my guest today has covered some of the most defining stories of our time. gary younge briefly became part of nelson mandela's entourage, joined revellers as president obama was elected, and has covered much else too — gay marriage, brexit, the windrush scandal, and the black lives matter movement. gary left full—time journalism at the guardian in 2020 to become professor of sociology at the university of manchester. although he continues to write articles for various publications and books. his new one is a collection

of his journalism called dispatches from the diaspora. gary younge, welcome to the media show. let's go back to some of where it all began. you studied french and russian at heriot—watt university in edinburgh, and then in yourfinal year you received a scott trust bursary from the guardian to study journalism. and i think you were quite clear at that point that you wanted to be a columnist. why? because i had been very politically involved and my entry into writing was partly because i'd studied languages and studied to be an interpreter and i like to manipulate words, but it was also because i had been very involved politically, almost precociously, and that i thought i had things to say. and what i didn't realise at the time was the degree

to which reporting, running out, talking to people, finding out, all of that, is the nuts and bolts of everything, including column writing. so as someone who hadn't done an awful lot ofjournalism and heriot—watt didn't have a student newspaper for the first couple of years i was there, my sense of being a journalist was about writing my thoughts and, of course, because i was 21 or 22 i also assumed that everybody would be interested in my thoughts, which, when i look back at it now is a little bit fanciful. well, i don't know, it does show a certain kind of confidence, which i really like, and reading your book it made me wonder how much was your mum's influence. a lot of it had to do with my mum and my upbringing. my mum was born in barbados, came to britain as a 19—year—old, was first a nurse and then became a teacher. had three kids, then my dad left when i was 15 months old. i was the youngest. and so she had this project. we were her project.

we were her kids, first of all. she used to pad around the living room with me on her feet and play young gifted and black by bob and marcia and say "look, they're playing our song." and it was this kind of... this act of hope and belief that, this is the early 1970s, britain is in a pretty dark place, and also literally because there were kind of blackouts and things, but also racially and otherwise. and my mum had this sense that, well, we're just going to have to imagine the world that you are going to live in, and we're going to have to imagine a place in your world that we have no evidence of. you get your education, and then you make your choices. and if you want to be a columnist, be a columnist! you know, that would have been so far removed from anything we would even have imagined at that time. and the notion that you can make a living writing was actually not

something that occurred to me until very late. 0k. let's fast forward a bit from then, but presumably at this point you're still not making much money writing — 1994, you were sent by the guardian to south africa to govern the country's first democratic elections. why did they choose you and what was it like to be a witness to such historic change? well, they chose me because they were... first of all, i had got a bursary from the guardian so i was known. and i was — when i... when i interviewed for the bursary i talked about my work in the anti—apartheid movement to alan rusbridger, who would then become the editor. and it was a kind of typical liberal dilemma. they knew that there were stories that white journalists couldn't get in south africa in the run—up to the elections, but they hadn't employed enough blackjournalists

that they wanted to send, actually, barely any that they want to send. so they looked around for someone who was young, cheap, and black to send them to see what was out there. and i was the youngest, cheapest, blackest thing in the office. so out i went. but then south africa is actually quite a difficult place to navigate if you can't drive, and so i would get lifts from people, and i ended up getting a lift with a tv crew who were doing an official account of mandela. they dropped me at a gas station and said, "there are some others coming through to pick you up," and they were mandela's bodyguards. and, frankly, i amused them and made it my business to amuse them. i had been involved in the anti—apartheid movement, i had studied in the soviet union, as had they. they would let me drive around with them. and so i stumbled onto this

kind of front—row seat, and it was the most stunning thing to be around. now, bearing in mind i had been involved in the anti—apartheid movement, i had picketed the south african embassy with my mum, aged 18, when apartheid was still going on. and so to be in some ramshackle stadium in the middle of nowhere, because that's where apartheid put black people, and to see kind of old toothless women and young barefoot children dancing around, waiting and the cavalcade coming up and seeing it kicking up the dust tens of miles away, and the cheering starting and the waving and the screaming, and the ululating, and then mandela arrives, and just to be in that moment and to be 25 and tojust kind of think "wow, wow." it was incredible. and how did the piece go down? the correspondent at the time — david beresford, a lovely man

who unfortunately died not so long ago — he said, "it's all here, but it's alljumbled up." and he said, "you've spent too long and you can't see it any more." he took me out for a drink and he said, "you'rejust going to have to stay up all night and just kind of, you know, whip it into shape." and so i did, and by the time ifound it, i couldn't really see what i'd done. and the piece was going through the system at the guardian and i managed to get a kind of connection from a computer and i started seeing all these notes coming through from colleagues, and then alan rusbridger, the deputy editor, and peter preston, which was the big one, all sort of saying this is a wonderful piece and well done and, you know... relief. i wanted to start crying, it was just very, very relief for which there are no words. you have met some pretty incredible people in your career, not least, how did you end up getting drunk

in maya angelou's limousine? for that, we have la traffic to thank. and i had 45 minutes with her. when the 45 minutes were over, she said, "just hang back." so then she took me for lunch and then she had something to do so she got me a room in the hotel so i could sleep, and then we went to her event, and then on the way back from the event there was this huge la trafficjam. the whole place just became a big car park and we were in her limo and she said, she had this kind of purring voice, she said, "would you like some whisky, mryounge?" and i said, "ooh, yeah, please, that would be nice," and her assistant said, "do you want ice and stuff, ms angelou?" and she said, "a little bit of ice and a lot of stuff." and so these huge whiskeys came out, and then there was more whiskey, and then there was more.

it was a big trafficjam. by the time i'd got out of the car, i was pretty hammered and i think she was, too, although she was in better shape than i was — she could drink me under the table. and ijust thought, you know, i don't need many days like this in my life, one day this will carry me on for quite a long time. you moved to america in 1996. you ended up spending more than half your career working there for the guardian. was it initially difficult as an outsider to understand what made that country tick? it was. for some things it always was, to be honest. guns. i've never quite understood, although, you know, i got further than i was at the beginning. and, you know, in a way, as a foreign correspondent, not understanding is a bit of a gift, really, because then you can go and find out. but it was like anthropology, really. you could kind of prod

around and it would work quite well in moments of kind of where other americanjournalists might not want to go, you know, having steak with a bunch of trump republicans, and it would be, you know... "funny, why do you think that?" and that would be my m0 for an awful lot of interviews. but as time goes on — my wife is american and i had two kids there — you become invested and it stops being anthropology and it starts... you've got skin in the game. and you start thinking, "that's my kids you're talking about." "that's my neighbourhood you're talking about." even if it's not directly your neighbourhood. you start knowing people who don't have health care as friends, knowing people who are undocumented and can't go to their parents�* funeral. and then it stops becoming interesting, perse, and becomes quite personal.

you covered so many important stories while you were in america, the iraq war, the election of president obama, occupy wall street, the tea party. but i think reporting on hurricane katrina over the course of the years stands out for you. why is that? i felt that in that moment the contradictions of america's kind of race and class were laid bare. that there were all sorts of ways in which they could be finessed. anybody who tries hard enough can do this or that and, you know, the civil rights era was a long time ago, even though it wasn't, and we have equality now and so on. obama was known by this stage, but there was no sense that he would ever be president — it would be a really weird idea then. and so to see who could escape and who couldn't escape and why

they couldn't escape, is a public disaster so you have a public response, but this was a private response — a privatised response. so if you didn't have a car, if you didn't have the money for a motel, and it came at the end of the month, if you hadn't been paid, you couldn't go. and so to see that all washed up, and then to see the response. there's a moment where michael brown, the head of the federal emergency management says, "we're seeing people that we didn't know existed." and i thought never a truer word has been said. it was hard with the book, because it's an anthology, you have to kind of pick a piece and go with it. and i actually went to new orleans several times over a couple of years after katrina, and it was very hard to pick one. it was such a devastating occurrence, and it was one of those moments where you couldn'tjust gloss over it.

and so kind of the american media in that moment kind of discovered race and class in a way that teenagers kind of discover sex, you know, it was kind of careless and urgent and just a little bit too eager. i wanted to speak specifically on race, because in 2015 you wrote in your farewell piece to america about a period of protracted regional conflict that you witnessed including murder of unarmed black men, including trayvon martin, eric garner. what was that experience like for you reporting on those stories? there's a really interesting thing that happened with black lives matter in particular, which was that it wasn't, and it hasn't been, that more black people were being killed by the police.

it was that, for whatever reason, partly it's new technology and who can take pictures and distribute and amplify, people were paying attention in a way they hadn't before. and it problematised an adage that i learned atjournalism school, which was, "when a dog bites "a man that's not a story, but when a man bites a dog "that is a story." and i started to think during that time, you know, sometimes, actually, news resides in asking who owns these dogs? and why do the same people keep getting bitten, and what can we do to control these dogs? that actually, black people had been living with this for decades, and it wasn't news because the people who decide what's news decided that it wasn't newsworthy. that was a failure ofjournalism? i think it was absolutely a failure of news journalism. and for reasons, i'm not entirely sure why, it became news.

mp and you wouldn't have to be black to get this, but if you are black, not to look at your son who was big for his age... in terms of your fear of what might happen to your son personally? yeah, it was a good example of it is no longer anthropology. there was an incident in the park nearby where my son was having a water fight with other kids and he splashed this woman, who was white, and she started screaming at him. i went up to her and asked, "why are you screaming at my son?" and she started screaming at me, and i asked her to stop screaming at me and she said, "who are you? "you're nobody! "that's who you are!" istood back thinking 0k, 0k, ok, this is where we are. i had literally flown up from ferguson that morning. you left america i think a year before trump was elected and we have seen more polarisation in the country since.

do you think the media had a role to play in exacerbating those divisions in america? certainly, if we look at fox news or msnbc or the way in which you have cable television, kind of amplifying division in a range of ways, then to that extent, certainly, yes. beyond that, i think that the kind of divisions are true. i think the divisions would be there anyway. i think there's a racial and economic fault line and the racial fault line is that white people will be a minority, probably with in the next decade or maybe a little bit more, and you can see they're really feeling that in places like arizona, new mexico, and struggling to... some of them are struggling to get their heads around that. and then an economic fault line because wages have been stagnant

for kind of half a century. poverty was a really serious, serious problem for an awful lot of people. so, you put those two things together and you have the ingredients for division, whether the media have been responsible or not. but the media was able to amplify, particularly tv media, amplify and exaggerate — to the point where people knew different facts about the world and, so, having a conversation with someone was difficult because you say it's tuesday and they say it's wednesday, and, well, that is difficult to sort your calendars out if that is what you are dealing with. you talk about tv, i mean, you did continue to report from america in tv documentaries.

in 2017, a clip of you interviewing the american white supremacist richard spencer, for channel 4, went viral. you are really proud of your racism, aren't you? you're really proud to be a bigot? i'm proud to be a white man. that's different from being proud to be a bigot. if africans had never existed, world history would be almost exactly the same because we are the genius that drives it. crosstalk how do you deny that? sorry? how can you really deny that? you're talking nonsense! how am i talking nonsense? you'll never be an englishman. you don't get to tell me what i will be. i do, actually. my name is richard spencer. "my name is richard spencer and i approve this message?" did you agonise over whether interviewing spencer gave him a platform and how did you reach that decision? i did agonise about it, and agonised after it because i think it's important not to give oxygen to people like that. my view was he already had oxygen, and doing that documentary, there were several people

who i refused to interview that they wanted me to interview, from the ku klux klan and just random bigots, but he, because of his... because of being in the alt—right and his connection to steve bannon, and steve bannon�*s connection to trump, i thought there was a legitimate reason. my aim in interviewing him, the first question i ask is, "you want a white ethnostate. "what is that? " "and why do you want it?" my aim was to be tough but to allow him to speak, but he quickly descended into a range of insults, and this thing ofjust telling me i'm not english, which... ijust kept telling him that's not your call, actually. that decision making process, it feels like a part of an ongoing debate of what the role

of a journalist is and potentially it feels generational now that people, i hate to say, of our age, but olderjournalists tend to think along those lines and perhaps younger ones are saying you should not give these people a platform at all? there's a challenging balance, i think, because, and this was the very beginning of my media career, i was working for yorkshire television on a magazine programme called the world this week. and i was asked, because i was employed for my languages, to call front nationale to ask for an interview with jean—marie le pen and i refused, and i said, "they're 7% in the polls. "this is titilation. "you can do it. "i will not do it. i was an intern and i said i understand you can fire me for insubordination. but i will not do it. did they fire you? no, they didn't because the stakes were so low for everybody. i was an intern. i could go and get an internship somewhere else.

they were barely paying me. but my view was... my view would be now, it would be a very difficult argument to say you should not interview marine le pen now when she is second, quite often, in the polls. that the politics has broken down and you have to engage with her. you're not saying interviewing someone doesn't give them a platform, you're saying they already had a platform? when they have a platform... then it's justified. well, otherwise, what will you do? never speak to them? let's take donald trump. should journalists never interview him ? he's the president. should you never interview him or should you be trying to hold him to account? so in a moment where people have power, you have to hold them to account. and myjudgment was that,

richard spencer in this case, was moving into the realms of power. now, it is a judgment, so i think it is a very legitimate question of should you or should you not, but it was my call. in that case, it made sense. before we end, when you look back at your career, which story, are there stories you're most proud of? the story i'm most proud of is claudette colvin, who was the woman who was kicked off the bus before rosa parks in montgomery, alabama, and they were going to go with her. she was going to be the one. the one they held up as the... she was going to be the standard—bearer, but she was very dark, from the the wrong side of town, and then she got pregnant when she was 15, 16 and so they decided not to. it took me a couple of years to find her. she was working as a nurse's aid

in the bronx and as well as it being a fascinating story, i also felt that it made some kind of contribution to our understanding, to my understanding of how the world works. gary younge, thank you for coming on the media show. thanks for having me. hello. for most of us, today has brought a very mild feel to the weather. temperatures in england, wales and northern ireland got above 15 celsius. scotland fell a little short of that. the mild weather being delivered to us by the jet stream, which is racing in from the atlantic. the jet stream, the winds high up in the atmosphere, driving weather systems around the globe. and along with that mild air, we are also seeing plenty of bouts of rain heading our way through the next few days. that rain really piling up over hills in the west. these are the rainfall accumulations we're expecting for the next five days. over hills in southwest england, wales, northwest england particularly, we could see 100 millimetres of rain. and quite a lot of rain actually to come overnight with this band

of wet weather that will be pushing its way east tending to weaken a little. behind that, we may start to see a few more clear spells filtering into the west. at the same time, the breeze will strengthen a little on what will be a really mild night. 5—10 celsius. tuesday morning starts with outbreaks of rain moving across 0rkney and shetland. shetland, i think, will stay wet for a good part of the day. then we're into a mix of sunny spells and showers, but some of the showers where they pop up could be heavy with some rumbles of thunder. and then late in the day, we see our next weather system, some cloud and rain getting into northern ireland. very mild indeed, 11—15 celsius. so our next weather system swings eastwards during tuesday night, accompanied by some quite brisk winds. and then really for wednesday, we will have a strong southwest wind. quite gusty conditions for many. and once again, a mix of sunny spells and showers. the showers perhaps focusing across western parts, perhaps some more persistent rain later for the channel islands.

so widely it will be windy. some western coasts could have gusts of around 50mph. temperatures seven celsius for low, 1a for hull, for norwich and for london. now looking ahead to thursday, again, it's a sunshine and showers day. again, some heavy thundery ones. could be some hail mixing in for good measure, some spells of sunshine between the downpours and then some heavier rain again starting to push up from the channel islands, maybe southern counties of england seeing that later in the day. again, mild double—digit temperatures for most of us. looking through friday and into the weekend, well, it will turn a little bit chillier across the north of the uk, staying milder further south and there is more rain on the way.

i'm david willis, in washington, and this is bbc world news america. china's president extends a hand — and a peace plan — to his "dearfriend" vladimir putin. it's the first time the two have met since russia's invasion of ukarine. a "survival guide for humanity" — the united nations releases a major new report on climate change. legal speculation, security concerns, and politcial mud—slinging — how the drama surrounding donald trump's potential indictment is gathering steam. and as millions around the world celebrate the persian new year, the bbc speaks to the us secretary of state about washington's relationship with iran.