this is bbc news. we will have the headline for you at the top of the hour. straight after this programme. hello, i'm katie razzall. this week, were the press blindsided by donald trump's us election victory? this is a magnificent victory for the american people. from polls to legacy media outlets, the results were predicted to be on a knife edge. we ask what went wrong? also, a new investigation into how the british royal family makes its money. that's all coming up on the media show. on wednesday, donald trump declared victory once again in the us election. it's prompted some soul—searching from pundits and pollsters who failed to predict the result. to talk about the media's role in the election, i wasjoined byjames harding, former head of bbc news, and now boss at tortoise media,

and max tani, media editor at semafor. well, i think the media in large part was hedging its bets because the polls showed such a tight race. there was a lot of uncertainty and there was a lot of apprehension among folks in the mainstream media about getting it wrong again, about underestimating trump's strength. what we've seen over the past several elections is that donald trump, his supporters are consistently undercounted in the polls, and so i think that there were a lot of... i think there were a lot of attempts to ensure that we in the mainstream media and news media told readers and told audiences that, uh, looking at the data that was available, that we didn't really know what the outcome was going to be. it looked like it was pointing in trump's direction. but given some of the other factors and other special elections here in the united states, there might have been a way in which the polls missed. so i think that there was some

hedging going on among news outlets that did not want to surprise, that didn't want to surprise readers, and didn't want to surprise audiences. in terms of those various election programmes that were on, how did they in the us respond as it became clearer that it was a bad night for the democrats and a good night for the republicans? well, obviously, it divides along ideological lines. i think fox, uh... i think it was a pretty upbeat broadcast on fox as it became clear over the course of the evening that donald trump would be returning to the white house. fox, of course, is very conservative, right—leaning and is a part of... essentially part of trump's media operation. you know, he appears on it all the time. msnbc, the mood wasjittery and nervous from the beginning. as we started to see results roll in, the tone increasingly shifted towards nervousness and anxiety. but i think one of the things

that kept a moment of calm, a tone of calm throughout all of the broadcasts was the fact that there were no confusing results at all. it was an overwhelming victory for trump from the very beginning. all of the early precinct data, all the information was pointing in the same direction out of all of the early counties and the places where the early votes started to roll in, which was that it was going to be an overwhelming trump victory. so i think most of the broadcasts were prepared for that. james, you wanted to say something there. ijust want to say, i don't think that the media in this case got it wrong. i don't think we're back in a 2016 story where people are saying, "oh, look, "the liberal media is elite and out of touch." i don't think that's the case. in fact, actually, if you look, um, max's colleague ben smith wrote an interesting note about the focus on joe rogan, the focus on young men. i think people were focused on that story. i think the challenge is for a media that realises the extent to which it's

been marginalised by, if you like, billionaire new media, the elon musk x phenomenon, that feels like the media story of this election. and i am going to talk to you about that in a moment. but, max, just to continue with you, it is very early to call it, perhaps, but if we look at which media was most influential in this election, what would you say? presumably you would agree with james harding, it's elon musk, his x. it was central to amplifying donald trump's message. yeah, i certainly agree with james on that point. it's something that we've written about. i wrote in 2023 for semafor that this was going to be the fragmentation election, the first election of true media fragmentation, in which, you know, the legacy outlets certainly still hold a lot of sway and have large audiences and large readerships. but a lot of people and a lot of voters here in america were getting their information from other places, whether that be podcasts or youtube shows or, you know, some sort of fitness influencer or something like that. and podcasts including thejoe rogan show. obviously, he endorsed trump. yes. he was presumably part of the strategy to win over male voters.

well, he obviously was. yeah, absolutely. and you saw both campaigns attempt to do this. the harris campaign also tried to do this as well, doing certain, you know, lifestyle and, uh, and other types of podcasts and youtube shows aimed at women and non—white voters. but in the end, trump's media strategy of connecting with men and connecting with younger men, minorities and non—college—educated folks, was something that i think went over quite well and clearly was a bet that paid offfor him. max, just do please stay with us. but claire atkinson is also here, media reporter at the media mix newsletter. claire, hello. i want to ask you about how the campaign unfolded online. for you, which platforms were most influential, do you think? yeah, i mean, ithink this is, you know, if we talked - about mark zuckerberg electing trump in 2016 on facebook, - this is, uh, elon... elon musk was really

the silver bullet. - and the fact that he was spoken about at length i in trump's victory speech... let me tell you, we have a new star. a star is born. elon. we also saw dana white . from ultimate fighting club jump up on the stage and give a shout—out tojoe rogan. - um, you know, it was kind of amazing. - i think, you know, i it's worth also talking about trump's rallies. he said he did 900 rallies. i don't know if that number is right, but those rallies . were broadcast also. they certainly - connected with people. it showed his energy levels. um, and then, you know,| we're all very online these days, everybody's looking | at social media, and social media was flooded with memes from both sides of the aisle. i yeah, cos we actually heard a lot about kamala harris�* meme strategy. what do you think happened there?

um, well, ithink the meme strategy was good. - i mean, she was able - to connect with young people. charli xcx, uh, called her, . you know, "kamala is a brat." and then theyjumped on that, and they used the lime green. from the album online, uh, i and kind of ran with that idea, um, which i think was smart. but not enough. i think young people... yeah... but i think the problem is really young people i and the palestine issue. i think that a lot of young - people decided that theyjust didn't want to support her or, um, you know, back her- because of that. yeah. and someone on this show, actually, if we keep talking about memes, i mean, somebody on this show previously described donald trump as the most meme—able politician. did social media warm to his willingness to do stunts? i mean, i'm thinking of him serving food in mcdonald's, dressing as a garbage truck driver. i mean, those were both pretty classic, weren't they? yeah, absolutely. i think they were, you know,

genius communication- strategies. in many ways, it helped him connect with the ordinary, . uh, you know, working—class voters that have now shiftedl from the democrat party to republicans. - um, you know, even though they were pretty, like, - fake events. um, it gave social media| and media a whole bunch of other things to talk about. um, and i do think, you know, with this meme strategy that i everybody's employing, that we do risk, uh, - just, you know, ending up. in a situation where politics seems farcical, and we talk about humour and fun - all the time instead - of the very serious business of politics and, you know, - what are their policies and how do they differ? well, it sounds like memes are sort of very serious for the campaigns involved. i mean, they call it earned content, don't they? cos you can't buy it, it has to happen organically. what about the stuff that they did pay for, the online advertising? do you know how much was spent and what the campaigns were spending on that? it was a $10 billion cycle, - if you can believe that number. um, the campaigns in america...

some people might say that was obscene. ..they go on forever. i mean, most people, i guess, are completely sick of seeing i these two people on tv . or on social and could use a break from both of them, i think. i um, you know, $600 million—plus was spent on google _ and meta platforms alone. that's facebook and instagram . and, uh, you know, then we have youtube, uh, nonstopj ads, um, on youtube. uh, you know what we saw, we had fox's earnings- yesterday, and we saw - lachlan murdoch talk about how the stations had taken in- so much money that they started putting it on their streaming service tubi and that, - you know, their streamer- was now taking in political ad dollars. um, you know, what's important here is that kamala had - the majority of the money and it didn't work. - so, you know, perhaps that says l that these political ad dollars l are wasted money, i don't know.

there might be a lesson there. james harding, let me bring you back in. you were talking about elon musk earlier. he's posted on x, "you are the media now." that's his message. to some americans, i guess a vote for trump was a vote against the media. he's described mainstream outlets as fake news for years. what should journalists take from what elon musk and donald trump are saying? so i think there's a huge amount to take, and i think there's a huge amount within the us, but globally, too. so the elon musk phenomenon, and to an extent the joe rogan phenomenon, is about new media. x, formerly twitter, joe rogan's show on spotify. for a long time, people in the media thought the platforms, the publishers have the power. this was an election where it was very clear the personalities have the power. if you think about it, spotify is a scandinavian podcasting and music platform, butjoe rogan gets to make his

own calls, probably quite different from what many of the people in that company might think. elon musk operates entirely as a law to himself, without any of the requirements or responsibilities expected of the media or even the culture ofjournalism. and i think one of the things that we've seen is that for a long time we thought there were rules around the wayjournalism works. then we came to think, "well, they're not really rules, they're conventions. " and now we think it's not clear if there are any of those things at all. so i think that's a really big thing. i think there's a second issue, which i suspect applies to us in the uk in the way in which we look at the us. we talked a lot about immigration, abortion, trump and harris on both sides of that debate, but it looks like inflation, on the face of it, a less interesting but for many voters, more real issue, really drove people at the polls. and if you look back at the coverage of the uk

election, i think people really got the idea that this was cost of living driving a lot of voting intention. "it's the economy, stupid." i'm not sure that that landed. but then there's a third thing, which is a question more than a kind of, an observation. the gender gap in polling seems to have been seen through, seems to have been realised actually at the polls — ie the gap between men and women, 55—45 in terms of the way in which they voted, and particularly amongst young men and young women... but perhaps not as big as one might have expected, or we were being billed to have expected. quite big, ithink, amongst young men and women. and i guess the question i've really got is if you look at what's happened to the media over the last decade, institutions have been polarised, much more political, much more in the united states, red, blue, you know, republican, democrat. and even in the uk, it feels as though journalistic projects are becoming more like political projects. and the question you've

got to ask is, well, if that's been historically about policy or political parties, might that gender gap also become a feature of the polarisation of our media, too? one of the big stories, though, of the campaign, for the legacy media certainly, was around endorsements. you know, the washington post lost a quarter of a million subscribers in protest at its decision not to endorse kamala harris. its owner, jeff bezos, justified the move as a commitment to impartiality. it looks as if he was right, doesn't it? perhaps to jeff bezos. and perhaps to jeff bezos' commercial interests. i think the reason why that caused such a shudder and actually much worse than that, notjust in the newsroom of the washington post, but in newsrooms everywhere, was that 11 days out from an election the newspaper, which perhaps more than any other has represented what it is to speak truth to power, given watergate, seemed to make a calculated decision, something that was so obviously transactional and say, "we're going to pull the harris endorsement "in order to curry favour "with the potentially the next president," a person who i think someone described the other day as someone who's got a very thick skin and the memory of an elephant,

you know, so you could see exactly what they were trying to do there. now to a new investigation that reveals how the british royal family makes its money. the joint investigation by channel 4's dispatches programme and the sunday times reports they make millions of pounds in income from rent from public bodies, including the uk health service, schools and the armed forces. to take us through the investigation, i spoke to channel 4's alistair jackson, who oversaw it. this started some months ago when a producer that's well known to us, geoff atkinson from vera, came in with... saying he'd got 5,000—odd documents from the land registry. now, i can't say that our heart

raced at that point, you know? but, um, when we looked at that a bit more closely, we realised that what he had actually was some material, quite a significant amount of material that parliament had tried to get hold of. so that's, you know, way back in 2005. so that was a start. but it was only a start. and then, you know, we took those 5,000 documents, pulled them out from the land registry, analysing the leases to actually get this first—ever portrayal of what these two estates, lancaster and cornwall, own. and they're a quirk of history in many ways. these are the two private estates. lancaster of the monarch, king charles, and cornwall, now of prince william. they're used largely to fund their private income and 180,000—odd acres. they're really what's been left when the crown estate was handed to the treasury several hundred years ago. so that you can call them the private fiefdoms. and they're now massive property companies that generate income... but don't pay corporation tax, crucially, or capital gains tax.

no. and they have this unique tax exemption. no capital gains, no corporation tax. and obviously when you put that against what the programme discovered in terms of ownership and how money was made, it raises, you know, we thought, big questions about whether that is sustainable, whether that tax exemption is sustainable. ok, sojust give us your mainfindings, then, from your investigation, for people who haven't watched it or haven't read it in the sunday times so far. i mean, shall we start with the public bodies that reportedly pay rental income? what did you find? yeah. well, you know, you start from the point that both of these organisations effectively say in terms they don't rely on taxpayers' money. and we discovered, you know, nhs trust paying £11 million in rent, the ministry ofjustice paying for dartmoor prison and paying for its upkeep. uh, the navy paying millions of pounds to moor its own, uh, warships, uh, charities that the king is patron of paying millions

of pounds in rent. uh, the ferry in liverpool paying a fee to moor its... to put its pier on duchy land, wind farms paying to run cables across the foreshores. so i think it, you know, it was the spread of things that was surprising. and those organisations i mentioned, of course, are publicly, you know, in receipt of public funds. and also, you also in the documentary raised concerns about the environmental impact of the estate's business dealings. obviously, i'm raising that because, as i said at the beginning, you know, at the moment prince william is in south africa talking about the earthshot, this climate prize. yeah. and i guess you can categorise that into two aspects, really, because of the duchy�*s ownership of mineral rights under the ground, a close involvement with mining down in the duchy of cornwall and in lancaster, obviously not all, but some of these, uh, some of the mines have a controversial aspect to them in terms of their maintenance of the environment. we heard from people on the ground that said, you know, this was a real contradiction living next to these places.

and then another aspect of the film which we actually worked on with the mirror was the duchy�*s role... duchy of cornwall�*s role as a landlord with private residences not being compliant with regulations designed to improve the environmental footprint of properties and actually renting—out properties that were really in breach of the, you know, of government regulations and the worst—offending properties in the country, in many cases. i should probablyjust say on the issue of housing, a duchy of cornwall spokesperson said "we're a responsible landlord "committed to continuous improvement of properties. "we work closely with our tenants to actively address "energy efficiency of properties "across our portfolio." they also said on the issue of mining that the duchy was acting responsibly and in a sustainable way, in line with the government's industrial strategy. but i wonder what has been the reaction to it since, in terms of getting other coverage? well, i think this is really interesting. so, in terms of the programme, it's the highest—watched show last weekend on channel 4, highest—watched dispatches this year, getting over a million views now.

uh, just before we came on air, i got the latest figures for interactions on social media. 13.6 million views across all platforms. now, the film got a lot of comment, a lot of commentary amongst commentators in the papers, but in many other aspects it's kind of been avoided. my question is, you know, why has this not been picked up in earnest by the royal beat, by a royal correspondent, especially at a time when we're hearing documentaries from william about fighting homelessness, he's overseas on his own environmental campaigns. you know, there are lots of questions from this film, and i'd just be interested to know, you know, royal correspondents who have that access... 0k... ..are those questions being raised? i'd like to bring injennie bond, who is a broadcaster and was a former... was a bbc royal correspondent. hello, jennie. thank you for coming on the programme.

i wonder what you think of what alistairjackson�*s been saying, what your reaction to these findings is? well, i thought it was a very powerful, comprehensive piece of work and i was shocked. i've been on this beat for 36 years, but i was really shocked by some of the findings, and i was also extremely surprised that i wasn't flooded with requests, cos normally when a royal story breaks, i am, and that it wasn't big news. jennie bond, do you think this kind of scoop could have come from a royal correspondent? i mean, i imagine conspiracy theorists might say, people can't do this because, you know, just looking today, people have been getting interviews with prince william today because of the earthshot prize. but, actually, if you'd run this story or done this story yourself, you might have not been given access as a royal correspondent on that key tour and to that key interview. that's a possibility. um, i think that there are two things on that. one, um, you're so busy on the royal beat, i really can't tell you how busy a beat it is. one minute your head

is being turned in one direction, fergie is having her toe sucked by a financial adviser, william's doing this, there's a divorce, there's a disaster, the castle is on fire, um, people are leaving the royal family. i mean, it is an incredibly busy beat and there is not time to go through or discover 5,000 documents and then analyse them. there simply isn't. do they do a good enough job, though, of scrutinising the monarchy, royal correspondents, jennie bond? i think in general, yes, but i think it's up to current affairs programmes to do exactly what dispatches have done because they have the time, they have the team to do it. and as a royal correspondent, how much access did you actually get to the royals? um, i got quite a lot with charles. um, you know, i've had tea with him at highgrove a couple of times, long discussions, one—to—one. much more with diana. not much with the queen. but, i mean, i suppose you could say, to your earlier point, yes, i had long chats with diana. she told me as i left on each occasion that we had those discussions, said "jenny, this isjust between you and me,

these four walls, "isn't it?" so what's a royal correspondent or any correspondent to do? i mean, you're going to burn all your bridges with your contact or your principal. jennie, stick with us. but i do want to bring in... if we're talking about, you know, the role of royal correspondents, i'm interested in royal coverage across the atlantic. it's not obviouslyjust the legacy media who are interested in all things royal. i'd like to bring in kinsey schofield, los angeles—based host of the podcast to di for daily. "di" being spelt "di" like princess diana. kinsey, you also have your own youtube channel, kinsey schofield unfiltered, both of which cover the latest royal news. and you're a commentator on tv, talktv and fox news. just tell me, in the last few minutes that we've got, when did you first become interested in the british royal family? well, i would say as a child in the south, that was something that we were all very fixated on. i did want to say, in regards to the story we've been covering, while 13 million people across social media, you know, engaged in this most recent documentary, 17 million people watched harry and meghan live.

and i think one of the answers to your question — why is this not getting more attention? — is because our attention spans are so small and we fixate on the petty and, i mean, i don't know ifjennie would agree with me, but if meghan markle walks outside, that's breaking news in this arena. and i wonder if because sometimes the focus is so shallow, and especially when it comes to american media covering the royal family, if these serious stories get buried based on the clickbait. and do you ever, kinsey, do you ever do negative stories? do you cover them, negative stories about the royals, and how does that go down with your audiences? i do, you know, i was critical of the prince and princess of wales when they released the mother's day photo. i thought it was a pr nightmare, and i received a lot of negative feedback at the time. um, it's a polarising topic to cover, it feels like you have to pick a side, and if you don't pick a side, you're considered the enemy. but, you know, if i do see a misstep, i do try to point it out.

and i've got to ask, we haven't got very long, but i'm always intrigued by why somebody american would get excited and interested in the royals and end up covering them, you know, what... how did you carve a role for yourself in the us? i mean, you flew yourself to london on your own dime, i think, in order to get into this business. tell me about that. several times, yes. my credit card is... my credit card has some thoughts. uh, yeah, ijust... i was a morning news anchor in new orleans, louisiana. kept sneaking royal stories into our coverage, and decided i'd launch a website and podcast because i realised that this was my passion. you've seen how polarising our election�*s been, and how beautiful that you have a monarchy that everybody can get behind. i should probably say not everybody. not everybody is behind the monarchy here in the uk.

but a lot of... that a lot of people can get behind, you know, i think that that's something really admirable and beautiful and i appreciate the tradition. jennie bond, what do you make of american royal coverage? is it very different? well, i know the american interest is huge cos when i do public speaking, especially on cruise ships, for example, the americans come flooding to hear my stories. and are just so curious about it, you wonder why they ever got rid of it, really. but, um, ithink american coverage... well, i don't see that much of it, actually, but i think it's probably largely more deferential and more, um, gushing than we are over here. that was jennie bond and kinsey schofield talking to me about all things royal, but i'm afraid that is it for this week. thank you so much for your company. goodbye. 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.

good evening. the fairly grey, gloomy but largely dry theme to the weather continued on friday and for many of us, it will continue through the weekend as well. not everywhere — we've got a few showers moving in on sunday. that marks the start of something a little bit clearer into next week. but certainly, the next 2a hours or so, most of us keeping this blanket of cloud. this is how we're going to start saturday morning — a few clear spells across northern and western scotland. it's here that we'll have some mist and some fog around through the first part of the day, slowly clearing away, and then there'll be some sunshine across the north and west of scotland but elsewhere, any sunshine in short supply once again. it'll feel rather cool under that cloud in the east — around 8—10 degrees — whereas further west, we could see 12—14. through saturday night, some clear spells again in the north but then we'll start to see some of these showers working in through the early hours of sunday across western scotland and northern ireland, too. ahead of that, another fairly cool night. frost—free as we start remembrance sunday.

temperatures down to 4 or 5 degrees for some in the east. so, sunday, then. many central and eastern parts of england keeping quite a bit of cloud, some brighter spells. as showers move their way in from the northwest, pushing across northern england and wales, a return to some sunshine by the end of the afternoon for much of scotland and northern ireland, so a marked change here compared to what we've seen of late. a bit milder than saturday, so we're looking at about 10—15 degrees. moving on into monday, and that's when this clearer air mass starts to move in behind this cold front, sinking its way south, so a different feel to the weather — at last — as we head through monday. early cloud and perhaps a few showers — that's the remnants of that cold front in the south first thing — clearing away. winds coming in from a different direction now, in from the north or the northwest. perhaps a little bit more cloud across parts of scotland and northern ireland but certainly, england and wales much more sunshine than we've seen of late. still relatively cool — around about 10—15 degrees. moving through to tuesday, then. well, high pressure with us but this frontal system may just move in from the east,

so a bit of uncertainty about the detail on this. but potentially on tuesday, parts of eastern england could see a bit more cloud, a few showers around as well. but for much of the uk, i think another predominantly dry and settled day. temperatures between about 10—12 degrees for most of us, so a little bit cooler and fresher than it has been. but a lot of dry, settled weather through much of the week ahead and compared to the last week we've seen where there's been a lot of cloud, there will be more sunshine around.

live from washington, this is bbc news. the us charges three men in connection with an alleged

iranian plot to assassinate donald trump and iranian—american journalist masih alinejad. as democrats reflect on their election loss, ballot counting continues, with control of the us house of representatives still in the balance. attacks on israeli football fans in amsterdam leave at least five people in hospital, with world leaders condemning the violence. hello. i'm azadeh moshiri. welcome to the programme. we begin with the news of an alleged iranian plot to assassinate president—elect donald trump. the us government has charged an afghan national, alleging he was tasked with providing a plan to kill donald trump , before the presidential election. thejustice department unsealed the criminal charges on friday that allege an unnamed official in iran's paramilitary revolutionary guard instructed the man to create a plan to surveil donald trump and carry out the plot. this was back in september.