Media Storm

Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW! Tuesday 20th May 7pm, @ the Business Design Centre in Islington. Tickets available HERE 

Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically.

This week, Katy Perry was blasted - into space, and in the media (4:50). As news broke that the Supreme Court ruled the legal definition of a woman is based on 'biological sex' (a ruling that didn't consult a single transgender person), we look at the rollbacks of queer rights around the world (10:20).

Plus, how three front pages defined differently an attack on prison officers at HMP Frankland by the Manchester arena bomber's brother (22:32), a rebuttal against an ableist Daily Mail column on stammering (31:53), and why one article about asylum seekers living in 'luxury hotels' fails on facts (36:34).

To keep Eyes on Palestine (41:02), we look at the case of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia university abducted by ICE in the US, and discuss a small but mighty change in a BBC headline.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) 

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW! Tuesday 20th May 7pm @ the Business Design Centre in Islington.

Tickets are available at 10am today via AEG Presents HERE! Paid Patreon subscribers get access to tickets ONE HOUR EARLIER at 9am

What’s the bigger threat to free speech: the ‘woke mob’, or the MAGA word police? Where’s the line between free speech and hate speech? How can you have free market of ideas - when most of the media is owned by political suck-ups? Is free speech actually free if some people have more free speech than others?

And with ‘free speech crusaders’ censoring anyone whose views they dislike… WHAT DOES ‘FREE SPEECH’ EVEN MEAN ANYMORE?

Journalist and political activist Femi Oluwole joins Helena Wadia and Mathilda Mallinson to put the mainstream media’s ‘free speech’ debates under the microscope: from the arresting of keyboard criminals, to the abduction of students calling attention to Palestine, to the hypocrisy of MAGA leaders, and the social media algorithms shaping public discourse.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us for the Media Storm LIVE SHOW! Tuesday 20th May 7pm, @ the Business Design Centre in Islington.

Tickets available at 10am on Friday via AEG Presents HERE 

Paid Patreon subscribers get access to tickets ONE HOUR EARLIER at 9am - support us on Patreon and get early access!  

Content warning: Rape and sexual assault. If you need support you can contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222

Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically.

This week, some million people in the US protested for democracy and against the Trump administration - but you wouldn’t know it from the front pages (3:10). One grievance on the protest agenda was against Trump’s tariffs, described as ‘reciprocal’ in the media - but it turns out they're anything but (10:25). 

Plus - can we do anything about Meta’s AI stealing over 7 million books? (9:12) (Sign the petition from The Society of Authors here!) Why did The Telegraph call Lucy Connolly, jailed for calling on rioters to set fire to asylum seeker hotels on X, a political prisoner? (21:03) And why intersectional reporting is so important in the case of serial rapist Zhenhao Zou. (31:11)

Finally, keeping Eyes on Palestine, we look at the compliant reporting even the face of evidence that Israel's army killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and civil emergency responders. (39:14) 

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) 

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Warning: this episode contains mentions of suicide. If you need support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123

Reports of image-based sexual abuse in the UK have increased tenfold over the past few years. Women are five times more likely to be victims of intimate image abuse. The true scale of the problem is probably larger, as many victims do not come forward.

But sensationalist headlines about so-called 'revenge porn' are doing a disservice to survivors. The term 'revenge' welcomes victim-blaming, the term 'porn' undermines the severity of the crime. Articles about apparent new protections for victims are written from Government press releases, with fact-checking thrown out the window, leaving tired survivors to take on crucial work as campaigners.

Legal frameworks also can't seem to keep up with rising technology - AI generated image-based sexual abuse, also known as 'deepfakes', increased 400% between 2022 and 2023.

Is the media failing to point to a culture of misogyny behind this crime? What steps can we take to combat IBSA? And how can we put survivors first every step of the way?

Joining Media Storm this week is Elena Michael, co-founder and director of #NotYourPorn (you can sign their open letter to address the critical gaps in current legislation), and founder of anti-share technology Image Angel, Madelaine Thomas.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically.

So many media storm’s blowing up our radar this week! The ICE abduction of a Turkish PhD student in the US (01:17); a coordinated effort by the Times, Telegraph, TalkTV, GB News, and Robert Jenrick to mislead the public about new sentencing guidelines (5:02); meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her MAGA friends blame migrants, Biden, and everyone but themselves for the Signal group-chat security scandal (17:56).

Plus - and this is where it gets awkward AF - Sky New's Sophie Ridge confuses two Muslim MPs for each other (22:00); a double stabbing in Bournemouth reveals how sensationalist media can play unwittingly into the hands of murderous men (26:05); and did you know - Adolescence is a true story? (34:24) And if you have concerns about the knee-jerk reaction of showing Adolescence in schools, here's the open letter you can sign.

Finally, for Eyes on Palestine, we report on the discovery of a mass grave of Palestinian doctors that has reignited accusations of Israeli war crimes. (38:20)

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We live in the age of sanctions - with Trump dishing out punitive foreign policy willy-nilly, and Russia’s war in Ukraine attracting more sanctions then the next top-sanctioned countries combined. It’s time to ask: who are they really helping?

Activists often call on their leaders to sanction foreign governments they see as breaking human rights laws. We’re told that sanctions help protect civilians from their own, and neighbouring, oppressive regimes.

But when civilian voices are left out of the conversation, and coverage constantly fails to examine the impact on the ground, how do we know if this is really what’s happening? How do we learn from mistakes?

Because there are mistakes. Venezuelan sanctions today, like Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, are estimated to have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. Yet just this week, we’ve seen more introduced.

Media Storm speaks to civilians from countries around the world, and discusses the real-life consequences of sanctions with one of the leading reporters on the topic - and the few to have consistently centred civilian voices - Murtaza Hussain from Drop Site News.

The episode also features Ilona Oleksiuk, from Ukrainian anti-fossil fuel group, Razom We Stand; Tata Chikviladze, Georgian journalist and protester; and Danielle Bett, Scottish-Israeli pro-democracy activist with Yachad.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you need help with drug addiction, you can find support here.

Tickets for Unchained Nights here!

Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically.

This week, the TV show on everyone's mind: Adolescence. We discuss our reaction to the Netflix hit, whether showing the series in schools will do anything to change minds on misogyny, and how we can involve boys in the conversation without stigmatising them. (21:25)

Also this episode: Drag Race icon The Vivienne's cause of death was revealed to be cardiac arrest caused by the effects of taking ketamine. A campaign has started to raise awareness of the dangers of ketamine, and to move the drug from Class B to Class A. But while the media uncritically supports the move, they fail to report on the wider context: that the more we have pursued a war on drugs, the more drug use, drug fatalities, and racialised inequality has risen. (04:01)

Next, former president of Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) - but why did he call it 'white man's justice'? The uncomfortable truth about inconsistent international law. (14:25)

And, we discuss the irony that a new four-lane highway is being built in the Brazilian city of Belém, cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest - all in aid of easing traffic at the climate summit COP30. You couldn't write it, but it's true. Read more from Ione Well's reporting here, and hear why we need to put the lived experience of indigenous voices at the forefront of the climate solution. (33:51)

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Content warning: baby loss

"When a court sentences a pregnant woman to prison, they sentence her to a high risk pregnancy"

There are hundreds of pregnant women in UK prisons - a third of them yet to actually be convicted of a crime. Babies born to women in prison are 7x more likely to be stillborn than the norm.

In recent years, two babies died when their incarcerated mothers went into labour and their calls for help were ignored. Last month, harrowing stories emerged of women at HMP Bronzefield being unlawfully handcuffed to male officers during childbirth.

Media Storm asks: will prison ever be a safe place to be pregnant? And if not, does the media care? And why, when debating this issue, did one LBC presenter get fixated on lamb chops?! (19:25)

Plus, Helena delves into far more detail than anybody asked for when talking about the EastEnders storyline which saw the iconic character Sonia Fowler pregnant in prison - an example of pop culture's influence on real-life issues.

Joining Media Storm this week is co-director of gender justice group Level Up, Janey Starling, and 'Anna' - co-founder of the Level Up campaign No Births Behind Bars, who was first sent to prison when 6 months pregnant.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) 

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Time for another weekly news debrief: Europe’s surging defence budgets and the hidden realities of the nuclear armament debate (03:09), the attack on benefits in our government and media - which are cutting more disability voices from the debate, than actual costs from the budget (10:07), and the overlooked importance of US airstrikes in Yemen (24:51). Plus, how Gaza’s ceasefire ended long before this week’s devastating airstrikes (30:39).

Walk with us through the week’s top stories and learn how to critically consume the mainstream media, spot the missing contexts and voices, and get a better understanding of what’s happening in our world.

UPDATE: Since recording, Gaza's death toll has continued to rise and has now surpassed 500 deaths since Tuesday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)  

The music is by @soundofsamfire

Support us on Patreon!

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing...The News Meeting from our friends at Tortoise. Your Media Storm hosts Mathilda & Helena were invited on Tortoise's podcast to pitch a story we think should lead the news.

Are welfare reforms Labour’s only hope of saving money ahead of the Spring Statement? Who are the hundreds of Venezuelans who have been forcibly removed from the US? And what is the media getting wrong when it comes to reporting on femicide by an intimate partner?

We join Tortoise's Deputy Editor Giles Whittell and reporter Claudia Williams for The News Meeting.

You can listen to the full episode here!

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