Media Democracy Pod

Matthew Brown has played a leading role in Preston City Council's work to maximise the benefits of public and quasi-public spending in the city. Changes to the culture of procurement in the city is having important redistributive effects and helping to foster a stronger co-operative sector.

Here he talks with Dan Hind about the origins of Preston Model, the ways in which it has developed over the years, and what it can teach us about the potential for far-reaching reform in the English regions and beyond.

The Centre for Local Economic Strategies has produced a short video about community wealth-building - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNQKaDYtmjs

Tom and Dan reflect on the first season of Media Democracy and the Summer of 2017: Corbyn's electoral breakthrough and a brief moment of media introspection; Snow, Robinson and Harris; everyone waking up to Facebook; the need to connect media policy with a wider programme of democratisation. Plus, Tom is accused of spreading fake news by Nick Robinson and Dan has been drinking coffee. Naturally we finish on a song.

This week we speak to Jamie Stern-Weiner about reports of antisemitism at the Labour conference. Jamie is a graduate student in Middle Eastern Studies. He was co-founder of New Left Project and is the editor of 'Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Toughest Questions', forthcoming from OR Books.

How does the financial and monetary system work? One thing's for sure, you won't get the answers from the Establishment media, which seems incurably incurious when it comes to the mysteries of money.

So this week, after a quick chat about the launch of the Media Fund, and a few pops at the Guardian and the BBC, Dan and Tom speak to author and public banking advocate Ellen Brown about money, debt and banking.

This week Tom and Dan chat briefly about the Labour Party Conference and the discussions there about the politics of the media. The episode ends with an extract from John McDonnell's speech at the World Transformed, where the Shadow Chancellor talks about role new technology can play in democratising policy making in the Labour Party and beyond.

As activists head for Brighton, Dan and Tom discuss the power of the new media oligopolies and a media reform agenda for an incoming Corbyn Government.

This week Thomas Barlow joins us to discuss our political and environment crisis and how the Media Fund is seeking to address it through organised support for independent media.

In the second part of our interview with Sarah O'Connell we talk about the growing distance between journalists and the people they cover, and about how this gap can be closed.

Sarah O'Connell talks to Media Democracy about the class and cultural differences that separate broadcast journalism from its audiences. Sarah began her career as a broadcast journalist in 1999 and has worked at the BBC's Political Research Unit, Panorama, Newsnight, Al Jazeera and Sky News.

In this week's show we chat about 'Traingate' and Jon Snow's MacTaggart Lecture before speaking to Hicham Yezza about Islamophobia and how it plays out in the British media.