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 injournalism. 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 have 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 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 that 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 view 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 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 appearing on our website, the stories also appeared on our facebook pages, and while 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 have 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 by their 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 circulating 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? absolutely, because 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 going to 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, absolutely. i mean, it's not a new problem unfortunately, and it's something that's... obviously, organic growth of digital has meant that there's kind of been lots of trial and error over time. and i think social media and commenting offers 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 that it then opens up a space where people can spread hate as well, and spread hateful speech, and that's a key part of my newjob. so, i've been getting round the company talking to editors, talking tojournalists in the last couple of weeks and finding out what some of the key issues are. and it is, you know, the comments and how to moderate them and really kind of then create a safe space for the audience that really want to engage, cos i would say it's 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. 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 at the 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 were 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 on 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 personal abuse thatjournalists 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, 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 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, it's no. longer us just transmitting i'iews. we're also receiving it. there's more of- a dialogue going on. and i think, on social media, we absolutely encourage our| reporters to be part of- the social media conversation. sometimes that can get out of hand. - they can get targeted. some of them receive abuse, i some of them have reported it to the police. but i think it's... i remember, in the 1990s, - i was a reporter in moscowjust after the collapse . of the soviet union. and i had someone calling up our bureau saying thatl i was 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 it shows that thisi kind of thing has been going on for a long time. but nowadays, i'm sorry to interrupt, 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 whatl 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 that the job that l 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 had not 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, of protecting yourjournalists while at the same time wanting them to engage. how do you navigate that? it's absolutely that, and you get two ends of 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 a problem is the reporters constantly being belittled by readers, saying they're doing a rubbishjob. 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 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 the 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 60% 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- that was developed with academics or experts. in linguistics and the _ portrayal muslims in the media, and we analysed over 48,000 articles and 5,500 broadcast i clips and we have kind of key metrics that we ask. - you know, is the article i or broadcast generalising, misrepresenting, associating muslims with negative - behaviour? you know, are the headlines orl 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, you know, - 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 crimesl 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 of how you define what's a negative story, what's a positive story. where does more neutral coverage sit? for example, you know, if there's a muslim contributor, but they're not speaking about islam, is that positive or negative, or do you discount it? is that not something that comes into this report? i mean, we have 50 key words| 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 they're not identified - as being muslim, or the word i islam or any other kind of word isn't identified, that wouldn't appear on 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're quite mixed. others, you know, pass. the radar and they're very positive. but then there is overall a sense there is a lot. of misrepresentation, - generalisation and the kind of pushing of common tropes that we used to find - on the kind of fringe of social media, which are entering i into mainstream media now. and not really being challenged robustly, whether that's - on broadcast, on topical debatel programmes, or in newspapers, or specifically 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 - about the industry itself, you know, kind of saying - to other people that this kind ofjournalism is not acceptable. - we had a panel discussion yesterday where we had . the editors of the mirror, i sunday times, bbc's home affairs editor, as well as some | print and otherjournalists on. | and i think one of the - questions that was put to them is why aren't enough - journalists holding other journalists to account - when journalistic standards are not reaching the kind of levels that we would l expect of it? and i think there's often- a fear, "we don't want to kind of hold 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 point . where we know — whether it's racism, whether it's sexism —j 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. i'd like to think there's a difference 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. pat on the back. i think the media needs to be in listening mode. and i think the media is in listening mode when it comes to areas like this. there was obviously the 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, this 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 exec chair for a bit as well, and then, in 2015, he did recapture the throne. he became ceo again. and, yeah, he's now announced he's resigning, and he's not really given a clear statement 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. with his fasting, diet, his beard and all that. yeah, so i suppose he's one of these tech ceos that attained celebrity status, sort of like mark zuckerberg of facebook, now meta, orjeff bezos of amazon. just remind listeners — you bring in meta — 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, 211 million daily active users at last count. and meta has about 1.9 billion. so that's give or take 10% of the same audience. and it makes a lot less money. ok, what do we know? 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. so he's been on a level with jack dorsey, talking to him directly and steering things like product launches for a very long time. so he's fairly well embedded in the company. john thornhill, i'd like 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, i think the company, as isobel was saying, - has been under a lot- of criticism for a long time. it hasn't performed very well, unlike facebook or meta - or google and youtube. it has really been an also—ran when it comes to advertisingl 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 the chief executive - of square, 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. it's been a long time that - shareholders have been wanting to push him out. but it sounds like the new boss is arriving into a very different atmosphere. you know, here in britain, this online harms bill 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 techl forum 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 someone . from the competitionl and markets authority who was making this point, that i think there is 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. 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 doesn't 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. _ it thought that it could limit other people 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 competition - lawyers are fairly astounded 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 a government agency in britain demanding an american company sells another american company? it is entertaining because 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. and a quick last word — 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? 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 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 in big tech, they want to do it for them of the different reasons and in completely different ways. well, i think there is a lot more to talk about, but 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 there. we await the arrival of the second named storm of the season. storm barra will bring the worst of the weather during tuesday as windy weather develops widely. added to that later on snow and blizzards over some of the hills in the north. this is the centre of the storm approaching western parts of ireland. it will push a band of heavy rain northwards and eastward across the uk. but ahead of that we start the day with a frost widely and some icy patches in western scotland and the northwest of england. a very cold start then. we got that rain sweeping its way across northern ireland, wales and the southwest in the morning, the winds picking up as well. that will be followed by some sunny intervals in heavy, blustery showers in the afternoon as that band of weather weather continues to push its way northwards and eastwards. may make double figures again in the southwest but it's much colder elsewhere, especially north of england and scotland where into that cold air the rain will fall as snow. particularly in the hills, a couple of centimetres, peak district, pennines, cumbria and the fells. heavier snowfall, blizzards likely in the southern opulence and that snowy weather will work its way up into the highlands later on in the day as the main rain band sweeps away from eastern parts of england, heavy showers follow and it stays very windy. strongest winds are likely to be through the irish sea, english channel, gust 70, 80mph near coast. generally a0 or 50 or so but could get windier around some north sea coast in the evening. now, after steaming into the uk storm barra isjust going to stall overnight and into wednesday. and it will weaken as well. wednesday is still a windy day, just not as windy. the strongest winds are going to be in south wales and the southwest of england. and around that area of low pressure showers or longer spells of rain rotating with some brief glimpses of sunshine. but it's still cold, temperatures around five to 7 was up by the time we get to thursday our storm really is no more. it's continuing to weaken, the winds are continuing to drop. this band of rain from the atlantic will arrive into northern ireland later in the day. but otherwise, it's a much quieter day on thursday. a fair bit of cloud around, many places are going to be dry, some sunshine at times but we are still in cold air, temperatures typically at sixes and sevens. welcome to bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories: the united states and as a diplomatic boycott of the beijing winter olympics because of china �*s record on human rights. china calls a week and insists it is against the spirit of the games. new york's mess is all private—sector workers in the city must be vaccinated against coronavirus. the strictest mandate yet. also, more evidence is given in the trial of ghislaine maxwell, the trial of ghislaine maxwell, the woman of helping to the disgraced financierjeffrey epstein. and we talked to the hollywood legend mel brooks who, at 95, is taking stock of his extraordinary career.