on very festival katie based on very festival katie has been reporting their i have been djing there believe it or not and in today's programme we will look at placed �*s media strategy. will look at placed 's media strategy-— will look at placed 's media strate: . , , r, , strategy. every single solitary erson strategy. every single solitary person eligible _ strategy. every single solitary person eligible for— strategy. every single solitary person eligible for what - strategy. every single solitary person eligible for what i - strategy. every single solitary| person eligible for what i have been able to do with covid—i9, dealing with everything we have to do... look we finally beat medicare. to do... look we finally beat medicare-— to do... look we finally beat medicare. ., ., ., g ., medicare. the fallout from joe biden 's faltering _ medicare. the fallout from joe biden 's faltering performance i biden �*s faltering performance on his tv debate with donald trump was instant in political terms and in terms of the media coverage we talked about this with jill coverage we talked about this withjill abramson former with jill abramson former executive editor of the new york times and any lindsey of the wall streetjournal. we spoke first to a co—host of the

pod cast mixed signals from cima. he the 46 president of the united statesjoe biden. it was 50 million people who watch the debate on cnn, and on cnn affiliated fox news but people 50 million americans watched the debate, right after in the cnn — the debate, right after in the cnn post brief we saw this prayer— cnn post brief we saw this prayer -- — cnn post brief we saw this prayer —— layout my people and anchors — prayer —— layout my people and anchors were reading you text messages they were seen, you had the — messages they were seen, you had the 0bama administration representative talking about what — representative talking about what could happen you would expect — what could happen you would expect to be supportive. the interesting to thing to look at is not — interesting to thing to look at is not necessarily fox news where — is not necessarily fox news where you knew the conversation would _ where you knew the conversation would go — where you knew the conversation would go. nbc did the discussion and coverage of cermin— discussion and coverage of certain days, nobody was saying this was— certain days, nobody was saying this was a — certain days, nobody was saying this was a good debate, that was — this was a good debate, that was hot _ this was a good debate, that was not a _ this was a good debate, that was not a hard argument to make for the _ was not a hard argument to make for the president. was not a hard argument to make forthe president. right was not a hard argument to make for the president. right away editorials published by not

'ust editorials published by not just the editorial board of the new— just the editorial board of the new york times, people like mr chris— new york times, people like mr chris doff— new york times, people like mr chris doff and tom friedman people — chris doff and tom friedman people the president holds in high — people the president holds in high esteem, raising questions from _ high esteem, raising questions from the — high esteem, raising questions from the washington post had written — from the washington post had written questions about the president 's age lustful and created _ president 's age lustful and created a media moment then. wheh _ created a media moment then. when it— created a media moment then. when it came to that night, clearly as happens after these kind of experiences you have a spin room and people start trying to spin, the democrat defence seem to be don't believe your eyes strategy as some people were calling. have some people were calling. how effective do _ some people were calling. how effective do you _ some people were calling. how effective do you think- some people were calling. how effective do you think that was? ~ . , effective do you think that was? ~ ., , , , was? we live in a very hyper art is was? we live in a very hyper part is in _ was? we live in a very hyper part is in time, _ was? we live in a very hyper part is in time, i— was? we live in a very hyper part is in time, i don't - was? we live in a very hyper part is in time, i don't think| part is in time, i don't think it is— part is in time, i don't think it is effective with the media or voters— it is effective with the media or voters or people seeing this — or voters or people seeing this it _ or voters or people seeing this. it has been a hallmark of our time — this. it has been a hallmark of our time right now, this is a hyper- _ our time right now, this is a hyper— partisan environment which — hyper— partisan environment which almost anything can be discredited as false, nothing feels — discredited as false, nothing feels true. we saw this even with— feels true. we saw this even with the _ feels true. we saw this even with the hurt report when it came —

with the hurt report when it came out— with the hurt report when it came out in february a special counsel— came out in february a special counsel robert hurt 's report into— counsel robert hurt 's report into the _ counsel robert hurt 's report into the biden classified documents case and i know that spurred — documents case and i know that spurred some of your reporting. in spurred some of your reporting. in february— spurred some of your reporting. in february when we got the report— in february when we got the report from him saying the president is an old man with diminished faculties, there are diminishing faculties with age a well—meaning man with a challenged memory. those were the suggestions. at that time a lot of— the suggestions. at that time a lot of questions were asked, a lot of questions were asked, a lot of— lot of questions were asked, a lot of questions were asked, a lot of questions asked like they— lot of questions asked like they had been asked after polling _ they had been asked after polling of 2023.— they had been asked after polling of 2023. who did what when and how— polling of 2023. who did what when and how much - polling of 2023. who did what when and how much influence polling of 2023. who did what - when and how much influence and editorial article has on the president of the united states and if he stands for president again. and if he stands for president a . ain. and if he stands for president aaain. ., ~' and if he stands for president aaain. ., ~ , again. the new york times editorial — again. the new york times editorial board _ again. the new york times editorial board came - again. the new york times editorial board came out i again. the new york times | editorial board came out the chicago tribune, various columnists, christophe, thomas friedman. david ignatius, use

or evenjoe scarborough of or even joe scarborough of morning joe or evenjoe scarborough of morning joe frame who the president does pay attention to. a very watched programme. his very—watched programme, you know, came out saying — asking questions about where do we go from here? how does this go on? his co—host and wife was not on the same page. so, we'll see. i mean, i think that — but i do think that this is going to be hard to have — you know, when the hur report came out, there was conversation from the vice president that this was politically motivated. when the viral clips came out of the president on d—day and otherwise, we were told, "0h, these are," you know, "these are modified clips." they were cropped, they were cropped differently. certainly, there were claims made by the rnc and others that were not true around those clips. but at the end of the day, people know what they saw and 50 million people saw this debate and i don't think this question is going away. jill abramson, former executive editor of the new york times, let's bring you in because you were expressing there a frustration that you don't feel that the american media more broadly has covered this story properly. tell us why. well, first, before i do that, i

i want to do a hat tip to annie and the wall street journal, which really did dig in and, i you know, from reading their story when it was published, | it was a true attempt at a real investigation of how— the president's health- and mental conditions were, so that was great. and, you know, the white house and democrats tried _ to discredit it by saying all the named sourcesl were republicans and that it was a partisan attack, - and it wasn't — it was - the truth and it was as close to the truth as you guys could get, which is what we expectl from the media - in the united states. we're protected by the first. amendment, because ourjob is to hold power accountable. you know, i — i —- i don't pretend, you know, as someone who's not even the current editor of a news organisation, to explain it l but there have been various hypotheses which i think are possible. j number one is, you know, - that this white house executed one of the best cover—ups of all time — one that- would make richard nixon envious. - number one, that's

a possibility. - and number two is a less. legitimate one that i really hope isn't true, but that - because ofjournalism's innate desire to not see democracyj destroyed by donald trump, that reporters stayed away from the story. because they didn't want to help donald trump. . and that is not ourjob, that is not the missionl of journalism. so, those, i think, - are the major two possible explanations. so, those are two possible explanations. but i don't know. you know, i don't pretendl to have the answer myself. and we should say that the white house would push back at any idea that it was covering up any aspect

of the president's ability to do hisjob. but i do want to bring in annie linskey now, who's white house reporter for the wall streetjournal and wrote that article that jill was just referencing there. that was on fourth ofjune, nearly a month before the debate. you wrote this big piece in the wall streetjournal, essentially listing concerns about president biden's health in some detail. just give us, annie, the details of how you went about that. how did you research it? who did you approach? what was the back story to that important piece ofjournalism? you know, look, when the hur report came out, i think it was like an earthquake. you know, there's been — i've been a white house reporter. i've covered this administration from the campaign well into the white house and reading that hur report, i realised that there's no other person who does not work forjoe biden who has spent five hours with him one on one. hur did it over two days. and so, i read it with that in mind of, "my goodness, "this man had access to the president that no

"journalist has had and, really, nobody aside "from his family or, you know, people who work for him," and that, you know, our bureau chief got us together and we sort of launched in a lot of directions to try to understand, "what is the president "like behind closed doors?" and the question was also amplified by pushback from the white house. voters have long said that the president is old and they worry about his acuity and the white house pushback has been quite simple. it has been, "if you could see what we see behind closed "doors, you would not have those concerns. "joe biden is absolutely fine. "he is sharp as a tack and we see it every "day in meetings." and so, to the wall streetjournal, we felt that was an invitation to start really digging into those conversations, those meetings and... and what did you find? it was hard reporting to do but we found that, you know, in some meetings the president was fine,

was behaving the way you would expect a president to do — was sharp, was spontaneous, had quick back and forths, had good questions. but in other meetings, he would really lose his train of thought. he would pause for extended periods of time that made people feel uncomfortable. he would at times just close his eyes in a way that made people wonder if he had sort of tuned out a little bit, that he would get key details of policy wrong when talking about them. he would mumble and be inaudible in cases where lawmakers were just reallyjust struggling just to hear what he had to say. and so, you know, we did this reporting. it took months. i'm on a very busy beat. my editors cleared a lot of time for me to work the story, and i deeply appreciate that support that we had from the wall street journal, all the way up to the top. and there you were, doing the very difficultjob of persuading people to talk to you but when the piece came out, what was the reaction? well, look, we expected

that the white house would not like the report. they were very aware of every single detail that would be in it. we gave them honestly, you know, two weeks, perhaps even more, to respond. we had multiple back and forths with the white house. so, you know, it was — we understood where — how they would react to the piece. i think, to me, one of the more surprising things about it — and i think it gets to the sort of partisan environment that we all live in — is there was a sense that — and we put it in the piece — we were very transparent that most of our sources were republicans. not all — most of them were republicans. but we put that in there, because it's a very — it's a very politically fraught topic to be writing about. i was surprised that so many people discounted itjust because our sourcing had included republicans. i think that if you approach a beat, especially in washington, with some sort of view, that if you have an r

next to your name, you're a liar, and if you have a d next to your name, you're a truth—teller, that really gives the democratic party a lot of veto power over important reporting. it also gives a real sense of the partisan nature of american journalistic reporting, potentially. i did see a tweet, something put on x byjennifer rubin of the washington post, who said, "the widespread media "condemnation of a shoddy front—page wall streetjournal "article about president biden slipping with age suggests "we have may have reached a journalistic inflection "point. "maybe the overwhelmingly negative response by other "journalists to what was essentially the promotion "of a right—wing meme will reduce such irresponsible "reporting." and this was reposted by the white house deputy press secretary andrew bates. so, you came under a lot of assault. but actually, presumably now, since the debate, has the reporting of the president's health and the reaction to you altered? yeah, there has been — there has been a change in that, you know, reaction to the piece. and i can understand —

you know, when i was watching the debate, i mean, i remember i was ten minutes in, i was getting — ten, 15 minutes in, getting text messages from sources — from, you know, democrats, from operatives, from colleagues. and to me, ijust felt like i was watching in real time what my sources had described to me. and my sources described this to me in sort of the most sober terms. and so, i think it was — you know, to watch that — to watch that debate, i saw, you know, the things that had been described to me and the things that we had reported in the paper being illustrated in real time. and the next two aspects of this story we want to unpack with the help ofjill, nayeema and annie are the biden media strategy in response to that debate but also, what it's like to deal with the biden white house. nayeema, you'll have experience with interacting

with different administrations. how would you categorise the journalistic experience of interacting with the biden white house and trying to find out what's happening within its walls? i mean, i'm not as qualified as annie, who has been. on the beat with this - white house, to tell you that. i can tell you from covering the media coverage that — i like, i can tell you what - the biden media strategy has been as a kind of acute - observer and reporter on that, which is they have long, i you know, had a strategy of sidelining the traditional media in some way. - they have gone directly — i the president would write op eds, give interviews- to influencers, celebrities. he has given — i think thisl was reported by my former colleague michael scherer- in the new york times in april — you know, fewer interviews than any other president has| given. it was around 50 interviews in his first two years - of office. this is the least amount of interviews since, - i think, reagan. and that includes 50 plus — 50—odd interviews to - celebrities and - influencers as well. people like jason bateman, etc, or drew barrymore — l

you know, who are noti going to necessarily ask the hard—hitting questions. and compare that to, you know, a couple hundred from trump, l a few hundred from 0bama, you know, 100—odd from . the bushes or, . you know, others. so, this is an administration that has really given limitedj access. you know, my colleague max tani, who reportedl on the white house for politico for a long time and wrote - a daily white house briefing for about a year, you know, | talked about how, post—covid, you know, there was this kindl of shield around the president and that didn't really come off as much as you would have expected to by 2021. - you know, you get very — - it's a very controlled strategy around the president, very, l you know — people who have worked with the president, who are extremely loyal, l who have been with him| for decades, you know — longer than myself or annie have been around, maybe — and it's a very impermeable i white house, which i think has

made — that's why the coverage you have seen, there's been. a lot of discussion _ of the president's age but it's been the editorial coverage and raising the question, . you know? people have asked for access to health records of both - of these candidates, who are very old. i you know, these questions have been raised, they have not been deeply reported in the sense that it has been hard to get. democratic — democrat sources on the record until now, - and i think that's what you're going to see change. - there's a phrase i'm going to remember — an impermeable white house. i've not heard it put in those terms before. i'm looking at a quote here from matt bennett, who's the executive vice president of a democratic think tank called third way. he said in response to the debate, "biden should be "doing town hall meetings with voters, doing press "co nferences. "he needs to prove that that was one bad night "and not a pattern." so far, we haven't seen that level of activity. jill abramson, what do you make of how the biden white house has handled the media since the debate? well, they've been more or less in a defensive crouch. i would just like to add

one thing which i think is important, which is for my career at the new york times, the paper employed a doctor, a physician named larry k altman. fabulousjournalist. he's now writing a book on the timely topic of presidential health. but every campaign — like, way before election day, before the conventions — he would do a sit—down interview with the presidential candidates and ask for access to their health records. and over the years, there were various levels of cooperation, from total cooperation to none. but, you know, larry's long gone from the times, unfortunately, and no—one has really stepped into that role since then, which i think is a great pity, a real kind

of hole in american journalism. well, we're going to move off politics now and talk about something maybe a little bit more fun because it was the glastonbury festival last weekend. 210,000 people in a series of fields on what is usually a working farm in south west england and a festival that, well, ros, you were at because ros happened to be djing there. mc: ros atkins! drum and bass version of bbc news theme plays. harder, faster, larger! speaker in music: . .120 beats per minute... - i took a brief break from myjournalistic duties to do a dj set on the saturday afternoon at glastonbury which, as you can imagine, was quite an experience. nothing like i've done before. but i have to say, just being there was quite an experience.

i've never been to glastonbury before and i was — of course, you never stop being a journalist, so while i was there, even though i wasn't reporting, i was thinking — because i knew you were and i was thinking, "0k, how is this different "to covering other festivals?" because as someone who is simply attending, it was very different to other festivals i've been to. it is very different to other festivals. i don't actually cover that many other festivals but compared with anything else i cover in the cultural beat that i do, this isjust incomparable — partly because it's so vast, so many stages, most of them not on tv, but around, you know, such a huge — it is like a town that's, you know, suddenly created in the middle of this working farm and you're wandering around, battling through the crowds... to pick your targets... ..who are having fun. you've got to pick your targets. it's difficult to capture it all and you can't capture it all. you know, i was there with a fabulous cameraman, a fabulous producer and we were doing stuff for tv, radio, online, lots of my colleagues doing the same. but actually, it was — this year, my own footage was the thing that punched out in a sense, it went viral, because people might remember the story of louis tomlinson setting up a tv in glastonbury

— he went out and bought one — because they weren't showing the football. they don't show the football on days when there's music. how did you find him? well, ijust happened to be walking across. let's — well, ijust happened to be walking past, saw this group of people watching this tv that was sort of in these buckets and thought, "what is this?" realised there was some sort of element of louis tomlinson and then, well, i chatted to him, i went up to him. have a listen. i'm slightly out of breath as i realise what's going on, but have a listen. you are the god of this festival because football wasn't officially on anywhere but you sorted it out. how did you do that? it was a little — well, we brought a tv in, very glasto, in some like, stones, in a little stand. it was a little bit touch and go at times because the signal kept going in and out. but, yeah, luckily we got the win. we pulled it off. made up, made up. well done. yeah, that was louis tomlinson — obviously people will know from one direction. and so, you got the clip, which was what you wanted. i got the clip, it was what i wanted but unfortunately, my phone broke, so i did interview him for a bit longer and when i went back to look at it, there was just,

thank goodness, one clip. but all the other questions i asked him, my phone had sort of done some weird stopping without me realising. this is the great fear, isn't it, for alljournalists? "have i pressed record?" and well, you had pressed record, but your phone didn't keep that side of the bargain. exactly, but you were the story of the moment. got a lot of coverage. idid. did you enjoy being part of the story? well, the theme tune came about in a slightly unlikely fashion, in that david lowe, the composer of the bbc news theme tune, had been on the media show on the same day that i posted on x that i was going to be djing, and people were messaging me, saying, "hey, why don't "you think about a remix of the bbc news theme?" and because david had been on, i messaged him a couple of days later and said, "how about it?" and he said yes. and then neither of us had the skills to do a drum and bass remix. brilliant composer though david is, by his own admission, he wasn't qualified to do a drum and bass remix, so we brought in a dj and producer called crissy criss who helped us produce the track and it got a lot of attention, which was a nice surprise, because i guess whenever you make something, then you hope people will like it. cheering. glastonbury, thank you!

and we've got the evening standard's el hunt here. you've covered the festival six times — more than me, i've only done three — but were you — do you agree with what ros was saying earlier about, you know, how different it is from what you would expect, having watched it on tv? absolutely. i mean, it is like a city, like you were both saying. for a time, it's the most densely populated area in the uk. it has a whole infrastructure to keep it going. and so, covering it is unlike covering anything else. it's sort of musicjournalism boot camp because the minute you think you're off, you've reviewed an act, you're scurrying back to the press tent to write it up, you'll walk past louis tomlinson with his telly, — which i did, and i took a photo of it, not realising it was him. did it go viral like mine did? i mean, i couldn't believe it. i've had people from all over the world messaging. lots of spanish people love one direction, it turns out, or love louis tomlinson, because i've had a lot of tweets in spanish. yeah, it did go viral. it was on about 23k, last time i looked. everyone was replying saying "it was louis! "you should go and listen to his music."

so, did you not realise it was as you walked past? no. you just saw the melee of people? ijust stopped to watch the game for a bit and then carried on. yeah. but these things happen all of the time, kind of in the corners that don't get shown on the tv as well, so covering it, it is unlike anything else, really, in musicjournalism. in your experience, how do you physically do it? i know how i do it, which is sort of battle through the crowds but actually not go — the bbc compound, where we work, is right next to the pyramid stage. and you know, i tend to think if i'm going to do a live, i'm not going to be able to go that far awayjust because it's going to take so long to get there. and if there's a signal problem, i just don't want that to happen. but are you freer? how are you doing it? so, in between the other stage and the pyramid stage are sort of an area called interstage which all of the media work from in a little kind of village fete—style press tent that we all work in and our passes get us down these — i call them tunnels, which kind of eject us at different corners of the festival, so we can kind of beat the crowds, like magic, race down to west holts or whatever, which

does make it easier. but i think the main way is a lot of compeed, some good walking boots... mm. yeah. some sunscreen, potentially... some sunscreen. ..or an umbrella, depending and — because i didn't go in the press tent, weirdly, this time. but was there a press tent this time? did you go in? is that where you work at all? yeah. so, it is like a white marquee tent, village—hall—style trestle tables and they do a really good job of keeping us topped up with shortbread, tea and coffee and so, we just — we dash back there after our sets and hammer out our reviews in the press tent all together. and how many of you were in there? i mean, it's a lot of people, isn't it? about 70—100, if not more. yeah, a lot ofjournalists all kind of scrambling to file copy. and do you find when you see the television coverage that we're seeing one aspect of the festival but actually, the scale of it and the multitude of different performances is — there's no criticism of those involved in the tv coverage — but very hard to get across in the media coverage. yeah. i mean, there's over100 stages across worthy farm, i think, if you count kind

of the roaming stages that people will set upjust on their own, and it's incredibly difficult to cover. i think in some cases, it's probably a good thing that they don't have cameras in the nyc downlow or some of the clubs really, really late at night. so, it'sjust impossible to capture anything — everything at the festival. and in terms of the practicalities of when you've done the reporting and you want to get it out, you hear people who are attending the festival always talking about "will "the phone connectivity be ok?" do they make sure that the practicalities for journalists are as you'd need them to be? i would say the wi—fi is a challenge. there's quite a lot of lying on the floor outside the press tent on laptops, desperately trying to tether to get the copy across. but for me, you know, it's sort of part of the challenge of reporting from the middle of a dairy farm in somerset. we just find a way to do it. so, ros, i guess the question is next year, next glastonbury, are you going to be on the pyramid stage? i think we can safely say no is the answer to that. but you're hoping to be invited back? you never know. i mean, i guess most djs or most artists who are booked

to play glastonbury hope to be asked back. but if it only happens once, that'll be one more time than i was expecting, so at the moment, i'm just enjoying the fact that it happened. fantastic. well, well done, you, and watch this space, i would say. thank you very much. clearly, it went down very well. hopefully. but that's it. that's all we've got time for. thank you so much for watching. 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. hello. thanks forjoining me. well, it does feel like summer has come to an abrupt end. or perhaps it never started in the first place. and more rain clouds on the horizon for the rest of this week, but here's some good news. at least it's not going to be raining all the time. i want to show you the big picture first and where the jet stream is relative to the uk. here it is over the next few days, to the south of us, now north of the jet stream, we generally have cool air. south of the jet stream we generally have warm air.

notice where it is over the coming days — to the south of us. that means we get that air stream from the north and with a rippling jet stream, we also have weather patterns heading our way and in fact, a lot of rain to come in the coming days, particularly across northern parts of the uk. in fact, the north east of scotland in the next 24 hours, particularly soggy with this weather system here. that rain unrelenting here, particularly in the northeast highlands, in grampian. to the south by the end of the night, i thinkjust a few scattered showers, but it is relatively humid air, so that means that the temperatures aren't dropping particularly low overnight, say 14 degrees first thing in the morning. now here's wednesday, low pressure to the north. so that rain that i mentioned in the north and the east of scotland. the met office is pointing to 20—30mm of rain quite widely. in the extreme case it could be double, even triple that. so really, really wet across this part of the world. to the south, scattered showers, maybe some thunderstorms. but i think come the afternoon

there will be some sunshine in the south of the uk. and that, of course, is good news for wimbledon because the weather has been dreadful. however, there is a rain symbol there for wednesday. that's to indicate the showers we should have in the morning, but come the afternoon it will be better. now, high pressure is close by. it's just in the wrong position. we're on the edge of the high, so that means that the winds are coming in from the north. so really cool air sliding across the uk with showers and again rather a lot of cloud. look at the temperatures. 14 in aberdeen. we might squeeze 22 or 23 in the south east of the country if there will be some prolonged sunny spells, but the outlook into the weekend really says it all. it's that mixed bag and it is on the cool side forjuly. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. world leaders gather in washington to kick off the nato summit, with ukraine high on the agenda. meanwhile, rescue operations continue in kyiv after a deadly russian strikes levels ukraine's biggest children's hospital. and hamas warns that a ceasefire deal with israel could be back to square one, after weeks of ongoing negotiations.

i'm sumi somaskanda, welcome to our show. european and north american leaders are gathered here in washington to kick off the nato summit. a central topic during the gathering will be the war in ukraine and the possible path to nato membership for the country. a short while ago, ukrainian president vladimir zelensky emphasised the need for more air defence and security to help his forces counter russia's deadly airstrikes and reduce civilian casualties. us presidentjoe biden vowed to aid ukraine against those attacks, announcing plans to supply new air defences to ukraine in an opening speech at the summit. the us along with other nato allies will send at least four patriot systems according to a newjoint agreement. mr biden also sent this warning to russian president vladimir putin on the alliance's growing strength. all we allies knew, before this war putin thought nato would break. today nato is stronger than it has ever been in its history.

when this senseless war began, ukraine was a free country.