and most powerful people. over in the states, a facebook whistle—blower and an expose into a media company have also got journalists very excited. but how can the public be persuaded to pay attention to stories like these? what tips something from worth reporting to game—changing? let me introduce you to my guests. ben smith is media columnist at the new york times, and before that he was editor—in—chief at buzzfeed news. so, ben, we will be talking a lot today about investigations, which is an art form that you are familiar with. tell me, what would you say has been your own biggest investigation? one of the glories of being an editor is being able to take credit for other people's work, and so i'lljust go ahead and do that and had a basically quite small hand in a project that won the pulitzer this year that a reporter did after getting tossed out of china, the investigation of the uyghurs' treatment, and it was really like just a feat of incredible reporting because she had done it after being tossed out. i was proud to be associated with that. you take glory, too. thank you, ben. more from you later on. we're going to talk about your extraordinary reporting on the company ozy media. alexandra suich bass is also with us. she is senior columnist for the economist covering politics, technology and society, and she joins us from dallas. alexandra, hello. is there any part of your brief that facebook haven't touched on this week? no, facebook has been keeping me busy. i think the last time i was on the media show, i was actually having a sense of deja vu. it was during the cambridge analytica scandal in 2018 and we were talking about that and facebook's epic fail. and we're back at it. it's probably not a good look that mark zuckerberg has posted himself sailing on instagram during a really difficult, challenging time for the company. it's been anything but smooth sailing for him. and we will definitely talk about that. obviously outages and other things as well have happened. juliette garcide is deputy business editor at the guardian and worked on the guardian's pandora papers coverage. and juliette, you also worked on the paradise papers and the panama papers. can you remind us what links them all and why do they all begin with p? well, the letter p, i don't know, itjust happened. l and we do get them confused. but they are about similar things, getting bigger each time. - so, the panama papers. was a leak of information from the offshore law| firm mossack fonseca about 11 million files, the paradise papers— was from a different offshore law firm called apple by. i think there were 13 - million files in that one. and then the pandora papers is 14 different offshore law firms. - and we all worked on it together with an organisation _ in washington called the icij, l who received the data and then shared it out to hundreds - ofjournalists all around the world and we all published together. and margot gibbs is an investigative reporter for the aptly named international consortium of investigativejournalists. she is one of the 600 journalists around the world who've been working on those pandora papers. let's kick off with you, margot. what happens first? because you had over 11 million financial records to choose from. so, how did you set about this? so, i think it starts with a massive data crunch from icij's data team. so, we have all of the files stored on some server somewhere, don't know where, or many servers presumably. and i think there's kind of a months—long process of machine reading those files so that we as journalists can then go and quiz the files essentially and give them our hypotheses. and say, is there dirty money coming into the uk, is there questionable funds going to our democratic process? and if you're looking for, and you are, looking forjuicy exposes, looking for big names, how do you find those? yeah, so i think that comes with your hypotheses, basically, i suppose. and i think you've seen from the guardian's fantastic coverage of uk political donations, part of the process is you run all political donors over a certain size and then you see what the results are. and then comes the huge amount of reporting that goes into digging through, ok, "is this a false positive, is this an interesting record? what can we do by going outside the files and reporting elsewhere?" i think they have done fantastically with one report for example. and, yeah, i suppose you start with the hypothesis of something that would be an important story to tell, and then you go and quiz the data with what would, you know, if this were true we would find something, right? yeah, that's the kind of process. i mean, from a personal point of view, i'm really interested in as well, how do you feel when you are doing it? because is it like a slog or do you get a buzz out of it? i get such a buzz, i thinkjuliette can probably speak to this as well, but it's really exciting. when you think that you are actually finding something that's a realjuicy nugget, it's incredibly fun, it's incredibly exciting. i think one of the... i came onto of this project in february, i think other people have been on it for much longer. one of the things that's most difficult, especially for quite a small organisation, is you can get countless stories from these leaks, but if you're launching at a particular time, the logistics of writing that many stories in essentially like a week is tough. so, we have, each of the reporters who been involved in this will have been sending dozens of comment letters over the last month. that's a hugely time—consuming process in order to be responsible journalists, we had to give everyone else the right to reply, and in a project like this, that's just a phenomenal feat. juliette, margot is at the icij, as we mentioned, and you have been doing this for the guardian. so, how does that work? after all, there are 150 different media companies all working on pandora and that is over 600 journalists. so, how are you all coordinating? well, we communicate. the main thing is share everything, communicate really thoroughly, really well. don't keep stuff back. i know that it's in the instinct of manyjournalists, particularly investigative journalists, to act as lone wolves, but we have to kind of unlearn all that. and it often kicks off with a big gathering where maybe people are looking at the data for a few weeks and then you will head off.. i've been to a couple of big gatherings in germany and it's like united nations of journalism. you have people there from every part of the world and they are all talking about the same project and it's a very forceful feeling and we're like a big family and we come in to talk and we trust each other. and i could not believe when i worked in the first one of these that nobody had kind of tried to get a head start on the rest. and that's because you know that you are just going to have so much more impact when you do it together. it's an international firestorm, and it only works that way because we do it together. and there were moments when information started leaking out because the people we were writing to were trying to get ahead of the game on all these projects and try to get their side out before we published. and i remember gerard, who's a director of icij, like a sort of general at the front of his troops saying hold, hold, hold and then charge. and you all go down the hill together. let's get to that. i've seen you describe the whole process as being like bashing at a giant pinata, that kind of idea, which i think is a lovely image. but in terms of the timing of publication, you know, you've got some conservative party donors and co—chair ben elliott, all had their financial activities raked over. as publishing in the week of the conservative party conference. that's notjust sheer luck, is it? well, it depends. that worked out well for the guardian, and we are a really important partner in these investigations because our website is free to access and it's very widely read. and we put a lot of effort into these. so, we have some influence over the timing, but it's also to do with how long the project takes. we weren't going to ready to publish it before the summer, so we are looking at autumn. so we had to pick the best timing for autumn. ben smith from the new york times, i mean, that's the pandora papers, but you've had your own expose of sorts this week, and for listeners who don't know, tell us what is ozy media and how did you come to be writing about it? you know, i think i should premise |this by saying that as high—stakes| and global and really kind - of important as the pandora papers were, this is like the lowest stakes story in the history of media. - and i actually think that - that is maybe part of why people liked it so much and it is sort of a challenge. _ i worked on the previous icij, - the fincen files, it is hard to get people to engage with those stories, iwhereas the story i'm about to telll people really love to engage with, which was about a media company in california that presented itself | on the inside and as the leading| millennial media company, i even though no one has ever heard of it, essentially. it persuaded many of the richest | people in the world and various| media investors to give _ them their money, as well as their very sophisticated advertisers. and something in particular, as you say, tipped it over, something dramatic happened. can you tell us about that? yeah, i think they were pretending i to have a very financially strong i relationship with youtube, - when in fact they were making a television show that theyjust posted to youtube the way- you or i could post. a video to youtube. and so at some point, the rubber- meets the road when goldman sachs, which was about to investl $40 million, wants to talk to youtube, just to, kind of, . check in on how that business is and they, rather than putting - them on the phone with a youtube executive who willjust say, - yeah, they're just guys who upload videos, they impersonate said youtube executive and say, . "well, these ozy guys are amazing" and they got caught. _ immediately. i have to say now that ozy has admitted to this impersonation incident and attributed it to a mental health episode. that last detail is, it's named after the poem ozymandias, i which the founder, the founder - believes his message was dream big. and famous also and breaking bad, i believe. but, ben, before all this happened, ozy media it was establishing itself as a major player. it had some big collaborations, and one comes to mind. i worked on the world services feedback programme, and there was a lot of praise for a series that ozy did with the bbc. so it was an appealing investment, was it not, going to traditional media companies? it was an appealing investment to people who had no idea - what was going on in the actual world of actual media. - i think in part because it presented a kind of diverse, progressive, - millennial vibe that had no conflict, no substance - nobody getting in trouble, - nobody was getting any secret tax hideouts, nothing like that that would scare any- millionaires or advertisers. but at the same time, some would say they identified the market. it was not polemical, it was not brash, it was not polarising. in some ways, it should work, should it not? no, i don't think so. maybe. i mean media that is boring and has no stakes is not. traditionally media people want to consume. - well, alexandra from the economist, we on the media show talk lot about the need for a friendlier, more thoughtfuljournalism. but bearing in mind what ben just said, is the internet geared up to allow that? is it actually what people want, do you think? i think social media and the internet reflects human beings and society, so many people like to point fingers at social media. there is a question about whether or not we should be pointing the finger at ourselves as well. but i think it's certainly much more entertaining political theatre to point the finger at facebook and social media for all the problems that we are perceiving on the internet. in terms of ben's story, i did have one observation. it strikes me that ozy media's kind of the theranos of the media space. it has come down quite quickly. it had a founder that all people wanted to believe in. for a variety of reasons. and it kind of played fast and loose like a lot of startu ps in silicon valley did. so, as i was reading ben's fascinating coverage, i was having flashbacks to the wall streetjournal report from years ago on theranos. just to update us what is the actual state of play right now with ozy media? they shut down on friday. the ceo then came on monday- and un—shut it down and compared the company to lazarus who jesus rose from the dead. _ and are now facing lawsuits from investors who would l like them to shut back down and give them back their money please. - 0k. the reason we asked about... i asked what this whole notion of what this whole notion of the public is interested in is because that is the kind of investigative journalism that i can argue all four of you do. i mean, alexandra from the economist, frances haugen, the former facebook employee appeared before the us senate this week accusing facebook of harming democracy and putting profits before public good. now obviously they deny this and have disputed much of what she said, and this all seems like a juicy story. but i want to read you a tweet from veteran silicon valley observer benedict evans. he says, "i really wonder how much any facebook story now changes anyone's minds. "there's a group of people now quite convinced that facebook is evil "who see any news story as proof, and the rest of us who think it's "alljust a noisy mess." but you have just published a piece for the economist pretty much arguing the opposite, have you not? so, i think congressional hearings have become a little bit so, i think congressional hearings into big tech have become a little bit like minor holidays. nothing changes after them and they all blur together, and so i expected that to be true of yesterday's hearing which frances haugen, the whistle—blower, testified about the documents that she's leaked on facebook's behaviour and some of its internal research. i would argue that yesterday's hearing was a turning point. you can make a counterclaim and history would support that which is nothing has changed after these hearings before. in some ways, what the whistle—blower has shown is what we all already knew about facebook, its two—faced toxicity and now we just have a new fresh evidence for it. but i think this time it's different for two reasons. the first is that this concerns children and teenagers, and i think that it's much easier to understand the pernicious harms that social media have on kids. if you compare it to the sort of cambridge analytica scandal, it was much more complicated to understand. it involved adults, data mining, privacy concerns, and so it was a big deal in the media, i think it resonated less with every person, than children and concerns about harm to children. and then i think that ultimately this is going to change tech for a different reason, and it will affect facebook but also affect other tech firms because i think this is the start of the golden age of whistle—blowing in tech. all these big firms have, well, a lot of them have played fast and loose. they have not grown up in a harsh regulatory climate. and i think there are a lot of employees now that have seen how frances haugen has been lionised. she was called a 21st—century american hero by several senators. and i think that that is going to encourage a lot of people who work at these companies who may feel ambivalent about some of the work that they have contributed to, to step forward. so i think this is a big deal for facebook and i think that the scrutiny is going to spread to other big tech firms as well. this is just the start. ok, because i could argue this debate is only interesting to media types like, and political types like us, in a sense, and that the person in the street really only cares when their instagram and whatsapp stop working, as they did this week. and, ben, what's your take on that? is this a turning point? you know, i think there's been sort of waves battering facebook- and the barricades around facebook for a while and it'sjust _ like a moment where maybe the water kind of comes over and in terms - of american congressional action, i there's a tonne of pressure on them. and it's happening at a time - when a big part of their business, not the only part, but a big part which is the blue facebook appi clearly is losing traction. and, you know, social networks can collapse really fast. _ and i think that in some ways, i you know, you can overestimate their strength as a company and they're under a lot - of pressure right now, - and i think it's going to be a challenge for them. you know, i also think _ there are these big questions that in part because facebook- is so secretive about its research and does not open itself up - to researchers, are hard to answer. like, for instance, are women- and girls struggling with body image more than they did in the 1990s when it was coming from pop i culture and from magazines? | that presumably a question that| could be answered with research. i'm not sure it's- clear, though, right? and it's hard to disentangle - all the factors, and facebook makes it extra hard with secrecy. and is this is a turning point because whistle—blowers can feel more confident now. do you think that's true? i do think employee activism in silicon valley and around i the world has become just a huge, huge force in corporate life. - and the extent to which these ceos are increasingly constrained - by what their employees will accept is something you are seeing here. i well, whistle—blowing is massive parts of the pandora papers story. juliette garcide from the guardian, it's obviously worth reporting this story, but it's not given that people will read it. how do you keep the public hooked is a crucial point, and how do you keep the story alive from one day to the next? well, yeah, iagree. tax, offshore structures, it's not easily digestible over your cornflakes. but we're lucky because we're talking about the 1% or the 0.1% here and some pretty crooked people, quite often. and we're talking about celebrities, and you've got the private jet—flying, you know, yacht with helipad—chartering oligarchs, so you get a wonderful window into how this global elite live and how they cheat the system. and you get... our readers love it. they love it, they lap it up, they donate when we run these stories because they see why we write them. they see the unfairness. you know, in the uk, the debate about tax was really dominated for years by tabloid stories about people cheating on their benefits, poor people, a cleaner who was claiming benefits and working cash in hand, stuff like that, a builder. what we've seen through these leaks is the rich cheat much more, on a baroque scale. and you can't run that argument any more about benefits cheats, and you see fully exposed to the extent to which laws are there and politicians vote them in, in order to enable this kind of behaviour. now, i don't a lot has changed, but i would say that the biden—oecd tax plan, which we're going to get an announcement on later this week, about stopping multinationals shifting profits around the world is probably in part due to reporting like the pandora papers. ——is probably in part due to reporting like the panama papers. ok, ok, but i want to go back to the whole notion of making these stories, if you like, sexy. again from my personal experience working on a tv documentary on the enron scandal, the producer had to come up with some really imaginative visual metaphors to try and keep the viewer engaged and hooked. and, alexandra, i'm sure in a sense the economist has to think hard about this, too. keeping the reader hooked. i think, absolutely. and also i think what unites both of these stories is it confirms things that people already suspected and didn't quite know. so, also how... everyone assumes that the wealthy and oligarchs kind of bend the rules and own properties in tonnes of different luxurious territories. and everyone kind of assumes that facebook chooses profits over consumers and societal welfare. how do you tell what might feel like a familiar story in a new way? i think a lot of it also comes down to the writing, i would like to think. and to a certain extent the framing, so that you remind the user, your readers, what is truly new and why they need to care. well, just before we end, let's think about what, if any, impact public interestjournalism can actually have. juliette garcide from the guardian, will the pandora papers actually change anything, do you think? we're waiting for long—promised better transparency in the uk about who owes what land, for example, what property. let me turn to you, ben smith, is there a danger with all these stories that the public has a kind of sense of leak fatigue? do you sense that? yeah, for sure. and i think the challenge of stories that confirm what people already. knew is that they can sometimes - shrug because they're not surprised. that said, i think there's a real series of icij leaks, _ of which is the latest and biggest, they have caused a bunch of legal| action, at least in the states. i mean, the us, the congress, in pretty large part due - to the fincen files, _ made it much harder to operate through anonymous shell companies. that is a real meaningful advance. and actually the relationship - between tonnes of people reading and getting excited about story. and legislative or law enforcement action, it's not always totally linear, right? i like sometimes you have one reader, but it's the right reader, _ it's the chairwoman - of the committee, so... margot, from your perspective, do you think this will lead to real change? well, you are already seeing in the us that lawmakers are pushing an anti—corruption bill called the enablers act, which is exactly to do with the fact that icij and its hundreds of partners and reported public interest issues, which involve notjust the dirty money of individual people, but dirty money which is facilitated across borders by people in suits, the lawyers, the bankers, the pr firms. and, yeah, that's already happening, so the impact is there. and often, you know, this is a reminder, as everyone has said, of things we suspected were happening anyway, but clearly this kind of publication helps to actually improve things. and all your hard slog has been worth it, is an aspect of that. alexandra, last word to you. do you think that all these revelations actually will change things? well, i think this was absolutely a week that reinforced the power of media. the facebook whistle—blower chose not just to go to the sec and regulators to report her concern, but went to the wall street journal because public scrutiny would force the hand of regulators and potentially make greater change. so, i think that all of these stories highlight the power and relevance of traditional media. well, that is all we have got time for today. thank you to all my guests, tojuliette garcide, deputy political editor at the guardian, to ben smith media columnist at the new york times, alexandra suich bass, a columnist at the economist and margot gibbs, investigative reporter at the international consortium of investigativejournalists. the media show will be back at the same time next week. for now, goodbye. hello. i's a lot of fine weather and the focus this coming week but even a week whether front gave a brand tramp, and and really stack the campus in norfolk first things morning. now, but whetherfront has been dragging its heels but with high fish building to it is weakening over time but behind with a front there is plenty of sunshine as you can see here in llandudno in north wales both for the north of a scattering of quite sharp showers and gale force winds blowing across the northern isles, quite fiscal in scotland, parts of northern ireland catching the hr as well but by and were, like there is a lot of dry and settled weather away from the west and it is afresh a day out there just hanging on to the one we haven't in southern areas but it will be notably cooler here overnight. last night we had the cloud, to make the into the fresh air. temperatures will dip into single figures and so it will for other parts circular night and another sign of what is to come this week, the chance of some ground frost. chilly start, may be the pocket of mist or fog but not extensive, still worth watching out for. this is the change on monday, far cloudier for scotland, heavey wane across the isles and they highlands. this still cloudy elsewhere, plenty more dry advice and even sunny weather but even in the south and viciously is 3—4 down and back to fetch a little bit low, below average is that cloud synced across northern and central england and eastern england to push on into the last time so we will have rather more cloud around across the skies on tuesday 15—16 , only 11 or 12 behind the cold weather front whether the price is up and come wednesday we have milder air pushing back into the north and elsewhere just more cloud meandering around and we have introduce more moisture with those week whether front of the could be a bit more mist and fog that can become an issue, actually, mid week onwards. 15, i6, that can become an issue, actually, mid week onwards. 15, 16, still above average for the time of year. plenty fine weather again on thursday once the mist and fog clears away but change afoot to the north of scotland and some rain again to come and behind that band of rain northerly wind because it is a cold weather front and that will bring behind it some chilly air and particularly to northern and eastern areas just a snapshot i think through thursday night into friday for some of us. our headline is business secretary defence at the rate the government has handled the energy crisis after supplier said the price cap system is not fit for purpose. i supplier said the price cap system is not fit for purpose.— is not fit for purpose. i think it is not fit for purpose. i think it is a critical _ is not fit for purpose. i think it is a critical situation. - is not fit for purpose. i think it is a critical situation. clearly, l is not fit for purpose. i think itj is a critical situation. clearly, i am speaking to people at this time, and higher gas prices have quadrupled this year are making an impact, and that is why i'm speaking to people, listening, and trying to work out a way forward. the to people, listening, and trying to work out a way forward.— work out a way forward. the irish foreian work out a way forward. the irish foreign minister— work out a way forward. the irish foreign minister said _ work out a way forward. the irish foreign minister said the - work out a way forward. the irish foreign minister said the uk's . work out a way forward. the irish | foreign minister said the uk's new demands on the northern ireland protocol could cause a breakdown in relations with the european union. britain passed �*s tyson shady bids deontay wilder and the 11th round in las vegas.