News Watch: Luigi Mangione mania, Dunkirk shooting, Trump and trans healthcare
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Hi MediaStormers, it's Helena and Matilda. The news is chaotic as hell. It's terrifying. It's confusing. It's conflicting. Basically, it's a dumpster fire on Trash Island. So how are we meant to make sense of it all? How about we do it together? Every Thursday, we're bringing you a news roundup.

The main stories dissected, finding the facts behind the fear-mongering, calling out the most unhinged headlines and helping you read the news critically. It's your essential guide to the mainstream media. This is MediaStorm's Newswatch.

You look at some of the fake news on these platforms, there's just so much out there right now. Some breaking news to bring you now. People want to be able to express opinions. I understand that. I have only one objective, which is to make sure the BBC is truly impartial. Well, I don't think that the mainstream media was lying. I think we missed the overarching story.

Welcome to Media Storms Newswatch, helping you make sense of the mainstream media. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's Media Storms. Dunkirk shooting, Luigi Mangione mania, Trump and trans healthcare. Are we on? We're on. Hello, this is the last Newswatch before Christmas. Ding, ding, ding. What's that, a Christmas bell? No, can we replace that with actual Christmas bells, please? Sure. Christmas bells. Ding, ding, ding.

Yeah, happy Christmas. Happy Christmas to you. You were at a wintry wedding, weren't you? I was. My first winter wedding, and it was really magical, was actually my brother's winter wedding. Very nice. I did a reading, and then afterwards, this is how brilliant my brother's wife is, during her wedding speech, she goes, thank you, Matilda, for doing a reading. Everyone, if you'd like to hear more of her voice, listen to Media Stonewalkers.

Oh my god, we're getting shouted out at every wedding. I was like, can I marry you? Yeah, it was so sweet. It was sweet. How was your week? My week was great. I did send you a message this week about a BBC News alert that made me crack up.

Like, it was... Okay, I'm just going to read it out. The news alert that I got and I sent literally straight to Tilda within 30 seconds of receiving it was...

BBC's Jeremy Bowen finds that after 50 years of Assad cruelty, Syrians desperately want answers about their missing and closure. No shit. Yeah, okay. And that's the reason why it really made me laugh because I was like, wow, has he found this out? Like, has he done such deep investigation that he found out that Syrians want to know where their missing family members are? Like, obviously they, like, what investigation did that take? I saw it and I was just like,

thank God we have British correspondents on the ground to tell us how Syrians are feeling. Right. And look, obviously this alert is promoting an article. It was a long read that Jeremy Bowen, who is the BBC's international editor, did. And like, I read it and it ended like a

was pretty good it was just the phrasing that made me laugh yeah actually this is this we're being so cynical because I am really grateful that we have Jeremy Byrne on the ground doing the reporting he's doing he's done some really really brilliant reporting from Syria but the wording does also point to this culture within journalism where we we definitely like center the foreign correspondent our man in Syria and not always the people who can actually just speak for themselves

Another News Watch, another week of unhinged writing about transgender people. You're speaking like a comedian because that's how we deal with this. Yeah, that's literally how we deal with this. And also, like, it says a lot that this week that I had to pick between which article was most awful that I needed to talk about. And the winner is... The winner is an article by Suzanne Moore in The Telegraph in which the headline reads...

Time wasted on trans ideology has meant more pregnant women dying under the NHS. Oh. Okay, here's the quote. One of the most galling effects of a preoccupation with inclusion or the gender wars or trans ideology over the last few years has been the actual neglect of women's lives and women's deaths.

I don't say this lightly. Time spent on changing NHS language from mothers to birthing people, to arguments over whether men can get pregnant and chest feed, means that provision for those of us with female bodies has been set back. This is all thanks to the Grow Your Own Cervix Brigade.

I have so much to say. I mean, the first thing is that headline, like that very, very direct jump between like diverting what money this way means this. If you were implicating an individual or an organisation specifically with that conceptual leap, no editor would run it because they could get sued for libel because it's just like obviously disputable and been presented as indisputable.

However, our media regulation does not allow for minority groups to sue libel, like for defamation. There is no way that they can challenge a newspaper for making defamatory, libelous and untrue claims about them as an identity. And so that as a headline would not be allowed in so many contexts, like just editorially breaks the rules. If it was an individual. Yeah. Right, right, yeah. So like what even is her factual basis for this? How does she justify it? Right, so this is what I find just,

so interesting and frustrating. Suzanne Moore quotes a study. She says, "...an analysis by the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London has revealed alarming declines in NHS patient safety. It shows that the number of women dying during or shortly after pregnancy and babies dying within 28 days of being born has increased for the first time in a decade."

And this is just what is so awful because...

Quoting this study, which is a real study, which is presenting real results that women are dying during or shortly after pregnancy, which is an extremely important topic. That study has nothing to do with trans people. Nothing to do with trans people. That is obscene. That is...

a rallying cry for what we know will be absurd hate. It's tagging trans people again as the perpetrators of violence against women, which diverts away from the real perpetration of violence against women, which is like systemic social neglect. And I think it's so interesting that...

that the references that she makes to birthing people and chest feeding, these were stories about NHS language that blew up as culture wars. And accusing trans people of trying to draw attention away from maternity services

is so ironic when it is literally the people who are so obsessed with being anti-trans who created the huge fuss and the culture war about chest feeding and birthing people in the first place. It's the Telegraph. Like, no single outlet, more than the Telegraph, has stirred up this drama around that language that the NHS is using. No one has published more content on that. No one has sucked more resources. Maybe the Times. LAUGHTER

Yeah, well, okay. But you know, it is these outlets that have sucked resources into stupid, time-wasting culture wars that trans people, so many trans people, at least that I've spoken to, are like, please just like, can people shut up about it? We were happily getting on with our lives and doing these things and no one cared. Right, like chest feeding or breastfeeding or...

or whatever you call it, is the least of trans people's worries. Let's put it that way. Also in this article, Suzanne Moore gives examples about how hard it was for her during COVID when one of her daughters had to give birth and she couldn't visit her. Women giving birth alone during COVID was real and horrible. What has that got to do with trans people? You're blaming that on trans people as well? And also, why is that not enough of a story on its own?

Why couldn't you report these women's stories as stories in themselves? Instead, you have appropriated them for your anti-trans clickbait commercial agenda that is so disrespectful to the women in these stories. And also like,

Is this an opinion piece or is this a factual piece? That is, I actually, because I googled it when you said it and it's in news. It is tagged in news, not an opinion. Right. That's outrageous. That is, editorially, that is... Editorially, that is outrageous. Worth mentioning, I think, that Suzanne Moore left The Guardian in 2020 because she claimed she was being effectively censored by editors. It came off the back of staff at The Guardian criticising the paper's pattern of publishing transphobic content.

Since then, she joined the Telegraph and it's fair to say the majority of her articles focus on trans people and sex-based rights. And also, to publish this in the week where the government have put a blanket ban on puberty blockers is just the only word I can say for it is cruel. It's cruel. And so for reference, Labour have said that the ban on giving puberty blockers to under 18s, which was first introduced as a temporary ban in May, is now to be made permanent.

The government argued in their statements that the puberty blocker ban is justified by two recent reports, both of which have faced significant public criticism, such as the Cass Review. The Cass Review, released in April, concluded that the evidence for the efficacy of puberty blockers and hormone therapy was shaky and urged extreme caution when treating trans youth. However, health experts and trans advocates heavily criticised the Cass Review for anti-trans bias

and inaccuracies in its terminology. But, you know, West Streeting Health Secretary has insisted it raised safety concerns around the lack of evidence for these medical treatments. Now, for reference, puberty blockers are drugs used to delay or prevent puberty happening. What we have heard recently

from trans people is that they give them space and time to understand their identity and to understand if they wish to transition further. They are also used for cis people, i.e. people who go through puberty very young. This is sometimes called precocious puberty and they're also used in some cancer treatments. They have been used since the 1990s. This ban feels especially targeted

because the ban extends to treating gender dysphoria in transgender youth. However, the ban will still allow blockers to be prescribed for precocious puberty, which I really believe tells us everything. So basically, these drugs are safe for cis people, but dangerous for trans people? Right. You cannot stop...

trans young people being trans stopping giving them puberty blockers will not make them not trans and actually that's what it comes down to like behind that's not what they're saying but but really what that says is we just want trans kids to not be trans yeah and that's why this article by suzanne moore is so damaging

But you know what? I think that the Telegraph is misjudging public appetite, actually, for much more of their trans bullying. And the evidence for that is coming from a huge media piece this week, which is Donald Trump's interview in Time magazine. Did you see this? I did see that he was made Time Person of the Year. I mean, I kind of stopped with thinking about it after that. Yeah. So then Time magazine, they do an in-depth interview with their Person of the Year.

And in it, they asked Trump about his views on certain trans debates unfolding in American politics. And his answer was truly shocking. So a big debate in Congress right now has been about the incoming representative, Sarah McBride, the first transgender representative in the States, and whether or not she can use the female bathroom. So Trump was asked about this. And actually, he agreed with what

Republican Sarah McBride had said herself when asked, which is that lawmakers should focus on more important issues than which bathrooms transgender people should be allowed to use. Wait, Trump said that? Yeah, no, I'm going to read you his quote because it could have been off media storm. He said, I don't want to get into the bathroom issue because it's a very small number of people we're talking about and it's ripped apart our country. So they'll have to settle whatever the law finally agrees.

He then went on to sort of say he's a big believer in the Supreme Court and like let their rulings be their rulings. And then added, but we're talking about a very small number of people and we're talking about it and it gets massive coverage and it's not a lot of people. God, this is so weird because I get what he's saying by referencing the Supreme Court is still an anti-trans narrative. However...

That is so interesting. He's talking about such a small amount of people. It's like, yeah, thank you. We've been trying to say this. Right. I mean, like, let's not ignore the blinding hypocrisy. Trump came in. One of his most successful ad campaigns was this campaign about Kamala Harris at one point in her career supporting access to transgender health care. And this campaign had the slogan, the very, very successful slogan, Trump is for us,

Harris is for they, them. So it was a massive part of his campaign, but nevertheless, he appears to be rowing back on that culture war rhetoric. And if there's one thing we know about Trump, well, if there's two things we know about Trump, one is that he just wants to be liked. Like he just wants to be popular.

And the other thing is he does have his finger on the pulse of American culture, American sentiment. He is very good at reading that and at riding that wave. And so if he is scaling back on this bullying, which is what the story about, you know, Sarah McBride in particular, a lot of people have seen it as this bullying of, you know, a lone transgender woman in Congress.

If he's rowing back on that, that is a sign that he is reading the people don't want it anymore, they think it's gone too far. Or actually, you know, maybe they got upset about Harris supporting access to transgender healthcare because they don't have access to healthcare. There are bigger issues underpinning why they voted for him. Many of them voted for him in spite of what they see as his hateful rhetoric.

So the lesson for us all is that we've got to push that wave, like signal that we don't want that bullying out there. And if Trump is a measure to go by, then we should hopefully start to see it die down.

And, you know, in a week where the British press has been really just so awful on this topic, just a little praise actually for an American outlet, a CNN clip that I saw. CNN presenter Lucy Kafanov sat down with three transgender children and their families,

from Arizona. This was ahead of the Supreme Court beginning hearings on trans issues such as gender affirming care. And I just thought this piece of reporting was so unusual and so important. The presenter asked the children and their parents on video,

what they feel facing an administration that used anti-trans adverts to fuel their campaign. And it was amazing. She was asking these kids like, "How do you feel that you have been used?" And that lived experience, I mean, it's everything. And those children and their parents are so brave to be on camera in a time like this where trans people are so marginalized. And I mean, it was shocking. Like one of the young kids said,

I'm scared I'm going to get shot in the street. I'm scared I'm going to be murdered. And I mean, speaking to transgender youth shouldn't be radical, but this CNN piece felt quite radical. And Media Stormers, if you want to watch it, we'll repost it on our Instagram stories.

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Did you know that this weekend at least five people were killed in a shooting spree in Dunkirk, just across the English Channel, where there are many refugee camps filled with asylum seekers hoping to reach the UK? No, I didn't know. I'm not surprised. So this story came to me through sources on the ground because I used to work in these camps in Dunkirk.

It has been reported a little bit here and there, but it has had nothing of the prominence it should have. I'm going to just tell you the details now. So a 22-year-old shooter went on a rampage around Dunkirk, making three stops. The first victim has been identified as a 29-year-old businessman and since reported to have been the shooter's boss. The shooter then drove to his second destination where he shot two former colleagues who were security guards.

And he then drove to Loonplage train station, which is one of the sort of unofficial sites where many homeless displaced people are camping, and he shot and killed two of them. Two Iranian Kurdish men, one barely a man at the age of 19. These men he appears to have had no connection to, as far as anyone has gauged. This should have been front page news, and I think if the shooter had been from a migrant background...

It would have been, undoubtedly. I imagine if the shooter had been from a migrant background, there would have been a lot of speculation about who he is and where he comes from. And actually, people on the ground have told me that immediately after the shootings, they had journalists calling them with this sort of speculative excitement that maybe it was someone from a migrant background. To be clear, it wasn't. The shooter is a 22-year-old French national. And the absolute lack of coverage mentioning his heritage or ethnicity means nothing.

I think it's probably safe to assume that he's of European descent, i.e. white, although I cannot find that reported anywhere, but that's sort of how these things work. With this shooting, the first three victims appear to have been personal vendettas,

He then, according to refugee witnesses, his car arrived by the campsite. He got out. He shot these two men, unprovoked, got back in his car, drove off. He then proceeded to turn himself in. Police found multiple weapons in his car. This has had some coverage. I've seen it in The Guardian, in Sky. The Sun has possibly done the most here in the UK and French media.

has picked up on it. However, it's not only not nearly been as prominent as it should have been, there's also not been enough follow-up and there's been very little verified information coming out. Maybe that's how it should be. Maybe they should always only publish what's been verified, but we know that that does not happen when the shooter fits a different profile and when the story coming out of it is different because the story coming out of this or the story that should be coming out of this

is the tale of targeted violence around refugee camps, migrant camps, right on our border. Honestly, it is like a war zone out there, both because of the lawlessness in which the police, I can testify and I will testify over and over again, fully participate, and also with the war-like conditions in which people are living. I mean, children picking through rubbish for basic essentials.

And now the fear is being felt on the ground, not just among the refugee community, but also by aid workers. I've spoken to workers from Mobile Refugee Support who tell me that since the shooting, groups have been withdrawing and frequently evacuating from camp. Aid is massively under pressure. This has put so much pressure on the smallest providers. At the worst time of year, winter, when without blankets, people will freeze, people

I would take this moment to say to anyone listening, if you want to support small organisations like Mobile Refugee Support, I will put a link in the show notes. And I have a first-hand story of being targeted by violence as an aid worker, which I'm going to share, not because it's anything like what refugees and migrants experience, but because as a first-hand testimony, I hope it resonates. When I was working there as a 22-year-old refugee,

aid worker. My tyres were slashed in a camp right off the motorway. So as soon as I drove out, they flew off. And they had written on my car horrible statements that I don't want to repeat, but which were essentially calls for racialised violence. And the same groups were saying fire to warehouses. This is not a new problem. This is a chronic problem. And it's chronically underreported. And that's what's happening. And the final picture I want to leave people with is a story of what happened from

people living it from people in the camp who found the victims when they had been shot the two Kurdish victims they say that they heard the shots they ran over found the two men one of them had instantly died having been shot in the head but the second was dying and drawing his final breaths and so the refugees stood around him and they all said prayers together so that yeah that would have been a

picture that we could have been given of life in Dunkirk as well. Okay, so finally on Newswatch today, there's a big story that's been going on for quite a while that we haven't spoken about yet. You must be talking about Luigi Mangione. I am. And the mania around it. Okay, now I'm glad you brought it up. I wanted to talk about it as well. Okay, tell us what happened.

If anyone has been living under a rock for two weeks and really doesn't know this, the background info is that Luigi Mangione is a 26-year-old from Maryland in the States, and he has been charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, which is one of the biggest health insurers in the States. This occurred on the 4th of December, and it's

become a huge story and remained a huge story since for various reasons. One is the six-day manhunt that unfolded and then the fact that when Mangione was found, the drama sort of had only just begun. He was found with a handwritten manifesto, which was eventually published by an investigative reporter after mainstream news outlets sat on it for a long time and sort of passed it between themselves.

And this manifesto showed he may have been heavily motivated by various ideological concerns, which seem to have struck a chord with huge numbers among the population. And then to many people among the wider population supporting Mangione or heroizing Mangione.

So what this manifesto said was that Mangione had huge amounts of anger towards the US healthcare system, the high costs of the US healthcare system, the fact that profits have continued to rise while American life expectancy has not. He himself has been affected by chronic pain since a back injury. He calls healthcare executives parasites. He apologizes for the trauma that his actions would

would cause, but said, quote, it had to be done. Since then, he's been painted as a vigilante by many. Supporters have donated thousands to his defence. A poll by Emerson College found 41% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 believe the killing was acceptable.

And in response now, just as we were recording, he has been charged with an act of terrorism in what we can probably understand to be the state's attempt to deglamorize his actions in the public eye. So yeah, for all of these reasons, this is one hell of a media storm. Yeah. Also because he's hot.

Right? I mean, like, come on. This story has really got into, like, meme culture. Yeah. The amount of posts and memes I saw about how fit the alleged shooter is. On Spotify, like, playlists were dedicated to him. Sellers on Etsy started making, like, pro-Luigi merch and apparel. People move fast. Yeah, I mean, the internet dubbed him the hot assassin. Posts were saying, oh, he's too hot to convict.

And it's not just his looks and that topless photo we all saw. The internet has kind of long been captivated by those who sort of seem to be taking on the system. But, you know, the fact that it has become a meme culture story does also say so much about our media because they have made that almost the central narrative. And there are so many more important narratives that we should be focusing on as a public medium.

service media, it is a bit distracting. Yeah, and I actually have an example of that. Oh, good. And that's what happened to Jamila Jamil this week. So there were over 10 headlines and articles about Jamila Jamil, the actress and presenter.

and a, in quotes, shameful comment she made about Luigi Mangione. Here's some. The Independent. Jamila Jamil criticised for shameful comment about United Healthcare CEO shooting suspect. Jamila Jamil faces backlash after comments on United Healthcare CEO murder case.

The Mirror, Jamila Jamil slammed over shameful Luigi Mangione remark as he's charged with murder. Breitbart, actress Jamila Jamil glorifies alleged assassin. Daily Mail,

Daily Mail, Telegraph, Daily Express and more also ran headlines. Now, if you read those headlines and indeed those articles, you would think she went out of her way to say something pretty awful, right? What did she say? Okay, well, here's what she said. There's a popular Instagram account called Saint Hoax, which is an account with many, many followers known for using pop culture to explain politics. It's like my only pop culture feed. Right, right. It's good, it's good. So that account posted...

a series of photos, including the topless one, and a series of explanations about what had happened when Luigi was identified. And a lot of people at this point were talking about how hot he was, you know? Jamila Jamil commented underneath that series of photos and explanations, a star is born. At the time that all these articles and headlines about Jamila Jamil came out, 4,500 people had liked her comment.

And only 25 people had replied to it. And of those 25 people that had replied, one called it shameful. Wait, and the headline was Jamila Jamil slammed. Public backlash against Jamila Jamil for outrageous comments. Shameful comment.

And not only that, that one person that wrote shameful may not have been a person. And I say that because their account had one follower, no posts. And that's typically the sign of a bot.

Yeah. And yeah, to quote Jamila Jamil, she said, I've been accused of dividing the internet over one bot disagreeing with me. Oh, wow. And this is an example of what we're talking about. Like the media relies on people's lack of media literacy and they know that people won't interrogate who is calling her comments shameful or why. This just shows how desperate the media is to

tell a story in its most polarizing way we are telling a cultural story when there are plenty of really important social justice and policy making issues that we could be telling when it comes to this story yeah so should we talk about that now yeah good idea and i think that this is a criticism for me this is a criticism that plays out across the left and the right coverage of this story

Jameela Jamil's comment, while it's not the main story, it is in line with a lot of commentary on the left that has, you know, turned Manjone into a bit of a hero. And I think that many on the left have painted Manjone as a resistance fighter taking down the system, you know, and that's how he has actually also depicted himself.

And I understand why people do that and it's coming from massive amount of anger at corporate America, at corruption and capitalism. However, at MediaStorm, we have done investigations with people who see themselves as revolutionaries and who have resorted to violence after peaceful measures have failed. Their stories definitely tell us, yes, not all violence is random or terroristic.

Sometimes it's resistance. But we cannot just dish out that title willy-nilly. Mangione had a lot of issues, and by making him the face of violent resistance, we do a disservice to the real movements of last resort violent resistance that are so important in the news right now. And by the same token that we shouldn't be rushing to paint Mangione as a hero, we shouldn't be rushing to paint Brian Thompson as a villain, and I've seen that among some left commentary as well.

And look, he was the CEO of one of America's biggest insurers, which has so many dark marks to its name. However, there is a hypocrisy here that we cannot let slide. I don't want the left to do a Chris Carver in reverse.

Okay, so before you tell us why that's potentially hypocritical, just to remind listeners, Chris Carver was a unarmed black man that was fatally shot by a police officer in South London in September 2022. But it was back in the news a couple of months ago because the police officer who shot Carver was found not guilty of his murder. And we wrote an article in the Byline Times about this.

And in that article, we were angry about the media's capitalization on this trial to flood the public with headlines about Chris Carver's alleged criminal background gang involvement. Yes. Right? Carver, who was a victim of violence...

then became villainized by a media who took the opportunity of his death to trial him in the press instead of going through the proper legal course of justice. And I think that the same could be and has been partly true for what's happening with Brian Thompson in the press. The point is, if you disagree with...

The killing of someone without trial, right? Because of someone else's perception of their criminality. If you disagree with that, then this is a problem for you. And you do not just go ahead and trial the dead person by media, especially while their family is still grieving. Yeah, those are all very valid and important criticisms for the coverage and the reaction on the left. You know, but I've got a little bit of criticism about the right as well. Oh, don't worry. So do I.

The main thing for me is how the right has dismissed

the systemic issues that this story points to, to do with the healthcare system and the corruption of America's and profiteering of America's healthcare system. Like how many people in America have had claims unfairly denied? How many have died from preventable illnesses? Had the insurance paid up as they should have? This is a massive issue. And it's not a left-wing, right-wing issue. This is an issue that unifies voters, be they Republican or Democrat. And the right-wing's media attempt to

skirt around that is not just a betrayal of many of their viewers but also such a representation of how desperately partisan our media is at the moment that they just have to disagree with the left for going into these healthcare issues and I understand some have said we shouldn't be rewarding violence by talking about exactly the issues the shooter wants us to talk about but the point is people have been begging you to talk about these issues and they haven't been listened to so just to show that

How lenient the right has been on the healthcare sector and on policymakers about healthcare. Here's Piers Morgan interviewing Peter Thiel, an American tech billionaire, Republican member and conservative commentator, about the public reaction to this shooting and the public's desperation in response for answers from the healthcare sector.

"Oh, I saw this and guys, like, this is painful, but stick with it and pay attention to what Piers Morgan says at the end." And to those who think this shooter is a hero because he did it because he said this healthcare executive was presiding over a healthcare system which kills thousands of Americans by denying them cover, what would you say to them? Um, it's... I don't know what to say. I think...

I still think you should try to make an argument. And I think there may be things wrong with our health care system, but you have to make an argument and you have to try to find a way to convince people and change it by that. And this is not going to work.

I don't know. It's, yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of things one could say about it, but I don't think, and again, I think the motives feel, I don't want to go into all the particulars here, but I don't think there's anything heroic about them.

I completely agree. I completely agree. You agree with what? What did he say? Piers Morgan, the man who cannot let anyone finish even the most coherent sentence. Literally. Sits through that and has little to respond other than, I completely agree. With what? I know, with what? With who he is, with what he represents. And definitely not with what he said.

And that's just the right-wing media. When you go into the sort of ultra-conservative far-right commentary, there's such a desperation to divert focus away from his anti-corporate, anti-capitalist ideology. They are just focusing on, like, the fact that Mangione was Ivy League and maybe part of the deep state. Some vague cultural elite and conspiracy theories thrown in. The template for the far-right. MUSIC

Just before we go and bid you a happy Christmas and New Year, we will give you a little update about our future plans. This is the last Newswatch before the New Year, but we will be back in February. And it'll be worth the wait because we won't just be back with our weekly news roundups. We'll also be back with our lived experience discussions. So tune in in February. Happy New Year.

Thank you for listening. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed the episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast. So please do tell your friends and leave us a five star rating and a review.

You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia and follow the show via at MediaStormPod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Sam Fire.

Hello, I'm Mark Steel and each week I look at the world and ask the question, what the fuck is going on? To help me answer my question, each week I'm joined by guests like Caroline Lucas, Jason Manford and James O'Brien. Plus there are contributors such as our very own George Galloway. Let me put it to you, Justin Bieber, Nadine Boris. You're shithousey little shithouse. And broadcasting legend...

Mike Concrete. Yes, he is. So to find out what the fuck is going on, search What The F Is Going On wherever you get your podcasts. What the fuck is going on?