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Media Confidential — 243 episodes

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Title
1

Hasta la vista, baby!

2

Eternal youth and billionaire biohacking: The politics of longevity

3

The death of Jason Arday: A modern media morality play

4

Jonathan Shainin: Legacy media no longer explains the world

5

How long will the ‘Burnham bounce’ last?

6

Patrick Radden Keefe: ‘I’m not your therapist. I’m not your PR person. I’m a journalist’

7

Rod Liddle: the provocateur who loved to scandalise. But what did he really believe?

8

Mehdi Hasan: Why US media shies away from talking about genocide

9

So you didn’t get a Burnham interview? Break out the tiny violins

10

Corruption, convictions and vengeance: Maggie Haberman on the inside story of the second Trump presidency

11

Burnham’s new cabinet: What did the media miss?

12

Political censorship: How governments are using national security laws to silence journalists

13

Ann Widdecombe’s murder: Have the police said too much?

14

Iain Dale: I'm a Conservative but I don't do propaganda (unlike GB News)

15

It’s the media’s fault! Nigel Farage plays the victim card

16

Lachlan Cartwright: ‘American media became a propaganda arm to get Trump elected’

17

Will the BBC cave in to Trump?

18

Vicious media: How the Murdoch press attacks its targets

19

Starmer’s downfall: Is the media to blame?

20

Beeban Kidron: What the Online Safety Act gets right (and wrong)

21

Murdoch’s biggest deal yet

22

The 60 Minutes meltdown: inside the power struggles reshaping America’s iconic news show

23

Henry Nowak and how the media fuels racism

24

Joshi Herrmann ‘If we're going to devolve more power to places like Greater Manchester we’re going to need to bulk up the quality of the local media.’

25

Ofcom’s Michael Grade doesn't understand impartiality

26

Why are Britain’s politicians so weak on freedom of speech?

27

Peter Geoghegan on getting SLAPP’d: ‘It had a huge chilling effect’

28

Hiring on the cheap: Are news organisations exploiting young journalists?

29

Investigative journalist Gabriel Pogrund: ‘Go after big targets because they deserve to be pursued, not because you want to take them down’

30

Will Ofcom finally sanction GB News?

31

Liam Byrne: What happens when populists win?

32

Slapped: Why can’t we talk about Nigel Farage’s crypto donations?

33

Killing with impunity: the death of Amal Khalil in Lebanon

34

Trump: AI accusations and assassination attempts

35

Press Gazette and the end of ‘Barbara Santini’

36

Mandygate: The megaton bomb that shook Westminster

37

Sidney Blumenthal: ‘There’s about to be a real, severe change in American politics’

38

How the media brought down Viktor Orbán

39

Democracy at risk: The big banks censoring free speech

40

The madness of King Trump (continued)

41

Susan Glasser on Trump: ‘The big, fat, naked emperor in the room’

42

Why the US treasury secretary thinks the FT has become ‘tabloid trash’

43

Does the Washington Post have a future?

44

Breaking news: the BBC’s new director-general

45

Why isn’t Ofcom investigating GB News?

46

Pete Hegseth and the future of American press

47

What gets lost when war hits the headlines

48

The Telegraph: The deal is done

49

The Murdochs: Autopsy of a family’s slow death

50

Reporting on Iran: How to cover total warfare

51

Is the Westminster lobby a victim of groupthink?

52

Arresting images: How to snap an (ex) prince

53

‘It’s dangerous work’: The battle against digital disinformation

54

Labour Together’s snooping operation on journalists

55

Marty Baron on the Washington Post’s ‘death spiral’

56

‘Jeff Bezos could have saved the Washington Post. Instead he’s trashed it’

57

Bellingcat founder: ‘Playing whack-a-mole with disinformation is always going to fail’

58

Bezos, the BBC and reporting the Epstein files

59

When did climate coverage become part of the culture wars?

60

Alex Pretti, ICE and the New York Times

61

How to protect the BBC from its enemies

62

Prince Harry v the tabloids

63

Elon Musk vs Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales on why democracy won’t survive without facts

64

Liz Truss and the rise of YouTube politics

65

How CBS lost its way

66

Trump, Maduro and the Washington Post

67

Are we losing our civil liberties?

68

‘Despair is a luxury’: A year of hope with Zizek, Mehdi Hasan, Robert Macfarlane and others

69

Cory Doctorow: How the internet went to sh*t

70

Only in Denmark? The ‘existential editor’ covering life, death, love and everything in between

71

Zanny Minton Beddoes on Steve Bannon: ‘Comparing Trump to Moses was quite something’

72

What’s next for Alan Rusbridger?

73

The investigative journalists resisting legal threats

74

‘I’m with you on the free press, it’s the newspapers I can’t stand’: What Tom Stoppard got right about journalism

75

Ben Zand: How to make money in journalism (without selling your soul)

76

The OBR springs a leak! Reporting on a budget shambles story

77

The BBC crisis: The next test

78

‘The New York Times won’t settle’: Why reporters will not be intimidated by Donald Trump

79

What’s next for the BBC? A new director-general

80

‘Trump is a grifter. The BBC must not pay him a dime’

81

The Nerve: ‘We want to shine a light on culture… with a bit of “F— you” energy on the side’

82

The BBC is in a mess—but it’s not what you think

83

Goalhanger co-founder: ‘I’ve stepped in to stop Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart arguing’

84

Has Ofcom opened the door to a British Fox News?

85

Peter Oborne: Is the British media complicit in genocide?

86

How would you prepare to interview Putin?

87

‘We asked Israel to investigate the deaths of our journalists. We’re still waiting’

88

‘Rupert Murdoch follows me on Substack’

89

‘Lord Lebedev called me a prick…which sold extra subscriptions’

90

The Hack: What happens now?

91

The Successor: Who is Lachlan Murdoch?

92

Who gets right of reply?

93

The Hack: What’s the real story?

94

Lisa Nandy: We’re not afraid to regulate US big tech, no matter what Donald Trump says

95

America’s assault on free speech

96

What would you ask Donald Trump?

97

Does the news need gatekeeping?

98

The Murdoch succession: Lachlan gets the power; his siblings get rich(er)

99

Greg Lukianoff: ‘Bring back freedom of speech’

100

Why is the media dancing to Farage’s tune?

101

Trump’s 100 days, with Ruth Ben-Ghiat

102

Ethan Zuckerman: How to escape the internet hellscape

103

Mehdi Hasan: ‘The media doesn’t want to hear certain people’

104

Slavoj Žižek: ‘Elon Musk lives like a communist’

105

Q&A: Has the media contributed to ‘tinderbox Britain’?

106

Tesla exposed: how a whistleblower lifted the lid on Elon Musk

107

Q&A: Can you express your own views as an editor?

108

How long can Ofcom allow Nigel Farage to keep his own show?

109

Q&A: Mamdani vs the media

110

Tom McTague: ‘This country’s problems run deeper than Starmer thinks’

111

Q&A: Would you ever break an NDA?

112

Sophia Smith Galer: How to make the truth go viral

113

Q&A: Should the BBC have a paywall in the USA?

114

Only in Denmark? Meet the ‘existential editor’ covering life, death, love and everything in between

115

Q&A: What makes a good reporter?

116

Scaramucci on Trump: ‘He’s going to tell 10,000 lies this year as president’

117

Q&A: Where do you get your information about the Middle East?

118

Substack’s co-founder: Elon Musk ‘saw it as a declaration of war’

119

Q&A: How do you help the BBC?

120

Why AI companies don’t want journalism to exist

121

Q&A: What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

122

The new wave of approachable journalism

123

Q&A: Would you have interviewed Hitler?

124

Does ‘free speech’ even exist?

125

Q&A: What’s happening to the Telegraph?

126

Trump v the New York Times

127

Q&A: Who is the rudest person you've ever interviewed?

128

CNN's CEO: ‘If we didn't have politicians on air who might lie, we'd struggle to fill the airwaves’

129

Q&A: How to make the Evening Standard great again

130

Harry Shukman: Undercover in the Far Right

131

Q&A: It’s ‘Da Business’— The launch of Alan and Lionel's (imaginary) new newspaper

132

New hope for the newsroom?

133

Q&A: How do you prepare for the death of a Pope?

134

Are cartoonists about to be cancelled?

135

Q&A: Bezos or Musk–who would you rather be in a rocket with?

136

Who owns the media?

137

Q&A: How do you spot a story?

138

Trump’s tariff-mania: What are journalists missing?

139

Q&A: Have you ever felt your life was under threat?

140

Is this the most dangerous time to be a journalist?

141

Q&A: Signal and the Atlantic defence leak

142

Michael Wolff: Cancelled by Trump attacks

143

Q&A: How to deal with a conspiracy theory

144

John Sawers: ‘The deep state is what keeps us stable’

145

Q&A: Has journalism become a commodity?

146

Ash Sarkar: ‘Media is politics by other means’

147

Q&A: What's the difference between dead cats and real cats?

148

How do you solve a problem like gen Z?

149

Q&A: Do echo chambers actually exist?

150

The Murdoch monarchy: Who will take the crown?

151

Q&A: What's the role of journalism in the age of Trump?

152

Can you ‘bomb-proof’ the BBC?

153

Q&A: How to stay safe in a war zone

154

Sam Freedman: “The press lobby’s gone feral!”

155

Q&A: How to interview a president

156

Norm Pearlstine: “Media is Trump’s cocaine”

157

Q&A: Reporting as an act of resistance

158

Are UK journalists under state surveillance?

159

Saad Mohseni: The tycoon and the Taliban

160

Prince Harry wins, Telegraph in Limbo: What next?

161

Q&A: The BBC, a broken tape recorder and a fake Meryl Streep

162

Armando Iannucci: "X is an industrial piss factory"

163

Q&A: When Lionel met Obama and Alan met the queen

164

2025: Buckle up! It’s going to be quite a year

165

Is assisted dying moral? Rowan Williams and Brenda Hale in conversation

166

2024 in review: From Sanewashing to the Observer sale

167

Q&A: Will machines replace us?

168

AI: Powering newsrooms of the future?

169

Q&A: The Daily Mail's sidebar of shame

170

The Murdoch Succession and the limits of AI

171

Q&A: What's REALLY going on at the Observer?

172

AI: how to stop Big Tech ripping off journalism (again)

173

Q&A: Lionel’s Wild Ride

174

Trump 2.0: Buckle up! It’s going to be wild

175

Sayeeda Warsi on the Tories and why ‘Muslims don’t matter’

176

Reporting on a burning planet

177

Q&A: Michael Lewis, the Observer and asking difficult questions

178

Marianna Spring: Truth and the social media scandal

179

Q&A: The death of local news

180

Exclusive: The Observer's existential crisis

181

Q&A: The most embarrassing mistakes of our careers

182

US election 2024: The final days

183

Q&A: How influential is Joe Rogan?

184

Eric Beecher: Making an enemy of Murdoch

185

Q&A: Advice for aspiring editors? Get a backbone!

186

Michael Lewis on his critics: “It’s all horseshit”

187

Q&A: Is an editor's life just about boozy lunches?

188

Esther Solomon: Editing in a war zone

189

Q&A: Should social media platforms be legally regulated?

190

Justine Roberts: Mumsnet takes on Big Tech

191

Q&A: What went wrong at the Evening Standard?

192

Tim Snyder: Why a Trump victory is a threat to freedom

193

Q&A: How does an in-depth investigation begin?

194

Elon Musk: The Man Who Destroyed Twitter

195

Q&A: Why does the press hate Prince Harry?

196

Rebecca Solnit: ‘Sanewashing’ Trump’s Gibberish

197

Q&A: Cummings vs Campbell, who was toughest to deal with?

198

Has Musk gone too far?

199

Trump and conspiracies: Does the truth even matter now?

200

Biden: Is the game up for the President?

201

Election 2024: It’s the Sun wot lost it!

202

Julian Assange: A landmark moment in press freedom?

203

Farage’s Reform: the media’s wife—or its mistress?

204

The Washington Post: the chaos continues

205

The British are coming! How editors from the UK are conquering the American media

206

Kara Swisher: How big tech squashed the media

207

The Tory TV Channel

208

‘Reporting from a horror movie’: Motaz Azaiza and Youmna El Sayed

209

Phone hacking: What did Murdoch know?

210

The phone hacking scandal: new evidence and fresh claims

211

Meloni’s Media Clampdown

212

The West Bank according to Gideon Levy: Locked inside a living hell

213

Anne Applebaum on Ukraine, the forgotten war

214

Israel kicks out Al Jazeera

215

The GB News Propaganda Machine

216

Counting the casualties of war

217

Gary Younge: Dog bites man *is* the story after all

218

Trump’s Public Enemy Number One?

219

The demise of Vice and BuzzFeed: what happened to millennial media?

220

Bonus episode: Should Paul Marshall be allowed to buy the Telegraph?

221

Are journalists being targeted in Gaza?

222

Ask the Editors: Ofcom, GB News and Biden on TikTok

223

Is this the future of local news?

224

Is the right-wing media ‘out of control’?

225

How the government captured the BBC

226

Trump v Biden, Round Two: how to cover the US election

227

The Post Office scandal: Toby Jones on his drama’s impact

228

The media world in 2024

229

Review of the Year with Beth Rigby

230

Lynsey Addario: how I took the defining image from Ukraine

231

Reporting on Gaza: bravery, brutal facts and the need for context

232

The phone hacking scandal gets an extra dimension

233

Legendary photographer Sir Don McCullin “damaged” by his work in war zones

234

Mona Chalabi on Gaza, bias and the New York Times

235

James O’Brien on the media figures who “broke Britain”

236

Should Ofcom get GB News under control?

237

AI and the future of journalism with Mathias Döpfner

238

Is there a media bias against Israel?

239

Disinformation on X, and the power of the Telegraph’s Barclay brothers

240

Israel, Hamas and media in a time of war

241

Legendary US editor Marty Baron on Donald Trump, Edward Snowden and Jeff Bezos

242

Rupert Murdoch steps back: politics and succession, with Malcolm Turnbull and Michael Wolff

243

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