the one nine hundred ninety s. failed there are those who believe the government should support this industry. today you have without going to ban all. so it's very important for to cultivate such amounts of land where you can get more than forty products out of it. the best the road you can just get it out of that. it's out of the united nations says lebanon is one of the largest producers and exporters of cannabis in the world politicians now want to cash in on this lucrative underground market but in a country known for corruption some question the government's ability to control and regulate the trade so out of northern because lebannon. quick look at the top stories now the u.n.

special envoy to yemen says talks between warring parties next month will focus on disarmament this is international criticism has been growing over an airstrike by the saudi a morality coalition which at a bus full of school children in northern province many of the remains of yet to be identified the rebels say at least fifty one people were killed in thursday's strike including forty children. thousands of people have been protesting against israel's controversial nation state law the law officially affirms israel's jewish character but critics believe it makes non jewish minority second class citizens in while a u.n. delegation is arrived in gaza for meetings with hamas in a bid to lower the tensions with israel are expected to push for a more permanent cease fire a visit comes as funerals are held for three palestinians killed by israeli forces during friday protests at the gaza border the twentieth week that protests were held. but has more from gaza. nicholai mlodinow off the u.n.

envoy himself was supposed to come last week but because of that escalation in violence that meeting between himself and have never happened now these meetings have happened on a regular basis in the last few weeks when we've seen these escalations in violence desperate efforts by the u.n. envoy to try and forge try and maintain some sort of last thing ceasefire antigovernment protests as a rallying for a second day in romania after more than four hundred demonstrators were injured in violence with police on friday many of the protesters in the capital bucharest all remain in migrants who have returned home to demonstrate against corruption police have denied that they used excessive force on friday when they deployed to gas and water cannon to disperse the protesters and turkey's president has vowed to defy what he describes as u.s. attempts to undermine the country's economy. but on wrote an opinion piece in the new york times warning the u.s.

must respect the sovereignty of their partnership could be in jeopardy as president donald trump announced this week that he would double steel and alan minium tariffs on turkey as the headlines coming up next on al-jazeera it's the listening post. tony robbins spent shell months tempted. to tell the same thing right. now at this rally on wall street. hello i'm richard gives

birth and you're at the listening post here are some of the stories we're covering this week extremist voices and the media to give them a platform or not that is the question if he'll be the new prime minister and the media so far so good but how real will the reforms prove to be a bangladeshi photojournalist appears on al-jazeera speaks his mind and ends up behind bars yes i mean i really do this is not and the saudi twitter account that crashed and burned after evoking memories of nine eleven we began with a question on the rise of far right and the immigration movements in countries like great britain do such movements and the support that they attract drive media coverage or is it the other way around do the news media through excessive coverage help manufacture that support take tommy robinson who calls himself a warrior for freedom of speech on issues such as migration when he rails against the supposedly creeping influence of political islam in u.k.

society that resonates with audiences but what came first his newfound popularity or the coverage of him. a recent academic study suggests that right wing anti immigration political parties such as the u.k. independence party ukip oh more of their success to the news media than they would care to admit that news outlets do far more than just reflect current events this is a story about british politics but the issue at the core of it the relationship between the far right and the news media is a dynamic at play in many countries around the globe our starting point this week is long. the tone of some of the interview of the leader overall being an asset to the entire russian leader if they do you know. when it comes to figures like tommy robinson the question isn't just when to cover him or high do you take any responsibility for it that. you think that i'm asking do you think that i'm asking the larger question is why when you

scroll back to the beginning when robinson had no tangible following did the british media cover him and provide him with the platform in the first place intuitive idea that i think a lot of have in their minds many journalists included is that if you see some sort of idea or actor that you find troubling let's say with respect to the public interest you want to go and report on that you want to say look this might be a problem the counterintuitive model which is i think the one that actually holds in reality it is that it actually ends up being a feeding frenzy a lot to say nothing to you that these figures further and further into public support. this is what right wing extremism in the u.k. looks like fourteen months ago a man plowed his van into a crowd near a mosque in one there were nine casualties and one fatality at the trial the court was told that the driver. wanted to kill most was

a follower of tommy robinson and had been in contact with him just days before. british broadcaster saw nothing wrong with the interview rockets right giving him air time the day after the attack and began this once the trial concluded tommy robinson who has repeatedly been bailed out by the media darren also borne the mode a bunch of pedestrians down for no other reason than that here soon they were muslims he did so inspired by tom robinson's ideology almost all woodbine almost over temporarily how muslim immigration to country this very day after the murder they put him on good morning britain the day after donald's point goes to jail that brain tony robinson ought to be pursued newsnight and give him a chance to represent himself as a martyr we had free terrorist attacks it was in quick succession and rather than talk about them is about to close in fact why this man. i want to put on the fact that i report the truth is every single time the media has given him

a top form and made a politician out of somebody who was essentially a far right football hooligan one of the most dangerous games that the the political and political liberals and the left of played over recent years as being to call for the banning of views they don't like because. all of this is a cult she was underestimation of all fellow citizens who we assume are going to be easily easily turned into racists easily influenced i think that's a very. dangerous content us that way of treating all fellow citizens. lots of people talk about media coverage anecdotally impressionistic but relatively few quantify it and analyze it an academic study published last week in the british journal of political science examined more than a decade's worth of coverage by british newspapers of u.k. the u.k.

independence party and immigration party which fought for britain's departure from the european union the author. looked at the chicken and egg question of what came first was it you keeps the rise in popularity followed by increased coverage or did the press coverage of the party preceded surgeon support and have a causal effect we found that media coverage is a predictor of public support in future periods but we did not find any evidence that public support is a predictor of media coverage so there appears to be a unique causal effect between media coverage of these far right wing populist parties and their rise in electoral significance i don't think that the media should to be in the business of making moral decisions about what kind of voices are heard on the media i don't and the media is to blame for the rights of thomas roberts and tommy robinson has opinions which should be. discussed and that's not

the same as saying even those opinions depriving him of mainstream media coverage just means that he gains a certain mystique though his ideas is so frightening that you have to keep them out of the mainstream the british media have been creating a space for whatever reason for the far right well in advance of any of the times of support for them to justify it by saying but if we put them on television will expose them and what turns out to be the case is that journalists know very little about the history of the far right just as the history of the individuals they are all dealing with about their politics or even about how to engage with or challenge their most offensive claims in the end they end up being played by the far right. one of the broadcasters that interviewed tommy robinson over the baron osborne case last year and has since given airtime to his supporters is the b.b.c.

this is how it explained its decision to provide them with a bloc that there will be some politicians public figures. views featured in our news coverage that some of our audience will find unpalatable we wouldn't however censor a political viewpoint as we have a duty to create a platform where as wide a range of voices as possible can be heard we aim to analyze and scrutinize the facts so our audience can make up their own minds b.b.c. wasn't the only british media outlet we approached with questions we also wrote to i.t.v. and the radio station l b c neither chose to comment they've let their work speak for itself and generally journalists are relatively inhospitable to extreme fringe far right wing populist viewpoints but once those actors do force themselves onto the agenda then there's a feeding frenzy that occurs so that's how i think media and journalists specifically can produce

a reality that they actually don't really want to say. with the governing conservatives divided over the opposition labor party split over the same issue and the mostly pro brackets it tabloid press still pushing its agenda british politics is already in a messy state and when the broadcast media even with the best of journalistic intentions put the likes of tommy robinson on their air so that they can grill him they find they cannot do so without giving him the exposure he craves they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions that is where britain seems to find itself today and the news media aren't just reporting the story many times they have a hand in driving it. we're discussing other media stories that are on our radar this week with one of our producers joanna hooks joe in bangladesh a photo journalist has been arrested over comments that he made on this channel

what specifically has been charged with well the charges of giving false information. now bangladeshi police arrested shocking for that and for allegedly making productive comments on dizzier during an interview about protests that have flared up across the country over how dangerous the roads are i saw the police going. on students that the lawyer was charged under is the information and communications technology acts or i.c.t. and this is a statute that media right groups say is often used to target journalists now long criticized the excessive use of force by police and protesters and said the demonstrations are motivated by factors larger than road safety alone among those factors he says the government's gagging of the media and corruption and alarm isn't the only bangladeshi journalist who's paid a price after covering these protests far from it and supporters of the government and the prime minister cheikh hasina have reportedly attacked more than

a dozen reporters covering the protests beating them and their equipment and asked for the i.c.t. at least twenty five journalists and several hundred bloggers and facebook users were prosecuted on the last year alone over online content alleged to be defamatory or blasphemous that a government has promised to change that law but is yet to deliver moving on now to a story we did a few months back hungary and the ever tightening grip that the government there has on the media and now one of the few remaining critical news outlets is have a change of editorial too and how did that happen exactly well richard the outlet is hair t.v. which has now been bought out by as an ally of prime minister viktor orban and his ruling party now here t.v.'s former owner. used to be close to the president as well but ever since relations turned sour three years ago he's become outspoken and critical which was reflected in here t.v. content now just hours after the takeover of the channel's new owners shut down

here's leading news program and fired several senior employees various other. analyst resigned in protest and i spoke with one of them and bihari a former reporter at the channel i mean you don't know when your media outlets are going to have a. change of ownership or are going to have a change of voice we're going to have a change of structure and it's a real structure a new plans new values and you have your own reality use you trying to stick to them but it's really really really hard to stick to your ground use and have a job actually hungary if you work in the media now now this transaction the sale of here t.v. it's part of a larger trend isn't that media outlets that are critical suddenly ending up in the hands of orbán supporters it is indeed and we've been tracking it in the past few years there have been a number of new media owners in hungary or been associates like and divina hein we

have patina and lorraine's measure ours now here is what bihari had to say about this a lot of televisions a lot of. other outlets new sports laws journos have changed owners and all of these. media outlets have been built either by really close friends was a prime minister himself or businesspeople who have some kind of relationship with the governments so the map of the hungry media changes in new really dramatic way and in really fast way because it all happened in the last two years and that was adam bihari formerly of hair t.v. ok thanks joe it was just six months ago after years of protests than a state of emergency that east africa's most populous country ethiopia saw an unexpected changing of the political guard the surprise resignation of prime

minister haile mariam disallowing lead to a leader from the oromo try. taking power in the four months since he became prime minister he has not only forged an historic agreement to end the twenty year standoff with eritrea he's also made bold promises to end the authoritarianism of former prime ministers and to heal social tensions among ethiopia's or more n.t. gray ethnic groups. the media specifically social media are central to this story because it was ethiopians constant use of platforms like facebook and twitter to coordinate protests and amplify grievances beyond the reach of government censorship that preceded all the changes the listening posts flow phillips now on how social media both inside and outside the country shaped ethiopia's political revolution and what some of the most influential ethiopian journalists are now hoping for under their new prime minister.

on april second a new prime minister and. addressed ethiopians as one nation. to them. at the moment. there was hope there was. you could take it as a sort of obama's moment for ethiopians. but that is. that i give him a. big. but whether freedom of the press or to open up the space for political position are given to restore peace. to. listen. to. it just look at them. and i was very much impressed by his articulation his vision

and how he would like to change things quite. different we. are going to go you know that yemen that. mangas years back again. wired to prime minister abi ahmed's rise to power ethiopia had had just two prime ministers in twenty three years. who spent his seventeen years consolidating power around his ethnic group the to groening's and haile mariam to selling.