 Yn ymdillion, mae'r amser Ross Greer. Mae yna OSP Fyraedd yng Ngôr, ac rwy'n ysgrifennu'r Gwbl Sgolwysgol Cymru'r Gwbl Sgolwysgol Cymru. Yn ymdillion, rwy'n cael ei ddaeth i'w cyhoeddiadau arno eich gyffredinol i ddim yn informacio ac eu ddim yn informacio, mae'n cymryd i'r hynny o'r tarif o war a gwyfnig. Rydych i gwybod i'w ddim yn Gwbl Sgolwysgol Cymru o elu hynny y 18 hynny sydd ydych chi'n gweithio'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r Ffosbyddiad yma. Fosbyddiad o'r ffordd o'r Fosbyddiad hefyd dim y cymryd. Mae'n cael ei ddweud o'r parolion iawn i'r parolion, mae yna bod y gallwn amlŷn gweithio'r ffordd o wneud o bobl yn gweithio'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r gweithio'r ffordd o'r gweithio'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r gweithio'r ffordd o'r lle. Mae'n cael ei bod yn cael ei ganhaeth i gyfain o'ch parlynedd. Mae'r ddechrau'r gwaith yw'r cyflwyno ar gyfer. mae'n ddigonion o gyflym yma sy'n fawr yw'r cyfrannu cyfrant ymlaen i'r lefyddau mae'r cyflwyno ar gyfer yn gyflym. Mae'n ddigonion o'r cyfrannu cyfrannu cysylltu yn ymdill, yma ond mae'r cyfrannu yn gweithio'n ddefnyddio'r cyfrannu gyflym a'r ddweud yn gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r Llywodraeth Rhywbeth, I'm delighted that we've got an expert panel here to join us this afternoon. So I'm going to introduce everyone on the panel and then we'll get stuck straight into this. So immediately on my right, your left, we've got Joanna Szostek, who is a lecturer in political communication at the University of Glasgow. She's also an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. To my left, we've got Dr Serring Topgal, who is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Birmingham. He's a political scientist with research interest in Chinese politics and foreign policy and Asia-Pacific affairs with attention to security and ethno-nationalism. Dr Topgal's latest book is China and Tibet, The Perils of Insecurity. Joining us online, we've got Olga Robinson, who is the assistant editor at BBC Monitoring, which reports and analyses news from media around the world. She's experienced Russian media analysts, she specialises in information manipulation and disinformation techniques, so very relevant to this discussion. Olga's also a native Russian speaker and has most recently been covering the war in Ukraine. Finally, we've got, on my far right, though politically I'm sure that's not the case, we've got James Blake, who's head of media and humanities at Edinburgh Napier University. James has worked on the ITV News at 10 as a specialist home affairs producer for Channel 4 News, as a news reporter for Channel 4, and he worked as a reporter and programme producer for STV News and the STV Scotland Tonight current affairs programme. So with that, we're going to dive straight in, just starting off with a question to frame our discussion and we'll put this one to Olga in the first instance. Olga, could you just tell us from your perspective what is disinformation, what are we trying to grapple with and talk about this afternoon? Well, it's a very good question and it's one of the classic ones, you get to ask it as a disinformation expert. So disinformation in the way we tackle it is the spread of false or misleading information with the intent to benefit personally or financially or politically. And this is exactly why this intent, this element of intent, deliberate spread of misleading information or false information, is how we distinguish it from misinformation because at the time of crisis in particular, breaking news situation, a lot of people do spread misleading information and false information but they do it so without necessarily having some nefarious intent. And that's how we define the two and differentiate those in our work. Thanks very much. Joanna, how would you distinguish between this new wave of this new challenge that we're facing and the misinformation that we've always seen in political communication, particularly in geopolitics? I mean, misinformation and disinformation are not new problems. I mean, you can go back to World War I, World War II and I mean that there were use of rumours, there was use of misleading information back then, probably go back even further. I think what's new is the environment in which disinformation and misinformation now circulates. So if you think about the speed with which misinformation and disinformation can spread, the number of people, how easy it is to put misinformation and disinformation out there, which means that pretty much anyone with a device connected to the internet can be part of this problem, fueling this problem. And the fragmentation of audiences, that's been a major change of the past few decades that people these days can select themselves into niche people called bubbles and basically surround themselves with one, I guess, worldview in which disinformation is an important part. So, thanks, and saying I'm coming at this on the point of view of somebody who's had a long term interest in the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the fate of the Tibetan people. I think quite a lot of folk will become somewhat more familiar with this issue in recent months due to the situation in Russia and Ukraine. But could you tell us a little bit about how information warfare has been used in the context of China's territorial claims to other territories like Tibet? The first thing to note is that historically China has a tradition or a practice of controlling information. So both misinformation and disinformation played out even during the imperial periods. Burning of books, succeeding dynasties, writing the history of the preceding dynasty to benefit the current dynasty. And in the current period of the People's Republic of China, where China is ruled by the Communist Party, you will see that one of the three main pillars of power is the propaganda department. There's the military and then there's the internal security dimension, but the third element is the propaganda department. And control over that is crucial for the top leader or the Communist Party to retain power. And in Tibet as well as in other places like Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and also very clearly on Taiwan. And also you can say other territorial disputes in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, both misinformation and disinformation from China's part are very strong elements of China's strategy. And in fact information war and psychological warfare are crucial elements of China's strategies towards Taiwan, for example, and other territories that China is contesting with other countries. James, you have substantial experience in what we now call traditional media. Most traditional media outlets have been experienced in pretty, certainly in this country, long-term decline in levels of public trust and satisfaction, not consistent, but there have been significant challenges there. How are traditional media outlets responding to this new challenge, whether it comes from state actors or more organic conspiracy theories on social media? Well, most of my background has been in broadcasting, in radio, first of all, and then in television, so I'm coming at this very much from a TV point of view. I think there is a real important role for traditional media outlets which is focused on trust. Where we're in a digital landscape where more and more people are watching online and on social media, where there are so many people engaged in creating multimedia content, I think it's really important that there are organisations and individuals that we can turn to who are telling stories and creating content that we can trust. And I think that's a hugely important role and I think it's becoming more important, particularly in a situation where we have a big conflict in the heart of Europe, where truth inevitably disappears, where we need people that we can turn to, journalists and reporters and programmes and content, where we can trust them to be, I'm not talking about telling the truth because telling the truth is a hard thing, but who are telling stories that are fair, that are accurate, that are balanced as much as can be. And I think part of this is there's a real opportunity for journalists here where you've got so many citizen journalists and it's a phrase that I don't like, where there are so many people who are using their devices to film things, to interview things, to tell stories about the community that they're in and if we're talking Ukraine, I think it's really important that people in Ukraine can tell those stories. And I think that's a real opportunity for traditional media organisations to reach out to those people, to work with them, to become a partner with them and to enable those stories to be told. But equally we have to make sure that we can trust those people that we are working with and that can be a really difficult thing to do because yes you might get some video content, you might get some interviews from established media players, from agencies like Reuters and AP and so on. You have fixes on the ground, people that you work with on the ground and that's great, but what happens when somebody approaches you unsolicited with really interesting story and content? How do you verify it and how do you verify if you're sitting at a desk in London or in Edinburgh? So there's real opportunities here but there are real dangers I think for journalists. Absolutely. Now that I've set the scene of the general challenge, we're going to look at a couple of the specific situations starting off as you would expect with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I should probably declare an interest at this point in that last week the Russian government sanctioned me for reasons that I don't quite yet understand but I apparently now have a personal stake in this. I can't say it massively disturbed my holiday plans, I wasn't planning on going to Vladivostok any time soon. But Olga, if we could start off with yourself, it would be interesting to hear some of your observations about how the Russian and Ukrainian governments have been trying on all sorts of levels both with their own populations and globally to try and control the narrative around the war. It would be interesting to hear from you about the ways in which they're trying to do that and the relative success that each is having. The success question is a very interesting one and a very complex one but let me give you a brief overview of what Ukraine and Russia have been doing to control the narrative. Obviously both sides have been involved in an information war around the actual invasion. When it comes to Ukraine, as some of my colleagues at BBC monitoring who cover Ukraine have pointed out they have deployed so far things like memes and urban myths. For example, the very famous story now of the ghost of Kiev that's been doing the rounds, a really viral story but just the only problem is that the fighter jet pilot doesn't actually exist and it's more of a collective image of the defenders of Kiev at the beginning of the war. As Ukrainian officials did admit in the end. Now when it comes to memes, obviously probably everybody knows that meme about the Russian ship. Let's translate it as go away but it was a bit more rude than that and that's used now everywhere even in merchandise I've seen it and from that perspective this kind of the use of this kind of very punchy memes and feel good stories that really stick with people and you hear about them over and over again and in a way that's kind of a success of them one might say. Even earlier today as satellite images were coming out from Crimea from the Russian airfield that was hit the Ukrainian Defence Ministry actually released a sort of tongue-in-cheek video on Twitter which has already been watched one million times I just checked and in it they in a very kind of ironic way encouraging Russian tourists not to come to Crimea because well it may not necessarily be safe anymore and that kind of approach is very very different from what you can see coming out of Russia. Now what we are seeing coming from the Russian side is that whenever it comes to attacks that are blamed on Russia or any incidents like the butcher killings of civilians in butcher what we are seeing in response to these incidents from Russia is one of the disinformation researchers described as a firehose of disinformation when the whole ecosystem of Russian media and a number of disinformation actors affiliated with that are trying to pollute the information space with a number of or as many as possible confusing and at times contradictory theories that are not necessarily aimed at convincing anyone that this or that particular theory is correct it's more likely aimed to confuse people and just make them think well it's just too much information I'm going to switch off and nobody knows the truth we'll never know. Now whether that is having an impact is an interesting question because on the one hand when I speak to people who still live in Russia and some of the people I know and also people we interview for various stories you can hear people are echoing some of those allegations and some of those theories and saying well how about this how about that we may not necessarily we're not being told everything we may not necessarily know the whole truth but whether that is coming because they are bombarded with that kind of information they live in an information bubble or they are doing it because it's psychologically difficult for them to accept that what the Russian soldiers are doing in Ukraine may not necessarily be what they think and whether that kind of psychological effect is having an impact rather than believing disinformation well that's a question that is really difficult to answer but we do know that quite a lot of people in Russia and that is evident from even independent polls that are being conducted that the majority of the population is supporting the invasion most likely the propaganda that is coming out of the Russian media and the whole kind of Russian media ecosystem, Russian state media ecosystem is having an impact for sure You mentioned two quite interesting examples of Ukrainian government propaganda the first being the Russian warship Goef yourself snake island incident that was primarily aimed at the Ukrainian population themselves to inspire resilience and globally amongst Ukraine's allies but you mentioned another example there of the Ukrainian government producing propaganda directed at the Russian population in this case about Crimea which as a tourist resort, the occupation annexation of Crimea was a real high point for Putin in terms of domestic popularity so any attempt by the Ukrainians to undermine Russian public confidence and his ability to hold it would be really important I think it's fair to say that the first of those attempting to inspire the Ukrainian population and global allies has been successful how much evidence is there that Ukraine's propaganda is reaching the Russian population is having their desired effect of undermining confidence and the operation in the government in Putin himself Well, we need to look at the kind of information ecosystem that exists in Russia and it's fairly difficult overall for Ukrainian messaging to reach vast numbers of the Russian population Let's not forget that the majority of Russians still are using television state television as the main source of news obviously that kind of messaging from the Ukrainian side is not going to be on Russian television unless they want to walk it or present it in a way that suits them Now, when it comes to online things are slightly different and you can find alternative information online but you have to look for it so YouTube is not a band and you can find, for example, one of a former lawyer a lawyer and opposition activist, Fagin has a YouTube channel which is fairly popular and he does interviews with Ukrainian officials and you can access it from Russia The question is, you need to know where to find that channel and you need to actually go and look for it For example, if you are an ordinary Russian and you only use YouTube to find recipes or fun videos or cat videos you won't be necessarily served information about Ukraine so if you have no doubts about what is happening in Ukraine is a special military operation as the Russian authorities are calling it then you just want to go to YouTube and find that information Now, we know that access to Twitter is restricted Instagram, yes, people can use VPNs but again, it's fairly tax savvy people a lot of people in the kind of smaller towns and villages probably would not necessarily know not many of them would know how to use VPNs so it's a bit tricky so it's possible that the information coming out of Ukraine is reaching some people in Russia and it's sort of trickling in into the information space but I find it hard to believe that it's reaching masses of population because of the sheer because of the efforts by the Kremlin to control the narrative that is happening in the country and let's not forget that even when people try to check in Russia, try to check I don't know whether they are going on the Yandex search engine which is the largest search engine in Russia millions of people are seeing on the front page five top news stories from Russian media and they come from pro-Kremlin sources or present and they present what's happening in Ukraine in a very certain way and these people, even though they're not necessarily looking for anything related to Ukraine they are passively consuming the messaging by just, you know, you just look and you just see that on the front page, you can't get away from it and we shouldn't underestimate just how complex the Russian authorities' efforts are to try and control the narrative in the country, both in the kind of traditional media but also online Joanna, how would you rate the Russian propaganda effort's success so far particularly interested, not just in their domestic efforts but their attempts to shape the narrative globally because I think for a lot of folk here if anybody sees Russian propaganda around the war most of it is so laughable, it's pretty easy to dismiss from our perspective but that's a very Anglo-centric or European perspective there's a lot more to the world than that has Russian propaganda around the war had more success in other parts of the world and former Soviet republics for example? I mean it's always hard to judge the sort of impact effect of any kind of media content or propaganda you know, it's hard to distinguish the effect of the media from say pre-existing views and opinions I mean there are certainly parts of the world where certain elements of Russia's narrative resonate and sort of fit with what people how people understand the world for example I mean I think, sorry China is a particularly sort of interesting case because I think you know, many Chinese citizens plus Chinese sort of government officials will share this very very negative view of the West, of NATO, of the United States and so when Russia blames NATO and the West and the United States for what's happening in Ukraine and sort of, yeah the sort of very very anti-Western rhetoric I mean within China that has a certain resonance can we say that's an effect of Russian propaganda? Probably not because the Chinese information space is so restricted I'm not sure you could give the Russian propaganda or propaganda sort of credit for that and there are other parts of the world as well so I think Hungary, so even within the EU you know, there are sort of certain audiences where elements of the Russian narrative do resonate but I mean globally I mean I think Russia was sort of in a losing position from the very start when it came to public opinion just because not violating the borders of a neighbouring state not bombing civilians, not levelling cities but sort of fundamental basic principle of what it means to be decent and to be human I mean they've just sort of violated those norms and values so trying to kind of persuade people that Russia is somehow in the right was always going to be a mammoth task for the Russians so outside of Russia itself of course Can I just jump in very quickly here? Thank you, because when we talk about whether Russian efforts are effective in the west in Europe in particular I think it would be fair to say that largely in the kind of mainstream society if I may say so hasn't been effective but let's not forget there's also conspiracy circles and there are people in the fringe who are already who have already been primed to accepting this kind of idea but people who are somehow suspicious of the establishment suspicious of the west have very very strong anti-western sentiment, anti-U.S. sentiment we are seeing and we are seeing it a lot on telegram they are quite receptive to the Russian messaging and actually one of the most successful messages that I've seen were about around bilabs in Ukraine the claims that US funded bilabs in Ukraine are somehow involved in the production of bioweapons it's been widely debunked but we keep seeing it mentioned as a factor in like your non-circles in Europe and elsewhere and other fringe conspiracy circles and anti-vaq circles and so on so that's something, yes these are fairly small numbers and these are fringe communities but we shouldn't ignore that factor because we are all together Absolutely, I mean as a relatively low profile politician who has spoken up for Ukraine I get messages every single day across social media platforms and my email inbox from people who for example in the case of the bilabs were absolutely convinced the reason the Ukrainians were fighting to the death for Mariupol and as of style was because there was a lab underneath that steel plant with three Canadian generals in it coordinating a chemical weapons programme I mean patently ridiculous it's a very online community of people who bought into that for the kind of reasons that Olga is mentioning of being already massively disenfranchised mistrustful of the western establishment so I'm interested to turn to you now though on the comparison between this very modern blow-by-blow update kind of sorry no pun intended there war that we're seeing a Russian invasion of Ukraine that we are observing in real time through social media with a Chinese occupation of Tibet that happened decades ago and is now in a situation where Tibet is the least free place on earth the most information restricted place on earth if the Chinese invasion and occupation had happened now I realise this is a far-fetched hypothetical how differently do you think that kind of situation would play out when you're looking at for example how China's aspirations for Taiwan are being observed in the media right now the situation with Russia and Ukraine do you think there could have been a very different situation for Tibet if the information flow was different if the technology that we have now simply existed then first of all it's important to note some striking similarities between how the invasion and the current rule of Tibet by the Chinese has played out and what happened in Ukraine in fact in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine not after the Crimea sort of invasion but the current round of invasion going on when President Zelensky was sort of scrambling to roli his country and trying to seek international support particularly military support my thoughts went back to the Tibetan leaders in 1949 and 1950 when the People's Republic of China declared through radio broadcasts that Tibet and Taiwan were left to be liberated the exact word that they used and it was a matter of time before Tibet will be liberated so my thoughts went to how the Tibetan leaders at that time might have felt there are striking similarities in the sense that China decided to invade and justify the invasion and ongoing occupation as a liberation and liberation from who is the question that many people asked at that time and from the Chinese point of view Tibet was being run by a small section of feudal lords who are in turn sort of masterminded by imperialists British imperialists, Americans and also the Indians so China's liberation of the Tibetan Serbs as they called most Tibetans was from these feudal lords these sort of actors and then they also justify by trying to rewrite the history of Tibet and China so I think similar things happened when Putin tried to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine trying to go back to history and also talking about the existence of Nazis and the need to liberate Russians or the Ukrainians from these Nazi people so there are some important similarities also the action-reaction dynamic between Chinese information and disinformation can be on the other hand and reaction by the Tibetans it's important to remember there are Tibetans inside Tibet there are Tibetan exiles with something like a government exile which Tibetans call the Central Tibetan Administration in India and one of the departments or the ministries within the exile government is called the Information and International Relations Department so it has its own information strategy but even inside Tibet despite these very strong censorship and control sometimes even Tibetans inside Tibet managed to speak back and react to Chinese propaganda or information strategy so there are some significant similarities but Tibet is fully under Chinese control while Ukraine is at least most of it is still independent it can act with more independence it has more agency so that's important to keep in mind with regards to how the invasion would have played out if it happened now I think it's important to point out that maybe it would have made a difference it would have allowed the Tibetans to unite more quickly and strongly united front if Tibetans from all the Tibetan Plateau were able to see what the Chinese were doing in different places in Tibet the Tibetan leaders and the government at that time may have been able to mobilize the population much more strongly like Zelenskyd did and also get more international support the international public opinion may have been more supportive on these things but ultimately I'm wondering whether all of this benefit from information would have overcome the real politic if you look at the British policy towards Tibet in the 19th century and 20th century when Britain ruled India the most common refrain was avoiding the wrath of China people British colonial officials like the political officer in Sikkim or later the British representative in Lhasa the Tibetan capital they knew the ground situations they interacted more with the Tibetan government and the Tibetan officials and they were much more sympathetic to the Tibetan positions but then if you move to the India office the colonial government of India they had their own interests which is to protect India from the northern threats from Russia or elsewhere and then if you move up the hierarchy to London to the foreign ministry they were dealing with China so from that point of view China was much more significant as an economic partner and a strategic partner and Tibet did not have resources and things like that at that point to justify stronger British support and all of that and then also if you look at the Indian government response to Chinese innovation of Tibet India was of course a new republic becoming independent only in 1947 but when China decided to liberate or invade Tibet in 1949 after the establishment of the PRC if you look at the communication between the Indian government and the Chinese government India was most directly affected by the Chinese occupation of Tibet you see the border dispute that is going on and the clashes in the Himalayas and all the other threats to Indian security from China's position in Tibet but in those days India's main sort of communication with Beijing was you're doing it at the wrong time liberating or invading Tibet because India's thinking at that point was to get China PRC into the United Nations India was telling the Chinese you're doing it at the wrong time because we want China to become a United Nations member and that is the main sort of interest of the international community of Asia of India and your sort of plan to invade or liberate Tibet is going to jeopardise all of that there was no desire to protect Tibet and its sovereignty at that point so coming back to my point about whether all of these benefits of information would have overcome the real politic calculations of the countries is I think a big question quite a lot of speculation now understandably as a result of Russia's invasion has turned towards China and their aspirations never seated since 1949 for Taiwan the Chinese and Taiwanese governments are both very closely observing situation between Russia and Ukraine and the wider global response to what lessons do you think they're both learning particularly on the communication and misinformation side of this oh yeah, the information and psychological warfare is a very crucial part of the PLA's plan to take over Taiwan and going back to the imperial period where deception and the use of information and misinformation as a military strategy was very strong so it is an important element of the PLA's strategy to take over Taiwan and the Taiwanese have been living with these strategies the hackings, denial of services operations it happened when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan recently when the Taiwanese government was not able to use this sort of internet and information system for a while and Taiwan is particularly vulnerable because the only access to internet is through an undersea cable which runs from China so if the Chinese cut that Taiwan is very vulnerable Taiwan is trying to develop alternative satellite based alternatives to become less dependent upon China so it is a very important part of the Chinese strategy and the Taiwanese have lived with this for a while and they are also developing counter strategies and I think one of the good things from the Taiwan's perspective of China's recent military drills around Taiwan is the Chinese revealed what kind of assets they are going to deploy how they are going to isolate Taiwan keep the Americans away and try to take over so the Taiwanese and Americans and other interested parties would have learned lessons learned about China's strategies and try to closely observe it and develop counter strategies James, how are broadcasters grappling with this issue because I'm interested in particular in how the tradition and in the case of the UK the requirement for impartiality in broadcasting comes up against a situation where either there is in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine one clear aggressor and defender or in the case of some of these particular theories some of it, it might be objectively false but there is a significant group of people who may believe in it how do broadcasters wrestle between providing fair and accurate coverage and fulfilling the duty, the obligation to be impartial and balanced There is a lot here and it is really interesting to see how the discussion has moved China and Tibet let me come to your question through a slightly longer way I think I talked before about how citizen journalism can be a real opportunity and I think the fact that everybody almost has a camera in their pocket can be a really good thing and I've lost count of how many demonstrations and riots and protests I've been on but what has been wonderful I think is that the fact that people are there filming what is going on means I hope that the police or the army or whoever are in positions of power will think twice before they are before they overstep the mark before they are too violent against protesters in front of them and I have seen it happen and I think that is a really important and wonderful thing where we have citizens who are there recording being witnesses on the ground and recording that I think that is a wonderful thing We did have that in Tibet I think in 2009 there are some images of a big demonstration in 2009 against the Chinese invasion and some grainy footage came out of Chinese officials and authorities being quite violent against protesters and monks and so on and what then happened was the Chinese said that these were fake and released their own images of who they claimed were Tibetan protesters destroying property and so on and I think one of the important things that is a real shame about this climate of disinformation is that it enables people who are in positions of power who have been caught doing wrong things because they've been filmed it enables them to say it's fake and I think that is a real shame because even though we have evidence there even though we have all they need to do is go it's fake and it just plants that seed of doubt and already we're talking well maybe it didn't quite happen that way and it goes back to what Olga and Joanna were talking about just in terms of the success of the propaganda operation that's coming out of Russia all you need to do is get people questioning it it feeds into conspiracy theories but then other people start talking about it and although it might be quickly debunked by media organisations and by BBC monitoring and journalists that are doing a wonderful job the fact that we're talking about it and the fact that it's in the public domain and it's spreading means that it's done their job means that the propaganda has done its job and that I think is a real shame so going back to your question what can media organisations do I think media organisations can help debunk videos in particular where they are false and I think BBC monitoring does a fantastic job I think other fact check services do a great job there are also independent organisations that do that I think that's really important I think more widely we are all becoming experts in video based forensic analysis which I think is really interesting that we are now actively looking at video that we see online and thinking and I hope this is true of most people and are thinking is this true, is this right let's look into it because there's a lot of video that's coming that's old or that's been treated or slowed down in a way that's come from the 2014 conflict and not from now and it's really interesting there was a video from Ukraine recently there was a fuel depot and people online started to say hang on a second that must be fake because some of the firefighters have got Edmonton Canada on the back and it turned out that the fire department in Edmonton donated a lot of fire jackets to Ukraine and the firefighters in Ukraine but the fact that it was doubted I think that's a good thing that we're watching videos and we're looking at that content with critical eyes and that it turns out to be true and that's great but the fact that and I think it beholds all of us to be a bit sceptical and to do our own legwork in terms of what we trust what we share importantly and therefore which organisations which journalists, which reporters do we go to for the stories about the world Joanna, there's quite a lot of focus on this at the moment but the focus is on governments that would be considered hostile to our own Russian disinformation, Chinese disinformation and censorship the reality of certainly the post-second world war era is Britain and America have engaged in this extensively as well whether it was about tilting the scales of elections in Italy and France when the communists were surging going governments in South America is this current focus on Russia and China distorting the scale and the frequency of state sponsored disinformation campaigns go blue because is the reality simply that every government that's capable of doing this is doing this all the time on a greater or lesser scale I mean I would agree that many governments including our own have at various points in history engaged in spreading disinformation there are books written about the UK's experience of that through the Cold War it's quite interesting to read about I mean I would also not want to be too relativist about this, everybody does it and therefore what the Russians are doing we do it too, everybody does it it's not that bad I think that's a slippery slope because I think what actually the Russian government likes to do is to draw parallels between the sort of Western media assistance in certain countries that are trying to democratise and their efforts to sort of spread anti-democratic values in other countries I mean I think values are sort of central to this so yeah I mean you've got to look at I guess, well I mean I don't think disinformation should be spread in any context to be honest but is it sometimes right for Western governments to sponsor news content for people, audiences and other parts of the world I would say if those audiences and other parts of the world aren't being served by domestic media well then absolutely because I am unashamably pro-democracy and if supporting journalism and other parts of the world is part of that kind of encouraging the development of free speech encouraging reporting about topics that are important including corruption and that kind of thing I would be supportive of that but the other side of the fence is that these are all sovereign states and this is the argument that you get from countries like Russia and China which is that the UK, the US, the EU should mind their own business and stay out of our informational environment you pick your values and you take your position I guess on that In the case of a media institution like whether it's BBC World Service or Voice of America where there is a very deliberate effort to make sure that that news and information is reaching countries where that perspective wouldn't otherwise be the case is there a need for a greater level of democratic scrutiny here in Britain and America over those services then there would be say compared to how the BBC is typically scrutinised at either UK or Scottish level does it require something different because it is about directly intervening in another sovereign state Oversight is critically important and in the past mistakes have been made in terms of the level of oversight that was sort of given to various western funded broadcasters I actually teach a class at Glasgow University that looks at the 1956 Hungarian Revolution when sort of Cold War broadcasters from the United States were sort of accused of fuelling revolution there that led to a severe crap dynamism and people kind of losing their lives so this, yeah I think there's got to be critical thinking there's got to be good oversight monitoring of how western broadcasters news providers what their aims are what kind of content they're sharing because this is complex and complicated sort of stuff that we're talking about really but does this claim that western governments shouldn't at all help fund some kind of journalism for audiences that are you know in non-democratic countries I personally would not support the sort of cutting it off entirely for you I'd like to throw this one open to everyone on the panel quite often in recent years and particularly since the election of Donald Trump Brexit, Jared Bolsonaro and in Brazil some of the most extreme claims that have been made is that this new wave of disinformation and these new techniques are an existential threat to democracy or at least that is an ideal of liberal democracy the post-war, the end of history idea that we've reached this point of stability what is your perspective on that are we facing an existential threat to democracy as we understand it or are we simply moving into a different phase a more robust and combative phase certainly but one which democracy can certainly withstand can I let me kind of respond to that by just saying that I fear governments getting involved in stopping the spread of disinformation because I think that is a real dangerous slippery slope to go down because who then decides what is what is true and what is not true is that the government that decides that and what happens if they decide that anything that is negative about them what if they decide that that's disinformation and we have seen this happen quite recently in Pakistan there's quite a worrying rule I think from 2020 that's tied up in the online abuse preventing online harm which says actually the Pakistani government decides what is disinformation and it can cut it out and there's a similar rule in Vietnam so I think it's really dangerous having government clamp down on the spread of disinformation because I think we should be free to criticise the government and they should shouldn't be able to stop that under the guise of stopping disinformation I think what we can do is we can encourage education to encourage people to be critical about what they watch I think we need to have more media organisations need to have a duty to stamp it out I think social media organisations have a duty to police their own platforms I think it should be left to government Orgwb, are you looking to comment on that? Well I'm a practitioner so to me you know a threat of disinformation I mean it's a daily it's my job and whether it's a threat to democracy I'd leave that question to academics because I think it's more of a more comfortable area for them but I would absolutely agree on the point about media literacy because I think it's so important and actually part of the remit of my team what my team does particular at the time of crisis and when there's a lot of a lot of footage pouring it in from various places like for example at the start of the Ukraine war we just saw an absolute avalanche of videos and footage from Ukraine and not from Ukraine presented as being from Ukraine and what my team does and also the wider disinformation unit at BBC news is we often try and get on there produce very quickly digital videos just explaining and offering tips to people on how they can themselves spot what is wrong with footage how they can spot disinformation how they can track it and it's really good to hear feedback from ordinary people who say thank you for doing this because that is really helping and also like when we see the story about biolabs like just a very quick anecdote I felt really strongly about pushing back against the biolabs claims although you know they do sound quite wow out there but to somebody who's experienced with disinformation and you know Russia has been spreading disinformation about biolabs on its borders for years so it's like for me it was personally it was nothing new when they started talking about it again at the start of the invasion but then my friend got in touch and her mother-in-law was absolutely scared of Ukrainian bioweapons and she was having nearly panic attacks about the possibility of Ukraine developing this weapons at these laboratories and just hearing that made me feel that we do need to there is a public interest and there is a need to push back against these kind of claims and yes they do sound they may sound to somebody else out there and not worth unpicking not worth giving it more oxygen but if it's already reached people so widely around the world and in Russia itself in this particular case we have to step in we have to provide that context and she was trying to actually talk to her and explain my friend she was trying to talk to her and was trying to explain to her that that is not true but she didn't have all the arguments and so in sort of the conversation fell apart and it became very emotional so also last point part of what media organisations can also do and what we've been doing and our disinformation correspondent Mariana Spring has been amazing at doing is trying to explain to people how to talk to people who believe in conspiracy theories people who have been affected by disinformation including your loved ones because we often tend to just dismiss these people and just say that laugh at them or completely completely disengage but it's so important to show empathy and talk to these people and I think media organisations can help people give tips and explain how might be best to do that Seren Do you think there's a different threat faced by democracies depending on where in the world they are what stage democratic development they are I'm thinking of these bold claims that are being made about the existential threat to democracy in the US for example compared to say India where it is a relatively robust democracy but with a government that's becoming increasingly sensorious is the challenge different depending on that localised context First of all if I can go back to one of the previous questions I was hesitant to come in because I'm not a specialist in media or journalism but I also watched developments in Europe and America for example and also in India so called democracies with both interest and concern right but I think one of the main differences we should see between what is going on in Europe and America today for example and what Russia and China and other such countries are doing is we should be vigilant in UK and America or in India in protecting our rights and protecting democracy and all of that but crucial difference is in Europe or in UK for example or in America there are lots of media organisations with different ideological inclinations interests unless they break a law or something they are free to operate and there isn't the British Government or the American Government persecuting you if you write or say something against the Prime Minister or the President there isn't the Government persecuting a scholar whether at home or abroad for just doing their job in my case for example I was born in Tibet and I write about Tibet I do research about Tibet and I work in a British University but I have family back home and so I'm sort of exhibit A in terms of a particular government trying to control what I say what I write by not just sort of surveilling me controlling me but also by using my relatives and family back home so just to prove my point I don't want to say too much so that it creates unnecessary trouble so I think it's important to distinguish make this distinction but going back to your question very clearly I think there is this big distinction made about sort of stable and advanced consolidated democracies and countries that have gone into democratic transition soon and the role that democracy plays in fostering peace stability or in violence is quite complex right the more advanced and consolidated your democracy is when your institutions are strong then democracy can have a peaceful and stabilizing influence but when you are a new democracy where the institutions are not strong where you have this creative election with freedom of expression for the candidates and for the supporters and particularly when it is a divided society along religious ethnic lines there is this combustible mix of competitive election freedom to criticize and malign other members of your group just because you need votes from your own group so that can create more conflict and instability but with regards to India I would say there is this recent development of a particular prime minister and a party using religion and sort of in a way poison the political system to some extent but we should also know that India has gone through these kind of crisis there was more or less a dictatorship declared by Indira Gandhi in the form of the emergency where individuals were persecuted but India when overcame that and moved on and then India has a vibrant electoral culture vibrant media system and quite strong codes of course there are flows there which probably puts India in a different category from say newly democratized societies I've got one final question to everyone on the panel before thrown open to the audience because it's keen to hear from other folk in the room but just particularly because James and Olga were mentioning the importance of media electricity there there's quite a lot of emphasis in the UK around the topic of media electricity on children and young people how can we deliver this through schools looking at the example of the really great work that's taken place in Finland on this but are young people the right generation to focus on if this if this is an urgent question of media electricity are those who've grown up as digital natives actually the most susceptible to disinformation or is it generations who are well past the point of being in that captive audience of education who we should be focusing on Olga you leaned right in there so I'm presuming you're keen to hear myself straight away I think the most important thing I think for us to understand when it comes to audiences is that and I hear I will literally repeat what a conspiracy expert I spoke the other day to said to me is that anyone is susceptible to disinformation absolutely your age, your gender your level of education your your background they don't matter we're all human we're all susceptible to disinformation because a lot of disinformation feeds into our own biases and we may not even realise that we have them so I think it's important to focus on young people but whenever we produce in my department when we think about media literacy we think about media literacy for everyone because I think it's equally important for young generation and older generations to know the basics know how to distinguish what is false what is fake, what isn't and have this understanding and know how to practically use it because you know you can we are a small team we can debunkling so much but there's so much disinformation and misinformation out there and we're prepared for the challenge of living in an online world Anybody else want to come in on the question because what I'm particularly interested in is how we then go about doing that because to take a personal perspective I've felt that a lot of our focus on tackling equipping children young people with the skills to critically think and evaluate and spot disinformation just comes in the fact that that's the easiest age group for us to do that with because it's a captive audience you can design lessons around it you can include it in the curriculum how to educate the adult population around any issues is simply far more difficult because they're not in full time education so how do we go about equipping the adult population with the kind of critical thinking skills to be able to James you're making the point to do this for themselves rather than to have the government tell them what isn't is not correct I think there's a role for social media organisations and digital media companies and that's what we're doing from here is the algorithms that operate these systems means that we're only subjected to or we only see stories that play to our biases already as Olga say so if we're not seeing other stories stories that might contradict where we're coming from that play to our existing biases then we're not learning anything and I think we need stories that cut through those algorithms that say teaching people to engage critically with media content is more important than just giving people playing to their desires and whatever their search history has thrown up in the past so I think there's a real part for social media organisations to play to make sure that everyone that Olga is talking about across the ages, across the genders across society gets sight of and engages with that kind of content Joanna I agree with what Olga said in terms of we're all susceptible from time to time absorbing disinformation and misinformation and it applies to every generation and of course as you said older generations who've already left the education system are harder to sort of reach with the warnings on I mean I think yes as James said platforms can help and actually steps that have already been taken some steps have been quite effective I mean if you think about Twitter's reminder to have you read this article before you circulate it share it further that has been shown to be this friction that you introduced into the system it slows down the spread of potentially misleading information and that has been relatively effective and the labels that have been added that this broadcaster is funded by the Russian government this broadcaster is funded by the Chinese government all those little labels help to educate people in the process of using social media and online sources and so on and I guess just continued conversations like this where people have the opportunity to discuss to learn from each other I mean that there's no silver bullet to this problem obviously education is super important at every level I think just because current younger generations the digital generation doesn't mean that they know everything so it's important to include some kind of media literacy training in the curriculum I would say but I would also perhaps as my kind of concluding thought I don't think this should be all about teaching people to fact check I think it should also be about teaching people to value check because it's not just the untruth in the sort of Russian narrative that's the problem it's the fact that they promote hate basically and I think we just need to get people to think when I'm reading the news when I'm consuming this or that source what is this doing to me emotionally to my psychology as it were and just trying to get people to take a step back if it's hate filled just content take a step back from that be you know yeah so it's not just about checking facts media literacy is not just about checking facts it's also about checking your own emotional reaction and not being led into these sort of hate filled bubbles just on that point or Twitter and the the new system that a relatively new system they've got of marking particularly state sponsored media outlets political candidates in some countries but not others sustainable model essentially relying on the good judgement of social media platforms to do that for example clearly labelling an RT propagandist but from the Russian government's perspective Olga is a propagandist for the British Government how sustainable is it for us to rely on Twitter to show enough good judgement to flag up the dangers of RT Sputnik etc but recognise the difference between them and what we consider to be free media I noticed on YouTube the other day that BBC does have a sort of label now that this is a public broadcaster of the UK so I mean labels can be attached to all kinds of news organisations not just the foreign governments that we have difficult relationships with I mean I think in general informing people about the nature of the source that they're consuming whatever that source might be is a good idea and yeah I guess we do have to be careful not to put ourselves in a position where we can be accused of double standards but in terms of who does what what's the government's responsibility and what's private platforms responsibility I mean that's an ongoing conversation I know we've got at least one person in the room from Ofcom who might want to continue that conversation afterwards but yeah it's difficult because the platforms in some ways have greater expertise even greater power than governments to make suggestions to change things so it's a conversation that needs to continue really Sam would you like the last word on this question? Yeah I think it's important to bring about media literacy as well but also to increase access to higher education because I've been reading about correlations between people with more sort of parochial or racist attitudes with level of education both in America and also in UK so I think it's important to for governments to bring about greater access to higher education so that before they become fully fleshed adults they have been trained to recognize misinformation, disinformation or all of that but I think it's also important to strengthen the deterrence power to deter people from engaging in disinformation so I was thinking about Alex Jones and the court cases he has been facing in the US for talking about the shooting school shooting and the fact that it has to pay millions of pounds I think there are laws which needs to be sort of strengthened to deter as well but I think going back to what media companies social media networks can do is for example when the American government and also the UK government classified many of the Chinese media organizations as foreign agents so YouTube and these social media organizations have to put up this notification that they are fully or partly funded by the Chinese government or the American government or something like that but the Chinese government has been very clever in responding to that by hiring Western experts or influencers to make videos give access to Xinjiang Tibet, various parts of China to them, access to official sources and make them make videos supportive of the Chinese government's policies and also CCP's lines and in fact many of them are hired as stringers by CTGM and many western Chinese media agencies and they have different types of relationships with the Chinese government and these media organizations but YouTube and the Twitter they do not classify them as Chinese agents talking about putting forward Chinese lines so I think there are lots of things that the government and media organizations and social media organizations can do as well to fight disinformation Thanks very much I hope everybody found that an interest in livening discussion, we've got about 20 minutes left now to take some questions from the floor some folk at the back who've got roving microphones, if you'd like to ask a question stick your hand up and I'll direct the microphone to you it's always the case that the first question is the opposite side of the room from where the microphone is so our first question is in the very first row here so it's just right on the corner there Does our on-screen participant or any of the panel have any comment to make on the role of Bellin Cat in all of this and could I say to you from Tibet I feel a deep and lasting shame as to the United Kingdom stands on Tibet Thank you, Olga Would you like to kick us off on that one on the role of Bellin Cat and how the landscape has changed quite radically in the period that they've been operating Well Bellin Cat is a very well known organization right now and they're they're well known among journalists just for the sheer work they're doing and their ability to dig really deep into open source investigations so I think it's they've played a big role in promoting the idea of citizen journalism and open source investigations and I think even inspiring some of these rooms to because they've been so successful at documenting war crimes and wrongdoing in war zones in Syria and now in Ukraine I think they've prompted at least some newsrooms to even invest in developing similar skills in their own newsrooms and I know that some former Bellin Cat experts have even been working in some of the investigations together with journalists from the BBC for example Africa Eye and so on so definitely I mean Bellin Cat is a I think widely seen as world experts when it comes to when it comes to open source investigations and it's I suppose hard to underestimate the impact they've had over the past few years on the development of the OSINT community Anybody else like to come in on the role of Bellin Cat and the impact that they've had? I mean I think connected to this you're also we're already seeing bigger collaborations between established journalists and other organisations like Bellin Cat but also like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK we're seeing you know but also media organisations across sort of broadcasts and print so you've got Channel 4 news and Guardian having a collaboration around Cambridge Analytica and you're having Bureau of Investigative Journalism working with other media organisations because I think what Bellin Cat showed us is that you can have some really big ambitious investigative journalism that can have a big impact but it's expensive and it takes time and it takes a group of people with unique skills that can dig into the dark web and so on so I think big collaborations I hope are going to get more common as we need these kind of big ambitious investigations. Anybody else like to come in with a question? We've got one up the back and I think if there's more than one I'm going to take the questions in groups just because we're relatively condensed so I'll take the first question up the back and if anybody else has got one if you want to stick your hand straight up we'll come next to the gentleman in the far end so what you said earlier about YouTube and how it can almost filter into Russia in some way kind of sort of peat my curiosity and it also kind of linked in with what you're saying about trusting the judgement of social media organisations and I was wondering about should there sort of be a moral responsibility in these organisations such as Google who own YouTube to push sort of these what would be the class of true information in Ukraine would they have a responsibility to push it into Russian visitors to the website but again it is also that judgement of social media it's trusting that and could it possibly end up even backfiring and just result in a blanket ban and things like YouTube and anything that was getting through the cracks just ends up getting stopped. Thanks very much, really interesting question do these platforms have a moral obligation to be an active participant in situations like that, the conflict so we'll come here and then the third and final question there. Thanks Ross. Old democracies can tolerate opposition, that was a general statement made and I agree by and large with that, the current Conservative government is considering selling off Channel 4 which would likely make it less incisive how should we or can we react or respond to this? Excellent, thanks Ron and the third question here. Hi, this relates very much to that question that has just been asked and taking aside BBC's constraints in terms of impartiality I would take the view that one of the biggest spreaders of this information in this country is our own mainstream media because they allow politicians and I'm talking mostly Westminster politicians to come on and talk total bollocks and they do not challenge them. I think the media is to those whose key skill is reading out loud and those whose key skill is journalists and I think Channel 4 falls into that category and I wonder if that's why the government is so keen to change its remit. Excellent, thank you very much. Would anybody like to dive in on any of these questions? I don't mind taking the one about YouTube in Russia, I think the domestic politics to other people. I think social media platforms in Russia and in other authoritarian states are it's a tricky line to walk in terms of to what extent do they comply with laws in these repressive states and to what extent do they try and push boundaries and give people access to information that the governments don't want them to see. Thinking hypothetically YouTube is already an important source of alternative news that doesn't align with the position of the Russian government within Russia so it's already playing an important role and I'm personally quite surprised that the Russian government hasn't banned YouTube yet I don't know if Olga might have something to say about why it hasn't yet banned YouTube but I'm not sure we can place the responsibility on the tech platforms to sort of reach audiences in hard to reach places but the fundamental problem I guess in Russia is that you can put information out there, you can put and there are lots of videos people trying to convince the Russian audience via YouTube videos about the reality of what's happening in Ukraine but the resistance within the Russian population to consuming that kind of critical content to taking it seriously is like a wall, they've constructed this sort of nationalist sort of wall in their heads that anybody who criticises Russia must by definition be lying because the west and Ukraine are waging information war against Russia and therefore you're not to take seriously any kind of criticism and the Russian propaganda is to write out there saying that telling the Russian population that your first duty is to support your country don't bother about critical thinking so it's a difficult task whoever the responsibility is it's a very difficult task Jenny I'd say Russian YouTube is a fascinating story and I do find it quite fascinating that they still haven't banned it because it is freely available and it does provide a glimpse into the kind of reality of war in Ukraine and when you do like Google if you Google things in Yandex which are related to Ukraine war very often you would see links to YouTube that would provide that glimpse and that would be like one of the very very few things that are not programming but I don't know the answer to the question why they haven't banned it the one speculation though would be that YouTube is incredibly popular in Russia and banning it would probably make a lot of people angry because and also we need to understand how people use YouTube in Russia it's largely for entertainment purposes rather than to get news so if these people live in these bubbles where they look for recipes cat and dog videos and they're not specifically looking for Ukraine information the algorithms are not going to start all of a sudden leading them into the kind of rabbit hole of Ukraine news so that might be one explanation but there might be the real reason might be completely different it's just what sort of would be a logical explanation that it might actually make a lot of people angry because we know that there is the Russian version of YouTube which is called VruTube and it is not popular at all as far as I know nobody I know watches it or uses it but in general this curious case of YouTube in Russia is fairly interesting James and Pete Can I just ask you when you said maybe that's why they want to shut down channel 4 did you mean that channel 4 does challenge politicians? Channel 4 uses channels rather than news readers I mean so I've spent most of my career at channel 4 news so that's the sort of disclaimer but I've also worked at ITV news and the old music 10 with Trevor McDonald and I've worked to the BBC and BBC radio and so on so I've kind of worked across different broadcast outlets and I would say that I feel really strongly that we need a diverse media a diverse broadcast media so we need media organisations and institutions that are doing different things telling different stories in different ways to different audiences I think what the BBC does is great but it cannot be the only big media organisation that we have I think the commercial broadcasters I think what they do is fantastic and ITV news and channel 5 news and so on but I think what channel 4 does and where it is is in a unique position as a public service broadcaster that is not funded by a licence fee but is funded by advertising and has a very specific public service agenda which is to foster new challenge which is to tell stories for and by minorities in the UK and so on that I think is really precious I don't think there is any other media organisation in the world that is like that and has that I think it's a really important part of our media landscape in the UK but then I would say that because I went for channel 4 news but yes so I fear itself because I fear it will become a commercial broadcaster and I fear what would happen depending on who buys it and who owns it I don't speak for channel 4 or ITN and so on but from my point of view I think diversity has to come first that is really important and I think we would be throwing away something really really precious if we were to sell channel 4 Can I be slightly provocative James? Is there a an issue perhaps with our traditional media being perhaps too self-congratulatory or too defensive that when we have a lot of these discussions around misinformation and disinformation there is often a slightly reflexive approach from journalists whether it is in print or broadcasting that these are the problems of social media and that they exist in a much more noble profession that is not quite infallible but perhaps much closer to it than the public might think you certainly see as politicians we get feedback in our inboxes about typically about the BBC rather than about public service broadcasters not always fair but you tend to find currents coming from different political perspectives but the common theme is that people feel that the journalists interviewing the politicians are the same kind of people who went to the same kind of schools and the same kind of universities who live in the same kind of streets in the same London suburbs and there's an element of group think there that results in a lack of challenge is that fair? I think that's fair and I think when I talk about diversity I'm not only talking about diversity in terms of the organisations and the ownership I'm talking about diversity as in we need our journalism and our media staff to be diverse so that we can tell stories from across the communities and the areas of the UK and make sure that all of those are covered I think I don't agree that Channel 4 is the I think pretty much most of our mainstream broadcasters do a good job at challenging politicians in particular I think there is a problem with I think well there's a couple of problems and there's a problem with politicians and I think there's a problem with the way that we tell stories so if you think about a conventional news bulletin there's a half hour program whether it's on BBC or ITV or Channel 5 or whatever so within that you generally have a reporter package which is generally two and a half minutes, three minutes long within that reporter package you're supposed to tell the story and to comply with off-com rules you've got to make sure that there's a balance if you interview one politician then you've got to interview politicians from the other side, that's fine but the logistics of it and the reality is if you've only got two and a half minutes or three minutes to tell a story and you're having two or three soundbites each soundbite is going to be 15, 20 seconds or so so you've got one soundbite from one politician on one side, one soundbite from the other because you're balanced and you're accurate and you're fair the politicians know this and I have I run out of patience with the amount of times I've interviewed a politician I've asked a question and they know because I'm going to use one soundbite and quite often they will not engage with the question at all, they will just give me the answer that they want me to use do you see what I mean? because I need to use a soundbite from them they give me the soundbite they want me to use and as a journalist it's really really frustrating so I ask the question again they give me the soundbite that they want me to use again and I ask the question again and that I think is really difficult because I don't have the time to be seen to be challenging this politician because I've only got two minutes thirty to tell the story so what do I do? I either don't use the soundbite at all which I've done in the past quite a lot because hang on a second, they've not engaged with my question at all or you use the soundbite that you want to or you kind of write into it or whatever but then if you're telling a political story and these are our representatives so it's difficult I think what digital platforms and social media does enable us to do which I think is which I think is good is that if I were to do an interview and I'm only going to use twenty seconds what's to stop me taking the whole unedited interview and putting it up on Twitter or putting it up on Facebook and then you can say look at how they didn't answer the question look at how they dodged what I was trying to answer look at how I was trying to challenge them but they weren't so I think there's a real opportunity there in social media that you can show a bit of the reality of how these things work behind the doors and I think politicians are beginning to realise that and that they kind of need to engage with the question it doesn't mean to say that they still don't want you to use their sound of course they do but I hope that politicians are more and more engaging with the question and are challenged by it rather than just seeing it as an opportunity for them to get their twenty second message on the TV but you can see how that's just and it's the problem of the bulletin and the problem of the programme now what what Channel 4 enables us to do and Newsnight and other programmes on Sky and so on you've got more time and particularly if you've got live interviews you can get politicians in and you can really challenge them and you can make sure that they don't dodge the question and I think that can be more successful in terms of engaging and challenging with people in authority struck there by getting on a bit now, I think it's eleven years ago there's an infamous clip of Ed Miliband these strikes are wrong which is the ultimate example of that where he had one sound bite to say a particular public sector strike he was asked the question about twelve different times and it was just twelve different ways of rearranging the words for these strikes are wrong which worked perfectly when it was broadcast on the BBC News at 6 it didn't work so well when the BBC then uploaded the full five minutes of him saying the same thing over and over again in response to different questions and I am just as guilty of that because the question then becomes where is the incentive for the politicians to give that longer form answer we're not on the news we're not on the news everyday I've got ten seconds a week where I might be on report in Scotland if I want to get my ten seconds across I need to be incentivised to answer the questions that are being asked which is a cynical way of looking at it but that's politics but the journalists aren't blameless either because if a politician were to say as part of an answer if they were to admit some kind of blame for something or yes we got it wrong that would be the bit that would end up being used and not the positive bit that they want so I think there is a real problem with conventional storytelling conventional news that it doesn't cut across some of these complaints rarely is a public policy question simple enough for the ten second answer to be adequate saying I've totally lost my time management so you get the final word here but feel free to take as long as you want with that final word very brief thing to say I didn't want to come in because I wanted to practice what I preach by not misinforming about matters that I'm not fully informed about myself but on the latest point about how journalists conduct sort of interviews on international affairs I think it's not just that the journalists don't ask difficult questions but they are not fully informed they're not knowledgeable I'm not talking about all journalists of course but I saw interviews of the former Chinese ambassador to UK by Andrew Ma and an interview of the Chinese ambassador to the U.S former Chinese ambassador to the U.S by Christian Amanbo on CNN and one thing that struck me when they were talking about the genocide and the issues in Xinjiang the Chinese ambassadors said there is no genocide because the population in Xinjiang of the workers has redoubled from 1949 to 1949 up to now do similar kind of narratives about Tibet but they just let them escape get away with that if they were more fully informed they would have talked about the percentage of the population of Xinjiang that the workers composed today which is just under 45% when it was almost 80% in 1949 and when talking about genocide it's not just about physical elimination of people but the psychological make up the cultural identity all of these should also be taken into account so they both managed to get away without being challenged that is absolutely driven on a domestic level as well if you look at Scottish print publications the number of newspapers in Scotland who still have an education correspondent and a health correspondent an environment correspondent basically now you've got very very general journals trying to cover all of these issues and it's not criticism of them so they don't have the depth of knowledge in every one of these fields which then does make the job easier for folk like myself because I'm not being asked the difficult questions because the journals isn't familiar enough with the issue to ask them we've ran over time I'm afraid though so apologies for folk who wanted to ask a question a final round of thanks to Sering to Joanna, James and Olga I've found this a really interesting and engaging conversation I hope you have as well so hope we can all thank our panel for their contributions