hello, i'm katie razzall. and i'm ros atkins. this week on the media show, we'll look at how the international media has covered the conflict between israel and iran. and as netflix releases a new documentary about the grenfell tower fire in london, we speak to its director. we'll also talk about the social media platform reddit. it's turning 20, and we're going to learn how its communities moderate themselves and how ai may change that. that's all coming up on the media show. the conflict between israel and iran has been dominating

the news this week, and we've been looking at the challenges for journalists who are covering the story. on wednesday, we spoke to shaina oppenheimer from bbc monitoring in tel aviv and to shashank joshi, defence editor at the economist. there are very, very few, if any, publications that have permanent staff based in iran. and that's partly a function of the way the iranian regime has conducted itself. it has arrested many, many dual nationals over the years, accusing them of espionage, and it has not been a hospitable place to do journalism. and therefore, the result is that most organisations covering this story are based either in israel or in other parts of the middle east, but not in iran. and that creates a certain, i think, detachment from what's happening. but the other thing that strikes me that's very interesting is we're dealing with a sort of simultaneous transparency and opacity. and the transparency is the fact that i am able to acquire satellite

photographs of nuclear sites in iran, of a sort that would have blown the socks off a cia chief in the 1950s, within hours. but actually, at the same time, i am grappling with very, very sensitive claims about intelligence that are much more challenging to vet, scrutinise, probe. and i think that this is a problem we are finding in many conflicts around the world. and how do you go about that challenge that you described in the last part of your answer, that you're getting information about what's happening in iran often from your sources, but then the work of standing that information up is particularly difficult? well, i think part of the answer is using social media and other channels to try to get first-hand accounts of what's happening on the ground. and that can serve us very well in some circumstances in cities where there are lots of people with mobile phones capturing footage. obviously, it does not serve us

very well when it comes to the question of whether a particular building struck in tehran was a centrifuge production facility for uranium. we can't answer that just by studying the wreckage from the outside. and so the answer, as always with good journalism, as you both know very well, is triangulation. you talk to as many people as you can from a range of different backgrounds and nationalities, and you try to piece together different parts of the puzzle, always accepting that you don't know everything, and, i think, conveying some of those caveats to your readers or your viewers or listeners. would you also try and develop sources within iran, or would doing that put them at risk to a degree that you wouldn't be comfortable with? no, we'd absolutely develop sources within iran. some of my colleagues have excellent sources within iran. and iran is, you know, it is a repressive state, but that doesn't mean people can't talk to you using encrypted apps,

using means of safe and secure communications that would not have been available to people 15 or 20 years ago in the same way. and that allows us to get those direct views of people. i think having said that, though, we are aware that when you talk to some people in iran, they will be operating under conditions of surveillance, of self-censorship, and also they may have to tailor what they say and what they tell you for fear of repercussions, and you have to factor that in. i will say here, of course, on the israeli side, israel has wartime censorship and it has a military censor that operates even in peacetime. so, for instance, israel has asked people not to report on where missiles have struck buildings in case that it helps iranian targeting. and there are certain subjects that israeli journalists cannot report on unless they attribute it to the foreign press. so, that sense of wartime restraint is absolutely operative in

israel to some degree as well. shashank, one aspect of this story which you will be able to cover is the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu's direct communication with iranians, often happening via media outlets, where he is saying this is an opportunity for you to change who controls and runs your country. what's your observation of how he's used the media to deliver that message? well, this is interesting because the israel defence forces have a, um, just as they have an arabic language spokesman, they have a persian language spokesman who delivers messages in farsi. and some of those are operational messages, like the one we saw recently to clear large areas of tehran. but some of those are very political messages. and similarly, from the prime minister, he has used often television channels that are popular in the iranian diaspora, like iran international, as he did the other day to deliver a message effectively of his ambition

of regime change in iran. i think this is particularly effective when you have a very connected population. but iran, of course, is also trying to disrupt and limit the internet domestically because it is aware that that also is a way of keeping itself safe, sometimes. very useful. shashank, thank you very much for joining us on the media show. that's shashank joshi, who's the defence editor of the economist. and now we're also joined by shaina oppenheimer from bbc monitoring, who is in tel aviv. how did you and other outlets in the region hear about this operation first? and also, where you are in tel aviv, how has the domestic media been covering the story, the impact of the strikes in israel? i'll start personally. i was sleeping last thursday night. i was awoken around three in the morning by missile sirens. at this point in the war, you kind of assume they're all being launched from yemen, so there's a tendency

not to take them too seriously. i personally didn't bother to make it to a bomb shelter. i just kind of stood in my hallway. and as the siren ended, it was a bit shorter than usual, i got an alert to my phone which i had never got before, this warning sound saying to take, kind of, be near a protected area. it was quite confusing. and then very quickly, through local media and kind of my own journalist channels, we understood that the israeli military had struck sites in iran. and this is kind of when all of it started. there was a bit of shock and surprise, even though there was a lot of reporting leading up to this that indicated this could happen. and how quickly did you start reporting it, you and others? and of course, i'm very interested in how the domestic media is covering it. um, pretty soon i kind of turned on the channel,

started looking at things, writing my colleagues about it, and kind of i cover mostly israeli media and how it's kind of messaging and portraying events to the public. and very, very quickly, you see this kind of wartime mode kick into gear with israeli media putting up slogans of "together we will win", "israel attacking iran", and very much cheerleading what they see as significant military achievements in iran, while not mentioning whatsoever the civilian impact of those strikes. and do you see different media coverage depending on the political spectrum? or is it all very one note? i would say what's quite striking about this, though, is a general trend in the israeli media and the public is, on the eve of this attack, there was a lot of criticism of prime minister benjamin netanyahu, the way he was handling the war in gaza, and the view that it's dragging

on kind of for his own political survival. and you see that criticism really heavily in the mainstream media, the left-wing media, not so much the right-wing media. the second israel kind of goes and decides to launch an attack on iran, and netanyahu, i will say, has a tendency to pursue kind of, um, favourable public policy, you see, kind of across the board, this kind of excitement and cheerleading and kind of view that this was a good thing. and for netanyahu, you know, we can talk a lot about his calculations, but this was a fantastic distraction from all of the criticism that he has kind of been receiving since october 7th, before october 7th. just on the eve of this, he himself kind of being able to escape a pretty significant threat to his own ruling coalition. and there was even a presenter, wasn't there, comparing him to churchill and other big figures? yeah, we've seen that a lot

in right-wing media. one broadcaster said that by striking iran, netanyahu kind of proved himself to do much more for the world than winston churchill or mlk ever did. though that kind of sentiment is not necessarily shocking from something like channel 14, which is kind of likened to the israeli fox news. i think what's more striking is when you see it in mainstream media, when the day before there was so much criticism of the way he handles his kind of military policy. that was shaina oppenheimer and shashank joshi speaking to us on wednesday. now, this week marked eight years since the grenfell tower fire in london. it was a high-rise residential building and 72 people lost their lives, including 18 children. a public inquiry found that their deaths were avoidable. now, netflix has released

a new documentary that investigates what happened. it's called grenfell uncovered and a key focus is who knew what and when about the flammable cladding that had been put around the tower. this is described as sticking a petrol tanker to the outside of a building. this was a huge corporate scandal. there's internal emails that say, "oops, we are not clean." sadly, companies were able to find a way around the regulations. any minister who wants to introduce a regulation has to scrap one. we raised concerns with the council. we were labelled scroungers, we didn't deserve anything, so just shut up. there are thousands of buildings that still have the combustible cladding. feel free to ask me as many questions as you like, but use your time wisely. right. we were joined by the director of grenfell uncovered, olaide sadiq. obviously, it took some time, and i think it was about making it a safe space for

people to want to tell us their story. there are some people who have spoken in this documentary at length, probably for the first time to this degree. obviously, they've done maybe smaller news pieces and stuff like that. and there are people who are taking part, not necessarily bereaved and survivors, but are taking part for the first time in a grenfell documentary. so, it was about buying into what we were saying we wanted to do and believing us. so it was about building trust and saying that we want to make this different, we want to make this purposeful, we want to make this bold, and we want people to understand what happened and how it happened. and i think, you know, the trust was there, the trust was built, and it allowed people to come to us and tell their stories. and actually, i think they welcomed the opportunity to do so, because a lot of people want to keep speaking, but they haven't had resolved, they haven't had a conclusion. so, whilst they haven't had that, the grenfell story is still very real for them. now, the grenfell report, the inquiry report, identified a series of failures by both government and the private sector, rendering the tower a deathtrap and the cladding was pinpointed

as the principal factor for the rapid spread of the fire. and drilling down into who knew what about the cladding and when is, as we were saying, a key aspect of your documentary. what new evidence did you uncover and how did you get it? so, we obviously combed through the inquiry in fine detail. so, there are a lot of things from the inquiry that people might not have seen before that we've brought to light. and we also went through our own endeavours to look into paperwork and different actions that took place in america to understand that one of the companies involved who made the cladding may have known about the dangers of the products, you know, years before the fire. that's what we wanted to find out. and i think that's what we did find out. and that's what we've brought to the surface in a way that we feel is new and hasn't been done before. and you took legal action, i think, in order to get some internal emails released between staff at this company, the cladding manufacturer

in the us, arconic. what did they reveal? how did you do that and what did they reveal? i mean, the process was about submitting a, you know, a case to do it and that had to go through its own process. um, and that took some time. so, that was the how. we didn't kind of go to war with them, but we put our case and we had to wait for an answer. and what it revealed was that senior executives at arconic were aware of the dangers of that particular product before and during the sale of grenfell, and even just after the sale, and not at one point did they, you know, step in and maybe pull it from the sale or advise that it wasn't suitable, even though there was documents to show that the pe version of that product wasn't suitable for high-rise buildings, and that is the product that ended up on grenfell tower, unfortunately. so yes, these were the cassette-shaped cladding elements that went up so quickly up the side of that building, once the fire started.

is what you found significantly different to the criticism of arconic by the inquiry chairman sir martin moore-bick, because he said the company had "deliberately and dishonestly concealed test data "going back to 2005 "that showed its cladding burnt in an extremely dangerous way "and misled the market with safety statements "it knew to be false," he said. yeah, i'd say we were aligned with what he says and i think we've tried to go further in trying to highlight that. because not everyone probably would've listened to sir martin moore-bick's delivery or read the inquiry or followed the inquiry. we wanted to make, not just about arconic, but everyone involved in the grenfell story, we wanted to make that information digestible to a lot of audiences who may not know about grenfell at all, or know who's involved. and what response have you had from arconic? their response is in the film and their response was brief, and their response was that they didn't mislead and they stand by their product being safe to use

in building construction. and we did, of course, ask for a statement from the company. we didn't get a response. but at the grenfell inquiry final report last year, they said that "their subsidiary "arconic architectural products sas "supplied sheets of aluminium composite material "that were used to manufacture the rainscreen "for the grenfell tower refurbishment." they add, "this product was safe to use "as a building material and legal to sell in the uk, "as well as the more than 30 other countries "in which aap customers purchased the product. "we reject any claim that aap sold an unsafe product." hello, olaide, it's ros here listening to you talking with katie. as i'm listening to you, i'm wondering what kind of response you've had from the community around grenfell tower and whether you were nervous about showing the community the film. i wouldn't say i was nervous. the response actually has been predominantly positive. i think obviously there's so much to the grenfell story and there's only so much you can include. we can't tell every story and we know we're not

the first documentary and we're probably unlikely to be the last. but i would say the response has been really positive. it's been very emotional. it's a very, very emotional space given that it's eight years on, very recently. the silent walk i was at on saturday was very sombre. i think, with the announcement of the tower coming down, there's a very different feel in the community. so, i think people welcomed seeing it and i think they appreciated the opportunity to see it before it was launched on the platform, and that feedback was very raw, very emotional, but it was very emotionally charged as well. and i think it galvanised a lot of people who feel like this could help to push the dial somewhat in their push for change and justice. and you use the word galvanise. is it your hope that, more broadly, the many people who'll watch this documentary on netflix will be galvanised? are you hoping for an impact, such as in a very different way we saw from programmes like adolescence or mr bates vs the post office? i mean, i think if it had a sliver of the same, that'd be amazing. both those

programmes did such an amazing job of igniting conversations and getting people talking and pushing for change. and i think that's what the grenfell community and the bereaved and survivors want. they want change, they want accountability, they want justice. and i think the way we've packaged this film, i hope that would be something that can kick-start those conversations. i think if it's having real conversations with decision-makers in this country, i think that would be massive for us and massive for all those directly affected by the fire. because it is a story that doesn't just concern the victims and the bereaved. i think it concerns all of us. we all live in this country and it happened in this country and it may well could happen again if change isn't made. so i think it would be amazing if the documentary does have a wider impact on the cladding still on buildings, on the way we govern this country, the way people in social housing are treated. there's a number of things that we cover that we'd like conversations to be started from, for sure. now, next on the media show, we're going to talk about

the social media platform reddit. if you haven't used the site, well, it's built around over 100,000 interest-based communities, and they focus on everything from politics to gardening to cute animals. it has more than 100 million daily active users globally. we spoke to laura nestler, reddit's global head of community. reddit is a community of communities. it's a place where people, anyone, you can come together around the things that you care about the most. so, you can go and learn about something, but also you can go in and get really deep on a niche, particular interest and find people there that are just as passionate about those things as you are. so, for example... so, how you get into it? just describe for people what do you actually do? you know, when you go on a subreddit or a thread, what is it? sure. so, a subreddit is just a community. like you mentioned, there's over 100,000. they're all created and run by community members themselves. so you could search

for a new skincare regime or how to rebuild an engine, and you'll find a community for that on reddit. you can immediately join the conversation by posting or commenting or voting and just getting involved. ros and i are news people first and foremost, i suppose. and there's a new report by the reuters institute released yesterday which suggests that social media is now the main source of news in the us. do users go to reddit for news, i wonder? well, certainly what's happening in the news is happening on reddit. it really is a reflection of whatever's happening in the world. but the nuance here is that people go to reddit for discussion about the news. so you'll see a breaking headline posted and then hundreds of people on reddit unpacking it in the comments. they want to recount the play-by-play. they want to assess the impact of whatever event just broke. so it's not just about what happened, it's really about the conversation. and you've mentioned several times that the moderators and the community are at the heart of this, and that each different section may have different rules.

so, help us understand how moderation works. how do the rules get enforced? our unique moderation model is really what keeps reddit real. it's what creates spaces for people to feel vulnerable and be authentic. there are three layers of moderation. first, reddit, the platform, governs the infrastructure. so things like policies, safety standards. we enforce a set of rules that applies to everybody. but moderators are the second layer. every community has at least one moderator, and these are community members, not reddit employees. and what they do is they create an additional set of rules that sit on top of our platform policies that are tailored to the community's unique needs and goals. so, for example, uk personal finance, they have an additional set of rules that includes no specific investment recommendation. my favourite example is a community called cats standing up. right... you may be surprised to find out that... sounds niche. yeah. reddit corporate, we do not have any

site-wide rules dictating whether cats can be sitting or standing. that may be a surprise, but you better believe that in that community your post will be removed by the moderators if it's not a cat and that cat is not standing up. well... we also have a third layer of moderation, which is our users. so, this is really important because users' participation is what makes reddit really authentic. it's how content is displayed within the communities. and what it does is it builds the community's culture because it creates a single shared view of all of the content with the community posts. but i think what's important to remember is that the power on reddit is distributed by design, right? it is this tension and checks and balances with communities at the centre of gravity that all exist to make sure the communities thrive. but if the communities are the centre of gravity and you have this model which really can only thrive with those communities being very active, i'm listening, thinking, well, i can understand why people might want to join these communities, but i'm also thinking,

this sounds like a lot of work for someone to maintain these communities. does reddit pay any of them? we do not pay our moderators, no. i think what's important to remember is that moderators are here for their communities, right, not for reddit. they don't have a specific set of tasks that reddit is giving them. so our role at reddit is really to empower our moderators, ensure that they have the tools and the programmes to be successful at whatever the goal is for their individual community. mm-hm. and that's what we've been investing in on reddit side. and i must ask you about ai. of course, any conversation around any tech product has to feature that. you place a huge emphasis as a company, and you've also done this during the interview, on the importance of community and of the individual moderators who make reddit so special. but surely there is a risk here that as reddit embraces ai in a range of ways, you won't be such a human company, that actually the technology will become more dominant in shaping the experience.

if left unchecked, yes. but i believe that it's as much of a challenge as it is an opportunity. so, looking ahead, of course we're really focused on preserving the humanness of reddit and the internet in general. people are exhausted by inauthentic information online. everything is polished, everything is sponsored, everything is ai-generated. and that's just not reddit, right? reddit is real. so, what we're doing to make sure that reddit stays human is exploring ways to confirm that users are real people without needing their personal information. so, we need to know you're a human, but we don't need to know your name. so that helps in terms of the users, but in terms of how the moderation and the site works, if you are, for example, and i think this is correct, reddit is allowing ai models to train on reddit content. once the ai has learned how reddit content works, surely it will be in a position to moderate, to shape the content that is posted or not posted on reddit, and thus it will do quite a few people who love the platform out of a role.

well, i would disagree. i think, when used well, it can really help moderators flag things like rule-breaking content. imagine if you have a niche community and you have a set of rules, that ai could understand those rules. and when people come into your community, maybe that ai, when you are posting something that's against the rule, for example a dog in the cats standing up community, um, ai could help solve that for a mod before they have to see it. so, really, i think that it's important that human verification is top priority, right? reddit's going to thrive because it's real. it's people helping other people. and ai needs to support the moderators. there's never a world where ai should replace the moderators, because, at that point, reddit loses everything that makes it special. that was laura nestler, reddit's global head of community. and that is it for this week's edition of the media show. thank you very much indeed for your company, and bye-bye.

bye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts.

we come on air with some breaking news. president trump has just said that the united states has completed a successful attack on three locations in iran. he delivered that news in a post on truth social, you can see that post on screen, that post coming in the last ten minutes or so.