this is bbc news. the headlines: the belarusian journalist arrested in minsk following the forced diversion of his flight has appeared in a video statement — confessing that he provoked mass protests in belarus. it appears to have been made under duress. eu leaders have now banned belarusian airlines from its airspace and are drawing up targeted sanctions. the us secretary of state, antony blinken is on his way to the middle east for talks following the fighting between israel and palestinian militants. state department officials say his priority will be to build on the ceasefire. the us is preparing to mark the first anniversary of the murder of african american george floyd — which prompted global demonstrations against police brutality. relatives and supporters of mr floyd have held a rally that started outside the county building where former officer, derek chauvin was convicted.

now on bbc news — the media show. welcome. israel and the palestinians — it is a story that we have been stuck on for a long time. but the battleground is shifting. i am talking tiktok media tutorials, infographics on instagram, and a twitter spat between a supermodel and the israeli government. it might sound petty, but social media is now a weapon of war. the lines have been drawn, hearts and minds are the prize. to chat about this and a whole lot of other stuff, i have a lovely bunch of people with me. sarah is visiting assistant professor of israel studies at northwestern university in the usa. gabriel is professor of communications at the university of haifa. rehan writes for the middle east eye. chris is a journalist

and a social media expert. and also with us today, anna, the editorial director of a magazine aimed at kids, there is no swiping required. anna, we will talk to you a bit later. i want to know briefly, i know your subscription numbers have gone up significantly. you are one of the fastest—growing magazines in the uk right now. is that correct? yeah, that is absolutely right. we gained 36% more subscribers last year and we hit 100,000 subscribers to the magazine, going from strength to strength at the moment. what is on the cover this week? this week, we have news of the big beach clean—up. this is a huge initiative to clean upi million miles worth of beach across the uk. a bit of good news, very good. chris, i want to come to you briefly to talk

about one of the massive stories this week, which is about the merger of warner media and discovery, kind of getting married really. what does this mean, give us a sense of the scale — what does it mean to us as listeners and viewers? i think it can mean an awful lot because we have the battle for online streaming video which is dominated by the likes of netflix, amazon, disney+ obviously coming around the corner with 100 million subscribers worldwide. then you have at&t warner media, which is hbo and discovery which is channels like quest in the uk. they are very much on the back end, but combined, they could have 60 million subscribers. i think it is a way to fight with the big boys. yes, absolutely. let's go back to the question at the top of the programme today — israel and the palestinians, that has been dominating headlines for more than a week now. this long—running local conflict is now playing out in real time on a global stage, drawing in billions of social media users for a battle about who gets

to decide the narrative. of course, the wrongs on the rights of all of that. gabriel, tell us what you are seeing playing out in front of you on social media right now. the use of social media during conflicts, terrorism, war times, is not new. we have seen a lot of those in previous conflicts. notjust in the middle east, all over the world. what troubles me right now, and i must say that i am looking at the middle east conflict right now as a case study in a long range of abuse of social media. and what worries me is the way that social media is abused, regardless of whether you are palestinian or israeli, western, eastern, northern, southern, we should be worried about the way that social media is used as weapons instead of instruments of peace, understanding. it is being abused

and manipulated. and more troubling, if i may conclude my opening statement, is that we are not talking any more about those big giants like twitter, instagram, youtube, but the new players in the field like tiktok exposing many young children who are very gullible, innocent, manipulated by those messages. regardless of who is right or wrong, the use of social media and especially those new platforms like tiktok, should be troubling us. give me an example, you speak about an abuse of power or an abuse of a platform. give me example of where you see that happening. i saw one video which was something i wouldn't like to see, just adding more fuel to the fire, excuse the pun.

when there was a burning tree near the al—aqsa mosque, and the angle of the video was showing israelis dancing at the burning mosque. israelis were dancing because they were in jerusalem, the mosque was not burning, ti was a tree. but the message, the narrative was israelis are dancing because the mosque is burning. this is the way the video was presented, especially to audiences that are not quite aware of, let's say, fake news and manipulated videos. and instead of showing the suffering and the agony involved in conflicts like that, you just add fuel to the fire. rayhan, i know you have been writing about this this week, social media use in particular. what is your take on what we are seeing playing out at the moment? i have been writing over the past two weeks, particularly with regard to celebrities and the reaction generally on social media from high—profile figures.

we have seen a huge number of singers, actors, footballers, speaking out on social media, sending messages of solidarity. the list a few names — oscar—winning actress viola davis, singers including the weekend, dua lipa, zayn malik, mohamed salah, riyad mahrez, benjamin mendes. there have been so many figures who have spoken out on social media. to the point where we could almost say that there has definitely been a growth in terms of the number of celebrities that have spoken out, in comparison perhaps to other instances of an escalation of violence in israel and the occupied palestinian territories. and it is potentially linked

to the black lives matter movement having taken place last year. and we saw similar calls from users on social media asking celebrities, asking social media influencers to use their very, very large platforms to inform their followers about what is happening and also to share messages of solidarity. and we have seen so, so many. there has been some pushback as well, hasn't there? there has been this idea, and, sarah, i will bring you in in a second, there has been this idea and i guess i would call it a stick to your own lane type of idea. you are celebrities, why do you need to be talking about this type of stuff? what is your take on that? yes, there has been pushback, and i think for many different reasons. in many different ways,

and one of the most, the biggest pushback which you mentioned at the top of the show was the official israel account, the official israeli twitter account singling out the palestinian heritage model bella hadid, who has been very, very vocal, probably the most vocal celebrity that i have seen. i willjump in because i want to come back to bella against the state of israel in a second.

i think it is important to flag that bella hadid did return to social media to say that in her view, what she was chanting in her posts have been pro—palestinian as opposed to anti—israeli. i wanted to pick up on that point about tech platforms — how mindful do you think tech platforms are about their role? i mean, i was reading that nick clegg the vice president of global affairs for facebook is actually having meetings with the israeli authorities and with palestinian authorities. that is extraordinary to me, that in the middle of all of this, you have these meetings taking place.

do you think they are really aware of the gravity thousands and thousands of miles away writing posts that are intended to escalate rather than to quiet the situation. but you yourself are not going to incur the suffering that will result from people who are living in the region. i think that is the real danger of what is happening today. thank you. may i refer to the question? i feel very comfortable as a communications scholar to speak about media effects in general. we have to distinguish between cognitive effects and behavioural effects. we are always looking for empirical evidence, i think in the case of tiktok, in the last few weeks, you have had much empirical evidence of those types of cognitive and behavioural. you won't give me enough time to lecture about it, but let me give you one example of this. a week before the conflict started, many tiktok videos showing arabs attacking religious people, jews in israel. people tried to imitate it. so if you need any evidence on the powerful effect, there you are.

thank you. you are the editor of this weekjunior. for this tiktok generation that we are talking about, why do they want a hands—on magazine that you actually flick through? you don't swipe — what is the appeal here? i think it isjust genuinelyjust a passion for printed matter. i mean, we at the very heart of our mission have a real passion for reading and encouraging children to read for pleasure. what we have seen over the past five years since we launched is that there is still an appetite for it. and i think it is a very different way to consume information. and to go back to what your other guests have been speaking about, i think what we are able to do is to apply that calm and non—judgemental approach to reporting on the news, we have to be so careful in terms of reporting stories such as these to our readers

to not inflate anxieties. we really do have to stick to the facts as we know them and allow our readers to make up their own minds about what is going on by providing them with the context and the background to these stories, to help them to understand both sides but without taking a side ourselves. anna, practically, how would you be covering the israel and the palestinian story? how would you be covering that right now? we have done it this week, it is our main news story this week, the team have just in fact sent that issue to press. i know that they were wrestling with it right until the very last minute, we took an enormous amount of care over every word, every phrase, every picture that we used. our approach is very simple — it is extremely calm, we stick to the fact that we know, we try to provide balance. and i think for our readers, because they are as young as seven or eight years old, the first thing for us to do is to provide them with the context.

so explain the history of the region, explain the political and religious significance of that area. so that they gain an understanding of why these tensions are so high. what we will not be doing is providing them with anything that is particularly inflammatory, we are always very careful to distinguish what we know is a fact and what is an opinion or a response to the fact. and that isjust so important, we must not tell them what to think and we just have to help learn how to think. anna, do you think there is a degree of parental anxiety over what is available on social media and what young people are exposed to that is driving traffic to you? do you think that is why you have these great sales figures at the moment? i think to some degree, yes. we know that we have a huge amount of trust in the brand. events to their children.

let's face it, the world is full of information now, and it moves very quickly. and many children are really to young to learn, to distinguish between something that has been taken out of context and what is a fact that they need to understand. so i think there is a degree of it, i think children, parents love to see their children reading, there is nothing nicer as a parent than seeing your child happily absorbed in a magazine or book. i think we have found a niche for ourselves, nothing at a time when many people would like to believe that children are only interested in learning through social media or on screens, we have shown that there is still space for quiet time. and they can just explore the world at their leisure. chris, do you think a print magazine the kids doing well right now — is this a kind of pandemic blip? or is it a broader trend? i think it is a broader trend.

and actually there are examples of online personalities getting into the print world. ryan, a nine—year—old and one of the biggest youtubers on the planet, he set up his own magazine which is hugely popular because he wants to try to get this off—line connection. it is interesting to see what the weekjunior we are doing there. we have run out of time. thank you so much and thank you to all of my guests today. thank you all. i will be back at the same time next week. thank you for listening and you can hear more via bbc sounds, i appreciate your time and take care. not necessarily the same places

were playing that game on monday. northern england, north wales and east anglia with a fair amount of cloud around and patchy rain to be had. we will brighten up in these areas but heavy and thundery showers with the chance of hail in cornwall and devon clouding a bill with outbreaks of rain. largely dry in northern ireland and highs of 12 or 16 degrees. heavy showers and a few of those sinking into the midlands. 0vernight and into wednesday we see outbreaks of rain. elsewhere, where you have got clear skies, actually start to wednesday and temperatures into the low single figures. much of the low single figures. much of the uk on wednesday will be cloudy with patchy rain abandoned heavy showers breaking out towards parts of scotland and england. it be thundery again. sunny spells elsewhere and a tad warmer.

a welcome to bbc news, i'm ben boulos. our top stories. a belarussian journalist arrested in minsk following the forced diversion of his flight appears in a video, apparently under duress. european leaders ban belarussian airlines from eu airspace and draw up targeted sanctions against officials. in gaza, we meet one community grieving the loss of their children in the recent clashes with israel. the us prepares to mark the first anniversary of the murder of african american george floyd, which prompted global demonstrations against police brutality. max mosley, the former head of formula 0ne�*s governing body, and campaigner for tougher regulation of the press, has died at 81.

and the italian winner of this year's eurovision song contest passes a drugs test, halting rumours he took cocaine at the event.