his new one is a collection of his journalism called dispatches from the diaspora. gary younge, welcome to the media show. let's go back to some of where it all began. you studied french and russian at heriot—watt university in edinburgh, and then in your final year you received a scott trust bursary from the guardian to study journalism. and i think you were quite clear at that point that you wanted to be a columnist. why? because i had been very politically involved and my entry into writing was partly because i'd studied languages and studied to be an interpreter, and i like to manipulate words, but it was also because i had been very involved politically, almost precociously, and that i thought i had things to say. and what i didn't realise at the time was the degree to which reporting, running out and talking to people, finding out, all of that, is the nuts and bolts of everything, including column writing. so as someone who hadn't done an awful lot ofjournalism and heriot—watt didn't have a student newspaper for the first couple of years we were there, my sense of being a journalist was about writing my thoughts and, of course, because i was 21 or 22, i also assumed that everybody would be interested in my thoughts, which, when i look back at it now is a little bit fanciful. well, i don't know, it does show a certain kind of confidence, which i really like, reading your book it made me wonder how much was your mum's influence. a lot of it had to do with my mum and my upbringing. my mum was born in barbados, came to britain as a 19—year—old, was first a nurse and then became a teacher. had three kids, then my dad left when i was 15 months old — i was the youngest. and so she had this project. we were her project. we were her kids, first of all, but... she used to pad around the living room with me on herfeet, and play young gifted and black by bob and marcia, and say "look, they're playing our song." and it was this kind of, this act of hope and belief that, this is the early 1970s, britain is in a pretty dark place, and also literally, because there were kind of blackouts and things, but also racially and otherwise. and my mum had this sense that, well, we're just going to have to imagine the world that you are going to live in, and we're going to have to imagine a place in your world that we have no evidence of. you get your education and then you make your choices. and if you want to be a columnist, be a columnist! you know, that would have been so far removed from anything we would even have imagined at that time and the notion that you can make a living writing was actually not something that occurred to me until very late. 0k. let's fast forward a bit from then, but presumably at this point you're still not making much money writing, 1994, you were sent by the guardian to south africa to govern the country's first democratic elections. why did they choose you, and what was it like to be a witness to such historic change? well, they chose me because they were — first of all, i had got a bursary from the guardian, so i was known. and i was — when i... when i interviewed for the bursary, i talked about my work in the anti—apartheid movement to alan rusbridger, who would become the editor. and it was a kind of typical liberal dilemma. they knew that there were stories that white journalists couldn't get in south africa in the run—up to the elections, but they hadn't employed enough black journalists that they wanted to send, actually, barely any that they wanted to send. so they looked around for someone who is young, cheap, and black to send them to see what was out there. and i was the youngest, cheapest, blackest thing in the office. so out i went. but then south africa is quite a difficult place to navigate if you can't drive, and so i would get lifts from people and i ended up getting a lift with a tv crew who were doing an official account of mandela. they dropped me at a gas station and said there are some others coming through to pick you up and they were mandela's bodyguards. and, frankly, i amused them and made it my business to amuse them. i had been involved in the anti—apartheid movement, i had studied in the soviet union, as had they. they would let me drive around with them. and so i stumbled onto this kind of front row seat and it was the most stunning thing to be around. now, bearing in mind, i had been involved in the anti—apartheid movement, i had picketed the south african embassy with my mum, aged 18, when apartheid was still going on. and so to be in some ramshackle stadium in the middle of nowhere, because that's where apartheid put black people, and to see kind of old toothless women and young barefoot children dancing around, waiting, and the cavalcade coming up, and seeing it kicking up the dust tens of miles away, and the cheering starting and the waving and the screaming and the ululating, and then mandela arise and just to be in that moment and to be 25 and to just kind of think "wow, wow." it was incredible. and how did the piece go down? the correspondent at the time, david beresford, a lovely man who, unfortunately, died not so long ago, he said, "it's all here, but it's alljumbled up." and he said, "you've spent too long and you can't see it anymore." he took me out for a drink, and he said, "you'rejust "going to have to stay up all night and just kind of, "you know, whip it into shape." and so i did, and by the time ifiled it, i couldn't really see what i'd done. and the piece was going through the system at the guardian and i managed to get a kind of connection from my computer and i started seeing all these notes coming through from colleagues, and then alan rusbridger, the deputy editor, and peter preston, which was a big moment, all sort of saying, "this is a wonderful piece", and "well done" and, you know... relief. i just started crying, it was just very, very relief of which there are no words. you have met some pretty incredible people in your career, not least, how did you end up getting drunk in maya angelou's limousine? for that, we have la traffic to thank. and i had 45 minutes with her. when the 45 minutes were over, she said, "just hang back" and then she took me for lunch, and then she had something to do, so she got me a room in the hotel so i could sleep, and then we went to her event, and then on the way back from the event, there was this huge la trafficjam, it was like a big car park, and we were in her limo, and she said, she had this kind of purring voice, she said, "would you like some whiskey, mryounge?" and i said, "ooh, yeah, that would be nice," and her assistant said, "do you want ice and stuff, ms angelou?" and she said, "i want a little bit of ice and a lot of stuff." and so these huge whiskeys came out and then there was more whiskey and then there was more. it was a big trafficjam. by the time i'd got out of the car, i was pretty hammered, and i think she was, too, although she was in better shape than i was, she could drink me under the table. and ijust thought, you know, i don't need many days like this in my life, one day, this will carry me on for quite a long time. you moved to america in 1996. you ended up spending more than half your career working there for the guardian. was it initially difficult, as an outsider, to understand what made that country tick? it was. for some things it always was, to be honest, guns. i never quite understood, although, you know, i got further than i was at the beginning. and, you know, in a way, as a foreign correspondent, not understanding is a bit of a gift, really, because then you can go and find out. but it was like anthropology, really, you could kind of prod around and it would work quite well in moments of kind of, where other american journalists might not want to go, you know, having steak with a bunch of trump republicans, and it would be, you know. "funny, why do you think that?" and it would be my m0 for an awful lot of interviews. but as time goes on — my wife is american and i had two kids there — you become invested and it stops being anthropology and it starts, you've got skin in the game. and you start thinking, "that's my kids you're talking about. "that's my neighbourhood you're talking about." even if it's not directly your neighbourhood, you start knowing people who don't have healthcare as friends, knowing people who are undocumented and can't go to their parents�* funeral. and then it stops becoming interesting, perse, and becomes quite personal. you covered so many important stories while you were in america — the iraq war, the election of president obama, occupy wall street, the tea party. but i think reporting on hurricane katrina over the course of the years stands out, why is that? i felt that in that moment, the contradictions of america's kind of race and class were laid bare. that there were all sorts of ways in which they could be finessed — "anybody who tries hard enough can do this "or that" and, you know, the civil rights era was a long time ago, even though it wasn't, and we have equality now and so on. obama was known by this stage, but there was no sense that he would ever be president, it would be a really weird idea, then. and so to see who could escape and who couldn't escape and why they couldn't escape, it's a public disaster so you have a public response, but this was a private response — a privatised response. so if you didn't have a car, if you didn't have the money for a motel, and it came at the end of the month, if you hadn't been paid, you couldn't go. and so to see that all wash up and then to see the response... there's a moment where michael brown, the head of the federal emergency management says, "we're seeing people that we didn't know existed." and i thought never a truer word has been said. it was hard with the book, because it's an anthology, you have to kind of pick a piece and go with it. and i actually went to new orleans several times over a couple of years after katrina and it was very hard to pick one. it was such a devastating occurrence and it was one of those moments where you couldn'tjust gloss over it. and so, kind of, the american media in that moment kind of discovered race and class in a way that teenagers kind of discover sex, you know, it was kind of careless and urgent and just a little bit too eager. i wanted to speak specifically on race. in 2015, you wrote, in yourfarewell piece to america about a period of protracted racial conflict that you witnessed, including murder of unarmed black men, trayvon martin, eric garner, what was that experience like for you reporting on those stories? there's a really interesting thing that happened with black lives matter in particular, which was that it wasn't and it hasn't been that more black people were being killed by the police. it was that, for whatever reason, partly it's new technology and who can take pictures and distribute and amplify, people were paying attention in a way they hadn't before. and it problematised an adage that i learned atjournalism school, which was, "when a dog bites a man, that's not "a story, but when a man bites a dog that is a story." and i started to think, during that time, you know, sometimes, actually, news resides in asking, "who owns these dogs and why do the same people keep getting "bitten and what can we do to control these dogs?" but actually black people had been living with this for decades and it wasn't news, because the people who decide what's news decided that it wasn't newsworthy. that was a failure ofjournalism? absolutely a failure of journalism. and in a certain moment, for reasons, i'm not entirely sure why, it became news, and you wouldn't have to be black to get this, but if you are black, not typically, not to look at your son, who was big for his age... in terms of your fears of what might happen to your son? yeah, it was a good example of it is no longer anthropology. there was an incident in the park nearby where my son was having a water fight with other kids and he splashed this woman and she started screaming at him. i went up to her and asked, "why are you screaming "at my son?" and then she started screaming at me, and i asked her to stop screaming at me and she said, "who are you? "you are nobody! "that is who you are!" i stepped back thinking 0k, 0k, ok, this is where we are. i had literally flown up from ferguson that morning. you left america i think a year before trump was elected and we have seen more polarisation in the country since. do you think the media had a role to play in exacerbating those divisions in america? certainly, if we look at fox news or nbc or the way in which you have cable television, kind of amplifying division in a range of ways, to that extent, certainly, yes. beyond that, i think that the kind of divisions are, are true. i think the divisions would be there anywhere. i think there is a racial and economic fault line and the racial fault line is that white people will be a minority probably within the next decade or maybe more, and you can see they are really feeling that in places like arizona, new mexico, and struggling to, and some of them struggling to get their heads around that. and then an economic fallout because wages have been stagnant for kind of half a century. poverty was a really serious, serious problem for an awful lot of people. so you put those two things together and you have the ingredients for division, whether the media have been responsible or not. but the media was able to amplify, particularly tv media, amplify and exaggerate, to the point where people knew different facts about the world and, so, having a conversation with someone was difficult because you say it is tuesday and they say it is wednesday and, well, that is difficult to sort your calendars out if that is what you are dealing with. you talk about tv. i mean, you did continue to report from america in tv documentaries and in 2017, a clip of you interviewing the american white supremacist, richard spencer, for channel 4, went viral. you are really proud of your racism, aren't you? you're really proud to be a bigot? i'm proud to be a white man. that's different to being proud to be a bigot. if africans had never existed, world history would be almost exactly the same because we are the genius that drives it. crosstalk. how do you deny that? sorry? how can you really deny that? you are talking nonsense! how am i talking nonsense? you'll never be an englishman. you don't get to tell me what i will be. i do actually. my name is richard spencer. my name is richard spencer and i approve this message? did you agonise over whether interviewing spencer gave him a platform and how did you reach that decision? i did agonise about it and agonised after it because i think it's important not to give oxygen to, to people like that. my view was he already had oxygen and doing that documentary, there were several people who i refused to interview that they wanted me to interview, from the ku klux klan and random bigots, but he, because of his, because of being in the alt right and the connection to steve bannon, and steve bannon�*s connection to trump, i thought there was a legitimate reason. my aim in interviewing him, the first question i ask is, "you want a white ethno state. "what is that? " "why do you want it?" my aim was to be tough, but to allow him to speak, but he quickly descended into a range of insults, and this thing ofjust telling me i'm not english, which... ijust kept telling him, "that is not your call, actually." that decision making process, it feels like a part of an ongoing debate of what the role of a journalist is and it feels generational now that people, hate to say, our age, but olderjournalists tend to think along those lines and perhaps younger ones are saying you should not give these people a platform at all? there is a challenging balance, i think, because, and this was the very beginning of my media career, i was working for yorkshire television on a magazine programme called the world this week. i was asked, because i was employed because of my languages, to call front nationale to ask for an interview with jean—marie le pen and i refused, and i said, "they are 7% in the polls. "this is for titilation. "you can do it, but i will not do it." i was an intern and i said i understand you can fire me for insubordination. but i will not do it. did they fire you? no, they didn't because — the stakes were so low for everybody. i was an intern. i could get an internship somewhere else. they were barely paying me. you know. but my view was, my view would be now, it would be very difficult argument to say you should not interview marine le pen now, when she is second, quite often, in the polls, that the politics has broken down and you have to engage with it. you're not saying interviewing someone doesn't give them a platform. what you are saying is they already had a platform? when they have a platform... then it is justified. well, otherwise, what will you do? never speak to them? let's take donald trump. should journalists never interview him ? he's the president. should you never interview him or should you be trying to hold him to account, so in a moment where people have power, you have to hold them to account and myjudgement was that richard spencer, in this case, was moving into the realms of power. now, it is a judgement, so i think it is a very legitimate question of should you or should you not, but it was my call. in that case, it made sense. before we end, when you look back at your career, which story, are there stories you're most proud of? the story i am most proud of is claudette colvin, who was the woman who was kicked off the bus before rosa parks in montgomery, alabama, and they were going to go with her. she was going to be the one. the one they held up as the... she was going to be the standardbearer, she was very dark and on the wrong side of town and then she got pregnant when she was 15, 16 and so they decided not to. it took me a couple of years to find her. she was working as a nurse's aid in the bronx and as well as it being a fascinating story, i also felt that it made some kind of contribution to our understanding, to my understanding of how the world works. gary younge, thank you for coming on the media show. thank you for having me. hello. we'll need our raincoats and brollies this week. it really does look very unsettled indeed, and especially wet in western parts of the uk. monday is no different. i don't think it's going to be raining all the time, but certainly some rain on the way and just a few glimmers of brightness. a lot of cloud streaming in our direction but you can see it's coming in from the southwest, hence it stays mild. and multiple weather fronts crossing the country through the course of monday. more weather fronts out in the atlantic making a beeline for the uk. so the forecast then for monday shows mild conditions early in the morning. temperatures around five degrees in stornoway, nine in plymouth. and see where the heavier rain is in the morning across parts of northern england, southwestern scotland and northern ireland. that's one weather front, you can see it moves northwards. and then in the southwest later in the day, showers gather across cornwall, devon, parts of southern wales by around about 3pm. the best chance of any brightness would be across parts of the midlands, maybe east anglia, lincolnshire, perhaps yorkshire, and this is where will have the mildest weather up to about 16 celsius. elsewhere, the thicker cloud and the outbreaks of rain, it won't be quite as mild, closer to around 10—12 degrees. much fresher conditions in the north of scotland, with some sunshine in lerwick, about six or seven. through the course of monday evening, it does look as that rain would be more widespread and heavy as it spreads across the uk. here's tuesday's weather map, and a broad area of low pressure across the atlantic, sending weather fronts in our direction, quite a few isobars there, so that means the winds will be freshening as we go through tuesday and into wednesday. on tuesday, we are between weather systems, so one out in the north sea, another one here approaching ireland. we are in between with some sunny spells, but also some showers. you can see heavy showers in one or two areas. again, very mild, 13 or 1a, perhaps 15 degrees. through the course of the evening, the next weather front starts to sweep towards more eastern areas. through the course of wednesday, that big low pressure still dominating the weather across the atlantic. it's like a washing machine of clouds and showers circulating areas of low pressure. so, a very breezy day as well and gale force winds are possible around some western coast. so, here's an overview of the week ahead, you can see most days have rain icons but, at least, it is relatively on the mild side. bye— bye. welcome to bbc news. i'm vishala sri—pathma. our top stories — switzerland's biggest bank, ubs, takes over its rival, credit suisse to help restore global financial stability. environmental scientists prepare to unveil eight years of work — showing the scale of the climate crisis. the temperature up here in the alps is rising by about twice the global average, it's already increased by two celsius and is having a devastating impact on the snow and ice up here. ukraine condemns president putin's surprise visit to the russian—occupied city of mariupol — devastated in the early months of the war. translation: like all - ukrainians, like all mariupol residents, ifeel that today a war criminal, whose name is vladimir putin, visited the scene of a crime he committed several months.