and this week on the media show, we've been talking about an issue that is dominating headlines, notjust in america but across the world. that is the story of president biden�*s health after the debate. we've also discussed glastonbury festival. katie's been reporting there. believe it or not, i've been djing there. and in today's programme we're going to look at glastonbury�*s media strategy. every single solitary person eligible for what i've been able to do with the...with the covid, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh... look... if... we finally beat medicare. well, the fallout from joe biden�*s faltering performance in his tv debate with donald trump was instant, both in political terms and in terms of the media coverage. and we've been talking

about this with jill abramson, former executive editor of the new york times, and annie linsky of the wall streetjournal. but we spoke first to nayeema raza, who is a co—host of the podcast mixed signals from semafor. the 46th president l of the united states, joe biden. i think it was actually 50 million people who watched the debate on cnn. that, you know, and on cnn affiliate, you saw it in fox news, etc, but people, 50 million americans or 50 million people watched the debate. right after, in the cnn post brief, i mean, i think you saw this play out live where people were literally, you know, anchors were literally reading you text messages that they were seeing. you had van jones from the, you know, 0bama administration, someone you expect to be supportive, you know, talking about what could happen. i think the interesting thing to look at is not necessarily cnn, or fox news, where you kind of knew where the conversation maybe was going to go.

but msnbc even, uh, you know, the discussion and coverage that's happened in certain days, i don't think anyone was sitting there saying this was a good debate. i think that would be a very hard argument to make for the president. but you had, you know, right away editorials published by not just the editorial board at the new york times, but people like nick kristof, thomas friedman saying they were weeping. these are people, i think, you know, that the president holds in high esteem. david ignatius, who had written questions about... ..from the washington post, who had written questions about the president's age last fall and had created a bit of a media moment then. when it came to that night, clearly, as always happens after these sorts of experiences, you have a spin room and people start trying to spin. and the democrat defence seemed to be, you know, the kind of "don't believe your eyes" strategy, as some people were calling it. i just wonder how effective you think that was. i think we just live in a very hyper partisan time. i don't think it's effective. i don't think it's effective with the media. i don't think it's effective with voters or people who are seeing this. but i think it's been a kind

of hallmark of our time right now, that this is a hyper partisan environment which almost anything can be discredited as false. so nothing feels true. i mean, we saw this, you know, even with the hur report, actually, when it came out in february, this was the special counsel robert hur's report into the biden classified documents case. and i know maybe that actually spurred some of your reporting. but in february, you know, when we got this report from hur saying that the president is an old man with diminished faculties, that they're, you know, diminishing faculties with age, a well—meaning man with kind of challenged memory. i'm misquoting here, but those were the... such as. yes, but at that time, you know, a lot of questions were asked, a lot of questions were asked, just like they had been asked after polling in fall of 2023. just talk us through who did what, when and how much influence an editorial article actually has on a president of the united states and whether they stand for president again. i mean, who did what... i mean, i think that you gave

a good summary before, but the new york times editorial board came out, the atlanta journal constitution came out, the chicago tribune, various columnists, nick kristof, thomas friedman, maureen dowd, david ignatius. you know, you saw... and evenjoe scarborough of morning joe fame, who the president, you know, does pay attention to, his very watched programme, you know, came out saying...asking questions about where do we go from here, how does this go on? um, his co—host and wife was not on the same page. so we'll see. i mean, i think that... but i do think that this is going to be hard to have... you know, when the hur report came out, there was conversation from the vice president that this was politically motivated. when the viral clips came out of the president on d—day and otherwise, we were told, "0h, these are..." you know, "these are modified clips." they were cropped. they were cropped differently. certainly there were claims made by the rnc and others that were not true around those clips.

but at the end of the day, people know what they saw. and 50 million people saw this debate. and i don't think this question is going away. jill abramson, former executive editor of the new york times, let's bring you in, because you were expressing there a frustration that you don't feel that the american media more broadly has covered this story properly. tell us why. well, first, before i do that, i i want to do a hat tip to annie and the wall street journal, which really did dig in. - and, you know, from reading their story when it was - published, it was a true - attempt at a real investigation of how the president's health and mental conditions were. i so that was great. and, you know, the white house and democrats tried _ to discredit it by saying all the named sourcesl were republicans and that it was a partisan attack. - and it wasn't. it was the truth. and it was as close - to the truth as you guys could get, which is what we expect from the media - in the united states. we're protected by the first.

amendment, because ourjob is to hold power accountable. you know, i...i... i don't pretend, you know, l as someone who's not even the current editor of a news organisation, to explain it, i but there have been various hypotheses which i think . are possible. number one is, you know, - that this white house executed one of the best cover—ups of all time, one that - would make richard nixon envious. - number one, that's a possibility. - and number two is a less. legitimate one that i really hope isn't true, but that - because ofjournalism's innate desire to not see democracyj destroyed by donald trump, that reporters stayed away from the story. because they didn't want to help donald trump. . and that is not ourjob. that is not the mission ofjournalism. - so those, i think, - are the major two possible

explanations. those are two possible explanations. but i don't know, i don't. pretend to have the answer myself. and we should say that the white house would push back at any idea that it was covering up any aspect of the president's ability to do hisjob. but i do want to bring in annie linskey now, who's white house reporter for the wall streetjournal and wrote that article that jill was just referencing there. that was on 4thjune, nearly a month before the debate. you wrote this big piece in the wall streetjournal essentially listing concerns about president biden�*s health in some detail. just give us, annie, the details of how you went about that. how did you research it? who did you approach? what was the back story to that important piece ofjournalism? you know, look, when the hur report came out, i think it was like an earthquake. you know, there's been... i've been a white

house reporter. i've covered this administration from the campaign well into the white house. and reading that hur report, i realised that there's no other person who does not work forjoe biden, who has spent five hours with him one on one. hur did it over two days. and so i read it with that in mind of, "my goodness, "this man had access to the president that no "journalist has had and really nobody aside from his family "or, you know, people who work for him," and that, you know, our bureau chief got us together and we sort of launched in a lot of directions to try to understand, "what is the president like behind "closed doors? " and the question was also amplified by pushback from the white house. voters have long said that the president is old, and they worry about his acuity. and the white house pushback has been quite simple. it has been, "if you could see what we see behind closed "doors, you would not have those concerns. "joe biden is absolutely fine. "he is sharp as a tack,

and we see it every "day in meetings." and so to the wall street journal, we felt that was an invitation to start really digging into those conversations, those meetings. and what did you find? it was hard reporting to do. but we found that, you know, in some meetings the president was fine, was behaving the way you would expect a president to do, was sharp, was spontaneous, had quick back and forth, had good questions. but in other meetings he would really lose his train of thought. he would pause for extended periods of time that made people feel uncomfortable. he would at times just close his eyes in a way that made people wonder if he had sort of tuned out a little bit, that he would get key details of policy wrong when talking about them. he would mumble and be inaudible in cases where lawmakers were just. . . really just struggling just to hear what he had to say. and so, you know, we did this reporting.

it took months. i'm on a very busy beat. my editors cleared a lot of time for me to work the story, and i deeply appreciate that support that we had from the wall street journal, all the way up to the top. and there you were, doing the very difficultjob of persuading people to talk to you. but when the piece came out, what was the reaction? well, look, we expected that the white house would not like the report. they were very aware of every single detail that would be in it. we gave them honestly, you know, two weeks, perhaps even more, to respond. we had multiple back and forths with the white house. so, you know, it was... we understood how they would react to the piece. i think, to me, one of the more surprising things about it, and i think it gets to the sort of partisan environment that we all live in, is there was a sense that — and we put it in the piece — we were very transparent that most of our sources were republicans. not all. most of them were republicans. but we put that in there, because it's a very...it's a very politically fraught

topic to be writing about. i was surprised that so many people discounted itjust because our sourcing had included republicans. i think that if you approach a beat, especially in washington, with some sort of view, that if you have an r next to your name, you're a liar, and if you have a d next to your name, you're a truth—teller, that really gives the democratic party a lot of veto power over important reporting. it also gives a real sense of the partisan nature of american journalistic reporting, potentially. i did see a tweet, something put on x byjennifer rubin of the washington post, who said, "the widespread media "condemnation of a shoddy front—page wall streetjournal "article about president biden slipping with age suggests "we have may have reached a journalistic inflection "point. "maybe the overwhelmingly negative response by other "journalists to what was essentially the promotion "of a right—wing meme will reduce such irresponsible

"reporting." and this was reposted by the white house deputy press secretary andrew bates. so you came under a lot of assault. but actually, presumably now, since the debate, has the reporting of the president's health and the reaction to you altered? yeah, there has been... there has been a change in that, you know, reaction to the piece. and i can understand. you know, when i was watching the debate, i mean, i remember i was ten minutes in, i was getting... ten, 15 minutes in, getting text messages from sources — from, you know, democrats, from operatives, from colleagues. and to me, ijust felt like i was watching in real time what my sources had described to me. and my sources described this to me in sort of the most sober terms. and so i think it was... you know, to watch that... to watch that debate, i saw, you know, the things that had been described to me and the things that we had

reported in the paper being illustrated in real time. and the next two aspects of this story we want to unpack, with the help ofjill, nayeema and annie, are the biden media strategy in response to that debate, but also what it's like to deal with the biden white house. nayeema, you'll have experience with interacting with different administrations. how would you categorise the journalistic experience of interacting with the biden white house and trying to find out what's happening within its walls? i mean, i'm not as qualified as annie, who has been. on the beat with this - white house, to tell you that. i can tell you from covering the media coverage that... j like, i can tell you what - the biden media strategy has been as a kind of acute - observer and reporter on that, which is they have long, i you know, had a strategy of sidelining the traditional media in some way. - they have gone directly... the president would write op eds, give interviews- to influencers, celebrities. he has given — i think thisl was reported by my former

colleague michael scherer- in the new york times in april — you know, fewer interviews than any other president has| given. it was around 50 interviews in his first two years - of office. this is the least amount of interviews since, - i think, reagan. and that includes 50 plus... 50—odd interviews to - celebrities and influencers as well. people like jason bateman, etc, or drew barrymore, . you know, who are notl going to necessarily ask the hard—hitting questions. and compare that to, you know, a couple hundred from trump, l a few hundred from 0bama, you know, 100—odd from . the bushes or, . you know, others. so this is an administrationl that has really given limited access. you know, my colleague max tani, who reportedl on the white house for politico for a long time and wrote - a daily white house briefing for about a year, you know, | talked about how, post—covid, you know, there was this kindl of shield around the president, land that didn't really come off| as much as you would have expected to by 2021. - you know, you get very... it's a very controlled strategy

around the president, - very, you know... people who have worked with the president, - who are extremely loyal, who have been with himl for decades, you know, - longer than myself or annie have been around, maybe. and it's a very impermeable i white house, which i think has made... that's why the coverage - you have seen, there's been a lot of discussion - of the president's age, but it's been the editorial coverage and raising - the question, you know? people have asked for access to health records of both - of these candidates, who are very old. i you know, these questions have been raised, they have not been deeply reported in the sense that it has been hard - to get democratic... ..democrat sources - on the record until now. and i think that's what you're going to see change. - there's a phrase i'm going to remember — an impermeable white house. i've not heard it put in those terms before. i'm looking at a quote here from matt bennett, who's the executive vice president of a democratic think tank called third way. he said in response to the debate, biden should be doing town hall meetings with voters, doing press conferences.

he needs to prove that that was one bad night and not a pattern. so far, we haven't seen that level of activity. jill abramson, what do you make of how the biden white house has handled the media since the debate? well, they've been more or less in a defensive crouch. i would just like to add one thing which i think is important, which is for my career at the new york times, the paper employed a doctor, a physician named larry karpman. fabulousjournalist. he's now writing a book on the timely topic of presidential health. but every campaign — like, way before election day, before the conventions — he would do a sit—down interview with the presidential candidates and ask for access to their health records. and over the years, there were various levels of cooperation... ..from total

cooperation to none. but, you know, larry's long gone from the times, unfortunately, and no—one has really stepped into that role since then, which i think is a great pity, a real kind of hole in american journalism. well, we're going to move off politics now and talk about something maybe a little bit more fun, because it was the glastonbury festival last weekend. 210,000 people in a series of fields on what is usually a working farm in south—west england, and a festival that, well, ros, you were at because ros happened to be djing there. mc: ros atkins! drum and bass version of bbc news theme plays harder, faster, larger! speaker in music: . .120 beats per minute... -

tempo increases. i took a brief break from myjournalistic duties to do a dj set on the saturday afternoon at glastonbury, which, as you can imagine, was quite an experience. nothing like i've done before. but i have to say, just being there was quite an experience. i've never been to glastonbury before and i was... of course, you never stop being a journalist. so while i was there, even though i wasn't reporting, iwas thinking... because i knew you were and i was thinking, "0k, "how is this different to covering other festivals?" because as someone who is simply attending, it was very different to other festivals i've been to. it is very different to other festivals. i don't actually cover that many other festivals, but compared with anything else i cover in the cultural beat that i do, this isjust incomparable. partly because it's so vast, so many stages, most of them not on tv, but around...you know, such a huge... it is like a town that's, you know, suddenly created in the middle of this working farm, and you're wandering around battling through the crowds... to pick your target... ..who are having fun. you've got to pick your targets. it's difficult to capture it all, and you can't capture it all.

you know, i was there with a fabulous cameraman, a fabulous producer, and we were doing stuff for tv, radio, online, lots of my colleagues doing the same. but actually it was... this year, my own footage was the thing that punched out in a sense, it went viral, because people might remember the story of louis tomlinson setting up a tv in glastonbury — he went out and bought one — because they weren't showing the football. they don't show the football on days when there's music. how did you find him? well, ijust happened to be walking across. let's. .. well, ijust happened to be walking past, saw this group of people watching this tv that was sort of in these buckets and thought, "what is this?" realised there was some sort of element of louis tomlinson and then, well, i chatted to him, i went up to him. have a listen. i'm slightly out of breath as i realise what's going on, but have a listen. you are the god of this festival, because football wasn't officially on anywhere, but you sorted it out. how did you do that? it was a little... well, we brought a tv in, very glasto, in some like, stones, in a little stand. it was a little bit touch and go at times because the signal kept going in and out. but, yeah, luckily

we got the win. we pulled it off. made up, made up. well done. yeah, that was louis tomlinson, obviously people will know from one direction. and so you got the clip, which was what you wanted. i got the clip, it was what i wanted, but unfortunately my phone broke. so i did interview him for a bit longer and when i went back to look at it, there was just, thank goodness, one clip. but all the other questions i asked him, my phone had sort of done some weird stopping without me realising. this is the great fear, isn't it, for alljournalists? "have i pressed record?" and well, you had pressed record, but your phone didn't keep that side of the bargain. exactly, but you were the story of the moment. got a lot of coverage. did you enjoy being part of the story? well, the theme tune came about in a slightly unlikely fashion, in that david lowe, the composer of the bbc news theme tune, had been on the media show on the same day that i posted on x that i was going to be djing, and people were messaging me saying, "hey, why don't "you think about a remix of the bbc news theme?" and because david had been on, i messaged him a couple of days later and said, "how about it?" and he said yes. and then neither of us had the skills to do a drum and bass remix.

brilliant composer though david is, by his own admission he wasn't qualified to do a drum and bass remix. so we brought in a dj and producer called crissy criss, who helped us produce the track, and it got a lot of attention, which was a nice surprise, because i guess whenever you make something then you hope people will like it. cheering. glastonbury, thank you! and we've got the evening standard's el hunt here. you've covered the festival six times — more than me, i've only done three. but were you...? do you agree with what ros was saying earlier about, you know, how different it is from what you would expect, having watched it on tv? absolutely. i mean, it is like a city, like you were both saying. for a time, it's the most densely populated area in the uk. it has a whole infrastructure to keep it going. and so covering it is unlike covering anything else. it's sort of musicjournalism boot camp, because the minute you think you're off, you've reviewed an act, you're scurrying back to the press tent to write it up, you'll walk past louis tomlinson with his telly, which i did, and i took a photo of it, not realising it was him. did it go viral like mine did? i mean, i couldn't believe it.

i've had people from all over the world messaging. lots of spanish people love one direction, it turns out, or love louis tomlinson, because i've had a lot of tweets in spanish. yeah, it did go viral. it was on about 23k, last time i looked. everyone was replying saying "it was louis, "you should go and listen to his music." so did you not realise it was as you walked past? no. you just saw the melee of people? ijust stopped to watch the game for a bit and then carried on. yeah. but these things happen all of the time, kind of in the corners that don't get shown on the tv as well. so covering it, it is unlike anything else, really, in musicjournalism. in your experience, how do you physically do it? i know how i do it, which is sort of battle through the crowds but actually not go... the bbc compound, where we work, is right next to the pyramid stage. and, you know, i tend to think if i'm going to do a live, i'm not going to be able to go that far awayjust because it's going to take so long to get there. and if there's a signal problem, i just don't want that to happen. but are you freer? how are you doing it? so, in between the other stage and the pyramid stage are sort of an area called interstage, which all of the media work

from, in a little kind of village fete—style press tent that we all work in, and our passes get us down these... ..i call them tunnels, which kind of eject us at different corners of the festival, so we can kind of beat the crowds, like magic, race down to west holts or whatever, which does make it easier. but i think the main way is a lot of compeed, some good walking boots. mm. some sunscreen, potentially, or an umbrella, depending. and... because i didn't go in the press tent, weirdly, this time. but was there a press tent this time? did you go in? is that where you work at all? yeah. so it is like a white marquee tent, village—hall—style trestle tables. and they do a really good job of keeping us topped up with shortbread, tea and coffee. and so we just... we dash back there after our sets and hammer out our reviews in the press tent all together. and how many of you were in there? i mean, it's a lot of people, isn't it? about 70 to 100, if not more. yeah, a lot ofjournalists all kind of scrambling to file copy. and do you, find when you see the television coverage, that we're seeing one

aspect of the festival, but actually the scale of it and the multitude of different performances is, there's no criticism of those involved in the tv coverage, but very hard to get across in the media coverage. yeah. i mean, there's over100 stages across worthy farm, i think, if you count kind of the roaming stages that people will set upjust on their own, and it's incredibly difficult to cover. i think in some cases it's probably a good thing that they don't have cameras in the nyc downlow or some of the clubs really, really late at night. so it'sjust impossible to capture anything... ..everything at the festival. and in terms of the practicalities of when you've done the reporting and you want to get it out, you hear people who are attending the festival always talking about "will "the phone connectivity be ok?" do they make sure that the practicalities for journalists are as you'd need them to be? i would say the wi—fi is a challenge. there's quite a lot of lying on the floor outside the press tent on laptops, desperately trying to tether to get the copy across. but for me, you know, it's sort of part of the challenge of reporting from the middle

of a dairy farm in somerset. we just find a way to do it. so, ros, i guess the question is next year, next glastonbury, are you going to be on the pyramid stage? i think we can safely say no is the answer to that. but you're hoping to be invited back? you never know. i mean, i guess most djs or most artists who are booked to play glastonbury hope to be asked back. but if it only happens once, that will be one more time than i was expecting. so at the moment i'm just enjoying the fact that it happened. fantastic. well, well done, you, and watch this space, i would say. thank you very much. clearly it went down very well. hopefully. but that's it. that's all we've got time for. thank you so much for watching. bye— bye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts. hello, there. friday was another pretty unsubtle day, but at least many areas saw at least some sunshine for a time, and through the afternoon, it didn't look too bad here in flamborough in east yorkshire — some hazy sunshine, a bit of high cloud and the seas looking quite calm.

won't look like that, mind you, for saturday, because further southwards, we ended friday with this band of rain moving in and this area of rain is actually going to develop into a whole new area of low pressure. so, that's notjust going to be bringing some wet weather our way, but also it'll be quite windy at times as we go through saturday, particularly for england and wales, where we've got the tightly packed isobars with us. so, next few hours, quite heavy rain across england and wales. there'll be some heavy showers for northern ireland and another zone of quite persistent rain setting up across northern areas of scotland. our temperatures to start off saturday morning, generally around about double figures — about 10—13 for most — but as we start off saturday, there will be these areas of heavy rain associated with this developing low—pressure system. gusty winds running into the 30s of miles an hour, knocking the edge off the temperatures, and even as the rain clears through, showers will follow. sunshine and showers for northern ireland,

some persistent rain for northeast scotland. that could cause one or two issues here and look at that — just 12 degrees in aberdeen. certainly a lot colder than it was on friday. now, the second half of the weekend on the whole looks like being the better of the two days of the weekend, but it's all relative, really. we start the day on a dry and sunny note, but showers become pretty widespread through the afternoon, some of those turning heavy and thundery, as well. temperatures for many areas still generally mid to high teens. could be a few areas that sneak a 20, but i suppose where thejuly sunshine comes out, it won't feel too bad. next week, if you're hoping for signs of change, you can forget that. we've got low pressures coming our way from the southwest. now, monday is another showery kind of day, so most areas will start the day dry, with sunshine. the cloud then develops late morning into the early afternoon, and then we start to see some showers and thunderstorms break out in places. could be a few areas that miss those — maybe east anglia, southeast england seeing largely dry weather. and a little bit warmer here as well — temperatures could get into the low 20s for a time.

but overall next week, it is looking pretty unsettled, with rain or showers around, and temperatures still a little below average for the time of year. bye for now.

live from london. this is bbc news. iran's presidential election has been won by the reformist candidate, masoud pezeshkian. he beat his hardline rival in a run—off vote.

the us presidentjoe biden insists he's going nowhere, in his first major television interview since his debate against donald trump. and keir starmer begins his first full day as the uk's prime minister. he will hold a meeting of his new cabinet later this morning. hello, i'm catherine byaruhanga. we start in iran where the reformist — massoud pezeshkian has been elected the country's new president, beating his hardline conservative rival saeed jalil. the vote was declared in dr pezeshkian�*s favour after he secured 53.3% of the more than 30 million votes counted. mrjalili polled 44.3%. the run—off came after no candidate secured a majority in the first round of the election on 28june,

which saw a historically low voter turnout of a0%.