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 linskey 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 on 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, 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? 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 — i 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, as someone who's not even the current editor of a news organisation, to explain it l 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. so, those are two possible explanations. but i don't know. you 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 fourth ofjune, 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 streetjournal, 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 forths, 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 reallyjust 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 an - — 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 — i 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 —j 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 welt _ people like jason bateman, etc, or drew barrymore — l 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 administration that has really given limitedj 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 and 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 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 — i 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 k altman. 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, i was 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 targets... ..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. yeah. some sunscreen, potentially... some sunscreen. ..oran 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—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. we had a very wet start to the day on saturday with low pressure in charge, extensive and pretty heavy outbreaks of rain. the afternoon got a bit better. sunny spells came through but we also had quite widespread showers, like this shower cloud working across the horizon in the scottish

borders. now, the wettest place in the whole of the uk was rothamsted, in hertfordshire, near luton and here, we had 37mm of rain. that compares with the monthly average of 52 so, in other words, we had, well, nearly three—quarters of a month's worth of rain in just the space of 21! hours. now, showers have continued to affect eastern areas of scotland, northeast england into the first part of the night but over the next few hours, many of the showers will tend to fade away but i think we'll see another clump working into wales and southwest england as we head into the first part of sunday. now, sunday is overall the better of the two days of the weekend. many of us will start off with some sunshine first thing in the morning but we'll have those showers from the word go across wales and western england and through the day, those showers push eastwards. it is always across england and wales that the heaviest downpours are likely to be with some hail and thunder mixed in, and, to a degree, northern ireland seeing heavy downpours, too. in scotland, there will still be showers but they perhaps won't be quite as heavy as the ones we've seen over

the last 21! hours. now, monday's forecast — it's another pretty unsettled day. again, starting off on a promising note. many areas will start the day dry and sunny but showers will develop across northern areas of the uk and it looks like we'll see another area of rain start to work into the southwest, so that could affect southwest england and parts of southern wales as well. the area of rain is associated with this next area of low pressure, which pushes its way northwards across the country very slowly through tuesday and wednesday, so tuesday looks like probably the wettest day of the week ahead. extensive and heavy outbreaks of rain in england and wales. some wet weather for northern ireland. eventually, the rain reaches northwards into scotland and again, as the rain eases off, it willjust be followed by heavy showers and thunderstorms. top temperatures high teens to low 20s, much as the temperatures have been over recent days. that is below average for this time of the year. and beyond that, it does stay pretty unsettled. might see something a little bit less soggy as we head towards the following weekend.

bye for now.

live from washington. this is bbc news. a fifth democratic member of congress calls onjoe biden to withdraw from the us presidential race. keir starmer says he will have to make tough decisions "and make them early"

in his first full day as uk prime minister. and iran's president elect acknowledges there's a difficult path ahead. i'm helena humphrey. good to have you with us. us presidentjoe biden is under increasing pressure to end his 2024 re—election campaign. on saturday, a fifth democrat in the us house of representatives issued a statement calling for mr biden to step aside. congresswoman angie craig of minnesota said she admires president biden, and takes pride in the legislation passed in his first term. however, she then went on to say, "i respectfully call "on president biden to step aside as the democratic nominee "and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward." ms craig cited last week's cnn debate, where president biden appeared lethargic up against donald trump. his performance sparked concern

among democrats about his age and mental fitness.