The Buck Stops Here (with Ria Lina and Sophy Ridge)

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Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to Strong Message here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language.

Speaker 1 I'm Amanda Yanucci, or if you're listening to the Spotify transcript of this program, I'm Armagie Yanucci, which is inaccurate and I'm going to sew. And I'm here once again with Riya Lina.

Speaker 1 And this week, the buck stops with me. We're looking at journalism, editing, the language around the fallout of incidents such as what happened to the BBC.

Speaker 1 And for that, we're also joined by the host of Sky News breakfast show, Mornings with Ridge and Frost, Sophie Ridge. It's great to be here.
I'm very excited.

Speaker 1 Before we plunge into all that, I left X this week.

Speaker 1 It feels so good.

Speaker 3 So X is now your ex.

Speaker 1 X is now my ex. Yes, I'm seeing another social platform.

Speaker 1 How does that feel? Oh, it was a joy. It was a joy.
Nothing particular prompted it. I just, other than the kind of wave of tawdry sulliness that comes over me every time I looked at it.

Speaker 1 And I thought, I think it might be the problem rather than me. I think the thing that finally made me do it was reading about Ellen Musk's Elon Musk's, however you pronounce it.

Speaker 1 No, let's go with Ellen.

Speaker 3 I like Ellen. You know?

Speaker 1 Ellen Musk. Facts are fluid.
Ellen Musk's salary, new salary of $1 trillion for Tesla. And I read in the FT

Speaker 1 why the board of Tesla passed this. And it said, I quote, Musk swayed shareholders by outlining a future run by artificial intelligence and filled with self-driving cars and armies of robots.

Speaker 3 Which he demonstrated by being himself. I thought this is what it'll look like.

Speaker 1 They voted for that rather than shut it down. So that in the end was the fight.

Speaker 1 Anything you have to report?

Speaker 3 I wish I could leave X, but I currently have still more followers on there than I do on other social platforms.

Speaker 3 And so I feel I have to stay there for now and just talk to those that for whatever reason, they, I mean, I don't get it. Like we're all in alignment and yet there's just a small pocket.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Like a small island of the bottom.

Speaker 1 You've fallen in love with your bots.

Speaker 3 I also kind of now, you know, if I ever need to, you know, it's like a verbal punching bag.

Speaker 3 If you ever do need to just go out there and let off some steam, it seems like the perfect place to do it without any real repercussions now. Because everyone's doing it on there.

Speaker 1 Oh, right. Oh, gosh, a place where you can say things and there aren't repercussions.

Speaker 3 Right. Well, I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 But none of my opinions are particularly, you know, offense worthy.

Speaker 1 Well, want to try? Okay. No, no, no.
Sorry. Okay.
Sorry. I think, right, okay.
Let's look, Sophie. We're ticking up your time here and it's your bedtime.

Speaker 1 I'm slightly fascinated by the idea of leaving X, I have to say um sometimes you do wonder you know what it is that makes you get out of bed in the morning and just like open yourself up to a load of people shouting at you like why would you do that yes and also but i do you know the the reality of it is i mean you really you talked about your followers but i got the feeling over the last couple of years that the people i follow i'm not really seeing on x and the people who follow me are possibly not really seeing me.

Speaker 3 That's the problem.

Speaker 3 They've changed the algorithm to be more in alignment with some of the other real-based platforms where they'll show you what they want you to see rather than what you've asked to see.

Speaker 3 And that is an issue. But I feel like one of the joys, and this is being a comedian, is trying to convert someone who does attack you.

Speaker 3 Because often they are normal people with normal jobs and they would never speak like that to your face.

Speaker 3 And so sometimes when you just call them out, they go, oh, actually, you're human. Oh, you're not so bad.
Oh, sorry about that.

Speaker 4 And also, I think it is good to be challenged as well. That's partly why I like social media because, you know, as a journalist as well, you need to be aware of your own biases, which we all have.

Speaker 1 And actually, if you listen to and are interacting with as big a group of people as possible who sometimes challenge you and sometimes it's uncomfortable that is a good thing oh no i'm quite happy to be challenged i mean i'm challenged on blue sky about the stuff you say i think it was more i think it was more my mental health yeah suffering from just the the piles of toxic language used there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I'm all for free speech and so on, but I have every right not to have to engage with that speech.

Speaker 4 And that's not a challenge, that's abuse, right?

Speaker 1 Let's get

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 3 If you can't curate your own environment on there, which was one of the advantages of it, wasn't it? Then, you know, why follow people if you're not going to see them?

Speaker 1 Well, look, let's get into the travails of the BBC, the fact that Trump is possibly going to sue the BBC unless the BBC apologises and does a number of other things.

Speaker 1 We're in a kind of strange landscape, though, aren't we?

Speaker 1 Because you work at Sky, you work for an organization where, you know, the principle is, and at the BBC as well, principle is report the facts, report the news with impartiality, fairness and balance.

Speaker 1 But we do have this other system where someone like Elon Musk can say, call Jess Phillips, you know, a rape genocide apologist and feel that that's fair game, fair play, no consequences.

Speaker 1 Yet, if the BBC or Sky or whoever gets a fact wrong, there are consequences.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think the landscape, it is completely true, to be honest, that there is a different accountability and

Speaker 4 across different platforms. And we need to be real about the landscape that we're in.

Speaker 4 You know, people get their news from the BBC, obviously, and Sky and GB News and all these people who are regulated by Ofcom.

Speaker 4 But increasingly, people get their news from social media, from YouTube, from podcasts, a whole nother world. And it feels like we haven't caught up, if I'm being honest, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Some of it isn't news.

Speaker 4 That's the bigger issue.

Speaker 3 I'm finding that things are becoming facts because enough people have said it. You know, at what point, what is true?

Speaker 1 When it becomes a fact or an inaccuracy that has reached a critical mass, it then sort of becomes something that merits being reported about, doesn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, I think the kind of example of it is like the Brigitte Macron stuff, right?

Speaker 4 Where there was the untruth, a lie, which, you know, I think we should call a spade a spade that she was born a man.

Speaker 4 And normally you would just ignore that, but it was amplified so much that they felt they had to calm out, they had to go through this very painful process to to shut it down um it's it's it kind of blows your mind really and that is part of the mechanism that through which the the bbc panorama edit issue uh became headline news in that

Speaker 1 there was a campaign to give it uh greater publicity you know our document was leaked uh but this is irrespective of whether panorama made a mistake or not i mean clearly they should have signalled what the edit was But the way it became a headline was the document was leaked so that it became a story of significance that the BBC was then obliged to respond to.

Speaker 1 Part of the problem was it didn't respond to it quick enough.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's definitely true. I mean, I guess what I would say is your point as well.
You know, the issue, I think, is because nothing was actually done about it.

Speaker 4 The fact that this report was written by, you know, Michael Prescott, an kind of internal report, right? And then no one did anything about it. They sat on it.

Speaker 1 And then I guess that was then why it's leaked so i think that part of the issue was that yeah responsibility i guess wasn't taken at the time my feeling is that there is a problem with the bbc being so-called independent but actually connected with the government in power who has a considerable say over the price of the license fee the terms of the charter that's renewed every 10 years and has to be voted on by parliament and and i think genuinely actually the bbc tends to be subconsciously biased towards whichever government is in power at the time in that they they want to make sure that they're not in trouble or that their future isn't going to be questioned.

Speaker 1 Anyway, all I'm saying, Sophie, is if this particular claim reached critical mass, would that then be a story that is worth investigating?

Speaker 4 I think that,

Speaker 4 look, the kind of in answer to your question, yes, that does happen, right? Yes.

Speaker 4 I guess the only thing that I would say, and I'm not just actually singling the BBC out, I mean media organisations in general.

Speaker 4 I think that we do need to be careful about what people have referred to as like diversity of thought on this.

Speaker 4 And a feeling that if you're in a meeting room, you can put your hand up and say, I disagree with the way that this story is going, or I have a different perspective.

Speaker 4 And I think on some issues, I mean, the trans debate is perhaps a good example of that. People haven't felt that, right? The BBC, but also other institutions as well.

Speaker 4 And that can be a bit of a kind of metropolitan liberal elite thing. And I think it is something that we should be careful of a little bit.

Speaker 4 Like with the splicing of the Trump documentary for example yes that was a mistake it was misleading but I guess the reason that it was perhaps gathered the steam is because people felt it spoke to a wider truth where people at the BBC generally were kind of anti-Trump in how they approach things I think also though you said it was misleading I think that's the question was it misleading overall so they took two parts of his speech that were 54 minutes apart they spliced it together and he essentially said we're going to go go to the capital and fight.

Speaker 3 That's what they did. They put them next to each other.
Now, he didn't say that. He actually said, we're going to go down there.

Speaker 3 We're going to support our, you know, in the first half, he said, we're going to support our senators. We're going to walk peacefully.
And later on, he said, we're going to fight.

Speaker 3 But if you look at the body of evidence, can it still be argued that we made him out to want something that he didn't actually want?

Speaker 4 I think splicing those two things together in the way they did was misleading.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do. I think really honest.
Just to be sort of just like Division's advocate here.

Speaker 1 I think, you know, if you are the BBC, one of the biggest news outfits in the world with a huge reputation, and therefore there's an additional layer of responsibility you have when you report stuff.

Speaker 1 And therefore, I think people should have been constantly asking themselves questions as they were making that programme. Would this be misinterpreted?

Speaker 1 And also, as you point out, you know, there's plenty of evidence elsewhere to show that he did try and question the result.

Speaker 1 You know, it was a sort of, for me, it was a sloppy piece of editing rather than a willfully

Speaker 1 biased piece.

Speaker 4 And as you say as well, you know, putting it in context, there are much more terrible things that are written all the time on the front.

Speaker 1 And honestly, if the consequence of what's just happened is that we now have to listen to every Trump speech unedited, then I am leaving this planet because that is a fact and a reality that I'm not sure I can deal with.

Speaker 3 Just the fact that the two bits were 54 minutes apart. That is a long time to stand in Washington on the cold on January 6th.

Speaker 1 And we ought to get on to the kind of the broader question about editing, you know, because everything is edited, really. This show is edited.
If this went, our show went out exactly.

Speaker 1 Give away the magic.

Speaker 1 This show went out unedited. It would be mostly full of me going, I've got a corp here.
Hang on a minute. Sorry.
Just give me a second.

Speaker 1 These pages are numbered. Right.
This is what he said. All that has to get cut out.
Otherwise, I'd come across like a bumbling buffoon. So, yeah, everybody.

Speaker 3 Are you going to tell me next that the thick of it was scripted?

Speaker 1 Some of it was, but yes.

Speaker 1 I actually I'm indebted to somebody who calls themselves the jogging goth who skeeted me on Blue Sky. Don't look up skeet on Google.

Speaker 1 And he said, I heard a rumor that Match of the Day is deliberately edited to make it look like football matches last 15 minutes and are exciting from start to finish. I mean,

Speaker 1 how long is a football match? I think it's 20 minutes.

Speaker 1 That's too much. That's week and a half, isn't it?

Speaker 1 There is a process of editing that goes on in news in that someone has to decide what the big story is and what the second story is and how much time to give it. Totally.

Speaker 4 I mean everything is edited to a point, right? And curated and decisions are made all the time which people could disagree with or not.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, if I think about the program that you know I do, you know, in the morning program, you know, you have numerous editorial meetings. What story are you going to lead on?

Speaker 4 You know, what's the top story? What's the most important or most interesting story?

Speaker 4 And then you are like taking snippets of things all the time to illustrate that, snippets of speeches or whatever it might be. So you are constantly making these decisions by the nature of it.

Speaker 1 And how much are you put under pressure from groups and parties outside to make what they're about to say that day top of the agenda?

Speaker 4 I think it's probably not as bad as people sometimes think, if I'm being honest.

Speaker 4 I think that there is a cynicism about it that people think that we're just mouthpieces or that we're under pressure all the time from people, which is not true. But yeah, you do come under pressure.

Speaker 4 I mean, I obviously, my kind of background is mainly kind of politics and political journalism. And you absolutely, you know, get it in the ear from all the parties for various things.

Speaker 4 They're not on enough. They're on too much.
We're taking this story too seriously. We're not taking a different story seriously enough.
And so you have to be quite firm in just ignoring all the noise.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I have a question.

Speaker 3 Why are you never reporting on the Lib Dems? Because I'm sure they're doing tons of stuff.

Speaker 1 Where are they?

Speaker 4 I think that the Lib Dems, if I'm being completely honest, need to have a bigger megaphone, right?

Speaker 4 Because if you listen to the Green Party and it's like Polanski, it is easy to report on that guy because he's doing stuff all the time. And the Lib Dems are very cautious.

Speaker 3 And so it's not enough to water ski. Exactly.

Speaker 1 There are always so many water slides you can go on. I mean, if you want to talk about, I mean, Ed Davy was quoted this week in quite a lot of discoveries.

Speaker 1 Talking about a certain BBC board member. So I think that there's an example of him trying to make that a prominent story.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 And definitely on Trump. I think that he feels that he can go further on Trump than Kirstarma, for example.
And they see that opportunity, right?

Speaker 4 That, you know, Kirstalma's trying to cozy up to Donald Trump and he can just, he doesn't have to worry about about that, Ed DV.

Speaker 1 But how difficult is it now that there is an alternative to the traditional news coverage that Sky does, the BBC does, ITV does, even Channel 4, which is,

Speaker 1 you know, would you call it news opinion that some shows on GB News do, the rest is politics do? We even do it here. And also the fact that we've commented on this a lot on this show.

Speaker 1 the trend for certain politicians to regard any question that is hostile to them or picking their argument argument apart as hostile and therefore not to be treated seriously.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think it's a real thing, actually.

Speaker 1 Have you always get worse?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, and I think the difficulty now is that politicians can have more discretion about who they want to talk to.

Speaker 4 So if you are a politician and you only want to talk to friendly journalists and you only want to talk to friendly outfits, then you can do that, which personally I think is... not a great thing.

Speaker 4 I think that the challenge is really, really important for our kind of democracy, right? On the the whole, though, I think that the splintering, I guess, of the news environment is good.

Speaker 4 I think that people are so engaged in news now, people are so up to speed on news, and they're much more informed.

Speaker 4 People have news at their fingertips in a way that I don't think was true five years ago, ten years ago. People just switched off on politics.
You just don't see that now.

Speaker 4 So, I think, on the whole, it's positive, but there are clear risks on it.

Speaker 1 But there are, for example, Niger Farage was asked by your sky colleague, Mario Arora, if his plans to weaken workers' workers' rights make him anti-worker and he replied even your question is the problem that question is being asked really to try and test the argument behind his proposal right um but to to say as trump does all the time that's a terrible question yeah unbelievable and that's becoming a bit more common now isn't it yeah it definitely is and also murray by the way who i work with is like the the nicest most lovely person and also a great journalist impartial journalist as well.

Speaker 4 And honestly, it can be quite intimidating if you are in a room full of supporters of a political party to be, I guess, you know, confronted in that way when it's your job to ask difficult questions and to challenge.

Speaker 4 That is literally her job.

Speaker 4 So, I think it can be quite difficult in that, again, you've kind of got to have a thick skin as well, because it's not just unique to reform.

Speaker 4 You know, I remember it with, you know, doing elections and being in front of Labour supporters or conservative supporters as well. And you can get booed and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 But it's definitely a sort of challenge.

Speaker 3 I think we should get comedians and journalists together for like a heckler workshop.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'd love this.

Speaker 3 I would really, because I watch some of these interviews and go, no, no, they've gone left. You got to parry right.

Speaker 3 Like there's a whole, there's a game of chess to it when people, you know, when people are trying to catch you off guard.

Speaker 1 I love this.

Speaker 3 Okay, we'll do this.

Speaker 1 So what would you say then?

Speaker 4 What would you come back with if you know politicians? That's a terrible question.

Speaker 1 How dare you ask me that?

Speaker 3 You're too scared to answer the question, or just incompetent?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's good, that's good, isn't it?

Speaker 1 That's what happens when cousins marry, or some kind of comedian heckler.

Speaker 3 I did your mum, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Not amazing, yeah.

Speaker 4 Everyone's gonna the next time I interview a politician, they're gonna be no, they're not gonna know what's come up.

Speaker 1 Then they'll be like, What?

Speaker 1 I mean, I've said on this show before the fact that certain people see the shows where they get their news as worrying because that's not our job. I do have to ask, do you think, are we the problem?

Speaker 1 I'm pointing at myself and

Speaker 1 in that there is now

Speaker 1 this whole other culture of podcasts where the news is discussed, but in a much more relaxed and informal way, and where some people are allowed to express opinions as well as report.

Speaker 1 I think it's good, to be honest.

Speaker 4 I think it's a good thing, and not just some in the room with you, by the way, and trying to be polite, but I honestly think it's a really, really good thing.

Speaker 4 And I actually think as news broadcasters from more traditional outfits I personally have learnt an awful lot from podcasting from you know people on social media the kind of authenticity of it I think is really important that more intimate relationship with with your audience and your viewers I think that you know the kind of traditional TV news is kind of a thing of the past in some ways where you just sit there and you would tell a grateful nation what they need to know

Speaker 4 now it should be way more two-way I think and I think that's what kind of podcasting and other forms of media as well but podcasting in particular has has really broken that down which i think is positive should that then feed itself back into her the sort of more formal news coverage yeah i i think so yeah yeah so do you respond to comments on x yeah i do

Speaker 3 what am i doing why am i

Speaker 3 i i i i i i do yeah i try and do i do try and yeah yeah do you have on you i haven't seen your profile do you have the opinion you know how you have to disassociate yourself with your job do you have to say these are my opinions not the opinions of i don't but i probably should but no i don't

Speaker 1 i just go for it

Speaker 1 I think that some would argue that's part of the problem with where the BBC is at now with this whole issue is the fact that it tries too hard to be neutral and by never stating an opinion gets in trouble from the left and the right it gets in trouble on all sides exactly you know that's and you know traditionally that's when it says it must be doing its job correctly because it's hated by everyone uh not hated but it's criticized by every political party so it must be doing something right i mean i remember when we started doing the friday night armistice way back it was during the blair the the beginning of the Blair years.

Speaker 1 So in every way, a lot of our content, our talks was about Tony Blair.

Speaker 1 And there was a lot to have a go at, the kind of the managerial style, the use of big labels and Brit, you know, we are a young country. What does that mean? We've been around for centuries.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about? You know, the getting rid of any politician that had a personality, replacing them with managerial. So there was a lot to talk about.

Speaker 1 And then Iraq, yes, that thing. But I remember at the time, people thinking I must be right-wing because I'm doing that.

Speaker 1 And it's just part of your obligation if you want to look at how politics works.

Speaker 1 It was one reason why when we did the figure, I chose not to name the parties because it was about more than making a party a political party. It was about looking at the process, really.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's a really good point, actually. I feel that too, as well, as an interviewer, as well.
I get a lot of people saying, oh, you were never like this under the Tories.

Speaker 4 It's like, no, well, actually, I was. And then at the time, you got attacked by a load of people who were conservative for having a go at the government all the time.

Speaker 4 But, you know, it's kind of your job to challenge the government because they're the one making the decisions that you're scrutinizing, right?

Speaker 1 And as you say, it's a worry that politicians don't have the option of opting away from the hard questions because there are no other outlets that will give them an easier ride.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's exactly it.

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Speaker 1 Have you come across the word franken edit?

Speaker 1 Franken editing is, and this is what happened on the Panorama program. It's defined as a reality TV term for two separate parts of recordings being spliced together to alter their meaning.

Speaker 1 That's the sunny stuff.

Speaker 1 It did remind me of, I'm sorry to be dragging back shows I have done in the past, but when we did the day-to-day, which was like a news parody, Chris Morris and myself went on a very, very intense one-day BBC television journalism course.

Speaker 1 And I remember, and this was pre-digital, whatever, this was all VHSs and whatever.

Speaker 1 I remember we had three hours to look at rushes from unedited rushes from, I think, the conflict in Bosnia that was happening at the time.

Speaker 1 And we had three bits of information that we had to get across in our commentary.

Speaker 1 And as the clock ticked away and time was running out, I realized I had pictures that would back up two of those bits of information, but not the third. So what did I do as time was running up?

Speaker 1 I didn't include the third bit of information.

Speaker 1 And I thought that was an interesting lesson about A, how picture-driven news is on television, but also the ticking clock means that you have to make sudden decisions that maybe, you know, 25 hours later, you think, oh, I should have done this rather than that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think you need to go back on X because no one else is being that moral about picture, you know, picture veracity on X.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 3 there's storms from 10 years ago, and they're telling you that it's happening now. And, you know, you get that all of the time.

Speaker 3 X misses you.

Speaker 1 But that must go on all the time. That kind of intense pressure.

Speaker 4 I mean, the time pressure is

Speaker 4 really intense. And obviously, I work for a kind of 24-hour news channel.
So you're kind of feeding the beast all the time, right?

Speaker 4 And the job that the producers do, it genuinely kind of blows my mind because they are cutting video all the time, they are writing all the time, they are, it's an intensely time-pressured job, 24-7, including through the night, right?

Speaker 4 So, it's no surprise that human error happens at times, and really it astonishes me that it doesn't more often.

Speaker 4 And also, also, just from like a live broadcasting perspective, as well, like you know, often you'll get something like a breaking news strap. You just have one strap from Reuters.

Speaker 4 It could be anything from like, you know, a suicide bomb going off in Pakistan to a resignation from, you know, a government official, and you have to talk about it straight away.

Speaker 4 So it's, it's, it is quite, yeah, if I had like an hour to prepare, it would be much more perfect than it is in reality.

Speaker 1 I once did Friday night arms just election live problem on the 97 election, and I do remember at one point

Speaker 1 looking up at the camera where normally the autocue was and it was blank, and

Speaker 1 I heard in my ear, just Phil. Yeah, and I thought,

Speaker 1 what do I say? I'm not a journalist.

Speaker 3 That's the opposite of Franken editing, isn't it? That is very much the opposite.

Speaker 3 It's funny how Franken editing is only coming up now as a concept.

Speaker 3 We've been doing it in comedy for years on our Edinburgh posters by taking quotes from journalists and going, well, you know, she did a brilliant job at emptying the room.

Speaker 3 She did a brilliant job this year.

Speaker 1 Oh my god, yes. I love that.

Speaker 3 I have one that I've been using for years, and I don't actually remember the original review. I remember I looked back and I thought, I know I didn't like the review.

Speaker 3 I remember reading it and being crushed by it, but I took this from it and I've used it ever since.

Speaker 3 There's no denying the girl has talent, which when you, even when you hear it, you go, that clearly goes dot, dot, dot, but

Speaker 1 but I took that.

Speaker 3 There's no denying the girl has talent.

Speaker 4 I've been using it ever since.

Speaker 1 You had the classic one that was the film about the craze, was that right? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I think it was a film poster about the Kray twin brothers and the posters, the two of them on there. And they decided to put all of the star, you you know, four or five stars behind them.

Speaker 3 The whole poster behind them is filled with stars, but there's a little gap between their arms. And there's two stars between their arms, which was a two-star review.
So they haven't lied.

Speaker 3 They are completely accurate. But because they filled everything else with four and five stars, it looks like it was a four or five star review.
Just hidden by their arms. Just hidden by their arms.

Speaker 3 But it was a genuine. And I just thought, note that for later.

Speaker 1 And it is interesting how when you talk to people who work on certain shows that give you a completely different impression once they tell you what it's really like.

Speaker 1 There was a a show, I won't name it, but there was a show a while back that it was an art show, and it was a very, really lovely, wholesome, warm, encouraging people to take up art show.

Speaker 1 And I remember speaking to someone who worked on it, and they said, Yeah, I said, It's just a great, it's very inspiring show. And they said, Uh, yeah, 90% of what we get sent in is porn.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, and you're just like, Oh,

Speaker 1 oh, I've just

Speaker 1 disappointed, I've lost my faith in humanity.

Speaker 3 Does that come under free speech?

Speaker 3 I don't, I don't know where to file that.

Speaker 1 Well, I burn it.

Speaker 1 Right. Is that a category? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Before we go, is there a phrase that you'd just dearly love to get rid of used by politicians, possibly in the course of interviews?

Speaker 4 Yes, there's one that really stands out to me, and that is, let me be clear.

Speaker 4 Because as soon as a politician says, let me be clear, they're going to say something as opaque as you could possibly imagine. They are not going to be clear.

Speaker 4 They're going to say something completely irrelevant and different. And they always, it's something that they do a lot.
It happens to me every week, I would say.

Speaker 4 You ask a tough question or a direct question often, and they go, let me be clear. And they answer a completely different question.

Speaker 4 It's all about obfuscating. It drives me nuts.

Speaker 3 So you need to go, well, that wasn't clear at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Or once they've gone, let me be clear.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just say, well, when are you going to start? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that was not clear.

Speaker 3 Did you want another go at that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I felt that about Rachel Reeves' press conference about nothing other than things are going to be a little bit difficult.
Now I'll take some questions. How difficult? Well, I can't say.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Which is what she's been saying for months anyway, really. So it was very bizarre.

Speaker 3 I'd almost prefer her not to say anything till the budget.

Speaker 3 Every day you get a different budget.

Speaker 3 guess,

Speaker 3 a surmise, and you go, let's just, yeah,

Speaker 1 it's Schrödinger's budget at the moment, isn't it? In that you wouldn't really know what's in it until, oh, I don't know, I've lost the analogy. No, it's true.

Speaker 4 This is it. And it's just so much kite flying as well.
It's almost like they're testing various things to see what the response is.

Speaker 4 And then I think a lot of it is expectation management as well, right? So they can just say it's going to be absolutely terrible.

Speaker 4 And so even if it's just a little bit terrible, everyone will be like, oh, that wasn't as bad as we thought.

Speaker 3 If you really want to know what people think, just, I mean, they're so responsive to Nigel Farage.

Speaker 3 Just ask Nigel Farage what he thinks and then do whatever you worry is going to lose you the election or not lose you the election.

Speaker 1 Well, a lot of our guests who have come on when we ask them, you know, who's the best political commentator at the moment, have said Farage, because irrespective of, you know, his message or his policies, he has this ability to connect with people in a way that others don't.

Speaker 1 He does.

Speaker 4 And he is direct and he says what he thinks. And I think that he understands, you know, we've been talking about the new media climate.

Speaker 4 I think that he is one of these politicians who understands the new media climate in a way that other politicians need to get up to speed with, to be honest.

Speaker 4 I still feel there's a lot of the more kind of traditional politicians, if you know what I mean, who come on and do interviews with people like me, and they think that the best outcome is going through that interview without making any news at all or without saying anything.

Speaker 4 And that's a waste of everyone's time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, Mandani, the newly elected mayor of New York, said you have to speak in a language everyone can understand and see themselves in, and you also have to speak to the struggles that people are living through.

Speaker 1 So it's not necessarily of one particular political policy area or ideology. It's more about an approach to how you get your message across.

Speaker 4 I think that's it. And I'd say, like, so Zach Plansky, for example, is someone who I think is much more direct in the way that he speaks.

Speaker 4 And a lot of people will absolutely hate him in the same way that people hate Farage and what he stands for.

Speaker 3 But that's okay.

Speaker 1 It's a question I often ask myself whenever I, on the rare occasion, I do come into direct contact with a politician, how different quite a few of them are in real life than their television persona.

Speaker 1 I remember being on question time once, and John

Speaker 1 was welcome secretary couldn't remember the welsh national anthem john redwood john redwood thank you uh actually keep that in just shows that i'm actually fallible and senile um

Speaker 1 and uh john redwood was on the panel and you meet beforehand there's about 10 or 15 minutes

Speaker 1 perfectly civil friendly amiable very nice normal soon as the we went on air green light comes he turned into john redwood the slightly robotic slightly chilly kind of uh messenger yeah And I just thought, why does that happen?

Speaker 1 And people say that about people like Gordon Brown and so on. Why?

Speaker 4 Gordon Brown is a good example because I've interviewed him quite a few times more recently.

Speaker 4 And genuinely, I am always amazed by, well, fancy how nice he is, but also how genuine he is about the issues that he cares about.

Speaker 4 I mean, this is a guy who really, really cares about children and poverty. Yes.
And yet when he was Prime Minister, I felt that he was...

Speaker 1 you know, it's been written about, like kind of almost ground down by the job in some ways that he's also that try and be human, as in go on the you know desert island discs and say you're really into Arctic monkeys and

Speaker 1 things. Of course, you're not.

Speaker 3 I'm kind of relieved to hear that a nice guy doesn't do the top political job well.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But you sort of want it to be.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you do. I know.

Speaker 3 You want the top guy to be a nice guy, but it is, it is the kind of job where you know it's like what they say.

Speaker 3 If you go to the police and say, I want to work in the gun department, you should not have that job. Like, that's the one test.

Speaker 1 Anyone who wants to

Speaker 1 who desperately wants to be prime minister shouldn't be prime minister.

Speaker 4 That's like all of MPs ruled out, then all of them gone.

Speaker 1 So they all do. And that's part of the problem.

Speaker 1 Have you got the cheat codes for Kierstama? Oh, yeah. How do you get something out of it?

Speaker 4 It's hard. It is hard.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 He's cautious, basically. And so he talks in clichés sometimes.

Speaker 4 You sense that he's regurgitating the lines that Number 10 had told him. You can break through,

Speaker 4 but sometimes with him,

Speaker 4 I do think he is a genuine guy as well, even if he struggles with the communication sometimes.

Speaker 4 Remember interviewing him during the election campaign about the death of his father.

Speaker 1 Is that the tool maker?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was the toolmaker. It was the toolmaker.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I heard that. You heard that somewhere else.
I did. I did hear that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. He was quite keen to talk about that a little bit as well.

Speaker 1 What is an example of something if you repeat it often enough, it becomes

Speaker 1 a fact, you know? Yeah, yeah. Best political speech you've seen.

Speaker 4 I mean, recently, I think Mum Dani, we've talked to her before, has to be be really, really good. I mean, I'd like to pick up Thatcher as well, because I think that she found a voice.

Speaker 4 She's found a voice for a female politician, a Tory from a different mould, a different class. And I think that, you know, that was very compelling as well.

Speaker 3 I thought I heard she was born as a man.

Speaker 1 Is that not true?

Speaker 1 You keep saying it.

Speaker 4 It'll get on the top now.

Speaker 1 It'll get picked up. Yeah.
It gets a blue tick.

Speaker 3 And then she's going to have to come and deny it.

Speaker 1 Before we go, who's going to be in charge? Any thoughts on the next director general of the BBC?

Speaker 3 Well, it has to be Alan Carr, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Imagine.

Speaker 4 That'd be amazing.

Speaker 3 You know, I mean, yeah, I think we put him in charge. And then when things go wrong, is it him? Is it not him? Nobody knows.
He's so good.

Speaker 1 Does that mean he'll go around killing people?

Speaker 3 Yeah, but with the lovely little letter.

Speaker 1 James, that's all. With a smile.

Speaker 1 Hi. Yes.
The baby-faced killer is now in charge of the ball.

Speaker 3 Dear Mr.

Speaker 1 Lineker, you have been

Speaker 1 such a difficult

Speaker 1 the director.

Speaker 1 I think it will go to an android. I think no human can do the job of the BBC director.
It'll go to an Android. It'll be the Winkleman 3000.

Speaker 1 You're going for it, right?

Speaker 3 I'm definitely going for it. You know, and I hope as an Asian woman, I stand a good chance.

Speaker 3 If I don't get DG, then I'm going for home secretary because there's also a really high chance of me getting that job.

Speaker 1 Avoid justice as much as you can.

Speaker 3 You mean doing justice while home secretary or just the justice secretary job?

Speaker 1 No, no, don't flee from justice. Avoid the justice.

Speaker 1 So that's what I was going to say. I thought that was the best thing.
Avoid the justice. That's been happening.
Avoid the justice portfolio. Oh, okay.
Nobody comes out of that alive.

Speaker 3 Well, no, apparently loads do.

Speaker 1 They're being released by president all the time.

Speaker 1 Especially if Alan Carr has got anything to do with it. Right.

Speaker 1 For the sake of balance, I ought to say that Alan Carr, as far as we know, hasn't killed anyone.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for listening to Strong Message Here. I'll be back next week, possibly in the BBC's new home of an unlicensed boat somewhere in the North Sea, if we lose our license.

Speaker 1 And with Sarah Pascoe and Dr. Matt Winning to discuss all things cop.
All of our previous episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you're subscribed on BBC Sounds.

Speaker 3 Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 7 Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me.
We are the comedy show that takes history seriously. And then we laugh at it.
And in our latest series, we've covered lots of global history.

Speaker 7 We've done the American War of Independence. we've done Empress Matilda and the Medieval Anarchy, we've done Alexandre Dumas, the French writer, the Kellogg brothers, and their health farm.

Speaker 7 We looked at the lives of Viking women, Renaissance-era beauty tips. We jumped to 18th-century India and also to ancient Alexandria.

Speaker 7 We looked at the life of Hannibal of Carthage, who fought the Romans, and we've done Marie Antoinette and a big birthday special for Jane Austen.

Speaker 7 Plus, there's 140 episodes in our back catalogue, so if you want to laugh while you learn, the show is called You're Dead to Me, and you can find us first on BBC Sounds.

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