All Episodes
Media Confidential — 213 episodes
Liam Byrne: What happens when populists win?
Slapped: Why can’t we talk about Nigel Farage’s crypto donations?
Killing with impunity: the death of Amal Khalil in Lebanon
Trump: AI accusations and assassination attempts
Press Gazette and the end of ‘Barbara Santini’
Mandygate: The megaton bomb that shook Westminster
Sidney Blumenthal: ‘There’s about to be a real, severe change in American politics’
How the media brought down Viktor Orbán
Democracy at risk: The big banks censoring free speech
The madness of King Trump (continued)
Susan Glasser on Trump: ‘The big, fat, naked emperor in the room’
Why the US treasury secretary thinks the FT has become ‘tabloid trash’
Does the Washington Post have a future?
Breaking news: the BBC’s new director-general
Why isn’t Ofcom investigating GB News?
Pete Hegseth and the future of American press
What gets lost when war hits the headlines
The Telegraph: The deal is done
The Murdochs: Autopsy of a family’s slow death
Reporting on Iran: How to cover total warfare
Is the Westminster lobby a victim of groupthink?
Arresting images: How to snap an (ex) prince
‘It’s dangerous work’: The battle against digital disinformation
Labour Together’s snooping operation on journalists
Marty Baron on the Washington Post’s ‘death spiral’
‘Jeff Bezos could have saved the Washington Post. Instead he’s trashed it’
Bellingcat founder: ‘Playing whack-a-mole with disinformation is always going to fail’
Bezos, the BBC and reporting the Epstein files
When did climate coverage become part of the culture wars?
Alex Pretti, ICE and the New York Times
How to protect the BBC from its enemies
Prince Harry v the tabloids
Elon Musk vs Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales on why democracy won’t survive without facts
Liz Truss and the rise of YouTube politics
How CBS lost its way
Trump, Maduro and the Washington Post
Are we losing our civil liberties?
‘Despair is a luxury’: A year of hope with Zizek, Mehdi Hasan, Robert Macfarlane and others
Cory Doctorow: How the internet went to sh*t
Only in Denmark? The ‘existential editor’ covering life, death, love and everything in between
Zanny Minton Beddoes on Steve Bannon: ‘Comparing Trump to Moses was quite something’
What’s next for Alan Rusbridger?
The investigative journalists resisting legal threats
‘I’m with you on the free press, it’s the newspapers I can’t stand’: What Tom Stoppard got right about journalism
Ben Zand: How to make money in journalism (without selling your soul)
The OBR springs a leak! Reporting on a budget shambles story
The BBC crisis: The next test
‘The New York Times won’t settle’: Why reporters will not be intimidated by Donald Trump
What’s next for the BBC? A new director-general
‘Trump is a grifter. The BBC must not pay him a dime’
The Nerve: ‘We want to shine a light on culture… with a bit of “F— you” energy on the side’
The BBC is in a mess—but it’s not what you think
Goalhanger co-founder: ‘I’ve stepped in to stop Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart arguing’
Has Ofcom opened the door to a British Fox News?
Peter Oborne: Is the British media complicit in genocide?
How would you prepare to interview Putin?
‘We asked Israel to investigate the deaths of our journalists. We’re still waiting’
‘Rupert Murdoch follows me on Substack’
‘Lord Lebedev called me a prick…which sold extra subscriptions’
The Hack: What happens now?
The Successor: Who is Lachlan Murdoch?
Who gets right of reply?
The Hack: What’s the real story?
Lisa Nandy: We’re not afraid to regulate US big tech, no matter what Donald Trump says
America’s assault on free speech
What would you ask Donald Trump?
Does the news need gatekeeping?
The Murdoch succession: Lachlan gets the power; his siblings get rich(er)
Greg Lukianoff: ‘Bring back freedom of speech’
Why is the media dancing to Farage’s tune?
Trump’s 100 days, with Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Ethan Zuckerman: How to escape the internet hellscape
Mehdi Hasan: ‘The media doesn’t want to hear certain people’
Slavoj Žižek: ‘Elon Musk lives like a communist’
Q&A: Has the media contributed to ‘tinderbox Britain’?
Tesla exposed: how a whistleblower lifted the lid on Elon Musk
Q&A: Can you express your own views as an editor?
How long can Ofcom allow Nigel Farage to keep his own show?
Q&A: Mamdani vs the media
Tom McTague: ‘This country’s problems run deeper than Starmer thinks’
Q&A: Would you ever break an NDA?
Sophia Smith Galer: How to make the truth go viral
Q&A: Should the BBC have a paywall in the USA?
Only in Denmark? Meet the ‘existential editor’ covering life, death, love and everything in between
Q&A: What makes a good reporter?
Scaramucci on Trump: ‘He’s going to tell 10,000 lies this year as president’
Q&A: Where do you get your information about the Middle East?
Substack’s co-founder: Elon Musk ‘saw it as a declaration of war’
Q&A: How do you help the BBC?
Why AI companies don’t want journalism to exist
Q&A: What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
The new wave of approachable journalism
Q&A: Would you have interviewed Hitler?
Does ‘free speech’ even exist?
Q&A: What’s happening to the Telegraph?
Trump v the New York Times
Q&A: Who is the rudest person you've ever interviewed?
CNN's CEO: ‘If we didn't have politicians on air who might lie, we'd struggle to fill the airwaves’
Q&A: How to make the Evening Standard great again
Harry Shukman: Undercover in the Far Right
Q&A: It’s ‘Da Business’— The launch of Alan and Lionel's (imaginary) new newspaper
New hope for the newsroom?
Q&A: How do you prepare for the death of a Pope?
Are cartoonists about to be cancelled?
Q&A: Bezos or Musk–who would you rather be in a rocket with?
Who owns the media?
Q&A: How do you spot a story?
Trump’s tariff-mania: What are journalists missing?
Q&A: Have you ever felt your life was under threat?
Is this the most dangerous time to be a journalist?
Q&A: Signal and the Atlantic defence leak
Michael Wolff: Cancelled by Trump attacks
Q&A: How to deal with a conspiracy theory
John Sawers: ‘The deep state is what keeps us stable’
Q&A: Has journalism become a commodity?
Ash Sarkar: ‘Media is politics by other means’
Q&A: What's the difference between dead cats and real cats?
How do you solve a problem like gen Z?
Q&A: Do echo chambers actually exist?
The Murdoch monarchy: Who will take the crown?
Q&A: What's the role of journalism in the age of Trump?
Can you ‘bomb-proof’ the BBC?
Q&A: How to stay safe in a war zone
Sam Freedman: “The press lobby’s gone feral!”
Q&A: How to interview a president
Norm Pearlstine: “Media is Trump’s cocaine”
Q&A: Reporting as an act of resistance
Are UK journalists under state surveillance?
Saad Mohseni: The tycoon and the Taliban
Prince Harry wins, Telegraph in Limbo: What next?
Q&A: The BBC, a broken tape recorder and a fake Meryl Streep
Armando Iannucci: "X is an industrial piss factory"
Q&A: When Lionel met Obama and Alan met the queen
2025: Buckle up! It’s going to be quite a year
Is assisted dying moral? Rowan Williams and Brenda Hale in conversation
2024 in review: From Sanewashing to the Observer sale
Q&A: Will machines replace us?
AI: Powering newsrooms of the future?
Q&A: The Daily Mail's sidebar of shame
The Murdoch Succession and the limits of AI
Q&A: What's REALLY going on at the Observer?
AI: how to stop Big Tech ripping off journalism (again)
Q&A: Lionel’s Wild Ride
Trump 2.0: Buckle up! It’s going to be wild
Sayeeda Warsi on the Tories and why ‘Muslims don’t matter’
Reporting on a burning planet
Q&A: Michael Lewis, the Observer and asking difficult questions
Marianna Spring: Truth and the social media scandal
Q&A: The death of local news
Exclusive: The Observer's existential crisis
Q&A: The most embarrassing mistakes of our careers
US election 2024: The final days
Q&A: How influential is Joe Rogan?
Eric Beecher: Making an enemy of Murdoch
Q&A: Advice for aspiring editors? Get a backbone!
Michael Lewis on his critics: “It’s all horseshit”
Q&A: Is an editor's life just about boozy lunches?
Esther Solomon: Editing in a war zone
Q&A: Should social media platforms be legally regulated?
Justine Roberts: Mumsnet takes on Big Tech
Q&A: What went wrong at the Evening Standard?
Tim Snyder: Why a Trump victory is a threat to freedom
Q&A: How does an in-depth investigation begin?
Elon Musk: The Man Who Destroyed Twitter
Q&A: Why does the press hate Prince Harry?
Rebecca Solnit: ‘Sanewashing’ Trump’s Gibberish
Q&A: Cummings vs Campbell, who was toughest to deal with?
Has Musk gone too far?
Trump and conspiracies: Does the truth even matter now?
Biden: Is the game up for the President?
Election 2024: It’s the Sun wot lost it!
Julian Assange: A landmark moment in press freedom?
Farage’s Reform: the media’s wife—or its mistress?
The Washington Post: the chaos continues
The British are coming! How editors from the UK are conquering the American media
Kara Swisher: How big tech squashed the media
The Tory TV Channel
‘Reporting from a horror movie’: Motaz Azaiza and Youmna El Sayed
Phone hacking: What did Murdoch know?
The phone hacking scandal: new evidence and fresh claims
Meloni’s Media Clampdown
The West Bank according to Gideon Levy: Locked inside a living hell
Anne Applebaum on Ukraine, the forgotten war
Israel kicks out Al Jazeera
The GB News Propaganda Machine
Counting the casualties of war
Gary Younge: Dog bites man *is* the story after all
Trump’s Public Enemy Number One?
The demise of Vice and BuzzFeed: what happened to millennial media?
Bonus episode: Should Paul Marshall be allowed to buy the Telegraph?
Are journalists being targeted in Gaza?
Ask the Editors: Ofcom, GB News and Biden on TikTok
Is this the future of local news?
Is the right-wing media ‘out of control’?
How the government captured the BBC
Trump v Biden, Round Two: how to cover the US election
The Post Office scandal: Toby Jones on his drama’s impact
The media world in 2024
Review of the Year with Beth Rigby
Lynsey Addario: how I took the defining image from Ukraine
Reporting on Gaza: bravery, brutal facts and the need for context
The phone hacking scandal gets an extra dimension
Legendary photographer Sir Don McCullin “damaged” by his work in war zones
Mona Chalabi on Gaza, bias and the New York Times
James O’Brien on the media figures who “broke Britain”
Should Ofcom get GB News under control?
AI and the future of journalism with Mathias Döpfner
Is there a media bias against Israel?
Disinformation on X, and the power of the Telegraph’s Barclay brothers
Israel, Hamas and media in a time of war
Legendary US editor Marty Baron on Donald Trump, Edward Snowden and Jeff Bezos
Rupert Murdoch steps back: politics and succession, with Malcolm Turnbull and Michael Wolff
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