this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. hi, i'm ros atkins with this week's edition of the media show. we're going to talk about the messaging app telegram after its founder was arrested close to paris. we'll also bejoined by the editor of the satirical website in the us, the onion, which is relaunching its print edition. and we'll hear about a blockbuster game which has been made in china. let's start by talking about the messaging app telegram, because its founder and its ceo, pavel durov, has been arrested close to paris — and we're going to explore the implications notjust for him and for telegram, but for many of the biggest

tech platforms in the world. to do that, let's begin with mike isaac, tech correspondent for the new york times, who's in san francisco. we didn't quite know a lot from the very beginning. we understood that durov was detained, and it was pretty clandestine in the beginning. then later, the french prosecutors let out a few different reasons. according to a sort of brief statement, it was facilitating child pornography, human trafficking, drug trafficking, a sort of vague reference to encryption issues on the app. so it was kind of a laundry list of issues. more broadly, mike, were you surprised that this happened in france? so, this is... one of the fascinating aspects of this case is, you know, it's a big deal in any sort of country at this point,

i believe, to really take under arrest the ceo of a major tech company, especially one used by almost a billion people, that telegram is. i think the distinction that's important here is that the arrest was made not under eu sort of broader laws, but specifically under french sort ofjurisdiction. and i also think that other tech ceos are looking at that and what that means for travel across different countries, not... i think durov is a different case because of how uncooperative he has been with different countries over the years — but it's something to look at. related to that, my bbc news colleaguejoe tidy has been reporting in the last few hours that telegram refuses to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing child abuse material online. and those of you listening, you can find that full report on the bbc news website. i should also read you a statement from telegram following durov�*s arrest, in which it says it "abides

by eu laws" and that its ceo "has nothing to hide and travels frequently in europe." it goes on, "it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner "is responsible for the abuse of that platform." and that assertion, mike, as i said a little earlier, cuts into a broader debate when it comes to online platforms and the degree of responsibility they carry for the content which can be found on them. 100%. and i think that's something that... i mean, this is something in the united states, too, that's sort of up for contention a lot. there's a law here, a sort of rule called section 230, which shields accountability of the platforms as a whole from the speech that's written on them, and even when that is challenged frequently by different members of congress here and lawmakers, and so far it's held up. that doesn't exist in the same way across every country right now. and it's certainly something in litigation in the eu

as well as certainly in france, they're taking a look at it. but this is a real... i would say it's an existential issue for platforms and their owners because it, you know, it brings into question what sort of stuff could be published on these platforms at all. and i think they all have a bunch of lawyers in the room talking to them right now, figuring out, is this going to be a real case for us going forward, if notjust in france, then in other countries? let's get further help understanding notjust this story, but the app and the man in the middle of it. steve rosenberg is the bbc news russia editor, and he's with us on the media show. steve, we always appreciate you coming on. let's go right back to the beginning of telegram. tell us about how it came to be and what durov�*s ambitions were for it in those early days. well, pavel durov had created something called vkontakte before that, which was like russia's version of facebook, his version of facebook.

that was his first creation. telegram, which followed it, was supposed to be a, you know, secure and reliable messaging app that would allow lots of people, large groups of people to communicate. and underpinning all of this, i think, was pavel durov's sort of anti—authority streak, the fact that he was fiercely free speech. and this was supposed to be a platform where government couldn't snoop, couldn't interfere. though, of course, critics a decade later say that perhaps it's too free. in other words, that not enough moderation, moderation is not strict enough, and that telegram has become a platform, they would say, for criminal activity. and in those early days, how did the authorities view both durov and the messaging app that he'd created? i think this is a key question, actually — the relationship between pavel durov and the russian authorities, because for years, mr durov went out of his way to sort of distance

himself from the kremlin. the story goes that, you know, a decade or so ago, he came under pressure from the russian authorities over that version of facebook, vkontakte, which he created. the authorities wanted information about users. it wanted him to shut down the pages of opposition politicians. he refused. he was forced to sell his business. he left russia, decamped to dubai, then developed telegram, which russia tried to block in 2018, then unblocked in 2020. pavel durov has said, "i publicly refused to cooperate with the russian authorities," but there are some people who say that that is a myth, a legend, that in reality he maintained ties on some level with the russian authorities, and that he travelled regularly to and from russia. and, in fact, if you go back to 2021, telegram, together with apple and google, actually blocked software that had been championed

by the late opposition leader alexei navalny, that would have allowed russian voters to vote strategically against pro—kremlin parties. that had been a request from the russian authorities. and, steve, if you were to go outside of your office now and go to speak to people in the street, how many of them might have telegram, how widely used...? if i did the equivalent of that walking out of the studios here in london, i'm sure the vast majority of people i stop would probably be using whatsapp. is it the same with telegram in russia? yeah, it is. i mean, lots of people use telegram here because, you know, it's difficult to get information, alternative sources of information on the television. there's such a high level of state control on tv, in the newspapers here. so a lot of people go into telegram to get that alternative information. so i think the reaction from the public has

been quite negative. people don't like the idea of governments interfering into what they say is a platform for free speech. the reaction from russian officials, though, has been really interesting. there's been a lot of huffing and puffing by people in power here. the russian foreign ministry has accused france of trampling on international norms regarding human rights. the russian president's ombudsman for human rights claimed that everyone who strives for free speech protests against this. before saying that, i wonder if she'd given any thought to the state of free speech in her own country, because in russia, facebook�*s banned, instagram's banned. access to the signal messenger app was banned earlier this month. access to youtube is now severely restricted and, as i say, the media landscape here is heavily controlled. but we've been also hearing from, you know, other pro—kremlin voices using durov's detention to sort of say to the russian public,

"well, you know, we told you there was no democracy in the west. "look, here's proof. "and we told you that the west hates russia and hates russians, and here's proof." in other words, using this for sort of hype and pr and to strengthen kremlin narratives. next on the media show, we're going to talk about the us satirical website the onion, i'm sure a lot of you know it — and i've been talking to its editor, chad nackers. now, the onion started life as a print publication. it's since become a very, very popular website, but it's relaunching its print publication, and chad's been explaining to me why they've taken that decision, and he's been giving me a brief history of the onion. the newspaper started out in print in 1988, in madison, wisconsin. we moved to the internet in 1996. i believe we were the first comedy website online. and, yeah, we'vejust covered a lot of big issues through the years.

you know, i've been there since �*97, so i've been through since the clinton administration. the clinton administration. and, yeah, we'vejust...we and, yeah, we'vejust...we hit the big stuff. hit the big stuff. we moved to new york we moved to new york in 2001 and 9/11 happened, in 2001 and 9/11 happened, so that was, you know, so that was, you know, kind of a bizarre coming out kind of a bizarre coming out party for us and led party for us and led to kind of deeper, darker, to kind of deeper, darker, swiftian satire for a while, swiftian satire for a while, with the iraq war, with the iraq war, the afghanistan war. the afghanistan war. is it possible, then, is it possible, then, given that you've been given that you've been at the onion for so long, at the onion for so long, to talk about different to talk about different eras of satire, both eras of satire, both for your publication for your publication critical of the iraq but for satirists more but for satirists more broadly in the us? broadly in the us? yeah for sure. yeah for sure. like, in the late �*90s, like, in the late �*90s, it was, you know, it was, you know, the clinton...the era — the clinton...the era — the economy was really good. the economy was really good. so it was, like, veryjokey. so it was, like, veryjokey. we'd just put him into crazy we'd just put him into crazy situations, like collecting situations, like collecting joanjett records or being joanjett records or being injected with an unstable serum injected with an unstable serum to create a super president to, to create a super president to, you know, 9/11 happening, you know, 9/11 happening, and, you know, the onion and, you know, the onion was one of the few american was one of the few american publications that was very publications that was very

critical of the iraq war coming out.

that'sjust, like, what we kind of stand for. i don't think it really... if that's like a, you know, ideology, then to me that's kind of bizarre that one side would stand for things and one wouldn't. and i was looking at the politics section of your site just before coming into the studio. you had a headline about kamala harris�*s vice presidential nominee, tim walz, saying "panicked tim walz trapped in football metaphor for third consecutive day." another headline read, "nation confused as to whyjoe biden "is still on tv sometimes." so... and that's just two of many, many headlines that you have. so your primary product remains the website. is that right? it is. and we just created a new website. but we are expanding. we're returning print. so we have a new membership, and that's going to be one of oui’ revenue streams. you can pay $5 us a month right now, $60 a year — i think in british, uses rocks or something. um...

anyway, it's pretty affordable and we feel like it's the... ..you know, we want to, like, put our readers first. and i think the newsprint is a great way to consume the onion, because you're getting the interplay of all the different headlines and jokes. you're notjust seeing what social media shows you. and we're concerned about the readers', like, health, too. we want to get them off devices for a little bit and have them staring at newsprint for a while. is that not risking telling them, "well, get away from the place where most of you read the onion," because if you're encouraging them to put away their phones, turn off the social media appears, go away from your website, that presumably is where most people find your stuff? well, if they're giving us money each month, i think we're in good shape. 0k. you're going to be ok. and in terms of satire's health more broadly in the us, people listening may well have heard of what you're up to, but how do you look across us satire more broadly as we head into this election? you know, just our

role for satire? yes — but also who's doing it. i mean, where do you go to find the best satire? i just walk down the hall to my writers' room. i set that one up foryou, didn't i? no. we... you know, one thing we do is we have a writing fellowship. so people come in, they send in packets, they work for six months on the staff, writing headlines, writing articles, and being in the room to brainstorm things and learn the process, learn the voice. and that's where we primarily, like, fill up our bench and get people. but we also have contributors. there's onion writers who worked for the onion in madison who still contribute to us, still send in headlines. so we, you know, have a deep pool. tell us about that process that you've just alluded to. how do you go about generating yourjokes, generating your articles and headlines? take us through an average day in the onion newsroom. so, we'll start out, the writers will have, like, 20 to 30 headlines that they'll read out loud to the group.

so even before they show up, they've got to have 20 to 30, which must take them a while. or maybe you're very quick. it does — and that's usually... we have two different types of meetings. we'll have an evergreen meeting where they bring a lot of headlines, and then timely stuff like politics that they'll write, like, maybe five to ten. but in general, we'll pitch, like, 20 to 30 headlines. we'll highlight the ones that people laugh at, and like, and then we'll have another meeting in which we go through and pick the top headlines that we're going to publish. then we brainstorm the ideas, the writers go off and write the articles, we'll have a second draft meeting, we'll talk about it later. we'll have an editors' meeting where we, you know, according to the writers, we change all the stuff, and then it's pretty much ready for publication. and when you're doing that, are you trying to have a consistent voice, if you are making jokes or writing stories about very well—known political figures such asjoe biden or kamala harris or donald trump? are you trying to be consistent in how the onion

is projecting these characters? to some extent. you know, we'll kind of feel around with, like, whether it's a character. you know, ithink, like, if you're president, there's certain elements that come out, but we try not to go too heavy into a character because that gets a little one dimensional and it doesn't fit every situation. like, for instance — and it's a little easier when they're candidates. like, donald trump was trying to distract from the dnc last week by eating a live rat on video. and so we'll kind of play around. you know, he's a person who loves attention, so that will be kind of the core idea where a joke comes from. joe biden kind of does a little everything. we had him carried off by ants at one point. i should ask... i should ask why you had him carried off by ants. laughter. i think that might have been a... oddly, it was before

the debate, i think he was just seeming a little feeble. we were thinking it would be funny if he was, like, a group of antsjust grabbed him and carried him away. and do you have a position on who you would like to win? does the onion have a preference, whether it's the democrats or the republicans in power? i'll just say we are very against fascism. so that's our role here. 0k. now, on the media show, we're going to talk about gaming, and in particular a blockbuster video game that's come out of china. it's called black myth: wukong and it sold 11.5 million copies in the first 2a hours. master, are there more good folks in the world or bad? more good, of course. then why is there always suffering? and why do the bad folks always win? because goodness without teeth punishes not. it only foments evil.

cleanse the world with blood and grow lotuses in it. that is your destiny. well, i wanted to understand how unusual it is for a video game to sell this much in the first few hours and days of its release — and i've been getting some help on that from keza macdonald, who's the video games editor at the guardian. it's pretty big. i mean, to put that into context, another game that sold similarly was animal crossing: new horizons back in the pandemic. so a very, very popular game. it's had, like, 3 million concurrent players on pc. i think it's sold 10 million now and it's only been out for a week. so it's a very, very successful game. and it's the first such successful game to ever come out of china. china has a very, very big popular games industry. but most of the games made in china are played in china, largely because china wouldn't even allow games consoles like playstation to be sold in china until relatively recently. so there are loads of mobile

games that are in billions and billions and are very popular in china. rarely do they make it out of china and become popular elsewhere. and never has there been a game like this, which is like a blockbuster single player game that's ever come out of china and been this successful. so it's really speaking to some changes that are happening in the chinese games industry. now, one aspect of this story i wanted to ask you about is that i'm seeing that the co—publisher of this game has sent influencers a list of topics to avoid while live streaming the game, including feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse. presumably, it's not normal for games publishers to issue those kind of instructions. it is not normal, no. it's very interesting because the developer, game science, that's been making this game, they have had an unparalleled level of scrutiny and they've had no idea how to deal with it. so there was some reporting coming out of china from ign, which is a big games website, alleging kind of sexist, misogynist comments made by people who work at game science.

they did not know how to respond to that. they just completely refused to comment to all media on it. and now, obviously, they've sent out this list of demands for people who are streaming the game saying, "please don't mention covid, feminist propaganda or chinese politics." and you do start to wonder, "huh, what's going on there?" you mentioned the media approaches. the bbc approached the studio, game science, behind black myth for comment but has not received a response. just one more question on this, though. what can the game and the people behind it do to stop people talking about that? do they have the means to just block certain words? well, i do think that it's the classic thing where if you tell people not to talk about something, it's what they're going to talk about. and, of course, that's kind of how this story has gone. like, the game itself has been incredibly successful. it's a very good game. i've played a bit of it and it's very impressive, especially to look at. however, this, like, sub story now, that, you know, they're trying to control the narrative, and in trying to control the narrative, they've just made it worse for themselves. so i think there's probably

a lot for game science to learn on how to deal with the media and how to deal with social media and how to deal with streamers, because people who are engaged with video games tend to be extremely tech literate and extremely social media literate, and a lot of them will be aware of this controversy. ican imagine. that was one gaming story we wanted to talk about. another is that the inaugural esports world cup came to an end at the weekend. hundreds of competitors gathered in the host city of riyadh, in saudi arabia, to compete for a share of a $60 million prize pot. and joining keza is esports broadcaster frankie ward. frankie, for people who don't even know the concept of esports very well, how would this manifest itself? what would an esports world cup look like in practice? well, i'lljust explain really what an esport is first. it's basically a competitive video game that lends itself to a structured tournament environment. so that could be taking place in a community centre or a school, could be taking place online, it could be taking place in an arena in front of tens of thousands, and it could be one v one, five v five, 50 duos all competing against each other at the same time.

so that's kind of what you're looking at when you talk about esports. and is it a big media market? huge, yeah. but it kind of feels quite niche when you look at the way that it plays out, really, because it is massive, and yet if you're not interested in it, you might not know it exists because it's always taken place almost exclusively online. there are certain countries where esports is more of a national talking point. like, for example, in denmark you would actually see an esport called counter—strike played on a mainstream sports channel. but in the uk, for example, it'd be very rare to see it on normal television. you've given us a great briefing on the sport's general approach to the media and the audience it's trying to reach. but this world cup has been controversial because it was in saudi arabia, as i was mentioning, it was bankrolled by the saudi authorities. tell us how the sport has reacted to that. so it's been really interesting. definitely mixed reactions, particularly within the esports industry itself, which is made up of a number of

communities who all love their individual games. people have been very outspoken about the fact that saudi arabia's basically bought out the biggest esports tournament organiser in the industry and used it to put on this event in saudi. and traditionally esports haven't... ..esports events have not taken place in riyadh. so what they've done is they've put on their own event and they have branded it the esports world cup. there's nothing actually really about the esports world cup that resembles a world cup as we know it. there are no national teams being sent. it is a case of apparently 200 esports organisations, 20 of which are being paid to take part because they are very well known esports organisations who field teams in multiple games, and they are competing across 21 different games, or they did compete across 21 different games. and at the end of it, the one thing that was, i guess, world cup—like was one of the esports organisations that won the most medals got a trophy. and if we bring keza

in from the guardian. keza, are you comfortable with a major event connected to gaming taking place in riyadh? personally, absolutely not. an interesting thing about the video games audience is that about 20% of gamers identify as lgbtq, which obviously saudi arabia is fairly unpopular in that demographic. and i do think that there's an element of sportswashing that some people have pointed out about the very high level of saudi investment in gaming and in esports. it's obviously a young audience that watches esports. it's a young audience that plays games generally, although, you know, ever older. and that's an important demographic for, you know, the saudi efforts in laundering their reputation. so i had a bit of a problem with the esports world cup being in saudi arabia, and i certainly wasn't the only one. some people boycotted it, others quit over it. and looking at the numbers, a saudi government—backed gaming group says they want to invest £31 billion to transform the country into a global esports hub by 2030. so, frankie, despite the significant reservations, it sounds like this is happening.

well, it sounds like they're throwing money at the situation and hoping it sticks. it certainly has been something they're trumpeting as this success, the esports world cup. they're claiming that 500 million viewers tuned in, and that it's the most watched event in 2024. but actually, it's not the most watched event in 2024, because actually that's 21 different events. so you can see already that they're using this to kind of try and draw people in and take them seriously as an esports hub. but currently i wouldn't say that they have been, but, you know, maybe this will change things. thanks to frankie ward and keza macdonald for helping us through those gaming stories. and that brings to an end this edition of the media show. thank you very much indeed for watching. next week, katie will be back with us, but for now from me, ros atkins, 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.

live from washington, this is bbc news. babies in a gaza hospital are the first to get vaccinated for polio, as health care workers there launch a massive immunisation campaign. reports from eastern ukraine say at least eight people have been killed on saturday and many more injured in a barrage of russian attacks. a new effort to get mpox vaccines to a number of countries in africa, hardest—hit by the virus. hello, i'm helena humphrey. it's great to have you with us. palestinian health workers

in gaza have started vaccinating some babies against polio, a day before a mass immunisation programme is due to begin. palestinian health workers carried out the vaccinations in nasser hospital in khan younis. unicef says the vaccinations will take place for six and a half hours every day until wednesday. israel and hamas have agreed to three localised pauses in fighting to enable the vaccination of more than six—hundred—thousand palestinian children. our middle east correspondent yolande knell sent this new report from jerusalem. just two drops as the un begins vaccinating against polio in gaza. a dose is easy to give, but carrying out a mass immunisation campaign in a combat zone is a huge challenge. parents of the first vaccinated children are relieved. i was worried and afraid because this is scary. the polio disease. this disease makes the children unable to move.

baby abdulrahman was crawling early, but now his mum