and ros atkins. well, on this week's edition, we're focussed on one subject — the attempted assassination of donald trump and how the media covered the story. and we're also looking at the questions raised about the intersection between the media and politics in the united states. take a look at what happened. let's begin the programme by speaking to three journalists who were at the trump rally where the attempted assassination took place. in a minute, we're going to hear from the bbc�*s gary o'donoghue. from the bbc�*s gary o'donoghue, also anna moneymaker, a photographer with getty images, but first of all, from hadriana lowenkron from bloomberg. i was standing among the crowd, the crowd who had been waiting for several hours in anticipation of hearing the former president speak. for me, what was important was speaking with the people around and the hours leading up,

hearing how excited they were. and then, of course, when we heard the shots fired, immediately immediately everyone ducked, and i was there to speak to them and hear from them and hear their immediate reactions when it all took place. gary o'donoghue from the bbc, where were you? we were set up just close to the exit where people i were would come out from once the shooting started and peoplej started running and wel were there with our car. we were actuallyjust about going | on air on the bbc world service. | and you can actually hear this - on the bbc world service recording — the shots being fired live . while they're coming to us. and so, we weren't penned - in in the way many of the media were in on the riser, _ which is the sort of big structure that's often built at the back of these events. _ you probably see it with sort of wood and metal where - the crews all stand. we weren't penned in like that. so, we were able to grab people

as soon as they came out - and we were able to hear, i mean, the sheer range of anger, - horror, shock, frustration, bewilderment that the - rally—goers were exhibiting. and we were able, once we'd sort of recovered and realised - it was safe, we were able to talk - to them and hear all those emotions i and get their experiences within i moments of the thing happening. and anna moneymaker, we're going to talk about the incredible image that you took. but from looking at that image, it suggests to me that you were, well, fairly close to the president, fairly close to the podium. where exactly were you to get that shot? i was in a pool of photographers who normally covers the walk—on for the former president's remarks and rallies, like, he usually has a pool of photographers that are there. so, you know, we stay in the buffer for the first like ten so, you know, we stay in the buffer for the first, in the buffer

for the first, like, ten minutes of his remarks. and, yeah, i wasjust in the buffer with other four photographers. were you sending material back to the newsroom as it was happening? how does it work? i think the incident took three minutes or so from the first shots fired to when the former president was taken off stage, and right after he was taken off stage and into the suv, the photographers and i, we went into a tent that was behind the stage just while the grounds were controlled or secured. and that's when, um, we all were starting and that's when we all were starting to send our pictures. but i think during the, like our mobile hotspots. but i think during the um incident, i did start to turn on my mi—fi. it because that's the mobile hotspot that you were talking about. and, gary, how quickly were you reporting for the bbc?

well, as i say, we were actually | live when the shooting started. | and that's why, once we got upj and started interviewing people and our bbc output was rolling. on the event, i had my producer, iona hampson, was grabbing people, pushing them in my direction. - into the shot and talking to them. were you worried about your safety and your team's safety? yeah, of course we were. - we were absolutely terrified. i mean, we knew it was shooting straight awayl i mean, we knew it was - shooting straight away shooting straight away and there was a lot of it, so we were frightened. and i think, you know, in the moment when you realise you're no longer - in danger, you haven't been shot, you're alive, then that sort - of professional thing kicks i in and you know immediately this is a huge deal and you know, immediately you've _ got a huge job to do. and adriana, just to bring you back in from bloomberg, what were your feelings in the end the moment? did you worry about your own safety or were you far enough back?

well, i suppose being far enough back in that situation when we heard the shots at first, everyone ducked, and that was my first instinct as well. i was worried for my safety, i was worried for the safety of those around me and, of course, you know the former president's safety. so there were so many different thoughts going through my head. and of course, you know, we're here as reporters. ourjob is to tell the story. and so, of course, i pop up as soon as i can and i need to... to the service point, i had lost service. i had it right when it happened. i was able to share widely with my team what i had just heard. but in the immediate aftermath of that, i lost service. so i had to, with my notes, just keep an eye on to what i was hearing from people, what i was seeing. and when i was able later to get that service back, that was when i was able to feed that reporting into our story. and of course, we continued to update it all throughout the night as we got more information.

anna from getty images, you took one of the really defining images of the day. it was of donald trump ducked down, surrounded by secret service, looking to the floor with blood across his face. just tell us about taking that shot. how did you get it? so, once the shooting had happened and all these law enforcement agents came into the buffer, iwas, like, ducked down and a law enforcement officer crossed in front of me, and i wanted to go in the opposite direction so that i wouldn't get into his way. you know, i kept taking pictures and i saw the swarm of secret service agents who were like, making a shell around the former president making pictures with my wide lens. but then i could see through, the archway of one of the agents' legs. i could see his face, the former president's face.

and so, i pulled out my long glass or my 70 to 200 and focussed on his face and just, hit the shutter and all the pictures fortunately were in focus. did you know you'd got it? did you know that was the one? i don't know. ijust wanted to make that picture to prove that like what had happened and what he what he that he was ok or like that he was alive. so, that was sort of my intention when i made that picture. and then, i guess since then it's been like an important picture. yeah, absolutely. it's one of three images, i'd say, that have come to define the moment, the others being trump face bloodied, fist held aloft, which people might remember by ap evan vucci and an image taken by new york times is doug mills that appears to show the bullet passing donald trump. in an age of such heavy video consumption, the age that we live in stills do still cut through, photographs work. why do you think that is?

i think it'sjust, you know, we're the front row to history. there are pictures from the '605 and the 705 that are still displayed and that just hold such a strong memory. and so, yeah, i mean, it's just what i think is so wild about it was how there were four of us in there and we all got such different images. and so it's important to have as many of us that were there, there, so that we can get all the angles. and anna, if you're describing some of the images that millions of people around the world have looked at, next, let's talk about a video clip that's been watched millions of millions of times. it's you, gary o'donoghue from the bbc, speaking to a man called greg and eyewitness to the attack. this is part of that interview. i'm standing there pointing at him for, you know, - two or three minutes. secret service is looking at us from the top of the barn. - i'm pointing at that roof, . just standing there like this. and next thing you know, five shots ring out. - so, you're certain that the shots came from that guy on the roof? 100%.

gary, it's an extraordinary interview, an extraordinary account. tell us how you came to be speaking to greg. he was one of the people that was was there, and iona spoke to him first. she said, "we need to talk to this guy." we put him on air. and it was in my mind while i was talking to him, i was wondering, is this? to be honest, i was wondering, is this some kind of fantasist? because this is just too extraordinary what he's telling me here about having not having just seen the shooter — that's one thing, but having spent several minutes trying to warn the police that he'd seen a guy with a gun on the roof. and to be honest, i hesitate to say this slightly, but i'm a blind reporter — i had no idea what greg looked like. now, i know now he's a pretty striking—looking guy holding a can of beer. i didn't know any of this. and ijust wonder, you know, in a different world whether i would have been prepared to take him as seriously, but i listened to him. i tested what he said. i got him to repeat things.

i wanted to sort of verify whether he was consistent because we were live with him on air. this wasn't pre—recorded, we were live. people were seeing this. it could have done a lot of damage if he was talking rubbish, it could have been inflammatory damage. but i kept probing because i wanted to see his consistency, and frankly, he kept saying the same thing consistently overand overagain. and that's when i realised this is incredibly important and this is going to be something that is going to make a huge amount of news. and of course, that's what it did. gary, it's so interesting you talk about the fact that you went back to see if he was consistent, because i noticed, and i expect lots of people watching the interview noticed that you asked questions back at him again, as if you were almost going back over what you had heard. and you're saying to us, actually, that was quite deliberate. it was absolutely deliberate. i wanted to see his consistency. i wanted to check that i'd heard right as well that i wasn't somehow, you know, being kind of deranged and hearing things. i wanted to convince myself that i'd

heard what i'd heard. but i also wanted people just to to see him saying it and repeating it and describing it and doing it in slightly different words each time, but painting the same picture overand overagain. because when you just when you focussed on the meaning of what he was saying, it was absolutely gob—smacking. and it was something at that moment in time we just realised was a huge deal and had huge implications because bear in mind, we didn't really know. was a huge deal and had huge implications cos, bear in mind, we didn't really know. time is a very difficult thing in these moments. i can't really recall how long it took us to know that trump wasn't dead. so, i don't really know when i did that interview, how much i knew

about the state of the president, but i definitely knew that, you know, this was an assassination attempt. it was clearly an assassination attempt at that point, and we were using those terms. and for this guy to come and say, "i saw the guy who did it, and i saw the police not listening to us," telling them that there was a guy up there with a gun. iwas... yeah, i had all those flashbacks to those previous times when presidents reagan and jfk and all those things, and you think, this is going to be quite important in this narrative moment in history. absolutely. i'd like to bring hadriana lowenkron from bloomberg back in here just to talk, to reflect on attitudes to the media, particularly as we're the media show, obviously. i wondered from your experience, did yo experience any hostility from people who were around you to the media or to the press more broadly? did you see anything? so, from my personal perspective, the people that i was talking to, both in the lead—up to the the event that took place as well

as in the aftermath, they they were all flummoxed by what was going on. they were... so, you know, a bit of a panic, a bit of a confusion. but they spoke with me and i was able to kind of capture the reactions that i had gathered, and i didn't personally experience that. but i know that that has been the experience of other people, and i've seen that reporting. what about you, gary? as i say, at the beginning, we experienced a whole range of emotions, and there were definitely some angry people, really angry people. in fact, there was one guy who was so angry that when i was live on air on tv, he came and stood between me and my cameraman, and he put his — and he was a big guy — and he put himself physically between me and the cameraman. have some respect. and normally in those circumstances, what a tv gallery will do is they will cut away and move

on and do something else to try and avoid that. but they carried on rolling. and what i did is i walked forward and i put my hand on his arm, and i talked to him live on air and said, "this is what we're trying to do. "we're not disrespecting what's happening. "we're here, we're part of it. "it's really important that the public knows that someone "has tried to shoot a former president. a former president, "and also to convey how you feel about it "and everyone who was here feels about it now." he was properly, properly angry at us. and it took a few moments and this was all on air, but eventually he moved off. i don't think i'd i persuaded him, but he moved off out of the way and we we were able to carry on. there were others who came by and said some things that are pretty unrepeatable on a show like this, but they were very angry as well. but there were also a whole range

of people who were just quiet, who were just shocked, who were absolutely bewildered and wanted to talk to us. i, interviewed two people, father and son — he's a farmer, they live two miles dow the road from this place. their first ever political event political rally. the boy, colby teenager too young to vote, and here's his first experience of democracy — seeing people carried off on stretchers and loaded into ambulances. and you can't help at that moment in time. one of the things i did that night, ros, katie, was — and i never really do this with people on air — is i put my hands on them physically. when i was interviewing them, i put my hand through their arm, put my hand on their forearm. and you're not not meant to really invade people's personal space, but i wanted them to feel my flesh and feel my heat, because i wanted them to know that this wasn't just some dude

in a suit from out of town. this was someone who was there with them and really wanted to hear how they felt about it. and i'm glad i did it. i'm glad i did that. well, you heard gary o'donoghue talking about hostility towards the media from some people at the rally, and later, some trump supporters claimed that the media's coverage of donald trump had helped create a climate where violence was inevitable. and we're going to hear from two guests on the issues that this raises. jay caspian kang is from the new yorker. megan mcardle is from the washington post. i think that, factually, we don't know what motivated this shooter, and i think it is remarkable that so many days after this happened, he seems to be something of an enigma. amd i don't think in general, you've heard this a lot from the left over the years, right? and i think that one thing that you see in the media coverage that's different is that if this had been biden, right, we would already be drowning in hot takes on the right—wing

culture of violence, onn how something trump said had inspired the shooter, even if we didn't know yet. we've been a lot more restrained this time around, and i think that that's reasonable. in fact, i think that, you know, when the left used to say this about the right, i would say, look, first of all, shooters often have just very strange motives. if you look at, for example, the shooting of gabrielle giffords as an arizona congresswoman, the guy who shot her was a paranoid schizophrenic whose main obsession was grammar. if you look at john hinckley, who shot ronald reagan, he was trying to impress jodie foster, right? these people, people with fractured minds, often fixate on politicians, but it intersects with reality only at very strange angles, and it is not part of a left—right conspiracy. there are other people who are. the guy who shot at a bunch of congressional republicans, he was a bernie supporter who wanted to take political action. but i think we don't know,

and i think that it is irresponsible. i think it was irresponsible when the media used to do this kind of speculation before we knew. i think it's irresponsible when politicians do it. what i do think is that even though there is rarely a direct line between something anyone has said, and i also think that you can't use this to shutdown legitimate criticism and say, well, you criticise this person, and now someone has taken that to heart and gone and tried to hurt them. the responsibility lies with the erson who' u, the responsibility lies with the person who's committing donald trump, who makes those sorts of statements. just to interrupt for a second. just to ask you, is whether you think the media has gone too far at times. i think donald trump, he is extraordinary. he has broken a lot of norms that should not have been violated. it was totally appropriate to criticise that. i will say that i think that the media for the past eight years, really, especially during

the trump administration, decided that the issue that the solution to that was for us to abandon our old norms of objectivity and trying to maintain neutrality and to really go after him. and i think that was a bad decision, not so much because it causes assassinations, but because it undercut trust in the media. trust in the media, it undercut social solidarity, and it left us actually in less of a position to make the case against trump, because people just took us as being partisan actors rather than people who were there as all the reporters we just heard from making the first draft of history. megan, let's pick up on that with jay caspian kang from the new yorker. jay, welcome to the media show. i wonder whether you think it has become problematic that sections of the us media are casting themselves as the guardians of democracy, and in their eyes, that involves some form of opposition to donald trump. yeah, i would agree . with megan about that. i think that it was a conscious decision in 2015 to 2016. - you saw an outlet like the washington post, j where megan works.

so, i don't mean to impugn it, - but say, democracy dies in darkness. you had msnbc sort of remake itself as an oppositional network, - and that was very good business for these news outlets, right? . all these places did very well - during the trump administration. and i think that in the end, . what it did was that it created, i think, a lot of- anger on the right. anger on the right, yes. but i also think it created amongst a lot of democratic voters, - this expectation that the media actually was an instrument - for the democrat party, and you see that quite fervently right now. i i mean, anybody who steps evenj slightly out of line gets pilloried. and it's notjust- some twitter effect. it is reallyjust... i think that there has become such aj souring against the media in general on both the left and l the right at this point. on both the left and l the right at this point, and i think that part— of that was because of a decision that they would be partisan, that they would say things .

like, if we don't oppose this president, this is the mostl dangerous president of all time. dangerous president of all time — those things might be true, - maybe they should be said. but when the business model is built off of that, then it. _ i think it invites a lot of— scepticism that might be warranted. so, just so that i've understood this correctly, what you appear to be arguing is that the dividing line between the media and politics is all but disappeared in some cases, and in the eyes of the consumers of both politics and media, the two have become completely blurred. well, yes. i think that the decision to put. the media in that type of position was was definitely conscious. i however, i think there are a lot. of people who work in newsrooms who believe very fervently and strongly in a type - of journalistic objectivity. and those people are just doing theirjobs i and i think that most people in us newsrooms feel that way. - but i do think when i the business side of it or perhaps the publisher's position, the publication's that way, -

then the public is going to pay attention to it. l megan, can ijust bring you back in on that? and the question, i suppose, of trust, do you think the press actually believes more in its role as a guardian of democracy than the public actually does? we could look and say, for example, trust in the media is at an all—time low. yeah, i think it's very clear that we believe harder in this role than the public does. it's very clear in the polling, and i think something that i have been now trying to communicate to my fellow journalists for eight years is that what what was happening — not actuallyjust about trump, but about a broad range of issues — what was happening over the last roughly decade was that people looked at the institutional power that the media had, which, by the way, was already slipping. and they thought, "well, if i could just deploy that power and i could use it for a good cause, how amazing would that be?" and the problem that they didn't understand was that that trust was explicitly built on,

"we just tell you what the facts are." now, i'm an opinionjournalist, so i am not part of that. but even there, there is an expectation that i'm going to be forced to be fair, that i'm going to call people for comment, that i'm going to provide countervailing evidence when it's available. and what people were doing was abandoning that norm. they were sticking little editorial asides into the middle of quotes. they were editorialising. they were looking only at sources from one side. and they felt like, "if we do this, look at the difference, how much better the world could be." but in fact, all they were doing was spending down decades of accumulated trust and they were getting nothing in return for it. the end result was not that we managed to make trump not happen or we managed to end racism or any of the rest of the things people were trying to do. the end result was that people just took us as— progressive activists, rather than people who were in progressive activists, rather than people who were in the business of providing facts to an audience, for the audience to make

up their own mind, i think, and a dreadful mistake. to lead off from that point, jay, if i could bring you back in here. not long ago on the media show, we were discussing how american media was covering questions aboutjoe biden�*s age and that the criticism, the fierce criticism from some of biden�*s supporters that was coming the way of the new york times and other media institutions for their coverage. can we draw some parallels in how the media coverage of this assassination attempt is playing out, and how the coverage of biden�*s health and age are playing out? well, i, think the most striking thing about the coverage - of the assassination attempt i is that it feels like now, what, four days, five days after it took place, i that we've already- moved on in the media. . and i think that part of that is l because attention spans are short or whatever, but i think that that's somewhat. of an unsatisfying explanation. but more than that, i think that here in the united states, - that when a shooter fits the profile that this young man did, _

which is a disaffected, - bullied loner, into computers, then we kind of put them - in the school shooter category and that we've all collectivelyj decided there's really nothing to say about these types of things, and then we just kind _ ion from it, unless it, you know, | involves a mass death of children or something like that. and so i think the most striking thing about that is just that, and so i think the most striking thing about that isjust that, i you know, i at leastl from what i can tell, just as somebody who follows the news obviously works - in the news media, is that - the assassination attempt story is pretty much over. well, that is it for this edition towards the end of a week, well, that is it for this edition which has raised huge questions about the media and politics in america. thank you so much forjoining us. goodbye. 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 there. well, saturday saw some more sunshine towards eastern england in particular. it was warm and humid still here, with some of our temperatures rising again into the high 20s in celsius, whereas further west, it was a wetter story. plenty of thick clouds, fresher feeling conditions developing here. wer�*e all coming into that cooler feeling air as we head through sunday. there'll still be some sunshine around for most of us at times, but also some wet weather in the form of showers. and overnight tonight, we've been seeing some rain moving northwards and eastwards, showers following on behind most of the rain by dawn on sunday will be across the northern isles. still, that hang back of cloud towards eastern england and still that warm, muggy—feeling air — temperatures 16—18 celsius to start off the morning. now, many of us will get off to a sunny start to the day, but cloud will thicken as we head through the late morning into the afternoon, mostly from the west, and there'll be a scattering of showers for western stretches of the uk as well, with heavier rain moving into northern ireland later on through the afternoon, eventually to southwest scotland.

temperatures will be more or less the seasonal average — 16—23 celsius, so quite a drop for eastern areas of england in particular. staying in that cooler air on monday, a whole host of weatherfronts bringing some more wet and some windy weather at times to most of the rain, will tend to be out towards the north and west. a few sharp, thundery showers across scotland down through northwest england. a scattering of showers, but also some sunny spells for northern ireland, and it's blustery in the south where the brisk westerly wind a few isolated showers, but also some sunshine. the sunshine will help to boost the temperature, the sunshine will help to boost the temperature — perhaps for southeast england, we could see 2a or 25 degrees in the best of that. and then, on tuesday, high pressure starts to build in, so the sunshine will be making a return across pretty much the whole of the uk. a few showers to start off the day and a few isolated showers developing as we head through the middle part of the day as well.

more of a northwesterly wind, so it's quite a cool wind direction, but temperatures will be boosted by the sunshine, so rising a little higher again as we head through the day on tuesday — the high pressure, too, lasting into wednesday. so, if we take a look at our outlook for the capital cities as we head through the rest of the week, its warm and it's mostly dry again. its warm and it's mostly dry again on wednesday. temperatures rising a little further, on thursday and friday. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. israeli fighter jets strike houthi military targets in yemen, in response to attacks on israel in recent months.

donald trump speaks at his first campaign rally since surviving an attempt on his life a week ago. us presidentjoe biden says he's "looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week", despite growing pressure to step aside. microsoft admits friday's tech outage affected more than eight million windows devices, and there are warnings criminals might try to exploit the chaos. hello, i'm sophie long. former us president donald trump is giving his first campaign speech since surviving an attempt on his life a week ago. trump told the crowd in grand rapids, michigan, he feels as if he's not supposed to be here, saying he took a bullet for democracy. and they keep saying to me he

is a threat to democracy. i'm saying, what the