Warning: this episode contains mentions of suicide. If you need support, contact the Samaritans on 116 123

Reports of image-based sexual abuse in the UK have increased tenfold over the past few years. Women are five times more likely to be victims of intimate image abuse. The true scale of the problem is probably larger, as many victims do not come forward.

But sensationalist headlines about so-called 'revenge porn' are doing a disservice to survivors. The term 'revenge' welcomes victim-blaming, the term 'porn' undermines the severity of the crime. Articles about apparent new protections for victims are written from Government press releases, with fact-checking thrown out the window, leaving tired survivors to take on crucial work as campaigners.

Legal frameworks also can't seem to keep up with rising technology - AI generated image-based sexual abuse, also known as 'deepfakes', increased 400% between 2022 and 2023.

Is the media failing to point to a culture of misogyny behind this crime? What steps can we take to combat IBSA? And how can we put survivors first every step of the way?

Joining Media Storm this week is Elena Michael, co-founder and director of #NotYourPorn (you can sign their open letter to address the critical gaps in current legislation), and founder of anti-share technology Image Angel, Madelaine Thomas.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically.

So many media storm’s blowing up our radar this week! The ICE abduction of a Turkish PhD student in the US (01:17); a coordinated effort by the Times, Telegraph, TalkTV, GB News, and Robert Jenrick to mislead the public about new sentencing guidelines (5:02); meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her MAGA friends blame migrants, Biden, and everyone but themselves for the Signal group-chat security scandal (17:56).

Plus - and this is where it gets awkward AF - Sky New's Sophie Ridge confuses two Muslim MPs for each other (22:00); a double stabbing in Bournemouth reveals how sensationalist media can play unwittingly into the hands of murderous men (26:05); and did you know - Adolescence is a true story? (34:24) And if you have concerns about the knee-jerk reaction of showing Adolescence in schools, here's the open letter you can sign.

Finally, for Eyes on Palestine, we report on the discovery of a mass grave of Palestinian doctors that has reignited accusations of Israeli war crimes. (38:20)

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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We live in the age of sanctions - with Trump dishing out punitive foreign policy willy-nilly, and Russia’s war in Ukraine attracting more sanctions then the next top-sanctioned countries combined. It’s time to ask: who are they really helping?

Activists often call on their leaders to sanction foreign governments they see as breaking human rights laws. We’re told that sanctions help protect civilians from their own, and neighbouring, oppressive regimes.

But when civilian voices are left out of the conversation, and coverage constantly fails to examine the impact on the ground, how do we know if this is really what’s happening? How do we learn from mistakes?

Because there are mistakes. Venezuelan sanctions today, like Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s, are estimated to have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. Yet just this week, we’ve seen more introduced.

Media Storm speaks to civilians from countries around the world, and discusses the real-life consequences of sanctions with one of the leading reporters on the topic - and the few to have consistently centred civilian voices - Murtaza Hussain from Drop Site News.

The episode also features Ilona Oleksiuk, from Ukrainian anti-fossil fuel group, Razom We Stand; Tata Chikviladze, Georgian journalist and protester; and Danielle Bett, Scottish-Israeli pro-democracy activist with Yachad.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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If you need help with drug addiction, you can find support here.

Tickets for Unchained Nights here!

Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically.

This week, the TV show on everyone's mind: Adolescence. We discuss our reaction to the Netflix hit, whether showing the series in schools will do anything to change minds on misogyny, and how we can involve boys in the conversation without stigmatising them. (21:25)

Also this episode: Drag Race icon The Vivienne's cause of death was revealed to be cardiac arrest caused by the effects of taking ketamine. A campaign has started to raise awareness of the dangers of ketamine, and to move the drug from Class B to Class A. But while the media uncritically supports the move, they fail to report on the wider context: that the more we have pursued a war on drugs, the more drug use, drug fatalities, and racialised inequality has risen. (04:01)

Next, former president of Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) - but why did he call it 'white man's justice'? The uncomfortable truth about inconsistent international law. (14:25)

And, we discuss the irony that a new four-lane highway is being built in the Brazilian city of Belém, cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest - all in aid of easing traffic at the climate summit COP30. You couldn't write it, but it's true. Read more from Ione Well's reporting here, and hear why we need to put the lived experience of indigenous voices at the forefront of the climate solution. (33:51)

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Content warning: baby loss

"When a court sentences a pregnant woman to prison, they sentence her to a high risk pregnancy"

There are hundreds of pregnant women in UK prisons - a third of them yet to actually be convicted of a crime. Babies born to women in prison are 7x more likely to be stillborn than the norm.

In recent years, two babies died when their incarcerated mothers went into labour and their calls for help were ignored. Last month, harrowing stories emerged of women at HMP Bronzefield being unlawfully handcuffed to male officers during childbirth.

Media Storm asks: will prison ever be a safe place to be pregnant? And if not, does the media care? And why, when debating this issue, did one LBC presenter get fixated on lamb chops?! (19:25)

Plus, Helena delves into far more detail than anybody asked for when talking about the EastEnders storyline which saw the iconic character Sonia Fowler pregnant in prison - an example of pop culture's influence on real-life issues.

Joining Media Storm this week is co-director of gender justice group Level Up, Janey Starling, and 'Anna' - co-founder of the Level Up campaign No Births Behind Bars, who was first sent to prison when 6 months pregnant.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) 

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Time for another weekly news debrief: Europe’s surging defence budgets and the hidden realities of the nuclear armament debate (03:09), the attack on benefits in our government and media - which are cutting more disability voices from the debate, than actual costs from the budget (10:07), and the overlooked importance of US airstrikes in Yemen (24:51). Plus, how Gaza’s ceasefire ended long before this week’s devastating airstrikes (30:39).

Walk with us through the week’s top stories and learn how to critically consume the mainstream media, spot the missing contexts and voices, and get a better understanding of what’s happening in our world.

UPDATE: Since recording, Gaza's death toll has continued to rise and has now surpassed 500 deaths since Tuesday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)  

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Introducing...The News Meeting from our friends at Tortoise. Your Media Storm hosts Mathilda & Helena were invited on Tortoise's podcast to pitch a story we think should lead the news.

Are welfare reforms Labour’s only hope of saving money ahead of the Spring Statement? Who are the hundreds of Venezuelans who have been forcibly removed from the US? And what is the media getting wrong when it comes to reporting on femicide by an intimate partner?

We join Tortoise's Deputy Editor Giles Whittell and reporter Claudia Williams for The News Meeting.

You can listen to the full episode here!

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This week, Media Storm investigates how universities handle sexual misconduct cases - when their prestigious professors are at the centre of the scandal.

It all started when our intern, a student at LSE, told us about student activism stirring at her university, after a dozen sexual misconduct allegations against one male professor resulted in no disciplinary action for him - and several female staff resigning in protest.

It’s not a secret that women drop out of academia at disproportionate rates to men. The female-male ratio slips from over 50/50 at postgraduate studies to 30/70 at the highest rank of professor – giving the sector the reputation of a “leaky pipeline”.

But staff sexual misconduct (and universities’ failures to address it), is rarely, if ever, explored as a reason.

We investigated. And to borrow the resigning words of one female professor, what we found, at times, “reads like a textbook on how to turn a complaints process into a gauntlet, into a warning to women not to challenge the behaviour of men and the institutions that protect them”.

The episode was co-produced by Mathilda Mallinson and Camilla Tiana, and hosted by Mathilda Mallinson and Helena Wadia. The music is by Samfire.

Academic resources:

·       Eradicating Sexual Violence in Tertiary Education (UCU, 2021)

·       Power in the academy: staff sexual misconduct in UK higher education (NUS, 2021)

·       Misconduct Disclosure Scheme proposal (1752, 2024) 

·        ‘How Do Institutional Gender Regimes Affect Formal Reporting Processes for Sexual Harassment? A Qualitative Study of UK Higher Education,’ by Anna Bull, and Erin Shannon (Law & Policy, 2024)

Response from The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) spokesperson:

“LSE is committed to a working and learning environment where people can achieve their full potential free of all types of harassment and violence. We take reports of sexual harassment extremely seriously and encourage any member of the LSE community who has experienced or witnessed this to get in touch via one of our many channels. Further, if a complaint of misconduct is received against any member of our faculty, staff or student body we will always investigate fairly and fully, following our policies and procedures.

“LSE has developed, and continues to develop, a number of measures to ensure any allegation of misconduct receives a trauma-informed, robust and compassionate response. 

“These measures include the new Report + Support system- an online tool where staff and students can report issues of concern and which provides information about support, policies and procedures and campaigns. This enables us to address issues more quickly and consistently across the School and vastly improve our approach to case management and communication with all involved. In line with sector best practice, we also plan to make greater use of external investigators in the future. 

"We have commissioned Rape Crisis South London and Survivors UK to run an Independent Sexual Violence Advisory service for the School. This provides practical and emotional support for any student or staff member who needs it and supports them through a reporting process and/or the criminal justice process if they wish. This service is available to access online without a waiting list. This represents a step-change in the level of specialist support we're offering our students. 

“We have also implemented a tailored all-staff online training course on addressing harassment and sexual misconduct affecting students, developed with Advance HE. This is being rolled out as required training across the School." 

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This week, Media Storm delves into a vastly underreported topic - and one of the biggest potential barriers to gender equality, child welfare and family security.

The UK has the least generous paternity leave entitlement in Europe, currently set at a measly two weeks. On the surface, maternity leave looks generous in length - but compared to OECD countries, the rate of pay is one of the lowest.

As the government and media put culture wars over real-life policies, spread muddled misinformation about benefits that are designed to be difficult, and gender equality faces major cultural setbacks.... we ask young parents campaigning for change: why? (And how they're doing it while 5 months' pregnant?!)

Joining us this week are the founders of Dope Black Dads - Marvyn Harrison, and of Nugget Savings - Katie Guild. 

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) 

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Time for another weekly news debrief: we pick apart the most unhinged headlines and try to make sense of the mainstream media, helping you consume the news critically. In this episode, we take you through the Media Storm mission: we’re not about conspiracy, we’re about media literacy.

THAT Zelensky-Trump press conference set the tone for world news this week, as Western leaders rolled out red carpets and tried to decipher diplomatic rationale from clickbait MAGA politics. So who was the rude reporter that set the wheels in motion? And what should we make of the pantomime that’s become of the White House’s press room?

Imagine, instead, if Netanyahu had been in the hot seat (we play it out for you): warned by Trump and Vance that he is gambling with World War Three. That he has no cards to play, if the US wants a ceasefire. Instead of applying such pressure, the US government pushed through an emergency arms sale to Israel this week - days before imposing new terms on the ceasefire with Hamas. But is that how the press reported it?

Now for something NOT TRUMP. Ever heard of joint enterprise? The little-known law putting Black boys in prison has failed to attract much press scrutiny, so we dive in.

And finally, Mathilda’s secret aristocratic background has been exposed by the Daily Mail! Find out why Helena’s so disappointed.

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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Warning: strong language

For the first time since they wrapped filming, Mathilda, Jess, & Nathan from Channel 4's four-part documentary Go Back To Where You Came From are reunited!

In the documentary, Mathilda traced a common refugee route from Somalia to the UK - alongside Jess, from a small town in Wales, and Nathan, a trucker from Barnsley. At the start of their journey, Nathan & Jess had very strong anti-immigration views. But by the final episode of the show, after talking to migrants and seeing firsthand the situations that refugees flee, the audience sees their views change - and an unlikely friendship develop between the group.

How do we apply the lessons learnt from this documentary to our lives? How do we fight dehumanisation, and build bridges with those who think differently to us?

The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)

The music is by @soundofsamfire

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