Afleveringen
-
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
There are loosely three main funding models that make up our mainstream media. The first is public service models that are not run for profit, like the BBC, the second is donor-led journalism and the third is the big one – advertising. And we have the advertising model to thank for the acceleration of sensationalist, clickbait journalism. Because if you’re selling adverts, you’re selling your readers’ attention. When news outlets have to meet advertiser-set traffic quotas, that creates a lot of pressure for quantity over quality. Digital journalists are often desk-bound, required to produce dozens of articles a day out of recycled online material, with no time to pursue quality investigations or seek out minority lived experience. And the more money a broadcaster or a paper are paid for advertising, the more they will do anything to get traffic to their channel or website. So in comes dangerous media malpractices, like opinion masquerading as fact, sensationalism and scapegoating.
This episode, we speak to Richard Wilson, founder of the Stop Funding Hate campaign. The pressure group, which is celebrating a decade this year, asks companies to stop advertising in - and therefore stop providing funds for - certain British news outlets who spread disinformation and hateful rhetoric.
In the shorter term, following the efforts of Stop Funding Hate supporters, GB News has reportedly lost over £131 million. In the long term, they're building a movement which can make hate unprofitable for good, by tackling the systemic failures which currently make publishing hateful clickbait more lucrative than responsible journalism.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
Edited by Toka Omer
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us @mediastormpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
The EU has just passed a controversial law, hailed by the far-right as the start of "the era of deportations". Passed on World Refugee Week, the law allows EU countries to detain migrant families for years, and deport them to countries they have no connection to. This echoes the UK's failed Rwanda scheme, and Trump's existing deals with South Sudan, Eswatini, the Democratic Republic of Congo and more.
It also unlocks expansive budgets for surveillance, detention and deportation. This money is likely to end up enriching the same corporations underpinning ICE raids in the US, and notorious migrant containment camps such as Australia's Nauru.
Traffickers and smugglers often make headlines for profiteering off the refugee crisis, but the corporate industry that has grown up around it goes largely invisible in our news. These companies are paid billions of taxpayer dollars - not to tackle the roots causes of displacement, but to keep it away from wealthy countries' shores.
But is what they're doing even working?
How much public money is being directed away from essential services to feed the deportation machine?
And what about the human cost?
In this episode, Mathilda and Helena are joined by Sudanese refugee Mahamat Daoud, a survivor of EU-funded Libyan detention and the 2022 massacre at the Melilla-Nador border between Morocco and Spain. He describes what 'migrant deterrence' looks like up-close, and why it didn't work on him. Researcher Nathan Akehurst also joins the group, to breakdown the latest border strategy that Western governments call 'externalisation'.
It comes as 2026 marks the deadliest year so far for small boat crossings on the Mediterranean Sea. News outlets that report obsessively on dinghy crossings - but how many headlines have you seen on that?
Pre-order Nathan's book, Along the Watchtower, here.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us @mediastormpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
China, Russia, and... the UK? We’re talking about mass surveillance. Did you know the UK is in the 5 most surveilled countries in the world?
AI facial recognition technology is causing alarm for its recent deployment at protests. It’s being rolled out across the UK at a pace outstripping the rules designed to govern it. More than 6.6 million faces have been scanned since 2023. And guess what? Black and Asian people are most likely to be mismatched and criminally pursued in error.
But surveillance these days isn’t always as obvious as cameras on police vans. In today’s world, it’s about data. And governments aren’t collecting it on their own – they’re contracting private corporations to do it: via shady contracts that pay these companies not just in multimillion pound deals, but goldmines of our private information.
Palantir is at the top of that list – and the US tech firm that’s been providing ICE agents with private health data to help them target migrant communities has now got its claws in the NHS. Social media platforms are surveillance companies in their own right. And the media that’s supposed to hold them to account often functions as a tool in the data-gathering industry. How are we supposed to navigate this minefield?!
To help us through the maze, we’re joined by Jasleen Chaggar, Senior Legal and Policy Officer at Big Brother Watch, and investigative tech reporter Jade Ruyu-Yan.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us @mediastormpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Content warning: This episode contains discussion and description of rape, sexual assault and male violence against women and girls.
“THE TERROR OF THE MEDIEVAL PLAGUE SHIP HAS RETURNED TO HAUNT THE WORLD!” The Telegraph compared the Hantavirus cruise outbreak to the literal bubonic plague which wiped out 50 million people. Hantavirus killed three.
These unhinged headlines exposed a news industry pining for the next pandemic, when Covid clickbait saw news traffic and subscribers hit record growth.
But if the media wanted a catastrophic outbreak with a death rate twice as high as the hantavirus cruise, they had one at their disposal. The Ebola epidemic in the Congo and Uganda began at the same time as the Hantavirus outbreak. It has killed a hundred times more people and been officially declared a global emergency by the WHO.
In this news watch episode, Media Storm compares coverage of hantavirus and ebola across UK and US outlets. The findings are telling.
In part two: three teenage boys in Hampshire, UK, were convicted of ten counts of rape against a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old girl, in two separate, calculated attacks. Their punishment? Community youth rehabilitation orders, restraining orders with an expiry date… and a £26 fine.
Plenty has been written in the press about Judge Nicholas Rowland’s lenient sentence and ‘himpathy’ for the boys: they have ADHD, low IQ and need not go to prison! The media outrage did achieve change (the Prime Minister spoke up). But what was found in only ONE article may be the most crucial part of the story: the rapist boys had been reported to police multiple times, including for alleged sexual violence.
Why does our media fail to point to wider patterns of control and manipulation when it comes to cases of extreme sexual violence? If this is a systemic failure of policing and justice, who will hold them to account?
You can sign the petition for a Judicial Accountability Framework here.
Write to your MP about how the EHRC’s new code will affect trans people here.
You can call Rape Crisis 24/7 for free on 0808 500 222.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us @mediastormpod
Edited by Toka Omer Qassem.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Last month, an article in the New Statesman went viral. “Meet the Angry Young Women”, it was titled. “Across Britain a radical new feminism is rising”.
What makes someone radically left-wing according to this article? Disliking billionaires, feeling anxious about social injustice, caring about Gaza, and of course – having pink hair and a nose ring. How very radical!
The New Statesman article was then seized upon by The Times and The Telegraph in particular, who bemoaned that we should "Forget the Manosphere" and instead focus on "Angry leftie women" who are apparently "the vanguard of the Left’s toxic empathy". 6 in 10 women wouldn't date someone who doesn't have the same view as them on Israel-Palestine, they gripe. Yet the articles fail to mention that the data set also found that 5 in 10 men feel the same.
Can angry young women who are exercising their democratic right to vote really be compared to the angry young men of the manosphere, who are perpetuators and some even proven perpetrators of sexual violence? What is the media's real aim behind these lazy comparisons? And is the femosphere even real, or did the media manufacture it?
Joining us on Media Storm to actually discuss why women are so bloody angry, is therapist and activist Megan Cooper (who was misrepresented and misquoted in the original article) and founder of Cheer Up Luv, Eliza Hatch.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us @mediastormpod
Edited by Toka Qassem
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
In today’s Media Storm, we dive into the shadow world of dark money and foreign interference seeking to take democracy out of our hands.
Whether through think-tanks, bot farms, or all-expenses-paid MP trips, malicious actors have plenty of ways to influence our politics from outside. In theory, our politicians are supposed to work for us. They’re also supposed to disclose where their money is coming from (and make sure none of it is dirty or sanctioned). But a new report from Open Britain reveals a system with loopholes built into it, and a stark refusal to patch them up by those who stand to profit.
Why are US billionaires bankrolling Britain’s far-right? Why do high-ranking intelligence officers describe Brexit as Moscow’s most successful “active measures” operation in modern British history? And WHY – in light of that – has no government ever comprehensively investigated foreign interference in the 2016 referendum?
This episode features Conservative Party fundraiser-turned-whistleblower, Sergei Cristo, who shares his experiences of Russian state attempts to buy British politics. But Russia is not the only culprit. Journalist and broadcaster Sangita Myska joins us to break down her investigations into US and Israeli wealth that is reshaping our political landscape. We also revisit our interview with investigative journalist Sian Norris, about the illiberal causes where moneyed interests of Russia, the US and European aristocrats converge.
Dark money is a vast problem in the UK today, and it stems from a culture of financial corruption that is deeply embedded in the City of London. Private schools, football clubs, estate agents and news corporations regularly sell their services to launder dark money. And at the centre of the ‘London laundromat’ are the Houses of Parliament. This episode should open your eyes to the dollar-shaped crack in democracy as it exists today. To learn more, visit open-britain.co.uk, where the full report will be published.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with Open Britain, a grassroots campaign making democracy work for everyone (not just the rich and powerful)!
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us @mediastormpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Warning: this episode mentions baby loss and birth trauma.
How many times have you read a headline that tells you UK maternity services are in ‘crisis’? And how many times have you really understood why they're in crisis?
A recent interim report into England's maternity and neonatal care had some brutal findings: hospital mistake 'cover-ups', negligent care from frontline workers, lack of staff and poorer maternal outcomes for ethnic minority women. But identifying the problems is just the beginning – understanding their root cause is harder, and something our press repeatedly fails to do.
Financial incentive schemes that reward units whose data meets certain 'safety' targets put the lives of pregnant people on the line – but midwives with low morale, burnout, unsustainable working hours and stress take the brunt of the blame in the media, even when their voices are notably missing from the coverage about them.
What's really behind headlines about a lack of staff? Is there really a woo-woo 'normal birth ideology' killing mothers and babies? And why are outcomes so different depending on skin colour?
Here to answer all those questions is Leah Hazard, NHS midwife and author of 'Hard Pushed: A Midwife's Story', and Illiyin Morrison, perinatal trauma specialist midwife and author of 'The Birth Debrief'.
You can sign Leah's petition for legal limits on midwives working hours here.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Sri Lanka, Ukraine, South Sudan, Haiti, Greece, Zambia, The Latin America Lost Decade… prepare yourselves for a lesson in history . And in geography. And in (ew) economics! Today, we’re talking about debt.
You might not know it, but the world is in a spiralling global debt crisis. On average, low-income countries spend about a fifth of their entire national budget paying off foreign debt. To put that number into perspective, in 2014, it was just 5%. 3 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than education or health.
And who are these interest payments going to? Bankers, billionaires, and the world’s wealthiest countries — incidentally, often former colonisers.
This is not the story we get told in the media. So to tell us the first-hand human impact of global debt – which is inextricably linked to the climate crisis – we are joined by one of Zambia’s most prominent debt cancellation and climate activists, Precious Kolbwana. Plus, spitting cold hard facts, Lead Economist at the NGO CAFOD, Maria Finnerty.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Sign the Fair Trade petition here.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Warning: this episode mentions rape, sexual assault and suicide.
The UK government is moving to cut jury trials, a right that traces back to the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta.. It’s a sharp U-turn for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Secretary David Lammy, who spent years arguing juries were a cornerstone of democracy.
Labour say they’re acting in the interests of women – lucky us! They say cutting juries will ease court delays for victims of misogynistic violence. The thing is… fewer than 3% of reported rapes lead to a trial in the UK. So are juries really the problem here? Is this anything to do with gender justice at all? Or are women being used – yet again – to whitewash political agendas? What is the government (and media) not telling us about why Starmer and Lammy have changed their minds on juries? Side note: Palestine Action activists got acquitted by a jury who went against the judge’s order...
Plus, Owen Jones has won the first battle in an ongoing libel suit filed against him by BBC Middle East editor, Raffi Berg. The court has ruled Jones’ piece was a piece of reasoned opinion, not factual reporting, making it easier to defend. But wait until you hear who’s representing Berg in a libel suit that’s airing a lot of the BBC’s dirty linen.
We also look at Trump’s bid to use national security laws to control news coverage of the war on Iran, and the impact of Brexit on international couples.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
If you have been affected by sexual violence, you can contact: Rape Crisis (England & Wales) on 0808 500 2222
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
There are at least 49 million enslaved people worldwide… and very little knowledge about how directly connected we are to them through supply chains (take the terrifying Slavery Footprint survey like Mathilda makes Helena do in this episode!)
Over 100,000 are enslaved inside the UK, and that number is growing. This is no surprise, if we look at the data through a Media Storm lens. It correlates with government and media efforts to criminalise asylum seekers and irregular migrants, whether or not they have been trafficked here.
Britain credits itself with pioneering the abolition of slavery. Yet it has a thriving underground labour market and imports billions of pounds-worth of goods every year produced with forced labour. British legislation is called “toothless” by activists. Asda, Morrisons, Tesco and Waitrose all sell tomato products that would be barred from America under anti-slavery import controls.
In this deep dive, we look at modern slavery at home and in overseas supply chains, buried in mainstream media despite underpinning almost every aspect of UK life. We’re joined by trafficking survivor and podcaster Ilja Abbattista, and migrant worker rights activist Andy Hall, who has fought for years to see Dyson to pay a settlement fee to workers who say they were enslaved, beaten and tortured in a Malaysian factory producing parts for the company. Dyson says the settlement is not an admission of liability. Stay tuned to hear how the media is silenced by threats from multinational corporations, and how hysteria over immigration is helping human trafficking to thrive.
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Last week’s by-election in Gorton and Denton saw massive losses for Labour and a massive win for Hannah Spencer of the Green Party, despite Reform's overconfidence. So did the Greens cheat, as Reform claim… or are Reform just really bad losers? They seem to think abusive Muslim husbands stole their vote, and that the definition of sectarianism is brown people voting for a white woman in a party led by a gay Jewish man. And perhaps worse - the mainstream media think these ideas are worth multiple headlines, articles and broadcast discussions.
Also: remember when Trump said he’d achieved 'everlasting peace' in the Middle East? Since he joined Israel in bombing Iran on Saturday; Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Oman are caught in the crossfires. Trump insisted the attack was an act of self-defence, and now US officials are scrambling to justify exactly how that’s true. Has the media learned from its devastating mistakes in 2003, when it circulated false intelligence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq? Or are they doomed to repeat the same mistakes?
This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
CONTENT WARNING: Details about sexual violence.
Last week, we broke apart the Epstein Files following the US justice department’s dumping of three million documents about a man once described “the most dangerous sexual predator in the world”: Jeffrey Epstein. Survivors have been exposed and re-traumatised, their testimonies have been redacted and buried, and their justice has been continually denied.
So today, we put survivors back at the centre of this story.
It’s a story we probably wouldn’t even know about, were it not for their persistence and bravery in coming forwards despite terrifying efforts to silence them. So we’re honoured to be joined by two of them: artist and author Rina Oh, and educator and mum Teresa J. Helm. They tell us sides of the story the mainstream media is missing.
We also put sexual violence back at the centre of the story, by including a comprehensive outline of the abuse that victims have said was inflicted on them, as well as the names of men they have accused. It may be difficult to listen to, but we believe it is important to detail the sexual violence without burying in politics or euphemistic language — because that is what the legacy media has done for much too long.
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
If you have been affected by sexual violence, you can contact:
Rape Crisis (England & Wales) 0808 500 2222
RAINN (USA) 800.656.4673
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Next week on Media Storm, we will be speaking to survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse, following weeks of coverage that has often focused on this as a political and financial scandal. Survivors have been too lost in the media storm. But there has been a hell of a lot to process - so for Part One of this week’s news watch, we break down the key geopolitical, financial and political you need to understand.
Then after the break: you've probably seen headlines about Nigel Farage talking about divorce rates, birth rates, tax rates, abortion rates, working from home rates, and the root of all evil according to Reform: child-free women. But what links all these sensationalist splashes? There's something much darker, deeper and scarier going on here, and it's an attack on women's bodily autonomy. We draw the parallels between Reform's potential policies and the policies of the Nazi's. Think we're being too dramatic? Just listen.
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
In December, Australia enforced a world-first, nationwide ban prohibiting children under 16 from holding accounts on major social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and YouTube. And now, the UK could be following suit.
But are concerns over "child safety" really behind the ban, or is this a smokescreen for state surveillance and control?
For many teenagers, social media is where they first encounter global news, social justice movements, and political debate - especially if they don’t have access to formal education or traditional news environments. Is the social media ban a blessing for traditional media gatekeepers?
Will it even work, or will the digital native generation simply find a way around it? Shouldn't we be regulating content, not children? Will the government ever stand up to Big Tech? And is the legacy media completely out of touch with young people?
To discuss the perspectives missing from the mainstream, we're joined by two Gen Z's with big voices. Fiona Lali is the youth organiser for the Revolutionary Communist Party, delivering political analysis and explainers to hundreds of thousands of people across her social media platforms. Tamara Himani is journalist and analyst reporting on politics in the US and the Middle East for Middle East Eye, an outlet built on social media.
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Like this episode? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
In January alone, Donald Trump abducted the Venezuelan President, listed himself as President of Venezuela on Wikipedia, almost launched another tariff war after demanding Greenland, directly threatened Colombia, Mexico and Cuba, told Honduran vote counters there’d be “hell to pay” if his favourite candidate didn’t win, and dropped bombs on Caribbean boats that killed more than a hundred people. Yet at the World Economic Forum in Davos the same month, he launched his ‘Board of Peace’. Make it make sense!
But is Trump's new world order really that new? In a postwar world of covert regime change, privatised ownership of natural resources, and sanctions designed to strangle uncooperative economies, was the international rules-based order just a lie all along?
Plus: headlines told us that "Non-consensual sexualised deepfakes were created by the AI chatbot Grok" and that "Grok AI made sexualised images of children". But who gave Grok the prompt to do it? Missing from the headlines, as is so often the case when it comes to stories about sexual abuse against women and girls, is MEN. We discuss why no one can seem to name the problem - so much so, our government used a SNAKE to represent male violence in a recent advert (end snake violence against women and girls!)
And we end with our new segment: Holding Onto Hope.
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Like this episode? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Content warning: sexual assault, mentions of suicide, gunshots
Welcome back! Since we were last here, presidents have been abducted, Greenland became the pride of Europe and millions of Epstein Files flooded the matrix.
Believe it or not, we’re only one month into 2026! But we simply couldn’t fit it into a single episode. So here’s part one of a double-whammy News Watch, in which we round up the looniest headlines of the longest January ever.
We start with the deadly ICE circus unfolding in the US: if the government tells you not to believe your own eyes, should the newspapers reprint their orders? Plus: there’s two ICE-related deaths you’ve surely heard of… but did you read about the other seven? Or do only white citizens deserve headlines?
Over to Iran where the flailing government’s brutal repression and internet blackout has made it difficult to hear the voices on the ground - at a time when Iranians urgently need the international community. But others are also doing a good job at drowning them out: some very loud and very polarising pundits dominating the debate. We do our best to navigate the world’s moral dilemma of How To Help Iranians, by tuning into the quieter voices. And just listening.
To end: our new segment, Holding Onto Hope.
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
This week Media Storm hosts Mathilda and Helena answer all your questions - from tattoo regrets to the meaning of truth to who was shagging who in the newsroom. Variety.
Join our supporters to ask your questions (and give us essential Media Storm funds) via Patreon!
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia).
The music is by @soundofsamfire.
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Like this episode? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
The Telegraph is for sale. Why? A couple of billionaire brothers ran it into debt, and now a few more billionaires are lining up to buy it. Spoiler alert: most of them already own the mainstream media! But just because our news is owned by billionaires, that doesn’t make it biased towards them… right?!
On Media Storm podcast, we break down hidden biases behind the week’s headlines - everything from immigration to geopolitical conflict to healthcare. And we find lots of common problems: clickbait, missing voices, polarisation. But there’s one problem to rule them all, and it helps to explain where all the others are coming from: MONEY.
All roads lead to Capitalism. And so for today’s deep-dive episode, economics reporter Jessica Burbank (@kaburbank) and critical theory scholar Louisa Munch (@louisamunchtheory) join Mathilda and Helena to talk about how profit perverts journalism. We look at the week’s headlines in the USA and UK, and ask if the wealthy are weaving the story their way.
Economics is hard and boring, we get it. But both our guests are experts in making economics accessible, and as they tell us, until the public understands how the economy works, we can never make it work for us. The good news is, it’s not nearly as complicated as most media make it out to be - so get listening!
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Welcome to Media Storm's News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines.
We’re taking on the right-wing hit job on the BBC. Why has one of the world’s most trusted news organisations capitulated to dodgy accusations of lefty, pro-trans and anti-Israel bias, when it gets just as many accusations from the other side? Learn about power structures inside global news and the battles for narrative control – while minorities continue to pay the highest price.
After the break: ever thought we'd be talking about football on Media Storm? Maccabi Tel Aviv played Aston Vila in Birmingham. We highlight buried police intelligence showing overlaps between Israel’s hooligan and military forces, and breakdown how Sky News manufactured the key headline (‘no-go area for Jews’) that came to shape political events. Listen and learn to spot misinformation in realtime.
The episode ends with Eyes on Genocide. Updates from Gaza, where the so-called ceasefire has entered its second month amid hundreds of Palestinian casualties; and from Sudan, where satellite imagery sparks fears that paramilitary forces are burning victims’ bodies in bulk.
Like this episode? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Like this episode? Support Media Storm on Patreon!
Margaux Blanchard is a widely published journalist. She has written everything from essays about motherhood to investigations about disused mines. But what her editors didn’t realise? Margaux Blanchard doesn’t exist. At least, not as a human being.
A company called Inception Point AI is using artificial intelligence to publish 3,000 podcast episodes a week at the cost of $1 a piece. Reviewers call it ‘AI sludge’ – is it coming for our jobs (and brains)?
Big Tech firms are using journalists’ work without permission to train AI to do their jobs. The AI summaries often get the facts wrong while putting human news publishers out of business. Where does this leave us in an era of disinformation warfare?
Can the mainstream media blame AI when it’s already churning out sensationalist clickbait and poorly fact-checked news? And could AI ever be used to improve chronic problems in our news, instead of exploiting them?
Press Gazette editor Charlotte Tobitt and tech journalist Rob Waugh join Media Storm to breakdown the best and worst impacts of AI on the news.
The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)
The music is by @soundofsamfire
Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices - Laat meer zien
