Outfits worn by many celebrities. Well talk to one journalist about the challenges of covering it. Lets start with the Campus Protests in the us. Reporting them is creating a challenge for us journalism, and were going to talk it through with journalists whove been on the ground. But before we meet them, lets remind ourselves whats been unfolding over the past month. So, these protests started at Columbia University in new york in mid april. According to a bbc tally, there have now been demonstrations at nearly 140 colleges across 45 states and washington, dc, too. According to the ap news agency, around 2,500 people have been arrested at campuses across the us. And the protesters are demanding a number of things, including that their colleges financially divest from israel. Now, in some locations, police have been sent in, not least at Columbia University in new york, and that was seen as being hugely significant, not least because its the first time there have been mass arrests on columbias campus since the vietnam war protests more than 50 years ago. Also, in interviews with the bbc, jewish students at several campuses have spoken of incidents that made them feel uncomfortable, ranging from chants and signs supporting hamas, which is a proscribed terror group, to physical altercations and perceived threats. 0k, well, lets understand the practicalities of covering the story first with richard hall, whos the independent� s senior us correspondent and not a student. Richard, welcome to the media show. I know you were at Columbia Universitys encampments in new york. What did you actually see . Well, i could see what had happened, actually, from the first moments i got down there. The access to the campus was quite restricted most of the time. Press were allowed on for a couple of hours a day to speak to people. But outside of the campus, there was essentially a ring of counterprotesters and people that had come to protest the protest. And if you can imagine the kind of people that would give up their wednesday afternoon to go down there and shout at some students or shout at people who are shouting at students, i dont think it was very representative of what was going on inside the encampment. So there was this impression that these people causing trouble outside were connected to the protests in some way, and that wasnt the case. And when it comes to the people you met inside, is it right, that theyve been studying the Media Tactics of the vietnam war protesters of the � 60s and were you surprised by that . Thats right. I actually went down with the intention of talking to them about the 68 protests, because its something id noticed. Id studied the 68 protests at university, and i wanted to ask them, you know, do you know there are echoes from 68 here in what youre doing . And everyone i spoke to said, yes, we know. Its deliberate. We actually went into the columbia archives and we studied what the 68 protesters did. We studied their tactics, we studied how they dealt with the media. Even the idea of an encampment they borrowed from 68. So they were very aware of it. It was a very deliberate strategy to copy what they did and learn from them. And the students had designated a few people to speak to the press, and they had some very light media training, you know, just teaching them how not to get tripped up. And if you can imagine, the press are kept outside the campus in this huge line and are let in at a certain time. You have 100 journalists swarming this encampment, and you have six or seven students just trying to field all these requests, journalists fighting over them. So that was one of the things that they learned from 68, was just this discipline of message, making sure they say the right things and their words couldnt be twisted. I saw that some high profile journalists in america have been criticising the protesters for not speaking to media outlets. It sounds to me like it was easy for you to speak to the people whod been designated, but you couldntjust go around asking other students to talk to you. Or did you try that . I wonder what your take is on what people are saying about that. I was turned down a couple of times, but its completely understandable. Any sort of protest situation, not Everyone Wants to talk to you. And one example, i went up to one student at one point and said, and he said, whats your name . And i told him my name. He googled me in two seconds and he was reading out my biography and said, oh, youve covered syria. You worked in The Middle East. Ok, lets do this. So they were very savvy. Vetting you on the ground. Yeah i think if someone had trouble getting interviews with them, it was probably because the students didnt trust them. Did you come across Student Journalists who were also trying to get access . Did you interact with Student Journalists at all while you were covering it . They were everywhere that night. Yeah, they were at every barricade, in every side street. They had special markers on their back saying studentjournalist to identify themselves. Deeply, deeply impressed by their commitment to get out there and get involved. I saw Student Protesters following the live stream of the radio station. That was their tool to keep up to date on everything that was happening. So, yeah, they were everywhere that night. Really interesting. Richard hall from the independent, thank you. Well, next lets talk about Student Journalists, because theyve been commended by the Pulitzer Prize board for covering protests and unrest in the face of great personal and academic risk. Julia vargas jones is a masters student at Columbia Journalism School and also a freelance reporter. Julia, welcome to the media show. I know that you were covering some of these events for cnn. Just tell us how that happened. Well, thank you for having me. Well, i had, you know, i had a connection with cnn before id worked with them for many years. And in the moment, you know, i got a call from another classmate, natasha caragnano. She called me at around 3am, and she said, you should be here. And honestly, i didnt even ask cnn if they really wanted me to go. Ijust said, im here, you should take me live, and we started coverage from the occupation. I think when i got there, we were about six, seven hours in. And i did talk to people, you know, i was able to talk to people who were not media trained and said, look, im not media trained. I cant give you an interview. Im like, look, im a fellow student. I i want to report for the entire world. Were about to go live on cnn. I need to know a little bit of whats going on. | help me out here. I want to understand, how did the night go . | was it peaceful . Like, what happened after people went inside . And i think, obviously being a student, i was able to build that trust with some of the protesters. I julia, im interested so you call up cnn and you say, im here, i can go on air as soon as you like. But what are the practicalities of that . Because youve been woken up at 3am in the morning, youve rushed down to where the story is. What are the practicalities of getting on air . Im assuming youre using your phone, oram i wrong . Yes, so, you kind of need two phones and a tiny tripod with a ring light and microphones, wireless microphones, and a headset, a very simple, bare bones headset. Now, throughout the day, we were able to charge. L i actually had to recruit some fellow masters students to help me and be my camera operators. The biggest challenge of the coverage was, eventually, the phones started dying, i batteries started running out and we just had to make do with whatever we had. So its switching phones,. Its switching live methods. So every time that you saw me come back up, i was probably trying | to figure out another logistical| issue before i could, you know, talk to the anchors at cnn. While you were dealing with all of that, and you were no doubt encountering lots of other students who were reporting on it. You mentioned columbias Journalism School. I know a makeshift newsroom was established to deal with the level of interest in this story. Just tell us what that was like. I have to commend the Journalism School for everything that they did to help student i journalists continue reporting. A lot of people arrived there. Student journalists arrived there after the gates were closed, and the dean and the vice deans had to physically escort people into the building. In one of the main halls. Of the Journalism School, there was coffee, water, pizzas, snacks, advice from very established professors, people that have been. In the industry for 30, 40 years. So i think it was probably the best education in journalism that this l cohort is going to get. Julia, thanks for speaking to us. Thats julia vargas jones, a masters student at Columbia Journalism School. Well, next, lets assess how effective the protesters have been about getting their message out via the media and how Media Coverage, especially via the mainstream, has shaped americans perspective on the protests. Doug mcleod is Professor Ofjournalism at the university of wisconsin madison. Doug, welcome to the media show. I know youve been studying how the media frames protest. And you use an interesting term, you talk about the protest paradigm. Just explain what you mean by that. Yeah, well, weve been studying social Media Coverage of social protest for over 35 years. Weve studied it across a variety of different protest contexts, both left and right groups, abortion groups, environmental groups, black lives matter, anarchists a whole host of different types of protest topics. And one of the things that emerged when we looked at mainstream newspaper and Television Coverage of these protests was a certain common pattern of covering social protests. The stories look pretty similar in terms of structure and the way the protest was covered. And thats what we call the protest paradigm, a way of covering social protest. So, what are the pitfalls that News Organisations can fall into, in your view . So, one of the pitfalls is really getting caught up in looking for dramatic stories, dramatic images, looking for, say, conflicts between protesters and police or between protesters on one side of the issue and protesters on the other. As rich talked about before, it looks like a war scene, and it makes great video images. But one of the real problems is that the issues, the underlying issues of the protest, sort of get lost in the process. Are you saying that the media isnt interested in peaceful protest, im wondering . Well, i would say calm, rational protest that stands up to have expressed an opinion to try to influence public and policy on a given issue is unlikely to get a lot of Media Attention unless they can create a certain amount of drama that fits what journalists are often looking for. Uh, and so you often see clashes with the police. You often see incidents of property damage, even though in many of these protests, the people who are actually engaged with, uh, police or other counter protesters is a small fraction of the larger protest group. And so when it comes to these protests that weve been seeing and theyve obviously been punching out across the media, certainly across america and wider here in the uk. Some people have been saying that the Student Protests have overshadowed their cause. Has the message cut through, or how has the message cut through, do you think, and how does that reflect the coverage . Yeah, i think its a pretty good example of what were talking about with the protest paradigm. There has been a ton of attention on our campus at the university of wisconsin, on the police removing the encampments from campus and arresting protesters. Its pretty similar to the way the protest has been covered across campuses. The nod to what the protesters are looking for in terms of things like divestment are sort of briefly acknowledged within these stories, but theres little exploration of what divestment means. What are the investments of a university in israel or with companies that supply the Israeli Military . What is it that is problematic about what universities are doing that have led to the complaints that the protesters are trying to allege against the administration . Its very hard, as a member of the public to really divine what it is that the protest is all about. And so if you dont have a lot of thorough discussion, uh, of what the protest is about the protest looks very foreign to you, very disruptive, uh, particularly radical tactics of the protesters tend to be focused on and their, their issues kind of get lost in the clutter. Professor mcleod, thank you. Weve heard three perspectives on these Campus Protests. Lets hear one more. Werejoined by Shaina 0ppenheimer from Bbc Monitoring. Shaina, youre with us from jerusalem, and were going to speak to you about a couple of subjects on todays media show. But i was interested to ask you, you spend your time looking at Media Coverage that you can view from jerusalem. I wonder how these Campus Protests have been covered in israel. I think its important to understand, kind of as a starting point, that the israeli media does not really cover what happens in gaza from a humanitarian standpoint. There are very little images of the civilian impact of israels military actions there. So then israelis have a really hard time comprehending or understanding what the anger is and why people are protesting on College Campuses in the us. So the media kind of use interchangeable terms like anti israel protests and anti semitic protests without ever mentioning gaza, without ever without ever mentioning the cause and the reason why students were protesting. And they take these images that we were talking about of the most extreme cases of violence, and they use it to kind of question and perhaps delegitimize, some people would say, the Protest Movement at large, without contextualising it at all. Shaina, you are going to be staying with us. Before we carry on talking, let me say thanks to richard hall, professor doug mcleod, and julia vargas jones, whove been with us, as weve talked about those Campus Protests in the us. Shaina, lets stick with whats happening in israel. Um, because israels government has shut down the operations of the Aljazeera Television network in the country for the duration of its war in gaza. Heres a clip of their correspondent, imran khan, announcing the move, to viewers on sunday. That was aljazeeras imran khan. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Israeli Cabinet agreed to the closure while the war in gaza is ongoing. As i said, Shaina 0ppenheimer from Bbc Monitoring jerusalem, you are still here. Just tell us why, why its happened. Well, the Israeli Government, i mean, in general, israelis do not view aljazeera quite favourably. As i mentioned, there isnt really a lot of coverage of how israeli policies, um, affect palestinian civilians. So theres an inability to understand where aljazeera is coming from in that sense, now, during the war, and at large. And theres this long time accusation that aljazeera works kind of in kudos with hamas. People in israel see it certainly as a mouthpiece. So, for a long time, israel has not seen aljazeera favourably. And certainly when this war started, this idea of perhaps doing something to shut its operations has kind of been in the background. And the timing was quite sensitive, because at the end of the day, aljazeera is based in qatar, and qatar is quite a key player in negotiations with hamas. And there are even ongoing negotiations right now. Lets bring in mohamed moawad, whos Managing Editor of aljazeera, and with us live from doha. Uh, mr moawad, thank you very much indeed for your time. Following this vote, mr netanyahu claimed in a statement that aljazeera reporters had harmed israels security and incited against soldiers and has called your network a hamas mouthpiece. How would you respond to that . These are unfounded, baseless allegations i that the Israeli Government is, unleashing against us. And this is the least dangerous action they have taken against al jazeera. Weve lost three colleagues covering from the front line of this conflict, and they were targeted by air strikes. So, to be honest, this is the least dangerous action by the Israeli Government. And, this is something that we have heard before, against aljazeera from. The authoritarian regimes in the in the mena region, in The Middle East. When they shut down offices for al jazeera, with the aftermathj of the arab spring, this is the same authoritarian playbook. And to be honest, we see that as a way to conceal l whats happening inside gaza. Well. We heard today from israel hayom that the Minister Ofjustice In Israeljust told the hostages families that he is watching aljazeera because he knows arabic and hes watching aljazeera to follow whats happening with the negotiations and the war, because netanyahu is not telling them much about whats going on. Let me pick up on a couple of things. First of all, israel denies targeting aljazeera journalists. Indeed, it denies targeting alljournalists. Also, the Israeli Intelligence accuses aljazeera of revealing the locations of the israeli army in some of your coverage. Do you accept that perhaps in some of your coverage, you have accidentally given away information that could put israels military at risk . I dont think covering from the front line of the conflict, giving voice to the voiceless, uncovering the atrocities committed in gaza that was described by the United Nations and other, humanitarian organisations as war crimes, i dont think this is revealing positions for Israeli Forces or Something Like that. I this is a fine journalism. This is the core Mission Ofjournalism around the globe. And thats our mission. Were giving voice to the voiceless. Were reporting the gazan side, and were reporting the israeli side. I mean, were airing the statements by Israeli Government officials, and we are being criticised, i by the way, in The Middle East that we are airing them. People are criticising us and saying |that aljazeera is giving a platform| for the Israeli Government lies and that we are airing because they go on air and say we care about civilians. And then we report that hundreds are killed in their. This is your Immediate Reaction to the ban by mr netanyahu and his colleagues. Is there anything further that you can do about this . Can you challenge the ban legally . Of course weve. Started the process. We are pursuing all legal actions to make sure that we counter. These unfounded allegations. And we are sure that the whole l Israeli Government and the israel is now being tested. The democracy in israel is being tested because they are using the same playbook. Of the authoritarian regimes in The Middle East, but theyrej calling themselves democracy. So, lets see if the israeli institutions are going to defend Freedom Of Speech and i the Freedom Ofjournalists to operate in israel. In front of the court. Mohamed moawad, Managing Editor of aljazeera, with us from doha, thank you very much indeed for speaking to the media show. Thanks to Shaina 0ppenheimer, too, from Bbc Monitoring. Thank you. I want to turn to something very, very different now, but it would have been hard to miss. The photographs earlier in the week, splashed across the media, as stars took to the red carpet in sometimes questionable and often entirely impractical outfits for the annual met gala in new york. But of course, practicality isnt the point, i get that. Ijust want to give you a taste of the jamboree for the dozens of photographers at the event. Here is the arrival of Ariana Grande and cynthia erivo. Ladies, turn together. Turn together. Together. This way. | cynthia. And look in here, ari. There you go. Its a hugely profitable co mingling of celebrities, sponsors and brands overseen by Vogue Magazine supremo anna wintour. And its. The met gala is the source of seemingly endless coverage, fascinating and baffling in equal measure. And were lucky enough to say weve got someone who was there to cover it here On The Media Show jada yuan, features reporter at the washington post. Some people wont have seen the photos, others will. Just explain, though, how Big A Media Event is the met ball . Its. Its huge. It comprises notjust of the red carpet, which is kind of famous, along the steps of the metropolitan museum of art, and this time was not red, but actually, green and beige, with hedges of real plants along the side. Its a huge production. The tent is up there for days and you have, the tent is up there for days and you have just hundreds of reporters and photographers inside this scrum. But then you also have a side show that has this sort of Social Media Side Show thats been happening at nearby hotels where crowds will gather to just take photographs of stars as they get into vans to drive two blocks over to the museum, and yeah, and yeah, itsjust insane. And how do you get your spot . Where do you stand as a reporter . Where were you this time . Were way at the top. Were at the im at the upper end of the lowerend of the food chain. Is that good or bad . I cant quite work it out. Its not, its not great. I mean, the whole game of being a reporter at the met gala, other than just sort of taking in the sights of these ridiculous outfits and just the crush of celebrity thats coming through is to try and get them to come and talk to you. And my videographer found a box, and wejustjumped up on top of this box, so we were taller than everyone else and were able to sort of shout a little bit louder, and thats how we managed to get some folks over to us. And who did you get to speak to you . Lana del rey, jeff goldblum, nicole kidman. There were some people. Not bad at all. Yeah. We probably had 20 or 30 people at least. The thing im always fascinated by is what actually happens inside. Do you know what they do . Do they go in and change immediately into something more comfortable, or do they stick like that for the whole evening . Yeah, i know, even though ive never been inside myself, theres a few reporters whove been able to get in, but its mostly closed to the press. I think that most of them take off their giant trains and their huge hats, and theyre, like, lana del rey was wearing a crown of thorns. And i hope for everyones sake around her that she didnt have those on still, and then i think itsjust a party. Its a party inside the met. Ive been to other parties at the met. Its usually really beautifully lit, and i know theres usually a performance. And so you might be sitting at a table and beyonce might get up on and sing onstage. And then everyone leaves incredibly early. I mean, rihanna is always an hour late. She didnt come this year, cos she had the flu. But usually as shes walking in, people are leaving and theyre going to the after parties. 0k. Sounds great. A party that not many journalists are invited to, but one day, jada, one day. Jada yuan from the washington post, thanks so much. Im afraid thats it for today. Thanks to all our guests. Well be back at the same time next week. But its goodbye from me, katie razzall. And from me, ros atkins, thanks for watching. Well see you soon. Bye bye. And if youd like to hear a longer version of todays show, search bbc the media show, wherever you get your bbc podcasts. Hello there. Its the warmest day of the year so far across all four nations on saturday, with Temperatures Peaking at 26 degrees celsius in the highlands and also in east sussex, too. But change is on its way on sunday in the form of heavy, thundery showers for much of the western half of the uk, whereas further east, it should stay largely dry. All this change is brought about, of course, because the High Pressure thats been keeping us dry, settled and warm over the last few days is gradually drifting further eastwards towards scandinavia, allowing for these Weather Fronts to approach from the west. But its a mostly dry start to the day on sunday with some sunny spells, any early mist and fog will lift and clear really quite readily. But it wont be too long through the late morning before we see the showers pop up across Western Scotland, down through Northern Ireland, wales and the south west of england. And if we just take a little tour at around four oclock in the afternoon, you can see the shower across northern and Western Scotland gradually drifting further east with some of the showers really quite heavy. Its still quite warm 22 degrees celsius in glasgow, but certainly cooler than on saturday. More showers across Northern Ireland, some of the showers particularly heavy across wales. There could be some localised flooding perhaps as well. More isolated showers for central southern england, maybe 26 or 27 degrees celsius in southeast england. Cooler and breezier towards those north sea facing coasts. And overnight, those showers will continue to drift further eastwards. But this is the main driver of mondays weather this deep area of low pressure thats pressure thats going to roll this Weather Front in from the southwest. So, again, a largely dry start to the day for the vast majority, rain pushing into wales from southwest england and eventually Northern Ireland through the afternoon, as well as Scattering Showers across scotland and northern england. But again across many eastern areas of england. It could stay largely dry, but it will be cooler across the board. But still Temperatures Peaking in the low 20s out towards the east. In the low 20s out towards the east, but the area of low pressure just continues to roll its way further northwards and eastwards as we head through tuesday and into wednesday. So, there will be further showers around at times for many in general. Heres the outlook for our Capital Cities as we head through next week live from washington. This is bbc news. The Eurovision Song Contest Crowns Switzerland the winner well have the latest from malmo in sweden. Israel orders more evacuations in rafah as it intensifies military operations. Sweeping pro europe protests in tbilisi, georgia, as the country moves forward with a bill critics say will clamp down on dissent. Hello. Im helena humphrey. Glad you could join me. Israel has ordered thousands more people to leave the city of rafah in southern gaza, as it presses on with its Military Campaign there against hamas. The Israel Defense forces have declared a narrow coastal strip at al mawasi to be a safe humanitarian zone, but the un says it has no Running Water or proper sanitation. Israel says that since monday, about 300,000
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