and helen, before we wrap up, about the experience of being on the receiving end of a lack of enthusiasm, shall we say, from people who support the kind of figures like andrew tate is, or that were featured in helen s programme as well. because i m assuming, matt, that as well as being punched in the face a number of times during your visit since you left romania, you ve also been attacked repeatedly online. yeah, that s right. i ve got hundreds of death threats and also, you know, claims that. hundreds? the women in. sorry, hundreds of death threats? yes. hundreds of death threats. and also claims that i ve paid the women, you know, money to be in the film, claims that i ve doctored the voice notes that are clearly in andrew tate s voice, where he appears to discuss these crimes of rape and abuse. you know, all that s come through. yeah, in a big way. and helen, what about you when you made your programme? well, the response to the new gurus has been one
young men have become - so susceptible to this blame . game and create a much more robust, much more enlightened view of masculinity, such that a guy like me . doesn t feel like he needs to deprogram his 15 year old from this content. so he sjust a symptom. someone else . will fill the void. we have to go after these. how do you go about deprogramming a 15 year old son? very carefully. does he want to be deprogrammed? well, that s the thing. when dad says it, you worry that you re going to - just encourage it. and what i try to do . is highlight some other examples of what i would call masculinity that are more - and just some basics, some basics. - when you start blaming i women for your problems, you know you failed. that means you failed. that means you have lost the plot basics. i and we know from the news that teachers and parents are engaging with an awful lot of teenage boys at the moment because of andrew tate s content. i mustjust ask, matt
posting these videos. it s an army of young people and that s very difficult to take. tiktok and other platforms are finding it very difficult to shut that down. did he acknowledge as much when you spoke to him? i tried to get him to speak on that, and he sort of says, you know, oh, iwouldn t claim to have any control over, his exact words were where some random 14 year old singaporean who re edits my clips and tried to sort of say that it wasn t his intention. but really this is a very well thought out and kind of ingenious campaign to make him famous. now, we ve already alluded to some of the challenges forjournalists and for the media as to whether to engage with someone like andrew tate or not. it s fair to say at times, matt, you had a reasonably immersive experience when in the compound. this is part of your film
you know, the algorithms know very much what it is that, you know, who you are demographically and what you want to watch, and they serve you more and more of it. i was going to say, i think sort of one exception to that is providing a useful context for people to learn about andrew tate within. so for example, he s already out there, his content has been viewed over 13 billion times on tiktok alone. right? so if your viewers haven t heard of him, there are sons and nephews of theirs will have. and for the first time through our reporting, we ve managed to give a voice to kind of women from his past. so now when someome googles him they won t just see andrew tate and him talking about himself and justifying himself, they ll also get a chance to hear the voices of women who allege that he raped and physically abused them and make a more informed decision about whether to follow him. if he s committed crimes. and by the way, helen, i i think he made absolutely the right choice because ha
agreed to let you into his compound and to film, did they give you conditions? did they say, well, you can do this, you can t do that. you can ask this, you can t ask that? well, we re always up front with him that we would be making an objective documentary and telling all the facts as we saw them. but, yes, when we were there, you know, there were attempts to control our access. we had chaperones constantly, we were told, don t go in there, that door is locked, if you try and go in there, someone will put a gun in yourface. we had, you know, sort of tall, scary, intimidating, strong men behind us when we were interviewing everyone, monitoring our questions and all of that. so, yeah. well, thank you for coming on to speak about your film. and andrew tate s story more broadly connects directly well, thank you for coming on to speak about your film. to how media content is made, distributed, moderated and consumed. and we re going to spend today s edition of the media show understanding