back in 2020, the health authorities commissioned a report into the care that children and young people who were questioning their gender were getting. the cass review, as it's called, came out last week, and it recommends a new approach for clinicians. this is a polarising subject for some people. so, what mightjournalism do differently in how it covers it? hannah barnes is a former bbc producer who investigated some of the uk's gender identity services for the corporation's newsnight programme. she went on to write a book about it. i asked her when she first started her investigation. first came across it at all in 2017. i was off on my first maternity leave and there was a piece in the times byjanice turner which was talking about this really rapid increase

in the referrals of teenage girls to gids — the gender identity development service — and she had spoken to two clinicians who worked at the service. it wasn't really a big sort of whistle—blowy piece but they had talked to her and said — what they'd seen and itjust — i thought it was very interesting, but i was off and, you know, spending time with my baby. and there was also a documentary that same year on bbc two about a gender clinic — a children's gender clinic in canada. and then, it was really a leak of a report in the autumn of 2018, going into 2019, that really got me interested in this, which was a report where ten members of staff from gids had gone to... ..a doctor called doctor david bell — he's an adult psychiatrist at the tavistock — and they had relayed some very serious concerns and ijust thought, we don't often get nhs whistle—blowers. to have ten from a tiny service, something must

be going on. so, that's what started it. so, what were you doing? were you approaching them at that point? were you trying to find out who these whistle—blowers were or they were in the public domain and you were trying to get access? what were you trying to do? ijust started trying to speak to as many people as possible — both those who had written about this very early, because there wasn't that much around about it at the time. i spoke — i was talking to a couple of clinicians. i met them face to face in that spring. and i spoke with a oxford associate professor called michael biggs, who'd found some unpublished data on a study that gids had done on puberty blockers. and that's where our first film, myself and deborah cohen, who was health correspondent at the time, that's yes because i was going to say, you know, as you mentioned, i was working with you at newsnight at the time. i remember you and deb cohen doing this series of reports. how would you — so, that was for newsnight. how would you characterise media coverage of this story more widely? pretty woeful, i think. in what way? it just. .. it hasn't. ..

i don't think the media has done itself — has not really — it's not had a good episode here. i think there are exceptions but, really, the running has been done by generalists — predominantly by female journalists — and all of the health and science specialists have been absent. there really wasn't the support from the wider bbc. and, rebecca coombes, if i could bring you in — you're head ofjournalism at the british medicaljournal. would you agree? would you say that science journalists avoided this subject? i'm afraid i would, actually. why? why did they? i think there was a real hesitancy, and i'm hopeful that post—cass, the hesitant might be more courageous in stepping into the silence. i think there was a real mishmash between evidence and advocacy, and that became a problem.

so, i can talk from the bmj perspective that when you get that kind of — we're very evidence—based at the bmj. we're a medical research journal. and, you know, when doctors are involved, it's a bmj story, so it's natural for us to take an interest in this— and approach it from an evidence—based perspective and i think what we had to do is do what cass did — hilary cass did, which was to remove the political framing and focus on what is the evidence and not to be sort of blindsided by some of the backlash we got from the stories that we ran. and we were very aware of the work that deb and hannah was doing. we previously covered the interim findings of the cass report. hilary cass came to us. she wanted to talk directly to the profession. so, we ran an opinion piece by her. but when we got involved with investigations is — looking at the fact that

in the us, the transgender health guidelines, they changed so that it would leave the age of initiation up to the clinician, so there was no minimum age of treatment. and so, we got very interested in that and decided to look into the actual guidelines and look at the evidence that was being used to build up the guidelines which were being used by doctors. but when you say you were aware of what deb cohen and hannah barnes were doing at newsnight, were these the kind of conversations being had? i wonder whether it's the kind of conversation which was, "they're doing it. "we don't really want to touch it because it's so polarised." or is that unfair? i think at the time, it was just an editorial decision. i mean, we have — there was no reason why we wouldn't have done it and, certainly, we covered some of the work that you were doing. we did the piece on the american guidelines, we went to evidence—based medicine specialists and got them to opine on what they saw as the quality of the evidence and, actually, what they found is very similar to what's come out in the cass report,

which is threadbare evidence. i suppose the issue is exactly what cass was talking about — weak evidence. you know, this was new medical territory. you know, how do you approach stories when you're reporting on this kind of medicine? well, the same way that you would any story, you know — you'd speak to the people who are experts, you listen to them and it's really... i think it's a really unique feature of this story compared to anything i've done before. i'm a generalist. i'm not a healthjournalist. but, generally speaking, if you ask questions or you critique an evidence base — and, really, we have known for a very long time that the evidence base is practically non—existent — when you do that, you wouldn't usually be accused of hating or wanting to kill the patient population who are being treated by that. but you're saying that's what happened to you? well, yes, it does happen. you know... i guess the question is... to ask questions, you're then accused of being transphobic and — you know, which is silly. and i think what's

happened here — i mean, i spoke with doctor cass upon publication of her report in a short interview, and it is normal. it's part of nhs, isn't it, to listen to the voices of service users? of course it is. and she said to me — and this is a quote — "but obviously not to the point where you're not "following the evidence," which is what's happened here. i suppose there's a question, isn't there, around quite often withjournalism, you're looking for a case study — particularly when it's complicated. you want an individual who typifies what's going on and it's the human voice behind the story, if you like. and was that the instinct here? and was that the wrong instinct? i think it's the right instinct but i don't think there's one case study that typifies it. i mean, when i was researching... but maybe there never is. well, no — no, you're probably right. but, you know, i don't doubt that, you know — and we've heard many of these voices in the past week and i've spoken to them myself — that some people feel that puberty blockers and hormones have been life—saving for them.

and similarly, i've spoken to people for whom it has been absolutely disastrous and harmful. now, what all this is saying is we can't go on anecdote. we just don't know. we haven't got long—term data that supports this. but if you approach this like you would any other area of health care, the evidence isn't there to support this intervention. i agree with that. i don't know how much truth you're going to get at. i think that every patient experience is a different one and that, in turn, is completely normal, so it's very hard to capture an average patient experience. right. and if we look at what cass, you know, another thing that cass writes in her report, she says, "one of the major "challenges for the review has been the difficulty in having "open, honest debate as people with differing views can find "it uncomfortable to sit together in the same room "or on the same stage." that slightly points to the sort of culture wars conversations or feelings around this subject. rebecca, did you feel under any pressure from any groups as to how you cover this subject? yeah, absolutely, we did.

and i'm notjust talking about the, you know, the online retribution that we got after we published our american story. i think we had — there are factions within the profession, obviously, who have very strong views on this and i think that we — to deal with it, you know, we had to hold a line and say, you know, just because you're a professional society doesn't mean that you have the appropriate skill set to appraise the evidence. you know, at the bmj, we've been focusing on the evidence—based medicine movement for many, many decades, and particularly around too much medicine. so, whether that be for, i don't know, gestational diabetes or thyroid cancer. so, what we had to do is treat this as part of that, so that gender—based care for adolescents, was it an issue of too much medicine? and, jake kanter, if i could bring you in, from deadline, i wonder what your assessment of how the media reports on trans issues is.

and i suppose, you know, whether the media has a role to play in polarising opinion, when it could actually be bringing people together potentially. i think it is - polarising opinion. i think what this shows is that newsrooms are treating this l as a culture war story, rather than a health i and science one, and it's testament to newsnightl that the story was . pursued in this way. and i think it's a real. shame that, you know, originaljournalism is beingl gutted from newsnight now and we may not see stories of this ilk in the future - from that particular show. and what's your sense, as somebody who previously worked at the times, of whether — how those newspapers, how places approach these issues and the impact they have? they embrace these issues. they want to write about them because they drive huge - engagement and interest - and, you know, iwas encouraged to pursue stories where the media and these i debates intersected because

they were controversial, - because they stoked opinion. and for the bbc, it often finds itself at the centre _ of these storms when it's i reporting on these issues. people on both sides . of the argument criticise the coverage. it has often had - to make apologies. i mean, for example, - it has apologised to jk rowling twice in the past year- or so because she's been accused of being . transphobic on air. and it's an incredibly i delicate balancing act, ithink, for the bbc. and, rebecca coombes, just to bring you in at the end, you're head ofjournalism at the british medicaljournal. i mean, one thing i should say is that — and cass says it too — you know, in the absence of evidence, don't we have to, as journalists, listen to the voices of people in pain? um, yes, we do. but i also think this is a call to improve sort of scientific literacy amongst health — not just health journalists

but against politicians because what we saw was a real sort of mishmash of a kind of activist blogger might be placed as a highly placed source in a story alongside a research methodologist, whichjust didn't really make any sense. so, i think that this should be a call for the media to, you know, step into the silence and, um, just be more confident about asking those questions. it feels like a good moment to end it on, i'm afraid. rebecca coombes from the bmj — british medicaljournal — and hannah barnes, now at the new statesman, previously of newsnight, thanks so much for coming on the media show. thank you. now, hugh grant has settled a legal case he had against rupert murdoch's news group newspapers. the actor was one of a number of people, including prince harry, who are suing the publisher of the sun in the civil court. and jake kanterfrom deadline is still here and will be through the programme. what's happened ? ithink, you know, we don't know the terms of the settlement but

hugh grant has made very clear he did not want to do this. no, he talked about i " reluctantly settling". he said that he had been paid - an enormous sum of money to put these claims to bed i and that he would be using that cash to — well, repurposing . it through his mission. at hacked off, which is a campaign group against, you know, some of these. excesses in the media or the allegations- of these excesses. because he's explained, hasn't he, why he felt he had to do it? which is quite an interesting thing that people won't necessarily understand to do with how our legal system works — certainly in the civil court — which is, he says that, you know, he's offered this amount of money, which is an enormous sum, as you say. then, he's told if he proceeds — if he turns it down and proceeds in the civil court, then if he loses, even if he ends up being offered less than the settlement that was made pre—trial, even by £1, that means he has to pay

all the other side's costs as well as his own. and he said his lawyer said that would probably amount — because news group newspapers, you know, have very good lawyers — to about £10 million. and he said, you know, "i'm shying at the fence". he just didn't want to do that. yeah. he's clearly got a limit - to what he is prepared to do in terms of his fight — and this is a fight, - as far as he's concerned. he is, as i said earlier, he's a thorn in the side of the tabloid newspapers. he has settled twice - previously, so perhaps it's not a massive surprise. he settled phone—hacking claims against the news of the world . and he also had a similar claim against mirrorgroup_ newspapers — both of- which he settled recently — and so, well, - in the last decade, at the very least. so, you know, i think for, - for the newspapers themselves, this is a stink that - stubbornly refuses to lift and... i mean, it is worth saying, by the way, news group newspapers have obviously issued a statement saying, you know, they apologised unreservedly in 2011 to the victims of hacking,

voicemail interception by the news of the world. since then, they've been paying financial damages to people with proper claims. hugh grant had made the claim that it was £1 billion they've already paid out. i think that's lawyers' costs and settlement. but what they say is there are a number of disputed claims still going through the civil courts, some of which seek to involve the sun. the sun does not accept liability or make any admissions to the allegations. and they point out that a judge recently ruled that some of mr grant's claim — that was a bit about hacking — was out of time and they'd reached an agreement on the rest of it without admitting any liability. so, that's what they're saying. i suppose, what the question is — i've covered these cases a lot, mainly because they involve, you know, prince harry. there's quite a lot of them coming down the tracks and that have been coming down the tracks — i guess the question is is prince harry going to be the last man standing? is he the only one who has pockets deep enough to keep going with this and not accept a settlement? or do you expect that he might settle at some point? well, i mean, this suggests

that news uk might be - trying to pick people off and to settle individual claims. i there's still about 40 claims . unresolved and heading to trial injanuary alongside prince harry. - but this is a — _ this is a vendetta for him. and he has shown that he's got results. - he got results against - the mirror in december last year in a landmark ruling . and my instinct is he wants to get the biggest scalp possible — l and that would be - rupert murdoch, i think. taylor swift is permanently in the headlines. she's a massive driver of traffic for the media — even bigger this week as her 11th album, the tortured poets department, is out on friday. disney paid a ridiculous amount of money to start streaming her eras tour and the british broadcaster itv has hired a taylor swift correspondent. joining me is laura snapes, guardian's deputy music editor, who writes a weekly taylor swift newsletter called swift notes for the guardian.

and augusta saraiva, bloomberg's economics reporter who coined the term — and this is a good claim to fame — �*swiftonomics'. laura and augusta, thanks so much for coming on the media show. laura, if we just start with you, why did you start swift n otes ? there's so much coverage of taylor swift in the newspaper, especially at the start of the year in the run—up to the grammys and also when her boyfriend, the football player travis kelce was headed to the super bowl, that it made sense to have a sort of one—stop shop to contain it all and also sort of zoom out and do some slightly more sober analysis of her but also of the coverage itself because i do think she's of a scale where it's very easy for people to sort of lose their heads about it and sort of be wowed by scale as opposed to going, "what's actually going on here? "let's analyse it." and what is it like covering taylor swift? i mean, it's very varied. you know, you can write about anything from music industry things to, as we'll talk about swiftonomics, to her potential impact on the upcoming us election to, you know, gossipy things.

but then, also the actual art of the songwriting, which i think is something that can get lost in the wider discussion of her. so, it's — yeah, it's very varied. her new album is called the tortured poets department. �*poets�* doesn't have an apostrophe on it. i've read whole articles about what that means, you know — even grammarians are getting into it. and which camp are you in? are you furious about no apostrophe? or are you waiting with bated breath to see why it has no apostrophe? um, i think it's supposed to be like dead poets society, you know — it's like the name of a department, as opposed to a possessive. 0k. fair enough. and do you think she's taken seriously in newsrooms? and has that changed over time? yeah, i think she's taken incredibly seriously in newsrooms. she does huge traffic. and so, that's something that editors pay attention to. and i think specifically since 2020, when she put out the more folky albums folklore and evermore, i think they reached a more adult audience because they were made in part with aaron dessner from the national and they featured other members of the national and also justin vernon of bon iver. and so, i think a tier of perhaps adult listeners who hadn't paid attention to her before suddenly woke up to her and realised that,

you know, this is a smart songwriter, not somebody they might previously have written offjust as a sort of superficial pop star. and i think the combination of that and the stratospheric economic impact of the eras tour has made people realise, like, this is, you know, a very serious artist and businesswoman. you know, i read a stat that said that the gdp from the eras tour — sorry, the profits from the eras tour alone would make her the 36th smallest nation in the world on that alone in terms of gdp. so, there's 35 countries in the world that are not making as much as the eras tour has. and you are rare because you have actually had an interview with taylor swift. she's a difficult person to pin down for an interview. i've been culture editor for quite a few years now at the bbc news and certainly haven't had an interview with taylor swift as yet. what was that like? i think you went to her apartment in nashville, was it? yes, idid. yeah. so, it took about a year of meetings to make it happen. i had to pitch really hard and, yeah, take a lot of meetings

to make it work. but then, you know, for somebody who's so sort of secretive about what she does, i think one thing that was really interesting is that there were no questions around the interview. there was nothing i could and couldn't say. there was nobody sitting in the room. there was nothing i could and couldn't say. there was nobody sitting in the room. — i think i got about ten minutes more than what had been, you know, allowed for — but it was a surprisingly loose experience for somebody who is so sort of monumental and, you know, where there's, by necessity, such secrecy around what she does. and do you think the media is afraid to be critical of her now? is she that big? yeah, i think some elements are. i mean, there's various aspects of it. i mean, you've got — i mean, as is always important, you've got to be brutally accurate about everything that you do about her because she is known to be litigious, or her team will respond to things that they think are, you know, particularly egregious examples of inaccuracies or misinterpretations of what she's done. i think some critics are scared to be critical about her because she's got a very vociferous fan base online. but i do think that serious news organisations are still taking her to account about her business practices, which are not always — you know, they're not always the most favourable to other

artists, let's say, you know, as with her music returning to tiktok last week and her being one of the only universal artists who is still on there. and also.... yes, just explain that because that shows her power, right? the fact that she's taken — her songs are back on tiktok. just explain why. yeah, so she's part of the universal music group label, which is the biggest record label in the whole world. it's one of the big three. and earlier this year, they pulled all of their catalogue and all of their publishing catalogue from tiktok in a dispute over songwriting royalties. she is the only artist who has managed to get back on there. i think it's — it's believed that she brokered a deal with tiktok independently and that because she's so big, she is allowed to make exemptions, you know, from her umg contract. but it's interesting that, you know, comparably big stars like ariana grande and billie eilish have not been able to do this, so i think it's — she's previously also made decisions in a way that has specifically benefited other songwriters, and she's spoken out about that quite a lot... 0k. so, i think people are quite intrigued that this decision

doesn't seem to be a rising tide lifting all ships. right. well, let's bring in augusta saraiva from bloomberg economics — well, you're the economics reporter at bloomberg and, as i said earlier, you coined the term swiftonomics. well done. how did you start reporting on taylor swift? well, it actually started with a personal question, which was "why can't i get tickets?" right? so, when she announced that tour in 2022, i was essentially trying to get tickets myself and they were sold out immediately. so, the next morning — and, i mean, i, like you said, i'm an economics reporter, so i cover things like inflation, the labour market and consumer demand. so, the next morning, i was actually talking to my boss who has — who's a dad to two girls, and he also tried to get tickets and couldn't. so, we did ask ourselves this question — what does this say about the us economy? right? because i don't know to what extent people in the uk were following what was happening here but back then, in 2022, everyone was sort of expecting a recession, all of the wall street economies were really expecting

one to come eventually, so the whole taylor swift demand story seemed a little off, so that's why we started looking into swiftonomics or what eventually became swiftonomics to try and understand. so, that's what you meant by swiftonomics? yes. so, essentially, itjust became a theory about supply and demand and what it said about the us consumer and now, about the global consumer, right, because we're seeing the same story. what did it say? what do you think it says? well, it says something about pent—up demand and what the pandemic did to demand, right? because before the pandemic — and i don't want to get too wonky here — but before the pandemic, we did see people spending more on services and, of course, when we were locked into our homes during the pandemic, everyone went on amazon and all of a sudden, everyone was buying goods online, so we kind of, like, forgot about experiences. and then the — what the eras story said was that in a way, it opened the floodgates for services spending, so it's not that taylor swift

was the only one driving spending in the us because eventually, we saw barbenheimer and beyonce, but she did accelerate it, that recovery, in a wax _ so, what do you, as an economics reporter, what do you think the economic impact of the eras tour is? oh, it's massive, but i think the... is that a technical term? economically technical term, �*massive�*? i like it. uh, i wouldn't say that, i think that'sjust my own personal view, but you do have data supporting that, right? so, in a way, i feel like the key word here is reacceleration. it's not that people wouldn't be staying at hotels or wouldn't be travelling if it weren't for taylor swift but i feel like, in a way, what she did was that she accelerated that recovery, right? so, in places like chicago, i feel like eventually were going to recover in terms of hotel stays and all of that and tourism. but she did accelerate it. and bloomberg economics itself estimated that the impact not only from taylor swift herself,

but what they called the taylor swift—driven summer, which included beyonce, barbenheimer and all of that services demand was responsible for an $8.5 billion boost to the us economy. 0k. not bad at all, then! thank you so much, augusta saraiva... 0h, not at all! ..and laura snapes from the guardian, too. thank you both so much for coming on the media show. that is it for today. thank you to all my guests. we'll be back at the same time next week, but it's goodbye from me, katie razzall. thank you so much for your company. 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. many parts of the uk had some lengthy spells of sunshine on friday but there were a few showers around. the remain of some of this shower cloud in wolverhampton gave this fine end to the day a fine sunset, and the majority

of the shower cloud through friday afternoon was associated with a stripe of cloud you can see right here. this was actually an old cold front. the significance of that is colder air is behind it and as we go through the next few hours, that will be pushing in across much of the uk. milder air recirculating around our area of high pressure into northern ireland and western scotland, so it's here through the weekend that we will see the nation's highest temperatures. now, on to the next few hours. we're looking at that colder air arriving, a lot of dry weather, a lot of clear skies and that means it's a recipe for things turning pretty cold. and heading into the first part of saturday morning, we start off with a frost, even some patches of frost, i think, across rural areas of southern england. the lowest temperatures probably down to about —3 or so into rural areas of northern england and scotland. for saturday, we'll get this colder air moving in, for most, it's a glorious start to the day with clear, blue sunny skies. a bit of cloud coming in to eastern areas of norfolk and suffolk and maybe a bit of cloud developing through the day elsewhere.

some splashes of rain possible for the far north of scotland but otherwise, it's dry. the highest temperatures likely in northern ireland — we could see a 17 here in the very warmest spots. for sunday, generally, there's going to be a bit more cloud across parts of scotland, thick enough for some splashes of light rain — fleeting rain, really. a few showers coming in across east anglia and south east england, where we'll continue to have quite a chilly wind. could be even warmer for northern ireland. if we were to get 19, well, that would be northern ireland's highest temperature of the year, so we'll be monitoring that carefully through the weekend. 0n into next week, high pressure stays to the west of the uk and we continue to see this feed of cloud coming down the north sea. if anything, the cloud getting a bit more extensive, a bit thicker, and that means there's more likelihood of seeing some patches of drizzle across northern and eastern scotland and some eastern areas of england as well. the best of the sunshine probably parts of north west england, wales, south west england, northern ireland might still do 0k, and western parts of scotland. where the sunshine comes out, it shouldn't feel too bad but if you're in the east, where it's going to be quite cloudy with that wind coming in off the north sea,

it will probably feel quite chilly. temperatures picking up a little later next week.

live from london. this is bbc news. world leaders call for calm after us officials say an israeli missile hit iran. jury selection for donald trump's hush—money trial is complete — as a man sets himself ablaze outside the courthouse. a multi—billion dollar ukraine aid bill moves one step closer to passing in the us congress. hello.

welcome to the programme. iran's foreign minister has warned his country will give, what he called, "an immediate and maximum response" if israel acts against its interests — but only if there is a significant attack from israel. he was speaking to us media after a presumed israeli drone attack on isfahan in central iran. iran's top diplomat downplayed this, questioning whether israel was involved. tehran�*s muted response to friday morning's events has raised hopes that tensions between the countries can be dampened, and a wider escalation averted. with me now is said shehata from bbc arabic. what more have we heard from the foreign minister? the? the foreign minister? they mainly saying _ the foreign minister? they mainly saying what - the foreign minister? tie: mainly saying what happened yesterday was just drones that were downed by the air defence. he said it's israel because israel itself didn't

acknowledge the attack so in