After 12 years without freedom—first after seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and then as a prisoner in high-security Belmarsh—Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is free and is back on home soil in Australia.   Assange’s crime was to publish classified information leaked from the US Army. He was working alongside Chelsea Manning, who had hacked the material. Assange claimed he was a journalist acting under the protection of the First Amendment in the US guaranteeing...

Is the UK general election all over even before the first vote is cast? Polls suggest that Labour has an unassailable lead, and so with two weeks of campaigning to go, is there any chance that media coverage could still influence the electorate? Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger are joined by two experienced political commentators to discuss how the parties have performed so far, and if any surprises are likely in the remaining fortnight.    Michael Crick is a veteran of election campaigns,...

This week Alan and Lionel follow the latest twists and turns at the Washington Post. The noisy departure of Sally Buzbee, the paper’s former executive editor, continues to reverberate around the media world, following Buzbee’s bust-up with Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and chief executive, over an article that she approved about a phone hacking lawsuit connected to Lewis.   Lewis was mentioned in Prospect reporting that broke new revelations about the phone hacking scandal—but it was only...

Media circles across the pond are abuzz with the news that Robert Winnett is heading to the USA to take up the job as editor at The Washington Post, but not until after the US election. He’s the latest appointment by publisher Will Lewis following the sudden departure of Sally Buzbee. Winnett joins a handful of British journalists who have moved to America, including Emma Tucker, the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN, and Joanna Coles, chief creative and...

Kara Swisher—maverick, rock star and tech guru—has interviewed some of the highest profile and biggest personalities on the planet, from Mark Zuckerberg to Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch and Kim Kardashian. Joining Alan and Lionel on the podcast this week, Kara unpicks the relationship between big tech and the media. Big tech, she says, have no interest in the “greater good”. They wanted to make money, regardless of how that would impact the media companies, and media companies quickly got left...

GB News has repeatedly breached broadcasting regulations, been accused of political bias and featured anti-vax stories—but it got away with such misdemeanors until Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared on a show called “The People’s Forum”, in which he was able to outline key Conservative messages, largely unchallenged.   Ahead of the general election on 4th July, this finally grabbed the attention of Ofcom. But what took the regulator so long? And what sort of sanctions can the channel—many...

No foreign journalists are allowed into Gaza, so the rest of the world relies on those living in area to relay what is happening on the ground—dedicated and determined reporters who have made sure that no-one can look away. For months, photojournalist Motaz Azaiza and Al Jazeera reporter Youmna El Sayed were among those reporting from Gaza. Motaz has captured some of the most brutal, honest images of the war, refusing to censor even the most harrowing of shots. His aim? To show the world...

Investigative journalist Nick Davies returns with yet more remarkable insights and analysis about the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed Murdoch’s papers. Having trawled through documents disclosed through a host of court cases, Davies has pieced together information that suggests figures at the top of the Murdoch news empire—including potentially the man himself—knew more than we previously thought.   To read Nick’s stories in full, and the response from News Group Newspapers, visit...

Back in 2009, journalist Nick Davies uncovered a scandal: newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch had been hacking the phones of celebrities, public figures and even victims of crimes—notably the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler—in search of stories. The Leveson inquiry was established to investigate, and the world moved on.   For this month’s Prospect magazine, Nick Davies has trawled through documents to unearth new evidence which suggests that the phones of some politicians were still being...

Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger are joined by Maurizio Molinari, editor of Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica to explore exactly what Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is doing with Italian state media.   Renowned historian Antonio Scurati was booked to deliver a monologue on a talk show on Italian broadcaster RAI 3 on 25th April, Italy’s Liberation Day, when it commemorates victory over fascism. In this speech, he was planning to accuse Meloni’s government of sticking to ideologies of...

Tensions in the Middle East ramped up at the weekend with the massive drone and missile attack launched by Iran on Israel. The eyes of the world refocused on the region, particularly Gaza—but what about the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank?   Gideon Levy is an award-winning journalist who has been writing a column in Haaretz called “The Twilight Zone” for many years. On the podcast, he discusses his current view of life in the West Bank with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel...

The war in Ukraine has been grinding on for over two years now, and the media spotlight on the region has dimmed over the last few months. But Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and writer for the Atlantic, has been following the conflict closely.   Because much of the world’s media has turned attention away from Ukraine, with editors focusing time and money instead on the war in Gaza, Anne explains that the innovation of Ukrainians in the war is being under-reported. So is...

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has passed a law that will ban foreign media from operating within the country. Al Jazeera is one of the main outlets on the ground providing reportage, and the most watched network in the region—so what impact will the closure of their operations in Israel have on the ability to get news out of the war zone? Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber are joined by journalist and humanitarian Khaled Mansour to discuss where genuine news reporting from the conflict...

This week, Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber are joined by Gavin Esler and Michael Crick as they get stuck into GB News, broadcaster bias—and what it’s like to watch and appear on the channel.   Previously, Alan had tasked Gavin with watching GB News’s output for a month. The outcome? Tory MPs interviewing Tory MPs, “shallow” reporting, and a lack of balance not just about politics but about the reality of issues such as housing in UK society. Michael Crick is a contributor to GB News—albeit...

In any war, counting the number of people killed is challenging. So, too, is understanding how they died. In Gaza, where the still-rising death toll already includes 13,450 children, these figures can be obscured by biases, allegations—and the realities on the ground. In this week’s episode, Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger are joined by leading statistician David Spiegelhalter to discuss how to shed light on casualty numbers in a war situation.   Also this week, George Brock joins Alan and...

Journalists are often taught that “when a dog bites a man, that is not news; when a man bites a dog, that is news.” But, according to former Guardian journalist and professor of sociology at Manchester university Gary Younge, sometimes events are newsworthy because they happen often—journalists just need to get curious about the reasons why. For example, after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a US justice department report revealed that every time a police dog bit...

Alan and Lionel sit down with AG Sulzberger, chair and publisher of the New York Times. AG took over as publisher of the New York Times six years ago after many years as a hack. His term coincided with that of Donald J Trump, for whom the Times was public enemy number one. AG stood his ground, telling the president to his face that his anti-press rhetoric was “not just divisive but increasingly dangerous”.   He and his team have taken the Times and transformed the digital offering, adding...

Vice and BuzzFeed were once at the forefront of the digital media revolution—Vice alone was once valued at nearly double the New York Times! But now, both firms have shut their news operations, Vice has closed its flagship site, and further cuts to staff numbers are expected.   BuzzFeed’s former UK editor Janine Gibson, now weekend editor of the Financial Times, analyses why these millennial media giants became so troubled.   Plus, writer Peter Pomerantsev chats about a forgotten master of...

An investigation by Hope Not Hate reported this week that Paul Marshall, owner of GB News and UnHerd and frontrunner in the race to buy the Telegraph, had repeatedly liked and re-tweeted racist and Islamophobic content. In this special bonus episode, Alan and Lionel discuss who decides whether someone is fit to own a major UK newspaper, what Ofcom can do to uphold standards—and what could happen to political discourse in the United Kingdom if Marshall’s bid succeeds. Hosted on Acast. See...

Does the word “PRESS” on a flak jacket keep a journalist safe or make them a target? In this week’s Media Confidential, we focus on the sobering death toll of reporters covering the war in Gaza, as highlighted by the annual report of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Alan and Lionel hear from the CPJ’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg and speak to AFP’s Global News Director Phil Chetwynd, who has a team reporting from inside Gaza and who highlights an incident when journalists were...

What motivates the media world behind the clickbait? What drives broadcast, print and digital media producers and journalists? In this episode, Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber answer listeners’ questions on media bias in an election year, the impact of 24-hour news on mental health, and whether President Biden should be active on TikTok. Plus—do Lionel and Alan think Taylor Swift could swing the US election? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amid great concern over the provision of local news in the UK and beyond, could organisations such as the Manchester Mill and the Bristol Cable challenge famous old papers in some of Britain’s biggest cities and calm long-term fears of areas becoming “news deserts”?   Alan and Lionel hear from Joshi Herrmann and Sophie Atkinson from Manchester Mill about whether their community subscriber model is the way to fund commercially sustainable journalism capable of holding powerful people and...

Can Rishi Sunak still rely on what has often been called the “Conservative media”, or are news organisations on the political right becoming increasingly hostile to the prime minister?   Journalist David Aaronovitch helps Alan and Lionel analyse who and what is driving significant cultural and political shifts in some of the UK’s newsrooms and media boardrooms. Could the Telegraph and GB News even desert the Tories and back the Reform party at the next general election?   Enjoy one-month’s...

Alan’s investigation into “Gibb-gate” continues. In a major article for Prospect, he sets out the influence and connections of a tight-knit and largely unaccountable clique which is undermining the political independence and regulation of public service broadcasting. At the centre of that group is Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s director of communications when she was prime minister.   Alan and Lionel discuss the independence of the BBC and its journalism, as well as government appointments more...

Is Donald Trump now unstoppable in his quest to secure the Republican presidential nomination, after kicking off caucus season with a decisive win in Iowa? As Trump shapes up for another shot at the White House, Alan and Lionel ask how US media can pitch their coverage and analysis to ensure scrutiny of such an unreliable and divisive figure, without ignoring the election issues that matter to his supporters. They’re joined by Alex Burns, who is now head of news at POLITICO and covered the...