can be a great way to engage young audiences,

but it can also be a minefield. Like, disinformation on social media is rife and we're not going to pretend, you know, that it isn't. An investigation earlier this week found that posts from 10 bot-like X accounts, spreading disinformation and hate have been viewed more than 150 million times ahead of the UK election. AI has brought a whole new level to this, with deepfakes convincingly impersonating politicians. While press regulation is flawed, as Lexi you have explained, social media regulation doesn't exist. I mean, anyone can be a journalist on social media. How do we enforce journalistic accuracy and fairness on social media?

far more responsibility needs to be placed on platforms themselves. Why haven't you been heating, you know, a term used to describe attention that a platform may give to a video to try and encourage its audience to gravitate towards reliable sources trying to share information? Why can't platforms and news organisations work a bit better to do more of this heating, especially around touchstone issues, for example, elections? That would be a perfect time. The thing is, platforms don't have anything to heat if we're not giving them the high quality news content in the first place. I am so pessimistic about news media and their lethargy in serving digital audiences. I have seen, for example, how news organisations do not prioritise well-nourished social media teams where talent can be incubated and where high levels of resourcing and investment can create content. that goes viral before the disinformation does.

Imagine if we had more of that, platforms really would have no excuse when it comes to, hang on, all of this disinformation has gone viral on here. The thing that always blows my mind is that content creation for people who get involved in it is not only profitable, it is so much more lucrative than journalism, so much more so. And you'd think that papers, you'd think that media organisations would want to cash in on that and instead it's still like we're more important than you yeah i have to say i really agree with that because i do remember while working in a mainstream media newsroom you know i was a video journalist and i would go out i would make the videos for the news site for the digital site

and then you know they would say okay now just turn it into a ticot as if that was a really simple easy thing to do as if i could do it in the last five minutes of my shift as if i didn't have to put time and attention and work into doing it. The arrogance of these newsrooms being like, oh yeah, use the last five minutes of your shift to just make a TikTok. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting in terms of how are we going to support a thriving alternative media where journalists creators are the first stop if you need public health information, if you need climate information, if you need, you know, civil defense information. And this is what's happening for our generation, we're going to age up into a context where journalist creators are going to be

our first source of news. The issue around the regulation of all of this is that online platforms definitely have a responsibility in terms of dis and misinformation. If it doesn't serve their business interests, they're not going to make it a priority. So again, this is going to require a, you know, sort of public demand for this kind of content. It sounds like a two-way street. A marriage between journalism and social media could be amazing in tackling so many of the issues we've talked about today with disengagement and media literacy. And yes, the journalism sector needs to embrace social media and the arrogance of old media is making it resistant to new media. But in turn, these social media platforms need to embrace journalism. They need to reward accredited

journalists and fact check information and because of the funding model they have disincentive to do that. But if we can solve those issues, there could be a really great future for credibility and the integrity of news outlets, but the engagement, fun, educational quality of social media. Yeah, sometimes where people think about this as like a story of hopelessness. Oh no, we're about to lose a news industry that is falling behind. News is changing, but people still want news. They demand it. It helps them make sense of the world.

This is not a story of hopelessness. It's a story of opportunity. Yeah. When you work in journalism, you hear about we need to reach hard to reach audiences all the time. That's a really bad phrase. They're hard to reach. It puts the onus on audiences that they are somehow difficult or making it complicated for poor old youth. the journalist to make content that reached them.

So we need to be looking at this less about, oh, we need to reach these audiences online, and we need to think more about how we make our product, the journalism products that we offer, actually accessible. Sophia, take us away. Tell us where our listeners can follow you, and if you have anything to plug. My main platforms are TikTok and Instagram,

so you can find me on TikTok at Sophia Smith-Gaela. I'm on Instagram at Sophia S. Gala, and there you'll find my freelance journalism, the content that I make about language and languages, and any updates on my forthcoming book, How to Kill a Language. And Impress, we have a very old traditional website, Impressorg.com, but we're also across all platforms, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter as well, and you can certainly find us there. Thank you both so much for joining us. After the break, we'll be speaking to the host of The Turnout, the podcast looking at Why only around 50% of young people bothered taking part in general elections.

That's right, the no-filter G.K. Barry will be with us, giving us her key findings from the pod. A society that's been taught half a history is destined to do harm. A lot of people had not met another trans person before they came to Leeds in March 1974. Huge deal for them. The award-winning Queryf podcast is back with the history lesson you never had. The first person who performs this instrument is a trans person. Plus, a live event special with the cast of sex education. When you're a queer person, you get asked so many questions.

Just out here, vibe and trying to pay me counsel time. Listen to inspiring LGBTQIA plus stories with a new episode of the QuirioF podcast every Monday this Pride season. I want to get our stories told. And this is a good stop. Welcome back to the Media Storm Studio. We spoke earlier about engaging young audience. in not just this election, but politics more widely. So now we're going to speak to someone who's on a mission to do just that.

We're so thrilled to be joined by content creator and no filter host of saving grace and the turnout, the one, the only, GK. Barry. Welcome to Media Storm. Thank you for ever, me. So we're going to talk about the turnout. It's a little bit different to other content that you've been creating. Will you start by telling us why you felt this was so important for you to make? I did the turnout because Kiss approached me and said only 50% of young people actually vote. So I thought, I'm the person for the job. And tell us, what were the biggest lessons that you learnt from the turnout?

The biggest lesson that I probably learned is that more the reason people don't vote, a lot of people think it just doesn't make a difference. A lot of people also don't know where to get their information and it's quite hard to find unbiased places to get information from. I'm at Westminster Kingsway College in North London. I'm here to speak to the students that are old enough to vote, but don't bother. Do you guys vote? No.

Both of you don't vote. Why? I never really know who to vote for. Okay. I don't know if they're one in what's best for me. Yeah. You know? It's kind of just a difficult decision.

Yeah. I would say for me it's also a case of I'm still freshly 18. right don't really know about that world yet yeah yeah say I definitely need to you know I'm not a regular news listener so I hear that I need to learn more about it I feel like there's not much information to the youth about voting yeah like they don't really connect to the youth like political parties yeah if you were to say to a politician this is how you can reach out to people our age make us interested what would you say TikTok this is a common theme TikTok I'll say like visit schools, talk about in like assemblies.

Yeah. So when you were speaking to your guests on the turnout, what did you discover were the most important issues to young people today? So it was mainly stuff to do with university fees, cost of living, being able to buy a house and environmental issues. I wonder after doing the turnout, like, do you feel more hopeful? Do you think that you managed to encourage young people to vote? Definitely. I had so many messages from people saying that they'd signed up.

And also, I think it's nearly doubled the amount of young people that actually did end up signing up this year. So that was amazing. So hopefully it has made a difference. Wow. That's so cool. That's fucking cool. I feel more hopeful going into the election knowing that there's going to be a bunch of young people voting. No, honestly, I agree. Grace, we have got to ask you after the discussion we've had today, looking at MP's social media game, Do you think it's great that they're trying it or do you find it just cringe? I think it's funny and I'm glad that they're trying to reach younger people

on these social media platforms, but I would prefer it if they sort of just named what they want to do and what they want to change instead of making funny videos. I think, you know, the odd funny video is fine, but what are you actually doing is what I'd like to know. Yeah, it's kind of patronising, isn't it? Yeah, I just think put it in bullet points, 30 seconds, let it all out there and then we can make our own.

decisions. Right, but actually make promises to young people don't just make their memes. Absolutely, yeah, and stick to it. And stick to it. Do you have any kind of funny or favourite stories from The Turnow? Any of the interviews you did that have really stuck with you? I just loved Alistair Campbell once. He was so, like, I think he didn't know how to take me. And then towards the end, he said that if the percentage of young people went up by a certain amount, he would watch an episode of Love Island with me. So I absolutely am sticking to that. And I'm hoping it pans out because I want to see him watch Cassar and more. I really worry from the Labour perspective of this narrative that it's all over anyway,

Labor are going to win. Labor have got to get a massive swing to win. Do you know what this is kind of like, just to relate this to the viewers? You know, when you just assume that your favourite couple are going to win Love Island because you assume everyone's voting for them, but because you assume everyone's voting for them, but because you assume everyone's voting for them, you don't bother, and then they lose. Can I say something that will probably make most of your listeners think I'm a complete square? Always. I've never seen a single second of Love Island and I never will.

Should we make a deal? If loads of young people vote in this election, you must watch an episode of Love Island. If the young people turnout, 18 to 24, is above 70%, I will come back and do a G.K. Barry turnout, Gogglebox special. Wow. How about that? I'll get you the juiciest clips. Brilliant. Get the thong bikinis out. I can't wait. What about you? Who are you going to be voting for? Are you going to share that with us? So I have to remain neutral, but I think if you've listened to the turnout, I think it's quite obvious who I may vote for by my reactions to being. There's an incentive for curious listeners to go and check.

turn out if they haven't already. And you know what? I respect that because the most important thing isn't about pushing the party you want to vote for. It's about pushing people to use their vote. As long as you vote, I don't care who you vote for. Before we go vote, we thought we'd use our little take-home section

to give our lovely listeners an update on what's coming up this Media Storm series. So next week, we're dropping a special episode for you. Tilda has sat down with Mina Smallman ahead of her book, A Better Tomorrow, being released next week. Tell us about the interview. Well, for people who don't immediately know who Mina Smallman is, she is an incredible woman. She's a teacher, a pastor, and a mother. And her two daughters, Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman, were murdered brutally in 2020.

She's a black woman and her daughters were black. and so it was racism that she blamed when met police officers failed to respond to her daughter's missing person reports swiftly enough and then when the bodies were found police officers took selfies with their bodies for which they were later criminally charged and so in the interview we talk about how on earth she survived that but not only survived it found the strength to use that trauma, to fight for a better system. And she talks about everything she has gone up against that fight. She talks about institutional racism in the police and in the government and in society. She talks about the hate she has received from anti-woke extremists. She talks about the media and all of her experiences with the media. And she talks about the event

that me and her first met at and work that she is hoping to do with us at Media Storm as well. So there's lots to look forward to on next week's episode. It sounds absolutely incredible and she is an incredible woman and yeah, as we said, that episode will coincide with her book release.

So there's a lot going on from Mina right now and we're happy that we can be involved. After that episode we will be having a short mid-series hiatus because what's the reason we're taking a two-week break. I can't quite remember.

I never need something in the diary, but I genuinely can't get my head around it because my head is so full of so many things right now because I have a wedding coming up. Oh yeah, that's what it was. That's what it was. It was the wedding. It was a wedding. Yeah, we're totally getting married. So we're going to allow ourselves a couple of weeks off. It's amazing. It's amazing. I'm so grateful for you, Helena. Because when we got this series finally scheduled in and the wedding was bang in the middle, I was like, you know what, no what? We can make an episode on the week. We can keep working on until the day before the wedding.

And you're like, no, Matilda. I will not let you into the studio for a week before the wedding. You have to take the entire week off. And I'm so thankful you have because I can't even like... Yeah, I speak from experience last year. Yeah, I can't process how much there is to do. There is a lot to do. And the week before is probably the worst week.

So good luck with that. No, it's going to be an amazing day. We're going to have so much fun. I will keep everybody updated. on the Media Storm in Scrap Stories if you want to see Matilda in her dress. We will return to your earholes on Thursday the 1st of August

with a special episode about disinformation that surrounded the Russia-Ukraine war. We'll be speaking to two people from Ukraine's PR Army. PR Army is an organisation set up by Ukrainian communication experts and journalists which highlights the truth and fights the lies

about the Russia-Ukraine. war. It aims to help global media tell the accurate story of this war through the perspectives of Ukrainian experts, authorities and crucially witnesses. Weekly after then, we'll be back with our current affairs roundups from the people at the centre of the stories. But until then, please keep listening and sharing. It's been proven time and time again that word of mouth is still the most effective way for a podcast to grow, so please send a friend your favorite episode today. as a wedding present to me.

Thank you all for listening. A quick shout out to our Patreon supporters who support Media Storm Investigations and special episodes. If you want to join our community, head to the link 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. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Madison. The music is by Samfire. Our assistant producer is Katie Grant. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helena Wadia

and follow the show via at MediaStormPod. Listen and hit follow on Spotify.