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 Democr…

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…

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 re…

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.…

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.…

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, …

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…

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 …

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 …

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 propag…

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 exper…

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 …

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.…

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 …

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.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

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.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

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.…

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 Maka…

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…

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 …

On April 5th 2018 author and journalist Laurie Macfarlane came to Resort Studios in Margate to give a talk about the economics of housing and the politics of regeneration. This is a recording of his talk and the Q&A that followed. The recording is by Dan Scott, who co-produced the event.Laurie is the co-author of Rethinking the Economics of Housing…

We're back after an action-packed hiatus in media democracy land. This week Tom and Dan talk about balance, about Andrew Adonis' Twitter jihad against the BBC's pro-Brexit Bias, and about the prospects for an alliance between liberals and leftists against the gathering menace of the far right. At the end Dan tries to drag the centrists away from th…

This week Tom and Dan are joined by Will Davies, Reader in Political Economy at Goldsmiths and author of 'The Happiness Industry' and 'The Limits of Neoliberalism'. Will is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and his most recent article there looks at the scandals and anxieties that intersect at the Cambridge Analytica story. We tal…

This week Tom and Dan are joined by Professor Christopher Simpson to talk about his 1994 book The Science of Coercion. We explore the drivers of innovation in coercive communication, its origins in the military and the ways in which its techniques and assumptions have bled into academia and business. We go on to talk about the state of the art in m…

This week Tom and Dan are joined by Wendy Liu (@dellsystem) and Hettie O'Brien (@hettieveronica) to take another bite out of the emerging tech monopolies. We talk about Silicon Valley start-up culture and how to stop it, about the Tech Workers' Coalition and the emerging revolt against capitalist command and control, about the challenge the new mon…

Dan and Tom are joined by Alex Nunns, author of the award winning book, 'The Candidate', a second edition of which has just been published. They discuss the media strategy and policies of the Labour Party, social media and the embarrassing failures of Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toybee and the rest of them.…

This last week has seen the UK media engage in one of its increasingly absurd bouts of Cold War re-enactment. Meanwhile, a shadowy group of hard right Brexiteers are busy plotting a domestic revolution in league with foreign plutocrats. Kam Sandhu joins us to discuss both stories, and their implications for our media and our politics.…

It’s the difficult second episode of the difficult second season. But Dan and Tom style it out with the help of Nick Srnicek and Laurie Laybourn-Langton. The learned guests discuss the political economy of platform capitalism, the evils of advertising and algorithms and the scope for the development of new public platforms.Music by Makaih Beats.…

2.1 Conspiracy! by Media Democracy PodOleh Media Democracy Pod

Dan and Tom meet IRL for a Media Democracy Christmas Special and discuss the Philosopher King and Twitter personality A.C. Grayling, the Enlightenment, centrism, Tony Blair and the media’s general obduracy in the face of political change.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

Matthew Brown has played a leading role in Preston City Council's work to maximise the benefits of public and quasi-public spending in the city. Changes to the culture of procurement in the city is having important redistributive effects and helping to foster a stronger co-operative sector. Here he talks with Dan Hind about the origins of Preston M…

Tom and Dan reflect on the first season of Media Democracy and the Summer of 2017: Corbyn's electoral breakthrough and a brief moment of media introspection; Snow, Robinson and Harris; everyone waking up to Facebook; the need to connect media policy with a wider programme of democratisation. Plus, Tom is accused of spreading fake news by Nick Robin…

This week we speak to Jamie Stern-Weiner about reports of antisemitism at the Labour conference. Jamie is a graduate student in Middle Eastern Studies. He was co-founder of New Left Project and is the editor of 'Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Toughest Questions', forthcoming from OR Books.…

How does the financial and monetary system work? One thing's for sure, you won't get the answers from the Establishment media, which seems incurably incurious when it comes to the mysteries of money. So this week, after a quick chat about the launch of the Media Fund, and a few pops at the Guardian and the BBC, Dan and Tom speak to author and publi…

This week Tom and Dan chat briefly about the Labour Party Conference and the discussions there about the politics of the media. The episode ends with an extract from John McDonnell's speech at the World Transformed, where the Shadow Chancellor talks about role new technology can play in democratising policy making in the Labour Party and beyond.…

As activists head for Brighton, Dan and Tom discuss the power of the new media oligopolies and a media reform agenda for an incoming Corbyn Government.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

This week Thomas Barlow joins us to discuss our political and environment crisis and how the Media Fund is seeking to address it through organised support for independent media.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

In the second part of our interview with Sarah O'Connell we talk about the growing distance between journalists and the people they cover, and about how this gap can be closed.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

Sarah O'Connell talks to Media Democracy about the class and cultural differences that separate broadcast journalism from its audiences. Sarah began her career as a broadcast journalist in 1999 and has worked at the BBC's Political Research Unit, Panorama, Newsnight, Al Jazeera and Sky News.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

In this week's show we chat about 'Traingate' and Jon Snow's MacTaggart Lecture before speaking to Hicham Yezza about Islamophobia and how it plays out in the British media.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

Having spent a week as daily readers, Dan and Tom review 'The Sun' and discuss the rise and slow decline of Britain's highest circulating daily newspaper.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

This week journalist and campaigner Caroline Molloy joins us to talk about the current state of the NHS, the media's coverage of healthcare, and the way back from the brink. Caroline's work, and unrivalled coverage of the NHS, can be found at the OurNHS strand on Open Democracy.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

In Episode 5 of Media Democracy we speak to David Wearing about British foreign policy and its underlying political economy, how it is discussed in the mainstream media and what the opportunities are for challenging a dangerous elite policy consensus.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

This week on Media Democracy, Dan and Tom discuss the debate over online abuse in politics and the media over the last fortnight.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

In Episode 3 of Media-Democracy, we speak to Spinwatch's Tamasin Cave about the lobbying industry in the UK.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

In episode 2 of the Media Democracy podcast, Tom Mills (@ta_mills) and Dan Hind (@danhind) discuss the role, and conception, of the public in public service media in the UK.Oleh Media Democracy Pod

Episode 1 of the Media Democracy podcast with Tom Mills (@ta_mills) and Dan Hind (@danhind). In this show we talk about the recent UK general election and begin to explore some of the themes we'll be looking at in more detail over the coming weeks and months.Oleh Media Democracy Pod