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tv   Victoria Derbyshire  BBC News  November 10, 2019 3:30pm-4:01pm GMT

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ceremonies take place across the uk to mark remembrance sunday to commemorate those who lost their lives in conflict. a world war 2 dakota plane dropped 750,000 poppies over the white cliffs of dover to remember the fallen. australia's prime minister warns of a "difficult" week to come from the "catastrophic" bushfire threat to sydney and surrounding areas. three people are known to have lost their lives. the environment agency continues to warn there's a danger to life from high river levels in south yorkshire — with seven severe warnings still in place. we've had no sleep for two days. we keep getting calls coming in. people have got no supplies, no drinks, no food.
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an update on that statement from doncaster council, we have received a short time ago, saying that they are concerned over some reports that some residents remain in the area. the council is unable to offer support on the ground support to residents in severe flood warning areas but there is a rescue crew on hand which can get people out if they want to get in touch. they say that they have set up a dedicated centre for all fishlike residents. the environment agency does not expect flood waters in the area to go down for at least the next 2a hours. and now on bbc news — victoria derbyshire takes a look back at some of the highlights from her programme this week.
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hello, welcome to our programme. over the next half an hour, we'll bring you some of the highlights and original journalism from our show in the last week. on tuesday, we brought you a shocking investigation about instagram and self—harm. it all stems from the phone of one 17—year—old norwegian teenager called andrina, who took her own life. the evidence left behind on her phone has revealed the scale of self—harm and suicide material being shared across networks of private instagram accounts. andrina live—posted the moments leading up to her suicide on instagram. new analysis by a team of norwegian journalists has revealed that she was linked to another 1000 accounts, all posting similar dangerous content, around half of them in english. at least another 1a girls in the same network have also taken their own lives. we bring you this special report. and there are elements of it which are upsetting, it lasts around 13 minutes.
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i used to say that she... ..she was my heart. so she really took my heart with her when she died. ifeel like it's broken forever, but i'm not sure, it's only two—and—a—half years ago. pictures of heidi's daughter, andrina, cover her home. her teddies still sit on her bed. andrina killed herselfjust before her 18th birthday. then, earlier this year, heidi was contacted by some norwegian journalists.
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i got a text message that they were working with a project about youths and suicides, and social media's impact on this. and in their research, andrina's name often came up. i did a report a year ago in a small community in norway where three young girls, 15 and 16—year—olds, had killed themselves within a short period of time. and it turned out that one of these girls had been on instagram and had a secret account sharing self— harm and suicidal thoughts. annemarte started researching this instagram community. this network of hundreds of locked accounts posting often disturbing content. her team discovered at least 1a other suicides linked to the community. then we started calling, phoning,
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talking to all the families to confirm the suicides, and that's when i got hold of andrina's mother, and she said after talking to me for i think a couple of times, she said, "well, i've actually "got her mobile. "it's in the hallway in a cardboard box. "it came from the police a couple of weeks after andrina killed herself." and she said, "i know, i've always known that there is something on the phone that i don't want to see, but i have to see it. "now i have to see it." so she opened the phone. this was the secret locked instagram account that andrina posted on every day for the last three months of her life. in some videos, she's dancing. i love to see it. but that's alongside pictures of serious self—harm, videos of her crying.
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so heartbreaking. it's horrible. yes, it is. andrina was in supervised accommodation when she took her life. she'd moved out of home after years of self harming and suicide attempts. she'd been hospitalised multiple times. it took me two days to go through it. the hardest thing was that she had documented her last days, her last hours until she took her life. so it was almost like she was.... screaming that... that was hard to witness. she called me back and told me that andrina had killed herself online, that it was several posts from her actual suicide.
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in one of her last instagram posts andrina wrote, "just do it. "no one is going to miss you anyway." the comment below it reads, "don't do it" in capital letters. so this is our investigation room... andrine‘s mum, heidi, handed her daughter's phone over and annamarte‘s investigation team used digitalforensic techniques to find out as much as they could about andrina's connections and how many other self harmers she was linked to online. it'sjust getting darker and darker. she's hurting herself. she's figuring out new ways to hurt herself. she's talking about how she's hiding stuff to hurt herself, how she wants to die. they also had access inside the community through a dummy instagram account. they went through andrina's followers and in turn their followers and found 1,000 locked accounts connected to hers, posting similar dark content,
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talking about mental health issues, about suicide, about self—harm. around 500 were in norway and the rest all over the world, including the uk. the average age is 19. they're often in and out of hospitals. there's lots of support, lots of attention and they all sort of have in common that they don't believe that they can get help anywhere else. and what were the problems you saw? i very quickly discovered that when you post suicidal stuff or self— harm, you get more attention. 22—year—old ingeborg admits that she used to have one of these accounts. do you think it can make people worse? yeah, i know it can, because i think the community is making people worse because they give you ideas on how you can kill yourself, how you can hide your illness from people around, and even people who don't mean to affect others in a negative way do it because they post pictures
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of serious self— harm and people think, oh, my cuts aren't deep enough. then i have to do it like her next time. ingebjorg was on instagram and saw andrina put up her last post before ending her life. i felt like i was watching a suicide, that i was in the room with her watching it happen, and i couldn't do anything. all the other girls in instagram was like her audience. do you worry that andrina's posts, her behavior, showing her own suicide influenced other people? i know it did. but... i don't like to think about it. but i know.
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of the 1,000 accounts connected andrine‘s that were discovered by the nrk journalists, there are at least 22 in the uk. so, these are some of the uk accounts and they say things like "trigger warning" all over them. they have emojis that represent suicide attempts, that represent hospital admissions. by cross—referencing other social media accounts, we've been able to speak to one of the young women. she has one of those locked accounts and uses it to document her struggles with severe mental health problems, her suicide attempts, self—harm and hospital admissions. so, people would actually comment on the kind of cuts you are posting? she feels, although the instagram community could be very supportive, she also experienced people saying things like "your cut isn't big enough."
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she says there was a sense of competition as to who was the sickest. heidi thinks her daughter andrine was pushed to greater extremes by instagram. as time has passed and i have seen what's posted and how active she was on that instagram community, i realised that... ..instagram basically took my daughter's life. that's what i feel. if she didn't have instagram, she would have sought more help in real life. instagram technically doesn't allow images that promote self—harm or suicide. this year, it's completely banned all graphic self—harm posts, but their computers
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can't catch everything. some images are missed. some people now post more abstract pictures to represent their suicide attempts. so these are from just the last week and a half. these are all posts from suicidal girls, either very strong suicidal thoughts or actual suicide attempts. it's 48 of them. from your time inside the network, how does the way instagram works, its algorithms, push this kind of content towards people? we've seen, injust the past few weeks, we've been able to see how norwegian girls who have tried to kill themselves and posting it on instagram, in the same day are being recommended to other girls on the network. that's how i feel instagram is keeping this network alive and keeping it going and growing. we have honestly gone out and said
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to experts in this field, you know, "should we have any of this kind of content related to mental health, suicide or self— injury on instagram? " and they've come back with a resounding yes, because we do have a part to play in not stigmatizing the sharing of this kind of expression of when you're having a tough time. no—one is saying that instagram is responsible for the mental health problems that some of these girls are going through. but when you speak to their parents, they really do feel in some cases that their daughter would not be dead if it were not for instagram making their problems worse. how do you respond to that? first of all, i'm a mum myself, so i can only imagine the pain and the anguish that the families are going through of each and every one of the young women affected by this. we want people to be able to come to instagram to express themselves, but we are deeply committed to making sure that it's also... that our responsibility is to keeping people who come to instagram safe and not seeing what could be potentially harmful material. the way we do that is through
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technology, a mixture of what we call machine learning, which we do at scale, and human reviewers. there's a reason that ingebjorg has stayed part of this instagram network. she feels she has to. she's watched andrine and other friends post their suicides and has now taken it upon herself to try and stop other people doing the same. she keeps an eye on the community from her phone, routinely calls the police when people are in danger. the norwegian journalists have nicknamed her the lifeguard. and that must make you anxious about being online and... or not being online and missing something? yeah, i'm scared that if i don't notice when people are posting these things then no—one will do anything about it. i guess a lot of people are scared to call the police. how difficult was it for you personally spending all this time in such a dark network?
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i don't know. i feel like i've just been, like, shutting off. i think it affects me in ways that i don't really see at the moment, you know. but i'm not as good of a friend or a girlfriend that i used to be because i haven't got time for anybody else's problems. cos i've got all these girls and their problems. what would you say to a mum who's worried about her daughter? i didn't talk to andrine about this instagram because i was afraid that she would be angry and do more self—harm because she was angry at me. but... i regret that i didn't...
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..didn‘t do that. so... to another mum, i would say, don't do the same mistake. talk to your daughter. talk about it. and if you would like details of organisations which can offer you advice and support on those issues — go online, or you can call for free at any time. even though it's felt like we've been talking about a general election for some time — on wednesday, the campaign officially began, which means the house of commons was dissolved and mp ceased to be mps, hoping to get re—elected in five weeks‘ time. this year, a large number are standing down. some are saying they can't tolerate the abuse they have received and the demands it places on them and their families. i sat down with one of them, former labour mp, gloria de piero. so, why are you standing down?
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ten years is quite a long time to do a job of this intensity. but because it is a job which requires... it's like an honour, really. so you have to know that you can give it a hundred percent. and i still can. but i couldn't be sure that i could keep up this level of energy, strain, stress for another five years. so i thought the honourable thing to do for my constituents is to stand down while i've still got the energy. is it stressful, then? is it stressful in a different way. i mean, obviously i've not been going down the pit, you know, but it's stressful in the sense that you get pulled in a number of different directions, that your weekends are not necessarily our own, your evenings. so, just seeing your friends and your family, being a good daughter. you know, you should be able to be a good daughter and be a good mp, too. but sometimes those commitments fall by the wayside. what about the abuse? i know you've had a death threat.
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the toxic atmosphere, has that fed into your decision at all, like it has with a number of other mps who are standing down? it's horrible. but i do think that it doesn't represent britain. soi... you talked about the size of my majority, but actually since 2010, it's always been a marginal, really. and so i've knocked on doors pretty much week—in, week—out. are people fed up with us at the moment? yeah, they are fed up with politicians, but do they abuse you on the doorstep? britain's not like that. the doorstep sort of brings you back to a nice reality. people will rightly have a go at you if they're unhappy, but not in the way that you might see on social media. so that's interesting. there is a real difference between the reality when you talk to people face—to—face and what is on social media? and, therefore, is that why you aren't fearful about your personal safety, even though you have a panic button and an external mailbox and all the rest of it? look, before i go out, every time on the doorstep, i always think, gosh, you know, i've seen this today. people calling me this and that and traitor, whatever.
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so it always crosses my mind. and then at the end of a doorknocking session, i always think "it's not like that. "it's not like that." and so i always feel better at the end. than the apprehension at the beginning. that's good to hear. and what about the intolerance for different viewpoints within your own party and across the political spectrum? so i think something happened in around... i noticed it at least around 2015, 2016, when... of course, people have different opinions from each other and they are different opinions. and as far as, as long as they are not racist or sexist or homophobic or any of those things, then i think those opinions are valid. so i think a normal discourse is to say, victoria, that's your opinion. i don't agree with it. and this is why. but i sort of noticed a sort of fingerjabbing coming in. "you're wrong." "that's wrong." and i really think that it's really bad for political debate. everybody has a view worth listening to, even if you don't agree. nobody‘s wrong.
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don't fingerjab. let's have this conversation and disagreement in a respectful way. in almost a decade in parliament, you've never experienced, you tell me, sexism or harassment. is that true? not harassment, no. god... sexism... i mean, i can't think of particular examples, but of course, when you go into a place and it's 70% male, then you are very alive to it. so whatever strides that we've taken since 1997 really, in the representation of women, i mean, let's not sort of pop open the champagne corks yet. yes. 70% men in there, still. so thatjourney is far from done. and we need more working class people in there as well. which is really interesting. how do you encourage more working class people in? cos that's your background? yeah, it is. i think it's important for people from that background to speak of it. i mean, it's only 9% of even labour mps. .. it's lower when you look at the whole of parliament. but 9% of labour mps is not good.
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and what i've learned is, when people say to you on the doorstep, "you're all the same"... and the other week talking to someone... i said, you can't be serious... like borisjohnson, jeremy corbyn. they're definitely not the same. he went, no, i mean, you've all been to the same schools. you don't know what it's like to walk in our shoes. and i think that is a really crucial challenge. how do you do it? i'm not so sure, but i don't have the immediate answer. but i have to say, when i went round the country to say, "what do you think is the most important qualification for mps?" and i did a load of groups around the country and they all said qualifications or some groups said, you've got to go to oxford, cambridge. and let me say to all of your viewers, if you've got a passion and you love your community and you want to fight for your country, then you are the candidate and you don't need a single gcse to do that. i am going to ask you... it's a personal question. you're comfortable with me asking it. and i know you're going to say i wouldn't ask this of a male politician. but you have chosen not to have children, haven't you? i have. and you wouldn't ask it of a male politician.
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which is a fair point. but i must... i was asked it all the time when i was in the shadow cabinet being minister for women. 0ne journalist said i don't think you'd be able to do that because you haven't got children. 0ff camera. i still remember that. listen, women make choices about their lives and whatever choices they make about their lives, that's fine. that's good. and they should be respected. you know, we're notjust mums. but being a mum is one of the most wonderful things that people can do, obviously. and, next, you going to go back to broadcasting? oh, well... i mean, thing is, i'm... i've got to get a job, obviously. just like anybody else who gives up theirjob. now is the time to get a job. i don't have family money. in fact, you know, my responsibility is to look after my mum and dad, rather than the other way around. so, yeah, i'd love to go back into broadcasting, but if i can't do my dream job, i'd have to get a less dreamlike job. next, the mob0 award winning rap duo krept & konan released their second studio album revenge is sweet last week. the rappers have had a really busy year. they co—created bbc three's talent contest series the rap game with dj target.
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they're running their own restaurant and they've set up a foundation in south london called positive directions, which provides out—of—school activities for kids. and they've spoken out about banning drill music, which they think will have a negative impact. on monday, they sat down to talk to me. i want to ask you about levels of violence that you've witnessed. konan, you've spoken about having a good, stable family and supportive community, but still witnessed extraordinary levels of violence. your mum was shot, your stepfather was killed. yeah. and you've also been critical of banning drill music. and you know what the commissioner of the met has said. she said in an interview, "if music is inciting or glamorizing violence, then we think we have a social responsibility to work with us to take those kind of videos down." what's your view on that? i feel like it's lazy. i feel like, with us, we've got a foundation. so we've gone to the heart of where everything's happened
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and we've gone to the kids and tried to help them, give them something to do after school, get hands on with them and get them really involved and kind of distract them from that kind of life. so what is lazy about cressida dick saying we need to take those videos down? that's not the reason why these things are happening. you know, i mean, it's not the music. the reason why the violence is happening, people was doing crimes before music and they're going to do crimes after the music. so it's a situation that always happened. they tried to ban grime. they've always tried to ban music and then blame it for the reasons why things happen. but don't you think some of those videos do incite violence? but, then, if you look at that, when we was growing up, you know, when we was getting in trouble, when we were younger, what happened if they banned our music? we wouldn't be here setting up foundations, setting up restaurants, changing our lifes, our perspectives. you've got to take people out of these situations to change their situation. and we believe that they need to focus more on doing that. and that's why we set up our foundation here, because we know how much that helped us.
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so we want to get to the actual root of what the issue is and tackle the deep—rooted issue of the violence that's happening, rather than just saying let's ban music. sure. because if we just ban music, it's not going to stop someone... no, no, no. and your saying actually the music is a source of escaping the violence. that's how we got to where we are now. through the music. we come from that background. so it's, like, now the music has taken us around the world, taught us about business. given us the opportunity to change our family's lives. so for us to watch them ban a gateway that helped us, we can't stand there and watch that. so we had to kind of speak up about it. you, krept, i think it was you said going to university was the biggest mistake of your life. yeah. not the biggest mistake. it was a mistake? ido feel like... i did graduate. i got my degree, my 2—1 in accounting and finance, so i did it, but i still felt like when i left it, i didn't learn everything
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about what i was studying because there was so much different subjects. and ijust felt like, you know, it should have been more practical. you know, by the time i've left and got my degree in accounting, i should know how to be an accountant, rather than... so ijust felt like i did waste a lot of time doing that. but at the same time, there's a lot of people that need to go to university to do whatever it is that they want to do. but because i wanted to be a musician, for me, me going and going to university was like... it just was a waste of time for me. but there's a lot of people that it hasn't been a waste of time for. so... yeah. a lot of people will know that you were hurt at the radio 1 xtra live event in birmingham. you were slashed. how are you? i'm fine. i'm good, man. like, again, in every situation, i always just look at the positives of, one, could have been worse. could it really? yeah, because, you know, i got a report back saying if it was a millimeter deeper,
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it could have been fatal and stuff. so it could have been worse. where were you slashed? my leg. like here. it could have been worse. so, just from that, i kind of let everybody know, like, you know, thisjust happened to me. and i'm still going to get on with it and we're still going to release this, we're still going to do positive things and look at everything positively to let people know that no matter what happens to you, like, just look at the positives. and you can get through it. and it could have been worse. so i'm just grateful to even still be here because that could have been a lot worse. thank god. exactly, thank god. that's it for this week's programme. you can contact us at anytime, day or night. there is still several severe flood
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warnings in force, and many flood warnings in force, and many flood warnings and a couple of met office warnings and a couple of met office warnings for morning to come in at the coming weeks. if you have concerns, head to the website for more details. it has been guidetoday for most of us, however, the rain is marching into the western island. not only rain but some sleet over the hills here, which now for the pennines and southern upland. relatively low hills of scotland, about 200 metres also, there are warnings from the met office out for this particular area of rain netting through those areas sensitive to further rainfall. because we have the rend as well as the rain and snow, temperatures held above freezing. it will be a windy dry to at the south, the rain will be slow to clear from the north—east of scotland, heavy and blustery showers will come in behind, feeling chilly with that strong north—westerly wind.
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this is bbc news. the headlines at apm. the chancellor defends conservative party analysis of labour's spending plans, as labour says they are a complete work of fiction. big ben chimes the hour. ceremonies take place across the uk to mark remembrance sunday to commemorate those who lost their lives in conflict. a world war ii dakota dropped 750,000 poppies over the white cliffs of dover to remember the fallen. the environment agency continues to warn there's a danger to life from high river levels in south yorkshire, with seven severe warnings still in place. we've had no sleep for two days, we keep getting calls coming in from people who have got no, they have got no supplies, no drinks, no food.

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