hello. what is the relationship between journalists and their audiences? this week, some reporters covering the omicron variant say they've received a torrent of abuse from people angry about the government's response and blaming the journalists. nothing new in much of this, of course. people have been shooting the messenger for centuries. but have we reached a new low? because one newspaper group even announced they've had to disable reader comments altogether on their coverage of the tragedy in the english channel. so, does trolling mean the end of the reporter—reader relationship as we know it? let me introduce you to today's guests because we're also looking at the news that the founder of twitter, jack dorsey, is stepping away from the company. isobel asher hamilton is senior tech reporter at insider, and john thornhill is innovation editor and tech columnist at the financial times. we're also going to be considering a new report into how newspapers cover islam. rizwana hamid is director of the centre for media monitoring, a project of the muslim council of britain. and we'll be talking to her later, too. but we'll start the programme with that question i posed at the top, the role that reader comments play in journalism. ian carter is editorial director at iliffe media, and, ian, before we get into your experiences last week, tell us more about the titles you've got. because i think you're one of the last family—owned newspaper groups. we are indeed. iliffe itself is a very long—established publishing company. the family's run papers for centuries, but the titles we have now, newspapers include the kent messenger, the daily free press, the cambridge independent. we run lots of websites, kent online being our biggest one. and also radio stations down in kent. so, a real big media portfolio. fantastic, and rebecca whittington, i'm going to bring you in here because you're the brand—new online safety editor at reach. you only started this role, i think, a fortnight ago. congratulations. which newspaper titles will you be working with at reach? well, i'm going to be working across the board at reach, so kind of group—wide, so that's the national titles and the regionals as well. obviously they're quite different in terms of what they do, but actually this issue is an issue across the board. well, that's great. welcome to the programme. and i'm going to start, of course, with, you know, ian carter, you know, this awful tragedy in the channel, tell us how you covered it. and then how readers responded, some readers responded. i mean, we covered it in the way you'd expect us expect us to cover it. it was a terrible tragedy and, you know, it got worse the more it unfolded. we heard the early reports that three or four people may have drowned, and then of course it magnified and then all of a sudden you look and dozens of people have died. an absolutely terrible tragedy. we covered it extensively. we have a long—standing policy with certain stories of not letting readers post comments on our website, and unfortunately asylum's at the top of that list because we know the response it's going to get. on this occasion, we had a discussion between me and the news editor on duty, and we thought surely if there's going to be a time that we might be actually examine how we behave online and how we react to these kind of tragedies, this is it. so, we actually decided to leave the comments on for that story for the first time in a long time. because you thought the people would what? we thought they might examine... it might have humanised the people involved in this tragedy because we thought it might help people examine their own prejudices and question their own views on these kind of incidents because these were real people and we wanted to make that clear to people. ok, so what did happen? what happened initially was there was a lot more good than bad. when i say good, i mean compassionate and sympathetic. and that remained the case for the first couple of hours, but unfortunately the bad was very bad. people were openly celebrating people's deaths. they were glorifying the tragedy. and, of course, then we found ourselves as a publisher, we were getting feedback from readers saying, "why are you enabling these comments?" we had to explain why we were trying to do it because we actually were trying to pay tribute to the people, but in the end, we got to about the two—hour point point and had to turn comments off altogether. we just couldn't allow some of the toxic views being expressed to be on our website. and you people moderating throughout, didn't you, is that how it works? we had people moderating throughout, but like most publishers, we don't have the resources to moderate every comment on every story. so, we have to rely on a certain degree of self—moderation from the community. people report comments to us when they overstep the mark. so, yeah. and i believe you actually tracked down some of the people that were making these comments that you saw as offensive. what did they say? we did. so, as well as our website, the stories also appeared on our facebook pages, and whilst we can turn comments off on facebook, what we cannot do is stop people posting their reactions. and on the day that 27 people tragically died, 96 people posted a laughing face emoji on the story. so, we tracked those down. we've gone back to them all. we spoke to them on a story that's on the website today, and we just tried to say to them, "how did you get to a point in your life where you're openly laughing and celebrating women, children, men drowning in the most terrible circumstances?" did anyone regret it? did anyone say they regretted it? or what was the reaction? the reaction, they absolutely doubled down on their response. they spoke to a reporter. some of them didn't engage at all and blocked him. the ones that did engage just absolutely stood comments and they trotted out a lot of the misinformation that you hear all the time. you know, we shouldn't be letting these people in this country, everyone who arrives in the country is getting a free car by priti patel. some of the real nonsense you can see circling on social media. or even if people are entitled to hold some of those kind of views, it's the sense that, you know, they're revelling in people's deaths, a tragedy? actually because it was always my view that it's actually not the job of the press to police what views people hold, it is ourjob to present the facts and allow people to make an informed decision. rebecca whittington, i'm gonna bring you in here. you're the new online safety editor at reach. does this sound familiar, this, you know, business about, you know, whether to have reader comments on, how people respond, you know, what to do in these sorts of situations? yes, actually. i mean, it's not a new problem unfortunately, and it's something that's... obviously an organic growth of digital has meant that there's kind of been lots of trial and error overtime. and i think social media and commenting offer so much opportunity in terms of dialogue with the audience and actually giving some ownership and voice to people who wouldn't otherwise have it. but then the downside to that is obviously then opens up a space where people can spread hate as well, and spread hateful speech and that is a key part of my newjob at reach _ so, i've been getting round the company talking to editors, talking to journalists in the last couple of weeks and finding out what some of the key issues are. and it is, you know, it is the comments and how to moderate them and really kind of then create a safe space for the audience that really want to engage i would say it is hopefully a minority that are doing this. but obviously it then can swamp the positive speech, it can swamp the positive engagement and the potential benefits that actually opening the comments up actually allows. i mean, ian, newspapers never used to play this role. really, it used to be one—way traffic in a sense, yeah. the paper printed articles, the reader kept their thoughts to themselves apart from probably the odd letter to the editor. why do you need to host these debates? i mean, is it actually about the bottom line in a sense as a financial interest in this? it's not about the bottom line. obviously it's beneficial for us to be centre of the debate. my view on it is if we're not hosting these comments, these discussions will take place on facebook, and i would rather people discussing these kind of topics in an area where they're surrounded by regulated content, as our stories are. rather than off in a corner of facebook. and also if they're discussing them our websites, you would hope you're reaching a fully broader church and people might be challenged on their views, whereas if you're on facebook, you're going to be finding like—minded people talking to yourself and creating an echo chamber. rebecca, readers writing unpleasant things in the comments is one thing, but part of your role as i understand is that you're also looking at the sort of personal abuse that journalists now get, and in fact your editor said last month that it's become endemic, and i certainly feel, you know, in my own experience, you know, i would second that. but what do you think this means in practice? well, i mean, reach conducted a survey earlier this year which is one of the reasons i'm in this role now, actually, because the survey found that half of the editorial staff who responded were facing online, personal online abuse and that also out of those that said that, 85% of them said that it was usually sparked from something that they'd published online. and it'sjust an endemic problem, and of course actually we want people to be focusing on good journalism, we want them to be able to produce the journalism that they should be producing. and of course at the moment, some journalists, i think, are feeling unsafe to do that. so, it's a key part of my role in actually being able to help journalists work in these online spaces with confidence and actually engaging with an audience that, you know, want to engage with them in a positive way as well, yeah. i mean, john thornhill, if i bring you in now from the financial times, you know, there is a business issue here, isn't there? you know, media companies do in a sense expect theirjournalists to build up a social media following. would you agree with that, you know, even if it means the staff do receive abuse? sure. i mean, i think that both- reader comments and journalists engaging on social media - are very valuable things to do. i mean, certainly at the ft, i we get some wonderful reader comments correcting our- journalism when we get it wrong and coming up with alternative arguments and really- challenging the - journalism we produce. so, i think that's - a valuable part of the journalism that we do. about having a relationship between your audiences and the journalists? exactly. as ian was saying, l it's no longer usjust transmitting news. we're also receiving it. there's more of- a dialogue going on. and i think on social media, l we absolutely encourage our reporters to be part of the social medial conversation. sometimes that can get out of hand. - they can get targeted. some of them receive - abuse, some of them have reported it to the police. but i think it's... i remember i was, in the 1990s, i was a reporter in moscow- just after the collapse of the soviet union. l and i had someone calling up our bureau and saying. that i was working for. an imperialist, capitalist, working for an imperialist, . capitalist, zionist newspaper and they were going to come around and kill me. - i think the amount of wheezing i on the telephone suggested this wasn't really a very serious i threat and never showed up. fortu nately. but this shows that this kind of thing has been. going on for a long time. but nowadays, i'm sorry to interrupt, do you think does the company expect you to be on social media? because i suppose that's the thing, it's fine if you want to be as a journalist, if you feel that it's useful, but what about people who perhaps feel a little bit more conflicted about it and then receive, become targets of abuse? sure. it's not compulsory - for any of ourjournalists to be on social media. we do encourage it. we have very strict guidelines about what they should be - posting and what they shouldn't be. we urge them to steer clear of all kind of hyperpartisan i debates, not to get sucked into fierce arguments. - but, you know, it is a danger, and i think the job _ that rebecca is doing - is a very worthwhile one. isobel asher hamilton, does insider expect you to be on twitter? i think i would find it hard to do myjob if i weren't on twitter because i find it useful as a tool because so many of the figures that i follow, you know, tech ceos and people like that, use it as a very instantaneous pr service. there was never a point when the company i'm at now sat me down said you have to have a twitter because the company i'd been at previously, yeah, itjust hadn't been practical to do myjob without a twitter account. so, it's not something that the company forces you into, but it's kind of hard to do the kind of work that we do without it. ian carter, just a word from you, you know, at iliffe media, it's that difficulty, isn't it, protecting yourjournalists while at the same time wanting them to engage. how do you navigate that? it's absolutely that, and you get into the spectrum of one hand, reporters having horrendous death threats or being talked about being raped. we've had that before and that has gone through a police complaint obviously. i think it's as big a problem is the reporters constantly being belittled by readers, saying they're doing a rubbish job. i think for our staff now, i can't imagine as a trainee dealing with that, i don't want to say i know how i would cope. so, all you can really do is mentor them. they tend to laugh it off and they tend to be shrug it off, but you don't really know what they're feeling below the surface. so you've got to be very careful. yeah, it's very difficult. well, just stay with us because i want to bring in rizwana hamid. she's a director of the centre for media monitoring, and they published a report this week looking at coverage of muslims in british press. what did you find in your investigations and how did you go about it? i mean, the kind of biggest. findings are that almost 50% of online digital articles - and 47% of television broadcast clips portray muslims in a negative light. i the subject matter that's dealt with mostly in - terms of the coverage - is terrorism and extremism. newspapers fare far- worse than broadcasters. local, regional- broadcasters fare better than national channels. those are just some of the findings. - we go about this through a very kind of strict methodology- we've developed with academics or experts in linguistics- and the portrayal of media, muslims in the media, - and we've analysed over 48,000 articles and 5500 broadcast - clips and we have kind of key metrics that we ask. - you know, is the article, broadcast generalising . mispresenting, connecting muslims with negative - behaviour, you know are the headlines . or images incorrect or misleading? - so, we have a whole array of questions we ask, - and then do the analysis, j have checks and balances and come up with the kind of findings that we have. i and they're not new. i mean, there's lots. of evidence out there that proves that, yeah, muslims and islam are| reported negatively. cambridge university has done studies, leicester university. says the mainstream media's l reporting of muslims and islam is contributing to growing hostility and hate - crimes toward muslims. so, you know, the media has a great role to play, - and we find that often it falls far short of the kind - of journalistic standards - that it actually uses when it comes to other communities. so, i think we got a sense from that how you define what's a negative story, what's a positive story. what about, where does more neutral coverage sit? you know, for example, you know, if there is a muslim contributor, but they're not speaking about islam, is that positive or negative or do you discount it> we have 50 key reports which in one form or. another kind of give us- all the articles or television clips that contain one i or more of those words. now, if somebody . is on, and the word, is being muslim or the word islam or any other- kind of word is not identified, that that would not appear. in our radar. but if it does, even if it's a passing mention, - then we do analyse it. and obviously there are lots of articles that we kind - of think are inconclusive - because they are quite mixed. others, you know, past the radar and they're i very positive. but then there is overall a sense of there is a lot| of misrepresentation, - generalisation and the kind of pushing of common tropes that we used to find - in the kind of fringe of social media, which are entering . into mainstream media now. and not really being| challenged robustly, whether that's on broadcast, i on topical debate programmes, or in newspapers or specific . magazines and newspapers... so, like what, and is that what you're suggesting the next steps are, to challenge, and how do people challenge, you know, the titles you see as the worst offenders? i mean, i think it's i about, you know, it's about the industry itself, you know, kind of sayingj to other people that this kind i ofjournalism is not equitable. we had a panel- discussion yesterday the editors of the mirror, sunday times _ and bbc's home affairs editor as well as some print - and other journalists on. and i think one of the - questions that was put to them is why are not enough . journalists holding other journalists to account - when journalistic standards are not reaching the kind of levels that we - would expect of it? and i think there's . often a fear, we don't want to kind of hold, you know, our- colleagues to account. on another level, there just isn't the acceptance - that there is a problem, but that i think- is slowly changing. i think generally as a society now, we've reached a pointl where we know whether it'sl racism, whether it's sexism, it's various kind of levels where people are not. treated equally or fairly. i think we've reached a place now where people can't hide| behind the fact that this does not exist. - ian, your take on this and how we proceed. it's difficult. behind the fact that this does not exist. - it's difficult. between the regional media where i work and perhaps the national media. i don't know if that's borne out in the report. sounds like it was. she's nodding, and she said earlier it definitely was. that's on the bag. i think the media needs to be in listen mode. i believe it is not in listening mode comes to areas like this. there was a controversy earlier this year when the society of editors put out a statement about racism that did not meet the wide approval of the industry. it resulted in the president of the society leaving his position. so i think there is an acceptance that there is an issue and we need to be listening and we need to be engaging. ok, well, ian, thank you very much, and let's turn to the other big media story this week. isobel asher hamilton, senior tech reporter at insider, you know, the story, one of silicon valley's most important figures has resigned. just tell us who is jack dorsey for those who don't know. jack dorsey is the founder of twitter. he founded it back in 2006, and he was ceo for two years before he got ousted, which i imagine he didn't enjoy. however, he returned... he came back. yeah, well, he kind of didn't really leave. he kind of chugged along as chair and i think executive chair for a bit as well, and in 2015, he did recapture the throne. he became ceo again. and, yeah, he's now announced he's leaving, and he's not quite really given a clue then about where he's going. so, there's a little bit of mystery around that. but, yes, he's very well known because i suppose he's one of these, like, founder ceos and also he'sjust a very strange man. his fasting, diet, his beard and all that. yeah, so i suppose he's one of these tech ceos that attain celebrity status, sort of like mark zuckerberg of facebook, or meta, orjeff bezos of amazon. remind listeners, how big twitter is today in comparison, in comparison with meta or facebook as we know it, or tiktok. oh, small. twitter's got about, i think it's up to 11 million daily active users at last count. and meta has about 1.9 billion. so that's like give or take 10% of the same audience. and it's a lot less money. ok, and now the new ceo? we know that the new person to replace him is parag agarwal. he's the new ceo. what do we know about him? he's been at the company since 2011. where he started as an engineer. he's been chief technology officer for the last four years. he's been on a level with jack dorsey, talking to him directly and handling things like product launches for a very long time. so, he's fairly well immersed in the company. john thornhill, i want to bring you in here, tech columnist at the financial times, as everyone knows, who i'm sure has been listening. you know, the share price actually rose whenjack dorsey announced he was leaving. what do you think was going on? well, within the company- as isobel was saying he's been under a lot of criticism for a long time. - it has not performed very well, unlike facebook or meta - or google and youtube. it has really been - an also—ran when it comes to advertising on social media. and so there's been a lot of. activist investors who wanted to get rid of dorsey. and dorsey also has a second job. - he's chief executive of square, j which is a payments processing company, which is worth a lot more money than twitter, - and he has a bigger stake in that than he does - in twitter as well. so, i think- it was all lining up. there's been a long time that shareholders have been- wanting to push them out. but it feels like the new boss is arriving into a very different atmosphere. you know, here in britain, but this going through, but you know there's other things going on around the world. you know, how much appetite do you think there is now to rein in the tech giants? well, i think there's _ an enormously growing pressure to reign in the tech companies. i was at a future tech form event this week that the british government held and i think— the mood among regulators has changed enormously. . and i think on your show early this year you had the head - the head the competition and markets authority. a presumption of an action, the market should be - allowed to run its course and monopolies would . be self—correcting. but i think that mood has- changed, and there is now a far more interventionist mood. and we've actuallyjust seen that, have we not, this week with the competition and markets authority have done with meta, facebook�*s parent company, you know, telling them they've got to sell giphy because they make it, they may guess, but can you unpack that for us? how does a british competition and markets authority tell an american company what to sell? yeah, indeed it's quite an extraordinary story| in a way because giphy- is a new york—based lossmaking platform that provides gifs. it was bought by meta in may last year. - giphy does not really have any activities or employees - in the uk, but the competition and market authority - investigated it, and thought- that there was a case to answer in terms of suppressing competition. _ they thought - that it could limit of competition using gifs, . it could extract data if other people did use those gifs and it was also depriving| the market of a potential competitor to facebook.| and so the competition authority has told - meta to dispose of it. and a lot of the petition liners are fairly shockedj at that decision. but i think it does - speak to this new mood of interventionism that a lot i of regulators i think would now accept that they were asleep at the wheel when facebook| bought instagram back in 2012. and i think they don't want to i repeat the same mistakes again. and isobel asher hamilton, what's your take on that, on the british government agency in britain demanding an american company sells another american company? it is entertaining because of i think the authority argues they have jurisdiction over decisions like this when they determine that the merged companies together will take up a certain amount of market share and they believe that giphy and meta, facebook together will take up so much market share in britain that therefore they have the jurisdiction. i'm sure facebook will appeal this. and it's going to drag on for a very, very long time, but it really is entertaining to see the cma come out and try and make meta sell giphy. i'm not sure how it will turn out. in a quick, we talked right at the start about kent online inadvertently publishing some pretty terrible content from readers comments. do you think anyone is going to stop facebook and twitter from doing the same thing, to moderate the thing unmoderated people say? i mean, there are some countries in the world where speech on facebook and twitter and other places is already very heavily moderated. it's not impossible. it's a question of where the law should be drawn up throughout the free speech, and i think that really going to look to america because that's where these companies are based, that's where they have given they feel emotionally they have to please regulators a lot of time, although india is really becoming a way for them as well. and i think that the difficulty is that while both republicans and democrats agree that they like to reign that they like to reign in big tech, they want to do it for them of the different reasons ending with the different ways. well, and it is a lot more to talk about, but to forge a way that is it for today. thanks to all my guests. the media show will be back at the same time next week, but for now, thanks for watching. goodbye. hello. we have a rather cold and windy weekend to come. and there'll be some wet weather at times, especially on saturday, some showers or some showery rain and hail snow. drier for many on sunday. throughout the weekend, though, a chilly wind to contend with. what's going on? low pressure close to scotland as saturday begins will run south through the north sea as the weekend goes on. around it, showers or some longer spells of rain and hill snow, especially on saturday. and it's also dragging in another push of chilly air from the north—west. and it's not what those without power or working to restore power after storm arwen want to hear, but it is going to be a rather cold weekend ahead, with temperatures starting like this for saturday morning. just a few spots close to freezing, just a hint of frost here and there. there'll be early rain across eastern england clearing away to sunny spells, but then this curl of rain and hill snow through scotland, northern ireland, pushing into more of northern england, wales and the midlands as we go on through the day. north west scotland starting to brighten up in the afternoon, just a few showers. the far south of wales and much of southern england, a lot of the day is going to be dry. it's blustery wherever you are. these are average speeds. some stronger gusts around particularly western coasts, 40—115 mph or so, so a risk of gales here. so, it will feel colder than these temperatures might suggest, which are already down compared with what we had on friday. saturday evening and night, it's central and eastern parts of england with outbreaks of rain. some snow to the higher parts of the pennines and peak district. a few showers in the west, but some clear spells, too, and where you have the clear spells, a greater chance of a frost going into sunday morning, especially in the countryside. and on sunday, well, the low pressure�*s here. for many, it's far enough away to allow a drier day, but close to that across especially eastern parts of england, there'll be some outbreaks of rain around. they may just fringe into eastern scotland at times and also push a little further west towards the midlands. much of scotland, northern ireland, wales and the western side of england, bar the odd shower, will stay mainly dry. there'll still be a very brisk north—northwesterly breeze to contend with, so it will feel colder than these temperatures might suggest. and temperatures don't change much in the week ahead, and especially during the first half of the week, it looks like we're going to have to contend with more wet and, at times, very windy weather. welcome to bbc news, i'm simon pusey. our top stories: american prosecutors charge the parents of a teenager accused of a massacre at a school, saying they share responsibility. i will reiterate today that gun ownership is a right and with that right comes great responsibility. the first data on the omicron variant of covid suggests vaccines are less effective at stopping it spreading but they do make the symptoms less serious. it's possible that the omicron variant can cause infections evenin variant can cause infections even in previously vaccinated people, howeverthey even in previously vaccinated people, however they develop only mild illness which means the vaccines are still providing protection.