Media Confidential

Justine Roberts is not happy. Earlier this year she discovered that tech giant OpenAI has been scraping Mumsnet—the successful website of which she is CEO—for content. AI machines, like ChatGPT, train their Large Language Models (LLMs) in this way. Justine and her team have recently launched the first British legal action against OpenAI.Meanwhile, Google is fighting to overhaul UK copyright law to...

In this episode of Media Confidential Q&A, Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber dig into the mailbox to tackle listeners' questions about the media industry. The topics on the table this week: what led to the downfall of the  London Evening Standard ? Will newspapers be able to afford their foreign correspondents in future? Are traditional journalistic skills still useful…and can you guess w...

Alan and Lionel are joined by Yale history professor and leading scholar of Soviet Russia, Tim Snyder. Snyder’s new book,  On Freedom , explores the risks to shared freedom in a ‘post-truth’ world. He argues that a rise of disinformation and fake news—coupled with the weakening of reliable media sources and local news—has undermined established truths, which creates a pathway towards fascism....

In this episode of Media Confidential Q&A, Alan and Lionel return with the answers to all your burning questions and shed some light on the inner workings of the media industry.   This week: why is the BBC is constantly chasing gen Z audiences, even though young people consume media in other ways? And when does the non-mainstream media become so big that it becomes the mainstream media—ev...

Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber talk to NYT tech journalists Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about their new book Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter . The editors also explore the tumult at the Jewish Chronicle , a newspaper now plagued with allegations of fake news and a decline in journalistic standards. With four of its top columnists resigning, they ask what the future is for the olde...

Alan and Lionel return with their weekly Media Confidential: Questions and Answers show to tackle your burning questions and shed some light on the inner workings of the media industry. This week the two former newspaper editors discuss why Prince Harry continues to be targeted by the print media in the UK, what the return on inverstment is for a deep investigation carried out by journalists for a...

According to the writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, US media are failing to cover Donald Trump properly. “His incapacity to be coherent is pretty much hidden from the public, unless they’re listening directly or reading alternative media,” she says. Solnit, whose essay Men Explain Things To Me  inspired the word “mansplaining”, says she’s convinced that the US mainstream press—inc...

Alan and Lionel introduce a brand new, weekly bonus episode of Media Confidential. Every Sunday they answer listeners’ questions about how the media really works. In the first show they contemplate the rise of the Mail Online, assess the role played by the right-wing media in this summer’s riots, and much, much more. Plus, the big question: who was harder to deal with in government—Tony Blair...

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has become the champion of free speech—but at what cost? During a summer of unrest in the UK, a hornet’s nest of hatred was stirred up on X. Elon Musk himself gave the nest a good kicking when he provocatively claimed that the UK was heading to civil war. And when Alan responded with a column about the post, he was met by a barrage of abuse f...

Following the shocking attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, social media platforms were flooded not only with truthful accounts of what happened at the rally, but also with lies, conspiracies and “fake news” concerning the shooting.   Alan and Lionel are joined by Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University, to explore how to cover a presidential c...

Can Biden stay in presidential race or will concern about the state of his health force him out of the running?   There are plenty of reporters who say his time is up, but how did the president get to this stage in the campaign without anyone running a health-check on him? Jill Abramson, the first female executive editor of the New York Times , joins Alan and Lionel on this episode. She expla...

As Britain goes to the polls, what role has the media played in shaping the way that nation votes? Traditionally, the tabloid media, mainly Murdoch’s  Sun , had a significant role in influencing the public, simlpy due to the huge swathes of the population that read the paper. But what about this year? Where have the tabloids and the broadsheets put their faith?   Alan and Lionel are join...

After 12 years without freedom—first after seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and then as a prisoner in high-security Belmarsh—Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is free and is back on home soil in Australia.   Assange’s crime was to publish classified information leaked from the US Army. He was working alongside Chelsea Manning, who had hacked the material. Assange cla...

Is the UK general election all over even before the first vote is cast? Polls suggest that Labour has an unassailable lead, and so with two weeks of campaigning to go, is there any chance that media coverage could still influence the electorate? Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger are joined by two experienced political commentators to discuss how the parties have performed so far, and if any surpri...

This week Alan and Lionel follow the latest twists and turns at the Washington Post . The noisy departure of Sally Buzbee, the paper’s former executive editor, continues to reverberate around the media world, following Buzbee’s bust-up with Will Lewis, the Post ’s publisher and chief executive, over an article that she approved about a phone hacking lawsuit connected to Lewis.   Lewis was men...

Media circles across the pond are abuzz with the news that Robert Winnett is heading to the USA to take up the job as editor at The Washington Post , but not until after the US election. He’s the latest appointment by publisher Will Lewis following the sudden departure of Sally Buzbee. Winnett joins a handful of British journalists who have moved to America, including Emma Tucker, the editor-in-ch...

Kara Swisher—maverick, rock star and tech guru—has interviewed some of the highest profile and biggest personalities on the planet, from Mark Zuckerberg to Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch and Kim Kardashian. Joining Alan and Lionel on the podcast this week, Kara unpicks the relationship between big tech and the media. Big tech, she says, have no interest in the “greater good”. They wanted to make mon...

GB News has repeatedly breached broadcasting regulations, been accused of political bias and featured anti-vax stories—but it got away with such misdemeanors until Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared on a show called “The People’s Forum”, in which he was able to outline key Conservative messages, largely unchallenged.   Ahead of the general election on 4th July, this finally grabbed the atten...

No foreign journalists are allowed into Gaza, so the rest of the world relies on those living in area to relay what is happening on the ground—dedicated and determined reporters who have made sure that no-one can look away. For months, photojournalist Motaz Azaiza and Al Jazeera reporter Youmna El Sayed were among those reporting from Gaza. Motaz has captured some of the most brutal, hon...

Investigative journalist Nick Davies returns with yet more remarkable insights and analysis about the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed Murdoch’s papers. Having trawled through documents disclosed through a host of court cases, Davies has pieced together information that suggests figures at the top of the Murdoch news empire—including potentially the man himself—knew more than we previously thou...

Back in 2009, journalist Nick Davies uncovered a scandal: newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch had been hacking the phones of celebrities, public figures and even victims of crimes—notably the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler—in search of stories. The Leveson inquiry was established to investigate, and the world moved on.   For this month’s Prospect magazine, Nick Davies has trawled through docu...

Lionel Barber and Alan Rusbridger are joined by Maurizio Molinari, editor of Italian daily newspaper  La Repubblica  to explore exactly what Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is doing with Italian state media.   Renowned historian Antonio Scurati was booked to deliver a monologue on a talk show on Italian broadcaster RAI 3 on 25th April, Italy’s Liberation Day, when it commemorates vict...

Tensions in the Middle East ramped up at the weekend with the massive drone and missile attack launched by Iran on Israel. The eyes of the world refocused on the region, particularly Gaza—but what about the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank?   Gideon Levy is an award-winning journalist who has been writing a column in Haaretz called “The Twilight Zone” for many years. On the...

The war in Ukraine has been grinding on for over two years now, and the media spotlight on the region has dimmed over the last few months. But Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and writer for the Atlantic, has been following the conflict closely.   Because much of the world’s media has turned attention away from Ukraine, with editors focusing time and money instead on the war...

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has passed a law that will ban foreign media from operating within the country. Al Jazeera is one of the main outlets on the ground providing reportage, and the most watched network in the region—so what impact will the closure of their operations in Israel have on the ability to get news out of the war zone? Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber are joined by journal...