this is bbc news. the headlines: fighting appears to be intensifying around the ukrainian city of lysychansk as russian forces try to take the only remaining city in the luhansk region not under their control. it's come under intense shelling but a ukrainian spokesman denied claims that russian—backed fighters had now encircled the city. libyan activists say they'll continue protesting until the ruling elite steps aside. the comments follow rallies in most parts of the country on friday, which ended in the parliament building in tobruk being stormed and then set on fire. the united nations has

called for calm in libya. a three—day meeting of religious and tribal leaders in afghanistan has ended with a call on the international community to recognise the taliban government and lift all sanctions on the country. the male—only meeting also declared that any armed resistance against the militants would be considered a rebellion. now on bbc news, the media show. hello, and welcome. this week, we're talking about the return of q. and if that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry. you'll be hearing a lot more in this programme about one of the world's most notorious conspiracy theories. we're also looking at why bristol's mayor is facing a boycott of his press briefings and what it says about the often fractious relationship between councils and journalists. among our guests on that

topic are martin booth, editor of bristol 24—7, and charlotte green, who's a local democracy reporter with the manchester evening news. martin, welcome to the media show. what's your big story in bristol today? so, today i've been visiting bristol's newly repainted rainbow crossing, just painted in time for our city's pride celebrations. so we've got a brand—new rainbow crossing on wine street. sounds fantastic. charlotte, what have you been covering in tameside? so, in tameside, we've just got a new council leader, after the last one was deposed following the local elections, and so i have been speaking to them about what their plans are for the borough and what they are going to do difficult or differently. so that is the full spectrum of localjournalism right there. thank you. and we will hear more from both of you and others in a bit. but we are going to start with an extraordinary story from the other side of the atlantic. qanon is the conspiracy theory that says donald trump has been waging war on a cabal of satanic paedophiles

who stole the 2020 us election. completely unfounded theories but believed by significant numbers. qanon supporters were amongst the mob that stormed the us capitol last year. the movement has been fuelled by the online postings of a user who signs off as q. and last week, after nearly two years of silence, 0 posted again. gabriel gatehouse is international editor at bbc news and the presenter of the radio a documentary series the coming storm that looks at the rise of qanon. and dr irene pasquetto is assistant professor at the university of michigan school of information. irene, gabriel, welcome to the media show. hi, katie. hello. thank you. most welcome. gabriel, when we say 0 is back, how do we know this? what's happened 7 ok, so, 0 was this supposed figure who was supposed to be a government insider with high—level security clearance who was revealing secrets about this cabal of satanic paedophiles that had

supposedly captured the levers of government in the united states. and 0, this government insider, was posting his secrets on a little—known website called 4chan, then 8chan, then 8kun. these kind of very niche internet message boards. and the last time he posted something was shortly after the 2020 election. he posted a link to a song called we're not going to take it. and that was it. we thought this thing had disappeared. we thought it had kind of merged with the millions of people who believe that the us election had been stolen and that the kind of satanic cabal element had kind of faded into the background, but now he — we're assuming it's a he — is back posting under the name of q on this same niche website, called 8kun. and, irene, why now do you think? what's he posted on that, and why now?

yeah, ijust want to add that we also think it's the same 0 or the same person because he used the same short code that is used on the image boards by q. that's why the community kind of recognised q as the real 0. why now? that's a good question. i think it has to do with roe v wade overturn. it's a good political moment. you know, the audience, q's audience, is paying attention to what's happening at a political level. yeah, that's one of the theories why it's happening right now. and he posted three things, i think. "shall we play the game once more?" "it had to be done this way." and "are you ready to serve your country again? remember your oath." gabriel, there is of course a lot of speculation about who 0 is. your fabulous podcast goes down that route, but tell us who you think he is. well, i mean, most people who have looked into this, and there are people who have dug into it who know a lot more

about the intricacies of these image boards than i do, believe that however qanon started, and it's likely that qanon started as a game. and it's interesting this reference to "shall we play a game once more" in this latest post. it seems to be an acknowledgement that perhaps this whole thing is a game, and there's very strong evidence that it started as something called a larp, which is live action role—play. it's kind of like dungeons & dragons online, where people play a role, they pretend to be a high level in government insider and other people online kind of play along and pretend to believe him, don't really. and the idea is that qanon sort ofjumped out of this niche portion of the internet where people kind of knew what was going on and on to the mainstream internet, if you like. facebook, youtube, where people weren't so savvy. and so they started believing this kind of outlandish stuff. whoever started it, we think that it ended up at least being controlled by this slightly strange father and son

duo called jim and ron watkins. jim's the father and ron's the son. jim watkins bought this website, 8kun — 8chan, and then became 8kun — and his son was a sort of computer programmer. and we think that, in the latter months and years of qanon, they were the ones who were controlling it. and certainly, in the course of researching my podcast, there was evidence that we uncovered, and other people uncovered, that people in the trump orbit, in the run—up to the 2020 election campaign, had been in touch with the watkinses in order to try and harness the power of this crazy conspiracy theory to help get donald trump elected. irene? yeah, yeah, definitely. i agree, that's the main theory. and all the evidence points towards the watkinses. also because, as i mentioned, the short code, there is evidence showing that it was edited manually to match q's

original short code. and just an administrator of the site can do this sort of intervention. so, basically, this is real evidence that behind q is the website manager. people will be listening, could be listening and thinking why are we even talking about such a bizarre conspiracy theory? a conspiracy that had as one of its original narratives that qanon spread, that there was an alleged satanic paedophile ring run by hillary clinton but is obviously morphed into much more than that. how is it influencing political debate in the us? basically, what happened after the election was that this qanon conspiracy theory which already had, it's hard to say how many believers it had because it is a kind of spectrum, from people who literally believe that hillary clinton drinks baby's blood, to people who think

there is a deep state and people we don't know are controlling our lives or presumably they can be that many people leaving hillary clinton drinks baby's blood? you would be surprised. i'm not kidding you. what happened was, this qanon conspiracy theory about the cabal of satanic paedophiles merged with the conspiracy theory about how the election was stolen, and in a sense that conspiracy theory which involves these weird voting machines called dominion voting machines that were flipping votes from trump to biden, that conspiracy theory was also promoted by this same ron watkins guy he was one of the administrators who we think may have been controlling qanon. so these two things merged and what has happened now

is that the idea that america is controlled by a malevolent force, a deep state that has subverted its democracy, is now mainstream political opinion. there is a massive battle going on inside the republican party between those who believe this big lie, those who are promoting the big lie, and those who really don't, but it has become massively mainstream. if you look at the hearings that are currently going on on capitol hill into what happened around the january 6 storming of the us capitol, what we see is that the american electorate is completely bifurcated by this conspiracy theory which really has qanon as a huge element. questions of what happened in the 2020 election has essentially ceased to be one that is empirically answerable and become an entirely political question, and no facts seem capable of dissuading people who believe this conspiracy theory of the falseness of it. irena, this is a vast disinformation campaign, if you like. what is it about it that has

meant so many people have taken it up? is it a top—down thing, or is there something about the way they are using social media to give power to individuals to be part of it? the thing is that there are many things about it. like all conspiracy theories, it has a core truth, meaning that the crux is that child abuse, pornography, paedophilia and corruption are real problems in the world. but all of this is accompanied by lies and misrepresentation, which is that it is all controlled by these crazy cabal of democrats who were also paedophiles. so i think that is what makes it very credible. if i can add to that idea about the core truths,

when i was doing this podcast i was speaking to a guy about the donald trump is a russian spy conspiracy theory, which lots of democrat supporters got hung up on for quite a while. i was speaking to a guy and he was trying to make an equivalent between qanon and this russian narrative, but i said there was a large dollop of truth at the bottom of the russia story, whereas this is just complete fa ntasy. and he said, have you ever heard ofjeffrey epstein? so the thing that i kind of came to believe about qanon was that, yes, if you took it literally to mean that hillary clinton was literally running a cabal of satanic paedophiles out of a pizza restaurant out of washington, dc they didn't have a basement, then of course it is nonsense. but if you took qanon as a kind of parable, which is that people feel that there are unelected people who were kind of controlling

their lives in a changing world, and that they don't really understand how it is changing and they don't feel like these changes are happening to their benefit, then as a kind of metaphor, qanon has the central core of truth and that is why so many people seem drawn to it, i think. 0k, has it spread across the atlantic? irene or gabriel, is it in the uk, is it in europe? yeah, i did some studies of qanon, how it has spread in europe, and what we found is that yes, it will be picked up by a lot of influencers in europe as well and it has spread well beyond social media. there are building their own infrastructure, websites and forums, and there is so much work taking in all of the qanon theories and data points and translating in

the local languages. in germany, france, italy. and what they also did was to take this narrative and adapt the narrative to the local political context. it was just so much work, i guess it surprised me the amount of effort and work that qanon influencers put into this transmission. gabriel, is it in the uk? it is in the uk. i think it is not a strong draw i'm not an expert on how it is taken root in the uk and europe. that's because you are a foreign correspondent. but i believe it is very strong in germany. but one of the things that irene said about the amount of work that people put in, i think that is one of the things that has helped qanon to spread. because it is a participatory thing. if you are a qanon believer, you are notjust a passive recipient of secret knowledge. you do the research, you scour the internet for clues, you make

connections, and you might be part of this wonderful movement that can save the world from this overwhelming evil. when you put it like that, it sounds very compelling. i'm not suggesting that anyonejoins it. no. indeed. i was speaking from the point of view of a qanon devotee. do not try this at home! we won't. gabriel gatehouse and doctor irene pat squirted from the university of michigan, thank you so much for coming on the media show. now we are going to turn onto this row in bristol are has been troubling on this month. let me play you a clip from a press conference last week. the mayor had just got back from giving a ted talk in canada and a reporter was keen to ask him about it. i wondered firstly if you saw the irony in flying so far for a talk in climate change. and secondly, why you couldn't use zoom instead? ok, so you liked the talk? what did you think of the argument i made in it?

yeah, i thought it was very interesting, but ijust thought about the irony... let's work through this. do you know what the fundamental argument i made in the talk was? sorry, i thought we were asking you questions. i'm just trying to see if we're on the same ground. that's the bristol mayor, marvin rees, and local democracy reporter alex seabrook, known as an ldr. that exchange then continued for a while and remained as tense, i've got to say. then the press officer got involved. and on that topic, then... alex, may ijust ask a question? - just in terms of your role as an ldr. - so, from my understanding, it would be to report - and provide impartial coverage regarding the regular workingsj of local authorities - and public sector bodies, and so i suppose my questionl is that marvin was fully funded by ted to attend this - conference, so i couldn't quite understand what the role as an ldr would be in. asking those questions?

that apparent suggestion from the press officer, that the local democracy reporter shouldn't be asking such questions of the mayor, has got the trade up in arms. local newspapers, broadcasters and the bbc have said they are boycotting the bristol mayor's press briefings in solidarity with the reporter. with me is martin booth, editor of bristol 24—7 and part of the boycott. we're also going to take a look at the bigger picture and, so we have a charlotte green, a journalist for the bureau of domestic journalism, and co—founder of shout communications. welcome all of you to the media show. let us start with you, martin booth. what is your take on what happened between the mayor and the ldr, and why did you decide to join the boycott? so i think we all appreciate, thank you so much for having me

on, the necessity of journalists to sometimes ask difficult questions. the fact is that asking the mayor of bristol why he chose to fly to canada to give a iii—minute ted talk is a valid question in my opinion. so the issue here is that we don't want bristol city council or the mayor's office to pick and choose which journalists ask questions at these fortnightly press briefings. ijust have to add here that the bristol city council spokesperson gave us a statement, which said it is completely false that the local democracy reporters have been banned. "all media outlets had been invited, there's been long—standing mutual agreement about personnel attending press conferences whenever they announced and held, and that ldrs would not be sent due to the narrow definition of their role

as an impartial service." they say that they never did go to these briefings. charlotte green, let's just bring you in. you are a local democracy reporter. are these kind of difficulties with councils familiar to you? yes, i think this is a very extreme example, but this is not uncommon. authorities don't like to be criticised, and a lot of the time news stories aren't necessarily glowing in their praise of the councils and how they handle issues. when we talk about basic things like pot holes, that is not a positive story for a council, so you do end up having a lot of back and forth with the press officers where they try to get you to potentially take their side first or they want to try to get the council's spin on something because it is in their interest to protect the reputation of the council, but that is not what we are here as ldrs to do. we are here to scrutinise these local authorities. people might not

know what an ldr is. it is a scheme funded by the bbc. yes, we are set up to fill a kind of void in democratic accountability. there is a decline in local news that means there aren't local government report is going to these council meetings and haven't been for several years, so the scheme was set up in 2018 to address that. did you find it easy to get into the meetings? were you welcomed by open hours? —— with open arms. one of my councils did not welcome with open arms and they were very, almost offended that i was coming in and getting a chair and having to sit in a room with them and hear them discuss things. they didn't think i had a place there at all. but they let you in? a couple of times, i had to go and get my own chair because they wouldn't put a desk or chair out for me. you would think that is a simple _ you would think that is a simple courtesy to offer someone. considering back in the day journalists covered council meetings in all their glory

whenever they were held. martin, just to bring you back, doesn't the council have a point in a sense, the local democracy reporting service was set up with a limited remit. council meetings, planning registers, that sort of thing. a press briefing by the mayor, which is already attended by mainstream titles, doesn't merit the presence of a local democracy reporter? it isa it is a good question. at bristol 24—7, we are an independent media company. we are incredibly under resourced, so we are not able to attend every press briefing ourselves, so it's opportunities like that that we very much rely on the service that the ldrs can provide. and then there is the hyper—local publications, bristol has — bristol has actually got a really buoyant immediate scene, and below the surface, in print, there is still the hyper—local publications. one of the best things about the ldr scheme is that the content is shared out between everyone from bbc news to online publications like ourselves to this hyper—local publications.

they are not going to be able to have a seat in the mayor's briefing, so that is why the presence of ldrs is so important. let me bring you and, because i guess it didn't look like good pr there, did it? no, it's a really pr mess up i would say. i think it all comes down to the key thing, which is reputation. that is what pr is about. it is about establishing good reputations and then keeping them there. and what happens when somebody tries to duck an issue, particularly somebody who is in a publicly funded role, and it is all about accountability. when that is threatened, it makes people trying to manage the communication and trying to manage that narrative, it makes them look bad, doesn't it? and frankly it makes them look like they have something to hide. it is something we always

say we media train some of our clients, and we say never duck the issue of a question because why would you do that? you can answer it in a very small way. it can be a really bland and boring answer, but you have to answer it. we have a free press and a journalist is in within their rights to keep pushing that question. i'm surprised — and maybe he did — that the reporter didn't go back there again, because i would say any journalist sitting in front of a publicly funded figure is within their right to ask that question. just to be clear, the mayor did answer that question. ijust i just wanted to ijust wanted to bring it in. he did. you are a community organiser for local reporters with the bureau of investigativejournalism. you are also a journalist yourself. what is your experience of working with councils? i mean, frankly, i think we have all been done a favour

if a man had never written in the thick of it, because it would only be halfjoking. it sometimes feels like communications managers think it is a documentary and a manualfor how you do public sector, because the serious point is that they increasingly start from the point of view of how do i get the least possible information into the hands of the public, and that is not theirjob. we are in a democracy after all. yourjob is to provide the most possible information, they are paid for the public, by you and me, because journalists are people too, to do exactly that, to foster open and demographic local government and services. i think we need a pretty fundamental reset to get back to that. what sort of techniques do they use to try to close down information? the first thing is, they will not answer the phone or answer an e—mail. because why would they? because they are leveraging their power as a monopoly. they have a monopoly on being your local council. if they don't answer your e—mail or the phone, you often can't run that story because you need

a response from them. you can't go to another council to answer that question. so they can kill the storyjust by not picking up the phone or answering an e—mail. charlotte is nodding there. is that what is happening to you? yeah, it happens all the time and you end up having to play this game of hardball with them, saying if you don't get back to me, we will put you did not respond to comments, and they will look worse. sometimes they are prepared to do that — they think that by withholding they keep more power that way, and it is incredibly frustrating, especially when it is possible to build up good working relationships with press officers and do back and forth, and that way you are more likely to pick up on the positive stuff. the opening of a new school or something, and giving it more coverage, than you wait if you've got this really antagonistic relationship with them. what you advise your journalists to do in these circumstances? the problem is that the business model of local journalism makes us very weak. if yourjob is to put out five

or ten or more stories a day, you simply don't have time to keep going back to councils councils or going to the information commissioner, etc. but i am a big... my background isn't broadcast. i've been a big advocate for putting up the questions you asked and the bland statement you gave back which engage with the questions next to each other so that people can make up their own minds. because that's the other thing they do, they simply don't engage with the questions. you will get a generic statement, and if you go back to them they will say you had a statement. the other thing, as charlotte says, we do face empty chairing, being aggressive, if they have had an opportunity to answer, they have an opportunity to answer. if we then need to run the stories, we should. karen, as the sole pr voice here, do you think councils have blurred lines between publishing their own new stories and providing information to local residents?

like any brand, they have their stories to promote, and they want to i suppose justify their actions and their spendings to the public. and i think that they are using it as a tool to benefit what they do. but maybe it has gone too far, and it sounded without told bristol exchange that it was very aggressive, very antagonistic, and maybe that is not the best way to communicate. it doesn't lead to a listener or a viewer a very good flavour. charlotte ? i think itjust made itl look very thin skinned and like they were taking it incredibly personally, - and i don't think you i should be injournalism or in comms is if you are unable to deal with criticism - or answer questions properly, and that also extends - to politicians as well. martin, do you think you will be back in those press offices?

will the boycott continue? certainly, i'm not setting out to be aggressive. we want to find a positive and productive resolution to this, and enable local democracy reporters to get back in those press conferences as soon as possible. thanks, martin. i'm afraid that's all we've got time for today. thank you to all my guests. we will be back at the same time next week, but for now thank you for watching. goodbye. hello, there. sunshine and showers sums up the weather for part two of the weekend. some of the showers we have seen will be quite heavy and maybe some rumbles of thunder in places but there should be some good sunny spells in between them. we have got low pressure close by to our shores and a series of weak weather fronts spreading across the country will enhance the shower activity. showers will

get going and will be widespread and some offal be heavy, breezy in the north and of scotland. through sunday night the showers fade away and we will see further showers pushing into scotland or northern ireland where it will be breezy. temperatures dripping to 9— i2 be breezy. temperatures dripping to 9— 12 degrees. high pressure will slowly spread. it is going to turn warmup but cloudy and cooler further north.

good morning, welcome to breakfast with luxmy gopal and rogerjohnson. our headlines today: holidaymakers warned to expect more travel disruption, with airlines set to announce a new wave of summer flight cancellations in the coming days. the foreign office says it's working with the ukrainian government to secure the release of two british men, reported by russian state media to have been charged with being mercenaries. hundreds of people gather for a vigil in memory

of zara aleena, who was killed in east london as she walked home from a night out. one of the most controversial matches in years at wimbledon — nick krygios is accused of being a bully by stefanos tsitsipas. krygios went through, in an ill—tempered match. we'll have more on the fallout.