nears completion in georgia. international election monitors have flagged concerns over voting fraud, suggesting the ruling party's victory may have been interfered with. israel's prime minister describes saturday's strikes on iran as �*precise and powerful�* claiming its goals were achieved. meanwhile, iran's supreme leader says those attacks should not be exaggerated, nor minimized. dozens of people have been injured in central israel after a truck rammed into a group waiting at a bus stop north of tel aviv. police there are treating it as a terror related incident. now on bbc news... the media show. hello, i'm katie razzall. this week, an interview with yulia navalnaya, the widow of the russian opposition leader alexei navalny. get out of my table!

and behind the scenes at the hit reality tv show real housewives. it's all coming up on the media show. now, in the uk, the annual budget is coming up, and i wanted to get an insight into the relationship between the journalists and the politicians. to discuss, i was joined by claer barrett, consumer editor at the financial times, and by the former british finance minister — the chancellor — george osborne, who's now also a podcaster. fundamentally, a good budget has to be rooted in good economics and good political decision—making, and then, you know, the media strategy sits on top of that. i think a budget that's driven by a media strategy is probably the wrong way round and is going to unravel. i think it's worth considering that in a budget, there are around 4,000 individual decisions, any one of which could go wrong and cause a headache for the chancellor. and then the final thing

i'd say is, you know, it is the sort of central event, domestic event for the government in the year, even though it's done by the chancellor, not the prime minister. and in this case, there's also a kind of spending review, so for every government department, it's a big deal. and, you know, what they're going to have to try and pull off here with this budget is two things which don't necessarily sit very easily together. so they've got to have a budget that kind of sets up the labour government for the next five years. it's the first labour budget in, you know, over a decade. and yet at the same time, things haven't gone that well for the government in its initial couple of months, so it's also a kind of relaunch. you know, this is the moment when they've got to relaunch the fortunes of this new government. and, you know, trying to pull both things off in the media are quite hard, because on the one hand, you want to say, you know, "we're thinking for the long—term, "and we're going to be doing some difficult things "that will yield the results," they hope, "in a couple of years�* time." but at the same time, they need good headlines, and they need to kind of lift

the spirits of the governing party. and so if we talk more broadly and about your time, i mean, take us back inside number 11. how are you deciding, when it comes to that media strategy, what gets leaked, what gets briefed out in advance, what you�*re saving for the day? how does that work? long gone are the days when everything in the budget has to be secret. i mean, i think that was always a bit of a mythology, but famously there was a chancellor of the exchequer after the second world war who had to resign for kind of telling a journalist what was going to be in the budget. those days are gone. however, there are some bits of the budget that are market—sensitive, that will move the share price of individual companies, and they have to be kept secret and can�*t be leaked. or if they are leaked, that�*s a kind of mistake, and people are held to account. but most of the budget isn�*t like that. you know, we�*re not a kind of closed economy any more. these decisions don�*t move the ftse in the way that they used to. and so what really the central media strategy is — to get the bad news out before the day. i mean, that is the bottom

line of how you run, you know, your media strategy as a chancellor and the treasury team and the number 10 team. those are the only two bits of the government that are involved in this. the rest of the cabinet, by the way, have no idea what�*s in the budget until the morning of the budget. i�*m really listening to that, and i�*m thinking that�*s you admitting to leaking. no, that�*s the treasury giving guidance about what might or might not be in a budget. i do just want to bring in claer barrett, consumer editor at the ft. how do you, as a journalist, prepare for budget day? ok, so it's a bit like gearing up for some gigantic financial exam. and as george said, nowadays, with modern budgets, a lot of the news is out there or is in the ether. so you've got a feeling of, like, where the big stories might be, so you can kind of get all of your prep in. but you�*ve got to be across it all. yeah. i mean, and how quickly do you have to give your take? well, more and more quickly nowadays, in the days of social media, because, you know, i was speaking

to some of my colleagues in the office today who've worked for the paper for 30 years, and, you know, in those days, you'd have an enormous print supplement, extra pagination. you would do the budget at 3.30. it was much later then. you'd go to press really late at night, and there would be this great thumping paper of record that people would keep and refer to. whereas nowadays it's all about finding that angle really quickly. what's the analysis? everybody can get the documents by downloading a pdf online. gone are the days where the motorcycle couriers used to bring, you know, dozens of red books to the ft office. you've got to be able to analyse what the consequences of these tax changes are likely to be. so a really big challenge on the day for us to work out what this taxjenga, moving one thing there, could do to another thing over there, and what it ultimately means for people's pockets. now, an interview with yulia navalnaya, the widow of the russian opposition leader alexei navalny, who died in a siberian penal colony in february.

we discussed the circumstances of his death, her plans to stand for election and also alexei�*s decision to return from exile in 2021. you might recall the news footage of her and alexei on that flight. i thought, how manyjournalists are in the plane and why they are not going to sit down on their seats and then we can fly back to moscow, because me and alexei were... we were really dreaming to come back to moscow. we wanted to live in moscow. it�*s, first of all, about optimism and thinking about better things. then if to come to switch to vladimir putin, you never know what is in his mind. probably he decided something else, but it�*s better never to guess because you just need to do what you think is right.

we also talked about the role of the media and the internet in russia, because yulia has taken on alexei�*s role at the anti—corru ption foundation. this is his campaigning organisation that became hugely popular on youtube, their biggest investigation to date being one into a billion—dollar palace on the black sea which they said belonged to vladimir putin himself. putin�*s russia was famously slow to restrict the internet compared with other regimes. i asked yulia whether it was still the case. youtube still works in russia, and we have several youtube channels, more than 3 million each. and we can see that mostly those youtube channels are watched from russia. does that give you hope that the clamp—down hasn�*t been total? it gives me hope that people still get some messages.

if they block youtube, we will find some other ways. probably it will be more difficult, but we will find some other ways to send this information. and, of course, all these people who are in russia who are saying anything against putin�*s regime, they are very brave because for liking social media, for posting social media, they could be imprisoned. and are you confident that your name is out there, that alexei�*s name is out there? because it seems as if, because of the clamp—down and because he�*s been killed, actually you�*re not visible in russia any more. there is no politics in russia right now. nobody�*s visible. the people who are visible, they are just supporters of vladimir putin�*s regime. you can happen to be on tvjust

if you support vladimir putin. propaganda is very strong in russia, and that�*s why it�*s very important for us to send the independent information for people inside russia as well. that was yulia navalnaya talking to me, and i�*m delighted to say that francis scarr from bbc monitoring is here to help us unpick some of this. francis, welcome. is itjust a matter of time, do you think, before access to youtube from inside russia is completely impossible? well, earlier this summer, the roskomnadzor, which is the russian state body responsible for monitoring and censoring the media in russia, started to actively slow down youtube inside the country, so people were finding it hard to load videos in the country. and certain people close to the kremlin were saying that this was a response to youtube taking down the channels of pro—kremlin bloggers and channels inside the country. lots of analysts say

that it is only a matter of time before youtube is entirely blocked, but the fact is that it is still by far the most popular platform for viewing videos in russia. and in the past, the kremlin has been far less successful when it comes to blocking things like telegram, which it tried to block in 2018, compared to the likes of china, perhaps. so are there any platforms left, then, through which dissenting voices can reach ordinary russians? well, there is telegram, there is youtube, there's... facebook and twitter are ostensibly banned, but many russians are able to access them with the help of a virtual private network, a vpn, although... that�*s, of course, expensive, and they do close down vpns, don�*t they? and then... exactly. every so often, you hear that they've managed to close down a number of new vpns, and so people are forced to... ..sort of a game of cat—and—mouse where people are forced to find new ones. ithink, really, the kremlin is, before the invasion of ukraine in 2022, the kremlin allowed some freedom of expression to exist as long

as it didn't see any direct threat to the regime. and since then, it's really taken a much more wholesale effort to clamp down on any kind of freedom of expression in the country. the thing that intrigued me after broadcasting the interview earlier this week was just how much abuse and trolling i got from people spreading stories and negative stories about yulia navalnaya. there seems to be this disinformation campaign linking her to other men while alexei, her husband, was in prison. just tell me a bit about that. yeah, so especially after he died, she was targeted by pro—kremlin accounts on social media, also by state tv inside russia, who claimed that she had been unfaithful, that she had had abortions and affairs, and there were photos spread on social media. one in particular was with her with this major opposition... ..pro—opposition businessman called evgeny chichvarkin, who actually lives in london. and he is a long—time supporter of navalny and was a friend of both of them, and so this was just

a photo that had been dug up from several years ago. and there was another photo which was doctored, which was of her several years ago, hugging her husband at the time, and his head had simply been replaced by the head of another man. and these were being spread by these accounts on social media, and many people who are not familiar with the political scene in russia simply didn't know any better to be able to verify the fact that this was simply disinformation. so this is an attempt to discredit her. francis, just before you go, there�*s a related story i wanted to ask you about, cos last week it was reported that apple had complied with a russian government order to restrict access to radio liberty, which is a news service funded by a grant from the us congress. just tell us about radio liberty and what apple�*s done. so radio liberty is funded by us congress and has many channels around eastern europe and russia and central asia in the local languages, which allow people to receive objective and true news,

i suppose, as opposed to the pro—government propaganda that is largely dominant in those kind of countries. and what we've seen here is really apple complying with this demand by the russian government to block a media outlet that it sees as hostile and which it has declared as undesirable in the country, meaning that any kind of cooperation with radio liberty by ordinary russians is illegal. and actually, reporters there have beenjailed in the past. and finally on this week�*s media show, i wasjoined by the man dubbed the king of reality tv. andy cohen is executive producer of real housewives, the reality tv series that follows the lavish lifestyles of wealthy women in cities including new york, miami and dubai. i thought this was going to be a pleasant meeting, we were going to have a nice little cappuccino and you're going to say,

"sorry i behaved..." which shows your own delusion. you came after me in the house. i was sitting there having a lovely moment with the ladies, and you came in, in your herman munster shoes... um, they're louis vuitton shoes, you know? - well, even louis vuitton makes mistakes. um... oh, wow! that was luann de lesseps and alex mccord from the real housewives of new york. andy�*s also executive produced popular shows such as project runway, top chef, and below deck mediterranean. he�*s also got his own talk show. welcome, andy, to the media show. from the sublime to the ridiculous. yeah, we do a lot of different stories. you took a big right turn, there. i covered it — i did it well, though, right? seamless. you did it seamlessly. i didn�*t know how you were going to land that plane. we�*re going to have to start, though, with the real housewives, which has been broadcasting since 2006, expanded all over the world, including, as i said, into the uk, the real housewives of cheshire. how did the idea for the show come about? it came about — a gentleman brought us, at... i was in charge of programming

at bravo at the time — he brought us, i think, a vhs tape of a bunch of his neighbours in orange county, one of whom had a grotto in her back yard and she was an insurance agent. what�*s a "garado"? a grotto is like a... hugh hefner had one. it was like a pool with a rock feature formation. 0k, smart. a really intense water feature... you thought, "great tv!" ..i would say, with a waterfall — and we just said, "wow, we�*ve not seen moms "that look like this before," and it was around the time that desperate housewives was a huge show, a scripted dramatic show, on abc, and i looked at this and said, "all these women go to the same tennis club, "they all live in the same neighbourhood. "maybe we could produce this like a soap opera," and so we called it the real housewives as a nod to the show desperate housewives, and... got it — but i think there were some teething problems, weren�*t there? because you even considered killing it off, i think, when you saw the rough cuts of season one. we did consider killing

it off as we were in production on season one. why? we were not getting the footage that we were told... it was not really coming together, in a way, and so we were trying to figure out, "how are we going to make this into the show?" and i think that if you watch season one of the real housewives of orange county, it�*s like watching those early episodes of the simpsons where there�*s something there that relates to later episodes of the simpsons, but it looks very primitive and weird, and so i�*m so glad we didn�*t kill the show, because i wouldn�*t be at bbc broadcast centre... and you wouldn�*t have done quite as well as you have. no! what makes a real housewife? how do you cast it? and also, how scripted is it? it is not scripted, and when you meet a real housewife out in the wild, you will see that it�*s not scripted. they are exactly... it is — the secret sauce is in the casting of these women, and i think the reason it�*s still going is because we love tojudge human behaviour, and what makes a great real housewife is that they�*re outspoken, they�*re somehow aspirational,

and they are funny. there�*s a lot of humour in the real housewives. i think it gets a bad rap because there are a lot of clips that are shown, and there�*s...the clips that are shown are usually pretty confrontational, or heated... yeah, they�*re fighting, aren�*t they, sometimes? ..overly dramatic — but there�*s so much more to the show, and if there wasn�*t so much more, i don�*t think it would still be on 18 years later, it would just be a cartoon. and you said it�*s not scripted — i�*m sure you�*re right, but how... are you shaping the story arcs? how are you doing that? are you, how are you deciding what the stories are? well, the only way we shape it is, if you and i were at a dinner party and there was some drama over the placement of the... over the "gerardo", or whatever it�*s called. exactly — and then i saw you for lunch the next day. i think the producers would expect us to discuss the dinner party that we last saw each other, and maybe the drama within our friend group, but no—one is told what to say or how to say it, or what feelings to have, and that�*s what makes the show, i think, interesting, because you never know how

people are going to behave, and we love to judge human behaviour. ..over here, you're talking about her? the way you... have another drink. have another drink?! as a matter of fact, i will! all right, let�*s go. let�*s go. i'm going home. you know what? no wonder why you're... you cheated on your wife. and just take us behind the scenes on filming. what actually happens on set? what happens? well, you see what happens... is it a set? well, i wouldn�*t call it a set. no. i never go to filming the housewives, because it�*s weird — really, we�*re filming them leading, ostensibly, their lives, and, you know, if they�*re at a restaurant, there are obviously cameras set up, and it looks pretty dramatic, but they�*re still sitting there, they�*re not — there�*s no script. they�*re sitting there having lunch — and, by the way, sometimes it�*s super boring, and... that doesn�*t, presumably, make the final cut, the boring bits. yeah. you know, sometimes it�*ll be 30 seconds of the lunch that airs,

sometimes it�*ll air in a flashback, if nothing happens. because i suppose that�*s — part of the craft of this is presumably the editing. yes. what guides your editing decisions? you know, we would do, in the edit room if someone said, you know, "i love to be healthy," we would possibly cut to them smoking a cigarette or, you know, i mean, it�*s basically... little juxtaposition. exactly. i mean, so, we kind of try to show the full picture without saying anything, but it is in the editing that you can kind of get a sense of where we�*re going. 0k. well, let�*s talk about duty of care to the participants... 0k. ..in these shows, because one former real housewife has got a lawsuit on the go at the moment. she says producers put her in volatile situations to create good television. that is a big charge, andy. how do you respond to the allegation you�*re more interested in the drama than the emotional wellbeing of real people. um... that is, i would say, unfair and untrue, and i�*m so proud — i�*ve been making this show, and many other shows,

but this one for 18 years, and i�*m very proud with the care that we have taken. these women are coming on these shows and opening up their lives to us. they are telling their personal stories, personal stories relating to, um, addiction, getting out of bad marriages, sometimes, um, you know, negative relationships with family members. there are so many sensitive issues, and i�*m very proud of not only the way that we�*ve told these stories, but in the care that we�*ve taken with our subjects. the lawsuit that you mentioned, i�*m anxious for it to go forward. i think, i hope that most of it will be thrown out and that we will happily have our day in court. when you look at that show, you�*ve been closely associated with so of much the rise of reality tv. what do you think the future has in store for the genre? are there any trends that you�*ve spotted? i don�*t really know. i�*m really focused on keeping... we�*ve got ten housewives shows going that we produce...

all across the world. ..in the states, and they are mainly in the states. dubai is our only international version. the otherformats, we�*ve kind of licensed to other production companies around the world. so, those ten shows are what i focus on, and, really, it�*s about keeping those shows going, and fresh, and interesting and successful — and i can�*t get over that this is still going on now. i�*m so grateful for it, i�*m happy about it, and i will take great care to keep it going for as long as it can. what we haven�*t heard about is your career. just let�*s go right back to the beginning. you started your media career as an intern at cbs. how did you get your foot in the door? you know, actually, i was an intern at ap radio in the docklands right here. in the uk? i was in the uk and i was — 1988, i was an impressionable young student in london. i was very excited to be here studying abroad. this is where i came out of the closet.

my intense homosexuality was birthed right here in london. you can feel it in the air. wow! yes. well, that is a claim to fame for london. i know, i know. it really is. anyway, no, i — i was an intern at cbs news in new york. i worked at cbs news as a producer for ten years, and i absolutely loved it. ifeel like i could win a trivia game about the �*90s, �*90s trivial pursuit, i could probably ace, because i had a front row seat at cbs news to everything taking place. the oj trial, um, on and on and on, from 1990 to 2000. i became an executive. barry diller hired me to run programming at a small cable channel called trio. our most successful show that we produced was a documentary series called brilliant but cancelled, about brilliant but cancelled television — and then we became brilliant but cancelled when nbc and universal merged, and i was hired to run programming at bravo. and just before we talk about

that, when you were in news journalism following the likes of the oj trial... yes. i mean, what lessons did you learn from then in terms of news journalism that you could apply to your later career? did you learn anything?! yes, i learned a lot. well, first of all, that was a really impactful decade for broadcastjournalism in, uh, in the states, at least, it was, um, it was the birth, i think, of the tabloidization of news coverage in the states, led primarily by the oj trial and by the dominance of court tv, and you had the nancy kerrigan, tonya harding 0lympic saga, and itjust became these... that was the ice skating. what did you say? ice skating. the monica lewinsky, bill clinton affair — i mean, these salacious stories that really changed tv news. now, my lastjob at cbs was at 48 hours, which was an hour—long news magazine on cbs that followed one news story for 48 hours,

and what i took with me in my programmingjob years later, and even working on housewives, was the ability to think very fast in the edit room, and also how to shape character—driven story in an edit room, and i took that knowledge, and, really, i used that from the beginning of giving notes on all sorts of non—scripted television shows. right — and when you went to bravo, you became vice president of original programming. what drew you to the development side? uh, it seemed really interesting, coming up with show ideas. it was, at that point, bravo had queer eye for the straight guy, which was a massive breakout hit, and then, um, you know, just building — building shows that defined this channel became really exciting, and we really were part of a massive shift in reality television with shows like project runway, and top chef, and the real

housewives, and below deck, vanderpump rules, on and on. those were very huge shows in the states. i�*m always interested in whether people know they�*ve got a hit on their hands. i mean, how — is it possible to spot a hit before it comes out and people like it? i think, queer eye, there was a sense that that was going to be a huge hit, but a show like project runway, that we all believed in, it was a ratings failure at first, and it — and our head of the channel wound up marathoning the show a lot over christmas break, and it caught on in marathon form, um, over christmas break. so, we thought we had something, but it wasn�*t sticking. so, i had a sense that the housewives was becoming a soap opera, which — which, to me, is a positive — in season two of the show, when a couple that i had watched on the show announced that they were getting separated and i was like, "wait, i care about this in a way "that i cared about my characters on soap operas."

and do you get more plaudits or criticism for that real housewives? um, i think more plaudits. people are obsessed. we have — bravo, in the states, has the most educated audience on all of cable television outside of the golf channel and the news channels. so, these are very smart people who view this show as a great escape. that was andy cohen, executive producer of real housewives. that�*s it for this week. thanks so much for your company. i�*ll see you soon. 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! it�*s been a lovely start to our sunday with plenty of sunshine around, albeit rather chilly, but with cloud, wind and rain pushing into scotland and northern ireland through the day, it means we�*ll see

that sunshine diminish for many of us. for the week ahead high pressure builds back in. it�*s going to be mostly dry for the week, often cloudy. limited sunshine and we will see some morning mist and fog. so this ridge of high pressure is what�*s brought us the fine and dry sunday. but this weather front pushing into northern ireland and western scotland already bringing outbreaks of rain, will spread to all areas as we head into the evening. the sunshine will fade and become hazy across northern and western england and into wales. probably the best of the sunshine throughout the day will be into the southeast, but highs of only 1a or 15 degrees, cooler than the last few days because we started the day off on a chilly note. but as we head through tonight, that cloud, breeze and rain in the north and the west spreads to all areas. it tends to fragment and become a little bit lighter. so by the end of the night, it�*s patchy rain here and there with a lot of cloud, a bit of a breeze in the south, lighter winds in the north and a bit milder, 7 to 11 degrees to start monday morning. but it does mean our monday morning, in fact, monday day will be rather grey and gloomy with a lot of cloud outbreaks

of patchy light rain here and there, limited spells of sunshine, the breeze a bit more of a feature in the south, lighter further north and temperature wise, a bit milder than over the weekend 16 or 17 degrees given any brightness. generally the mid—teens further north. as we head into tuesday, any weather fronts tend to fizzle out across the uk as high pressure continues to exert its force across the country. so apart from a few patches of light rain in the south, most places will be dry. it will be rather cloudy. limited sunshine, some holes appearing in the cloud here and there that will push temperatures up to 16 or 17 degrees again. so again, quite mild with light winds and generally a lot of cloud. similar story as we head into wednesday as well as high pressure really dominates the scene. there will be some weather fronts, stronger winds across the far north of scotland. that really is about it. elsewhere we start cloudy, some mist and fog, which could be slow to clear. into the afternoon, could see some holes appearing in the cloud to allow for some sunshine. maybe central, northern and eastern areas. that will push temperatures up again to around 16 degrees.

similar story for thursday and friday. by the end of the week, we could start to see something a bit colder moving down from the north with increasing sunshine and overnight frosts. live from london. this is bbc news. at least one person has been killed with dozens injured in central israel after a truck rammed into a group waiting at a bus stop north of tel aviv. israel�*s prime minister says saturday�*s strikes on iran were �*precise and powerful�*. iran�*s supreme leader says those attacks should not be exaggerated.

japan�*s prime minister shigeru ishiba says voters have delivered a severe judgement on his party in the general election, as exit polls suggest it�*s lost its majority. reports of intimidation at the ballot box as georgia�*s ruling party claims victory. hello, i�*m martine croxall. israeli media�*s reporting that one person has died after a truck rammed into a bus stop north of israel�*s commercial hub, tel aviv. authorities in israel have confirmed they�*re investigating the incident as terror—related. at least 3a other people were injured. police said the truck driver was shot dead by armed civilians. driver was shot dead the incident happened as a bus was dropping off passengers outside glilot military base in central israel. 0ur correspondent lucy williamson has sent this update from the scene.