we begin with the fall of the assad regime in syria. for years, he oversaw the killing and detention of thousands of people, including civilians. and with assad gone has now come a freedom to report inside syria in a way that hasn't been possible for decades. kholoud helmi co—founded the syrian independent newspaper enab baladi, and she joined us in the studio. ok, so let us wake up because this is a dream and we are afraid that we might wake up tomorrow and say that things are... like, it's a nightmare. but no. how we have been operating is that we've been covering all the news, watching from aside, doing the analysis ourselves, listening to other people. but we rely on hugely, not only now, but since we left darayya, when we left syria and we were not physically present in the country.

because it's worth saying, you're in exile here in the uk. yes. many of your colleagues are in istanbul. exactly. and others in other european countries. but we rely hugely on our network of reporters and investigators inside syria. so they're sending you the information that you're... yes. and that's what's happened throughout since you left, presumably. yes. and have you had, so far, any contact with this new transition government? how are they treating the media? not yet. — and we are still, um, very... ..conscious about how they are going to treat the media, because i know that they have taken a huge part in liberating the country and, um, like, they helped us achieve the dream, not only themselves, but also the fighters from every and each city in syria who were pushed by the syrian regime to idlib. and then they were packaged there to do this, um, liberation.

but why we are anticipating, because we had bad experience with the salvation government and the hts in the past as media, so we were not in good terms with them. so you don't trust them? or you worry that you don't trust them? now we... now we are anticipating. i don't say that we don't trust them now because we haven't seen anything. the things is, to be honest, in syria, the... what is happening, like, our reporters are covering things without anybody interfering with them. they can have access everywhere. but it's still too recent for everybody to digest what is going on. and from our very previous experience, we have been confronted by the... ..the past shape of this. and what did you find, if you could tell us? so it's... enab baladi in particular, they chased our reporters in syria and they burned the...the newspaper. they burnt enab baladi newspaper? yes. hts did? the...the ones affiliated to it.

i'm not saying it, physically it is, but the people ruling. so not freedom of speech in your experience at that point? um, not to our...like, not everything, you know. and now we are alert. we need to say what is going to be. we still consider ourselves as, like, we do play a very key role in the country because independent media should be the one ruling the face of media and how things are being reported. of course. i mean, i'd like as well for our audiences for you to explain how you set up enab baladi, because that was back in 2011. what spurred you to do it? and at that time, it was very dangerous, obviously, to be trying to do this. what methods did you take to ensure you and your colleagues were kept safe? yeah, why we took that... ..like, we took the risk in 2011 because we...the media was controlled by the assad regime.

and none of you were journalists at that point? none of us. only one. nabil sharbaji. and he was detained by the syrian regime in 2012. we heard very contradicting news about him being killed under torture. um, we're not certain. we haven't seen the body. we haven't seen anything, um... ..anything, like, factual from any independent, like, any trusted source, like the regime records, let's say. so we are in limbo. uh, we also lost a lot of other colleagues in the way until now. one of them is my brother. he was also detained in 2012. he's forcibly disappeared and we don't know if he's alive or dead now, with the... and with the news of the prisons being opened and the detainees being released, um, we do have 200,000 detainees inside the prisons, and we don't know their whereabouts. so this is something, just like...like a side note. and, kholoud, as you've been

describing, you and your colleagues have paid a terrible price to continue to try and report on syria. now that the situation has changed, and i appreciate we are only two or three days into a new era in syria, what are you hoping you can create now? a new syria. this is the hope. so this is the aspiration. and for your publication, what do you think it can become? so the plan now is that we, um, like most of our... not most, every single reporter inside syria, including the ones in damascus who used to hide their faces, now they are on camera. so this is number one victory. and they are back to the streets of damascus, covering things, doing the investigations. and they are preparing loads, lots of stories about what happened during the past two days. we are planning to republish enab baladi in damascus and in darayya, the first edition after the fall of the regime.

kholoud, could ijust ask you, do you have any hope that you will find your colleagues, your brother, or at least find out what happened to them? ok, this is a difficult question. i'm sorry. if i cry, forgive me. but, um... so we now, in prison, we do have ahmad, my brother, and nabil sharbaji. uh, with all the rumours coming from inside, where i know that trusted media is doing the work, but we also, we are also living in the era of tiktok and influencers. unfortunately, some people think that they can create content out of prisons and the suffering of the families of the detainees. so you see rumours about, like, especially with the saydnaya prison, and when they freed the prisoners from there, you see rumours about electronic gates that they cannot be operated or opened but by the regime, and secret doors and secret whatever, tunnels, dungeons, and every single mother was aspiring

that they might see their kids in a moment. but unfortunately, yesterday was a very tough day. i was really worried that my mum and dad's heart are going to stop in a minute. i'm sorry. thank you very much for coming in at such an incredibly difficult time. and thank you for explaining the work that you and your colleagues do. thank you very much. that's kholoud helmi, one of the founders of the syrian independent newspaper enab baladi, which was set up in 2011 in reaction to the assad regime's repression. much of the early reporting byjournalists in syria has focused on the notorious military prison near damascus, saydnaya. edmund bower is a freelance journalist who's reporting from syria for the times, and he's been inside that prison. i mean, the process of gaining access is pretty much as simple as walking in. um... no place that i've been to in the region, until now, have we been given such

unfettered access to potentially sensitive sites, especially considering that this was a prison that for so long was only known to the... ..the guards and those who were unlucky enough to end up there. but thousands of people have been through in the last few days, including, iwould say at least dozens, maybe hundreds ofjournalists. i think we were, um, basically working towards, in a sense, the same goal, i think, of the thousands of people who went up to the prison from damascus and from other parts of the country. everyone i spoke to, at least, was searching for loved ones. these were people who had theirfamily members, had their children arrested and didn't know where they were. so much, much as we were, they were there seeking, uh... ..seeking information, trying to find out exactly what happened in those prisons, who was incarcerated in them, who perhaps had been killed.

and i think we were working much... ..more or less in the same direction. for example, there was this widespread rumour, and i think it's safe to say now that it's a rumour, that there's a second prison underneath the prison. and it wasn't just journalists out there trying to find if this was the case and if there were thousands of people buried in the hill under the prison itself. and it wasn't just civil defence workers who were making great efforts to search for this prison, but thousands of ordinary people as well, pulling apart pieces of concrete and breaking through walls. um, and i think the combination of all of that is this... ..it results in this tremendous transparency, that you're able to say, um, with a degree of certainty that would otherwise be difficult, that i don't think such a prison exists. and i think we're drawing closer to the reality

that the thousands of people missing in syria will not be recovered. and, edmund, as you're going about your reporting, are you having to interact with the rebels who drove assad from power? what is their media operation like in terms of interacting with journalists, both syrian journalists and foreign journalists? i think we're interacting with them when it's appropriate, and it's quite fascinating to talk to soldiers and definitely important to speak to, uh, members of the party, members of the various militias. and so far, and your listeners can draw their own conclusions from this, but they've been very open to speaking with us, um... ..very happy that we're taking an interest and very keen as well to project a particular image of themselves and stick to this party line that syria is going to be an open country and that the new government is not going to be like

the old one, and there is going to be a place for people to come and visit and ask questions. and i'm not drawing any conclusions on whether or not that's true. but for the time being, at least, it makes our job much easier. what will we see next from you? what's your next story from there? we've got a few things that we're working on. i mean, this is a country which, they've not allowed journalists to report freely for years. so you can imagine how many stories are out there. and there are plenty ofjournalists as well, running around damascus and the rest of the country, um, looking into all of these things that we weren't able to look into before. and it's a country in a period of massive transition. and again, i don't want to make any predictions of what's going to happen. it's tempting to, um, to look at what's happening now and try and draw conclusions from it, but really, we should, um...we should take a step back. there's an awful lot that can happen in the coming weeks and months.

earlier this month, the boss of a us healthcare insurance firm, brian thompson, was shot and killed outside his hotel in new york. and on monday, a 26—year—old, luigi mangione, was arrested on suspicion of murder. and for some on social media, he's become something of a folk hero. to understand that, we've been speaking to mia sato, a reporter with the tech website the verge. i think that the reaction online speaks to the role of private health insurance in american society. americans carry something like $220 billion in medical debt. people lose theirjobs, their homes, they declare medical bankruptcy. and even when you do have health insurance, accessing these services is not always straightforward. you have a maze of different providers and then your insurance company to speak to and try to get the care. and so i think that mainstream coverage has at times failed to explain and contextualise the desperation that exists

for many people in america trying to access healthcare. and, you know, i kind of wonder whether the reaction to the killing is... ..i'm not sure if it's as much about the victim as it is about the industry that he represents for many americans. and is part of what we're seeing on social media a frustration with the mainstream media for not, in the eyes of its critics, covering this issue adequately? um, well, i do think that there have been news outlets who have covered the health insurance industry extremely well, uncovered wrongdoing, and the way, the sort of labyrinthine way that insurance companies make care harder to access for people. but certainly, you've seen some coverage that is, um, sort of humanising one side but not the other, humanising the victim, brian thompson, but perhaps not the many people who have died because of a lack of healthcare.

you look across lots of different platforms, as yourjob title suggests. are there particular platforms which have engaged with this story, or particular platforms where you've seen some form of sympathy for the murder? i think it exists on all platforms. one thing that's been interesting about this case is that across platforms, from twitter, now called x, tiktok, bluesky, instagram, facebook, there have been a lot of... ..there's definitely an attitude where it's like, you know, this is terrible that someone died, but also, people die every day because of this industry. and so i think that's been interesting for me to see sort of, um, somewhat unified or somewhat consistent stances around this case. there are a lot of dimensions to the story, of course, with reference to healthcare, but certainly as well in terms of how the media and social media have reacted. and another aspect of this story is the work of internet sleuths. we heard a reference

to thatjust a moment ago, or in this case, perhaps the lack of work by internet sleuths, because many media outlets have been reporting on a seeming boycott of the case by amateur detectives. here's one tiktok video from the influencer @thatdaneshguy. i think about how, when my dad had cancer, how health - insurance companies - denied him after he lived beyond the prognosis and we had to pay out of pocket _ and lost everything. so... i don't have to - encourage violence. i don't have to condone violence by any means. but i also don't . have to help you. well, to discuss this, we're joined by michael mcwhorter, also known as @tizzyent, who's an influencer and internet sleuth with more than six million followers on tiktok. hello, michael. heuo. — thank you for having me. thanks so much for coming on. now, you've recently posted a video saying, "i've yet to see anyone online posting saying, "�*we�*ve got to find this guy.”' this was obviously before the guy was found. but what is the feeling within the sleuthing community?

obviously, i can't speak to anyone's motivations other than my own. um... personally, i didn'tjump on it as much, because i'm, unlike most social media creators who are maybe driven by views, i'm less driven by that. if i see a story getting a lot of attention, i start thinking about what stories are maybe getting buried as a result. but i certainly didn't see other people, who maybe are driven by views, jumping on this either. and i can't speak to their motivation, but i can say, personally, i rely on, you know, my audience or people to give me information, to help, uh, you know, go through clues or tips or bring me info, and i'm not... ..i wasn't seeing anyone really wanting to do that. so that presumably did feel unusual, did it? absolutely. i think i described it as, it seemed like the world collectively shrugged. right... when something so horrific that happened, which, it is horrific for a person to

be assassinated on the street like that, um, it was sort of an unprecedented thing to happen. would you see it as a boycott of sorts? um, you could call it that. i think it was more just disinterest in engaging. uh, people very interested in the story, and it was a rapidly evolving story that seemed to have information coming out, you know, every 30 minutes to an hour, we were finding out something new. i think people were engaged in that. ijust don't think people were as motivated to get this person off the street. and i know you say you can't speak to their motivations, but how did you read that disengagement, as somebody who knows that world, how did you read it? did you read it, for example, as being related to this david and goliath battle, if you like, between the healthcare companies and the little people? no, i think it definitely factored in, in a great way. i mean, i don't think there's anyone in america that either hasn't personally had

an experience with health insurance maybe not doing what they would like it to do, or thought they were paying for it to do, or having someone they care about experiencing that. and considering, you know, the fact, i think in 2023, the united states spent $4.8 trillion on healthcare, and yet we rank pretty low as far as wealthy nations on the quality of care, um, there is a problem that has been boiling for quite a while, and something like this, you know, really kind of makes it like... yeah, i think a lot of people went, "i can understand why someone might be frustrated and upset "and driven to extreme actions "because of my own experiences." and, michael, there you are talking about the issue, and i know that when you have posted about this case, you have chosen to talk about the issue rather than the details of the crime that was committed. when you did that, how did the people who subscribe to your videos react? did they want to hear

from you on an issue such as healthcare, or do they prefer you to stick to trying to resolve outstanding crimes? no, i would say the engagement, for the most part, has definitely been people who wanted to have more of that conversation about the failures of the healthcare system, about what we can do to change it. um, in fact, if anything, ijust saw pushback from some people saying, "well, i don't care and i'm not going to help "and we shouldn't care about catching this guy," obviously before he was arrested. so if anything, it was sort of the opposite, it was people saying, like, "well, i'm not interested in that, just to make it clear." but they were interested in engaging in the conversation about the issue of healthcare as a whole. open source investigation, osint, is something we've talked about many times before on the media show. and lots of big news organisations, the new york times, the bbc and others, use osint techniques to look at material that's been posted online, often on social media, and to try and extract further information about that material. ben strick is one of

the internet�*s leading open source investigators, and this month he's running an advent calendar online, revealing some of the tricks of his trade. one that i love to show people so much, and quite a few people know it, but the simple image reverse search. and i say it's simple, but some people might... ..might drop their phones and run away and close their laptops immediately. but i think the image reverse search is so powerful. and basically it just operates the exact same way that everyone uses google or any other search engine, where they put in words, but instead we're putting in an image to search visually. um, so i think for those of you in the bbc studio, you probably have computers in front of you, but if you're on google at the moment, you have a little button next

to your search term that you pop in there, and that allows you to upload a photo... we've cheated, ben. we had a go earlier. well, i did, anyway. 0h, 0k! yeah. so i did a trip on the train when i was covering the us election a few weeks back, and i took a few pictures from the train, and i put one of those into the image search, and it threw up a lot of pictures that were similar to the picture i had, but actually they weren't the same place. so... and then i tried it with a different one, some of the pictures were of the same place, but plenty weren't. so what do you do? how can you take that array of search results and work out which ones are in fact accurate, which do match the picture you've got and which ones don't? yeah, it's a really good one. so i think for those specific photos that you might have taken, they might not have been on the internet already. unless you've taken a picture of the eiffel tower and you've driven past that, which is a very good journey to have on the way to work. but if you've taken a picture of the eiffel tower, then many other people have taken photos of that and they've uploaded it online. so it's going to find similar objects in the background as well. and that's what it kind of holds on to,

is that similar object. so if you've sat on the train next to a famous football player, you don't really know who it is, and you've taken, accidentally, maybe, a photo with that person, if you wanted to, but you don't really know their name, you could use that in an image reverse search, and it'll show those photos that have been uploaded on sites like bbc news sport and places like that to really identify the same kind of thing, but maybe a different photo, right? ora different angle of it as well. that's kind of the way it works. and it's something that we rely upon a lot as investigators, because we might see a photo on social media that could be old, it could be out of context, or it could just be posted with nothing at all, no context. so a really good place to start is, well, where else on the internet has it been uploaded and is there more information with it? is it an older photo or is it relevant to this conflict or context or thing that we're looking at, right? so, ben, that's one of the things, the treats you've posted on your osint advent calendar.

but there's another, isn't there? and we're going for the really easy ones. a trick for identifying planes we can see in the sky. how do you do that? yeah, so there's a really nice one that i always use. it's called flightradar24, and it's really quite a useful one for a number of reasons. whether you're a nerd like me, sitting on the porch, looking at planes going overhead and thinking, "where did it come from, "where is it going and what's it doing?" you can easily go there and have a look at what's flying around right now around you. it's a live flight tracker, so it shows little planes flying over you as you go through. and that's really useful for a number of reasons. so i travel teaching this stuff a lot, and sometimes my flights are delayed, but i won't know because the board won't say anything, the staff won't say anything. but i can look at it, i can look at my flight on the flight radar and see if it's still in the air, if it's around the corner, still getting on the tarmac towards me. and it's quite a useful way

to do that and also to impress other people with immediate updates. yeah, i was going to say, that definitely is news you can use. what about in terms of how you use it in a more serious osint sort of way? how do you use that kind of skill? well, that's been crucial for us as well. so a lot of our projects really look at conflict, right? and also the enablers of conflict, say, for example, who's carrying arms and to what locations. we might use this to track flights to specific airports within sudan, where they might be carrying suspected cargo of arms shipments. we've also done this for myanmar, for example, as well, in looking at different flights and paths like that. and i think that's really core to some of the investigative techniques, is these flight trackers, but also shipment trackers as well, the exact same thing, but for vessels. so it's been very core to some of our work, and some brilliant investigative journalism has come out through the bbc and other outlets that have really been developed just because of that flight tracking.

i mean, you don't need to open those windows on that advent calendar. you know how to do this stuff! well, i certainly know people who know how to do this stuff because as part of bbc verify, big team in the bbc newsroom, we've got lots of osint specialists and i learn a great dealfrom them. but ben strick is also someone i can learn plenty from, so i'll be looking at his advent calendar too. glad to hear it. that is all we've got time for this week. thank you so much for your company. goodbye. 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 again saw temperatures reaching 13 celsius on tuesday, but the cloud this time brought with it more rain. and into the southwest, we'll find this rain arriving later in the day on wednesday. but at the moment, this area of low pressure is bringing the rain into the night. it's also bringing some strong and gusty winds, and that's all keeping

the temperatures up. it's very mild — these are the temperatures of 12—13 celsius by the end of the night. but it will still be windy into the morning, and the strongest of the winds are likely to be over and to the east of the pennines. gusts 50—60mph in the morning — could be quite tricky if you're travelling on the m62 or the a1, for example. may well be some early rain across northern england to move through, and then, following that, sunshine and scattered, blustery showers will develop in scotland and northern ireland. and across england and wales, it may well brighten up as well, before we see this cloud and rain coming in to the southwest of england and wales later on. temperatures still in double figures for england and wales — but with that northwesterly wind developing in scotland and northern ireland, things will get colder as we head through the day and temperatures will be falling. overnight, we've got that rain coming in from the southwest to push across england and wales — it should've cleared away from the southeast by thursday morning. and then, we'll all be feeling the effects of these brisk northwesterly winds, and it will feel colder on thursday. showers, too, and those could be wintry over the hills across northern scotland. quite a few showers for northern ireland, over the irish sea into wales,

perhaps the west midlands, and the southwest of england — and again, a bit of wintriness over the hills. more sunshine, though, further east, where it should be dry. we'll all feel colder in those brisk winds, temperatures 6—8 celsius — but at least there'll be more sunshine around. pretty chilly overnight for a while, before we see this rain coming in from the northwest on friday — that rain pushes away from scotland and northern ireland, into england and wales. it'll be followed by some sunshine and a few showers, and we'll end the week with temperatures of around about 9—10 celsius, so pretty good. heading quickly into the weekend, though, and it looks like a very unsettled weekend ahead. this weather system bringing some rain on saturday, and around the area of low pressure, we'll introduce a polar maritime air mass. and throughout the weekend, it looks like it'll be really quite windy. but through the weekend, it willjust get colder — and, as we see that colder air arriving, particularly on sunday, those showers will be turning wintry.

live from singapore, this is bbc news. ukraine says it was responsible for a bomb attack that killed a senior russian general in moscow. rebring you a special report from homs, the capital of the syrian rev resolution, as the —— revolution, as the country starts to repealed —— to rebuild. and the us says that talks on a ceasefire deal in gaza are making significant progress.

welcome to newsday. ukraine says it's responsible for a bomb attack that killed a senior russian general in moscow. lieutenant general igor kirillov was leaving his home in southeastern moscow on tuesday when he and his aide were killed by explosives planted in an electric scooter. we have been looking at the images on the scene, and an ied was used in the attack. the incident comes just a day after ukraine reportedly charged mr kirillov in absentia of co—ordinating the use of banned chemical weapons on ukrainian forces on the front lines. the kremlin denied those allegations. russia's investigative committee says it's opened a criminal investigation into the murder. the kremlin called the bombing an attack of terror and is vowing revenge. 0ur an attack of terror and is vowing revenge. our russian editor has the latest report from moscow.

being filmed from a car opposite,