Media Democracy Pod

Media Democracy Pod

A podcast about politics, the media, and the politics of the media. Hosted by Tom Mills and Dan Hind.

Episodes

December 22, 2021 69 mins
The Boris Johnson who bestrode British politics like a Colossus in 2019 is no more. In his place is a hapless figure, who can't seem to stop breaking his own regulations again and again last December. What happened? Why have the British public finally lost patience with him? Was it the media, by any chance? Tom and Dan come back to the Media Democracy studios to discuss the ongoing campaign by political insiders and their allies in...
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What a vintage year it's been! Tom and Dan look back on 2020 and talk about the highlights of the UK media's performance. We touch on mainstream satire (bad), the BBC (cosily familiar but also bad), the Murdoch press (very, very bad) and the current state of relations between the media and economic reality (absolutely awful). There's also some talk about what the hell the two hosts have been up to this year. There'll be Media Demo...
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February 25, 2020 77 mins
This week your intrepid co-hosts enter BBC Radio 4's flagship forum for ethical debate, The Moral Maze and talk about its February 12th episode 'The Moral Purpose of the BBC'. Confronted with the labyrinth of the BBC's assumptions and dogmas, its lopsided balance and general inability to think or see what's in front of its nose, Tom and Dan soon realise that there is no easy way out. At the beginning of the show Media Democracy exp...
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This is the second part of our interview with Juliet Jacques. In the intro, Tom and Dan talk briefly about Rebecca Long Bailey's recent proposals to reform the BBC and the response of liberal intelligentsia: why think through what public media should look like in the digital age when you can fixate instead on court gossip? Music by Makaih Beats.
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In the first instalment of a two-parter, this week Tom and Dan talk with author and critic Juliet Jacques about the depiction of trans people in the media, the trouble with liberal pluralism, and whether or not a secret cabal of Norwich City fans is pulling the strings of the British power elite. Music by Makaih Beats.
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January 9, 2020 67 mins
Dan and Tom return to podcasting after the Christmas break to discuss the media's behaviour in the General Election and the implications for the Labour Party of trying to operate in a communicative space that is as deceptive as it is hostile. Along the way we touch on some familiar themes - the awfulness of PPE, the awfulness of the New Statesman, liberalism's inability to distinguish between basic sociology and conspiracy theory, ...
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On 22 October Peter Oborne broke the silence that surrounds Westminster journalism with a damning article on the relationship between Downing Street’s press operation and senior correspondents like Robert Peston, Tim Shipman and Laura Kuenssberg. We talk about the article, the responses from Robert Peston and Amol Rajan, and what the reaction tells us about the state of UK journalism. Peter Oborne’s original article - https://ww...
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October 30, 2019 57 mins
Barely days after Facebook began trialing a news feature on its app Tom and Dan talk about the journey the company is on, from content agnostic charnel house to halfway convincing approximation of a civil public sphere. What does the platforms' emerging compromise with elected politicians, legacy media and the secret state look like? And how do we stop it? We also talk about Ofcom’s recent review of the BBC, the difference between ...
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This week Tom and Dan talk with Jodie Nesling of the Isle of Thanet News, an awarding winning monthly newspaper covering Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate and a handful of villages inland in East Kent. Jodie began her career as a journalist in one of the corporate conglomerates and she talks about her experiences there and about the challenges facing a start-up aiming to give its community the reporting it deserves. The Isle of Thane...
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October 5, 2019 60 mins
This week Tom and Dan are joined by author and activist Tamasin Cave of Spinwatch. We talk about the Climate Crisis and the individuals and institutions determined to preserve business as usual, whatever the cost. We explore the geography of the Westminster Village, the politics of proximity, and the gap between the lobbyists' outward facing propaganda and their growing internal anxiety about the threat of democracy. For the avoida...
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March 12, 2019 62 mins
In a one-off special to promote the Media Democracy Festival on March 16th, Tom and Dan fail utterly to mention said event. Instead they noisily take credit for the BBC's nervous flirtation with the audience-as-editor and the New Statesman's tentative moves away from pallid centrism. Along the way there is talk of Jordan Peterson, the role of experts in democratic reasoning, and these notorious thugs of the hard left identify the n...
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Tom and Dan are back after a long break throughout which the media class have behaved with scrupulous professionalism and disinterested rationality. This week we talk a little about Tom Watson's recent speech on digital policy before moving on to the main order of business, an interview with Trebor Scholz. Trebor Scholz is an associate professor at the New School in New York and in April of this year Trebor will launch the Institu...
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November 30, 2018 89 mins
This week Dan and Tom are joined by journalist, author and Blue Tick Twitter Personality Hussein Kesvani to discuss celebrity columnists and the Twittersphere. Over the course of the show we cover the politics of newsrooms, unpaid internships, Aaron Sorkin, David Aaronovitch, The Spectator and, regrettably, Jordan Peterson. Music by Makaih Beats.
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This week Tom and Dan go back to basics and spend an hour chatting about recent events in media/politics. The takes range from the stone cold and frankly unappetising - Dan's outrageous treatment at the hands of Ed Miliband - to the sizzling hot and oh-so-current - Poppygate and the uses of insincerity in the politics of remembrance. Along the way we discuss Tom's baffling online encounters with David 'Dave' Aaronovitch, the Stalin...
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This week on the podcast we're joined by Jack Frayne-Reid of the Reel Politik podcast to review Nick Robinson's podcast, 'Political Thinking'. It's a podcasting hall of mirrors. Music by Makaih Beats.
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October 20, 2018 60 mins
This week we bring you a recording from the Parliamentary launch of the Media Reform Coalition's 'Draft Proposals on BBC Reform', featuring Natalie Fenton, Zoe Williams, Amelia Womack, Clive Lewis and Media Democracy's very own Tom Mills. Music by Makaih Beats.
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We're joined by Joe Kennedy (@joekennedy81 on Twitter), the author of 'Authentocrats: Culture, Politics and the New Seriousness', to discuss the history, politics and aesthetics of the 'New Statesman'. Our apologies for the sound quality, which at times is not great even by our low standards. Music by Makaih Beats.
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James Stern-Weiner returns to the show to discuss the structure of the debates about Israel-Palestine and Labour's alleged antisemitism crisis. Jamie is the editor of 'Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Toughest Questions' (http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/moment-of-truth/). He is a graduate student at the University of Oxford. Music by Makaih Beats.
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This week we're joined by author and journalist Matt Kennard and talk about how he came to write his 2015 book, 'The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs. the American Elite'. As a graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism and a former employee at the Financial Times, Matt has first hand experience of how the media legitimates and assists state and corporate power across the world. Reporters rarely investigate the people who pa...
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May 4, 2018 61 mins
Fifty years ago Enoch Powell gave his racist 'Rivers of Blood' speech. In it he trailed themes that have given undead life to right-wing populism ever since: effete elites in the service of alien subversion, violent crime as an inevitable accompaniment to demographic change, a respectable and long-suffering civilization on the brink of cataclysmic collapse. It's all there and was given the full BBC radio treatment in April of this ...
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