only just. the consequences of. my. talking it's up. to get these pictures i've got. a lot to come up with not a lot richard gaisford in your at the listening post among the media stories that we're covering this week unrest over a new citizenship law in india are all those news channels out to inform or incite a state of a union divided donald trump honors a controversy of talk radio host media in the middle east and the troubling use of blackface why is it still considered an acceptable form of entertainment. plus the u.k. and the war of words. we want to find langley's french words as it turns out. india is more than 2 months into a series of nationwide protests against the new citizenship law known as the c a a the citizenship amendment act the c a a makes it easier for migrants from religious minorities some of whom have been persecuted in their homelands to get indian citizenship unless they are muslims the protests are all over the news not just because of their size or the politicians working the crowds this past week a few days after a minister in a render a modis b j p government called for quote traitorous protesters to be shot a gunman infiltrated a demonstration then shot and wounded in that this is a political story in which the news media are playing a central role india has more than 424 hour television news channels many of them have taken to amplifying the nationalistic pro hindu rhetoric of the b j p labeling protestors anti national implying that muslims are inclined to spread terror and in the process normalizing hate speech and spreading that right across their airwaves our starting point this week is new delhi. india has many problems. gun control however is not one of them. which is why this image was so shocking to think we did not match. the anti citizenship law protests had gone on for months mostly peacefully then on january 27th at an election rally a minister in the modi government referred to the demonstrations and urged his supporters to quote shoot the traitors. rather than condemning an official call to violence issued in public and news channels in the government's corner for the most part stuck to what they had been doing since the protests began questioning the motives the loyalties of the demonstrators there are . no qualms about their also but. 3 days later came the shooting of a protester. such that a list of radicalized by those who had a far greater the sponsibility that includes the m.p.'s for instance are amplified by by the public by times now by. all these don't like sometimes as outraged and so on and sometimes it's bordering on so when we get about the bottom of the op i get on with look at cannot be actually other people out there yet but why do i do that and you've been to target on somebodies back like that on prime time that there are going to be consequences and you are responsible for those consequences but. the incident of the gunman at the protests has completely exposed where the law and commitments of mainstream media like many of media outlets stand opposed to democracy. they work as and tegan says at the series of democracy. and one of the loudest of those voices is swamis although he has plenty of competition this one is news formula relies heavily on social and political conflict. with some outrage and name calling thrown in the stop. all wrapped in a brand of hindu nationalism that is straight out of the ruling be j.p. the channel that was launched as goswami is vehicle republic is partly owned by a b j p parliamentarian india is the land of news channels more than 400 of them other talking heads cut from the same cloth as goswami working the same crowd are no vehicle kumar of times now. news nation and c t v's suit here challenging the ongoing citizenship law demos have allowed those channels to put their nationalistic credentials on full display this is open propaganda and if a very dangerous kind it is not only goal government propaganda i'll hold more deeper than oh god right i mean. what kind of. right it is actively it's not good for big long i think propaganda. kind of dissent in the country and it has very very far reaching and dangerous implications we are not probe egypt at all the we do not affiliated with any political ideology or out of it any political party but yes the news is up at all india and the news is a nationalistic xenos supports any force which puts india 1st and the kind of popularity easynews enjoys shows that there is a large number of viewers who believe in what is the news. who believe in brand india who believe in the nationalistic approach the coverage is not just shocking but it is problem and it is disappointing in many dangerous fallout in consequence of nonstop provocation and i would confess i have worked with republicans in india i have been there. since the very beginning that's one of india's most networks but i was shocked. unlike many governments with nationalistic tendencies the modi government doesn't put much effort into muscling the indian media it doesn't really have too many of the country's news channels are either owned by politicians or business figures close to the b j p the print sector is more balanced although indian papers are heavily reliant on government ad revenues which can leave their reporting compromised the online space offers a greater plurality of views and some promising journalism but those websites simply cannot compete with all the t.v. news clips that go viral commercial realities factor in as well things like circulation ratings remember this sound bite. there is a lot of. what it was issuing and no wonder there are almost 5 times as many hindus in india roughly a 1000000000 muslims. hindus powered no rent remotely to a landslide reelection last year after the b j p campaigned on an aggressive brand of hindu nationalist india news executives can do the math they don't even have to share the b j p's ideology to capitalize on it commercially that's the state. except for the new and independent nontraditional media and magazines like out of sites like school the why are. these places that are so. kept the pressure on the government everyone else is either reliant on government ads and therefore cannot report or simply agrees with the government look out over the media media with the exception of 2 or 3 channels and newspapers portray anyone who disagrees with the government as so called anti national and any of the country. and like. they tried to destroy the structure that they live in it means that anyone who raises their voice against any government policy gets presented by these channels and used papers as a disgrace to the country and impediment to development in fact even scepticism and . which is why demonstrators have come to resent journalists from those channels covering their story on january 24th when deepak of news nation tried to report from a prominent protest location in delhi demonstrators intervened. returned a few days later along with sudhir choudhry of xenu's competing channels putting on a show of solidarity trying to make a point about freedom of expression is slow. because the protesters. there. they always talk about freedom of expression they portray themselves as the champion of freedom of expression they complain about intolerance but then our reporters now are going one on the streets they are being mishandled the only lake. that's such of media which is something that they are not open enough and gotten to know who engage with people like us who have a different. media they are sort of the media has a pattern of presenting any critique or attempt to question their reporting as an attack on democracy itself. however when they coverage is so unwavering in its support of the powerful and certain consistently. odds with the common man it in re just people i want to know in a democracy that is stable disciplined and nationalist he convinces them that the media is the actual enemy of the nation that the media is not the cure of democracy but in fact the villain possibly is dangerous to our society as any terrorist or militant and this is why public anger is exploding. we're discussing another media story that's come across our radar this week with one of our producers flo philips flo such an eventful week in the coverage of u.s. politics there was the end of the trump impeachment saga in the senate there was the mess over the democratic vote count in iowa but then came the state of the union address with a surprise talk radio angle to it indeed richard donald trump used the occasion to do something on precedented he awarded the nation's highest civilian honor the presidential medal of freedom to a conservative radio talk show host rush limbaugh now this was all seemingly pretty last minute limbo have been on the air just the day before telling his listeners that he'd been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer but president trump for once seemed very prepared for what he was going to say here's how he introduced limbaugh . in recognition of all that you have done for our nation the millions of people a day that you speak to and that you inspire i am proud to announce tonight that you will be receiving our country's highest civilian honor the presidential medal of freedom. now we've reported extensively in the past on trump's symbiotic relationship with fox news we haven't reported so much on talk radio which remains so influential in that country hugely influential limbo is basically a pipeline to trump's conservative base now as one reporter put it limbers award energized republicans but it also horrified democrats because he's a he's a hugely divisive figure he's had a show on the air now for more than 3 decades and a lot of his rhetoric really smacks of hate of sexism of racism i want to give you an example of some of the things he said over the past year he's told his listeners that the democrat party has imported the 3rd world into the country. he's compared asylum seekers coming to the u.s. border to the invasion of normandy and he's joked that quote maybe toilet water is a step up for some migrants all of which sounds like a come straight out of trump's anti immigration playbook exactly now look trump is trying to put this impeachment scandal behind him he's got 9 months until the election in november and he's really going to be counting on limbaugh to really help him shore up that base not just limbo though because it's uncertain as to how much he'll be on the air there's also the likes of glenn beck there's also the likes of sean hannity of mark levin so be interesting to see if we have any more medal ceremonies to come ok thanks love. turning now to a practice a problematic anachronistic one that keeps on cropping up in modern media black face white or light skinned people caricaturing those of african descent by darkening their faces with theatrical makeup it's a supposedly entertainment device from a bygone era and while across most of the western world it no longer features in mainstream art or entertainment in the middle east you don't have to go back in time to find this stuff blackface or caricature depictions of black people still go out on the air there and in most cases they're not even seen as offensive particularly in egypt which is home to a sizable newbie and minority black egyptians who originate from the southern end of the country or from northern sudan the listening posts are now on racism in arab media and the persisting legacy of blackface. it is crude and you have a still image baggage going to. it is offensive. to. be and it's ugly. in the arab world racist depictions of black people are rampant and you said and i think. and the use of blackface is right. black people are retuning coming into subservience playing for prostitutes. straight up object of ridicule. that. to have these sort of when we watch t.v. shows or movies black people are always in feed and blackface is an inferior negative and racist concept which should not belong in the arab world we almost never speak about this segment of out of society black people firstly because they never get to speak in public spaces. yes the black person is a citizen in the arab world but an invisible citizen why because power made him invisible busybodies in the arab world is entirely self-righteous we would never admit that we racist lebanese would never admit the races that maybe as they would never admit the races in people from so then they would never admit that the us is in against their own black people and so it was only through your like creating the explosive media. once or realizing ok something. really awful going on in here. black face is a practice rooted in the 19th century united states white black unef going to mimic enslaved africans on southern plantations creating a stereotype of lazy ignorant black people how black face and the arab mainstream is not certain british colonise as a thought or protests in egypt in the 880 s. be it in the middle east or in the west blackface is rooted in flavor and racism reinforcing a toxic nice and the blackness is the best the joke. from western politicians to media personalities i mean truly follicle correctness has gone amuck to even a jumper designed by gucci blackface scandal of all over the news social norms have moved slowly by comparison in the middle east things are changing however take the case of shame at say a star in the arab world of most widely watched media network and we think it should be formed last year because the storm online shamus safe is sitting in a front of a van and she's speaking just it's not comprehensible arabic it's not concept principle anything. this. awful overly sexualized nonsense dialect that is an attempt i think to represent the sudanese dialect and it's very offensive in the other video there is shame with that purportedly her little boy. who constantly has to go to the bathroom and she has him urine a in a jar and when he does so people are horrified. i cannot imagine a woman wiping the urine off of her hands on to other passengers it just wouldn't happen so this idea that the sudanese are unclearly in they don't care and that they have no hygiene is also quite racist i'm not sure they do them on this which i saw the video and i don't have a problem with it to be honest art uses these things this doesn't mean people shouldn't be bothered by it but as long as the intent behind it isn't to offend them it's ok directors producers and actors use blackface to entertain audiences but that's because society already disregards these people so in the eyes of the director or producer they look at what makes people laugh and what they respond to and they use it they're not concerned with improving public taste they just want to make money fast and how do they make quick money by making people laugh. i mean it's the bullshit that. underpinning this racist form of comedy is a deep social amnesia a denial of a history of slavery. between the 7th the 19th century arab traders captured millions of african slaves and shipped them out of the continent slavery was not formally abolished in the arab gulf countries until 970 many contend the modern form of slavery still exists there today. the arabic word for slave it is commonly used as a racial slur. the middle east history of slavery the casual racism particularly against. people from the south of egypt and the depictions of black arabs on screen interwoven but as many arabs often say the context is different if it really fair it's a compare slavery and blackface with their western counterparts. i am sure that when people object to the idea that blackface is offensive in the middle east they're saying we're not talking about the american south we're not talking about plantation slavery we're not talking about the same kind of abuses or the same scale that happened in the southern united states. however the slave trade in the middle east was huge and the cultural impact of this slave trade has everything to do with black face in the middle east nobody has ever discussed any of that and nobody has ever acknowledged this very dark and shameful history so like we keep shaming americans and the europeans for when they really do like i think racist but at least. somewhat common terms with their dark history at least they're trying to confront it and face it head on where is there is no acknowledgement whatsoever of our shameful. of what happened to africans and. sentries and. song commentary defense of blackface in our media that goes something like this. is totally harmless. the holes in the argument are too numerous to list more lives that black people in on the joke not even represented on the screen and the misrepresentation of black people as a consequence of screen in the real world. that we are lost about with the inequity in the arab world we have a range of skin colors from black to very pale white. our preferences of arabs which align with the standards around the world is that the whiter someone is the more attractive they are i have personally received a lot of comments like the night has come early or i get called she karbala she is a black footballer and i shouldn't be offended but the name is used in a derogatory manner to offend me there are lots of sexual remarks related to black stereotypes people have pulled my hair spit on me and thrown things at me people talk about me as though i don't understand arabic as though i don't know they are commenting about me to be our new people because of all the them and. mainstream media no i do not see a conscious decision or like a conscious measure that has been implemented to change the perception of blacks and i do not remember seeing an african character being even in there for a role in any. mainstream t.v. or film i think that is very indicative because any culture acknowledge its minorities and white house more and i think it also stems from the fact that we have more writers we almost have more critics who actually continue to talk about with these issues so what would be. the black person's image in the media and in the arab world psyche won't change for the better as long as black people themselves keep. silent nothing will change because the people who create these images are the ones who are in power leaving the black people on the sidelines i see that the black my needs to fully participate in the change like what's happening in the united states when the black community realized they were under represented in white t.v. they made their own child knows the imposed change on society which is far from being the case in the arab world in the outer world this image may never change as long as i don't people's mindsets and perceptions of black people don't change. and finally in june of 2016 the united kingdom voted to leave the european union and last week 3 and a half years 3 prime ministers 2 general elections and thousands of sound bites later it finally did it last just like that but in their moment of triumph for axa tears are showing a distinct lack of gratitude to the e.u. and its member states france for example and they would be horrified to learn which is why we're showing the following video just how many of the words they use every day are actually french imports verbal migrants are real scandal the french press that song makes that very point just how ingrained europe is in great britain and that's not going anywhere the video was funded by patriots an arts platform and it was performed by a musical trio amanda palmer sarah louise young and max and elton will see you next time here at the list. no you can cause you want to leave without a. doubt. there is not. week a piece of french. know your child. was ok so. there's no there job. without. again without he's a we really fear him is that our love for you the. only good man just such a bully dainties sure nothing cut school last week politics been at least a holiday just to. just to keep going this is the sound of making a liar and i. soon saw all the world will tell no one. just. cause you cannot wrong evil without love the concept of the world so many things that's rooted. in the services you would understand the souls young died without life saving friends just. know you. in japan thousands of men and women of vanishing without a trace one i want to investigate why people engineer their own disappearance and. how to 0. a conflict that is now considered to be the world's worst humanitarian crisis how many have to die like this. really for sale and investigation into how billions of euros are made from supplying arms to saudi arabia a leader of the coalition fighting a war in the south the case is interesting to watch his immense money involved yemen war profiteers on al-jazeera. news. the world health organization sends a team to china to investigate the corona virus outbreak as the number of dead keeps climbing. and the quiet commute on a day when millions were expected to return to work in china's capital. i'm sam is a than this is our just there live from doha also coming up a new force in irish politics.