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 and i spoke with a oxford associate professor called michael biggs, who'd found some unpublished data on a study that gids had done on puberty blockers.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 where it started. 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, ispoke 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, i was encouraged . to pursue stories where - the media and these debates intersected because they were controversial, - because they stoked opinion. and for the bbc, it often finds itself at the centre of these i

storms when it's 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 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 _ 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 i or the allegationsl 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 . land he also had a similar claim. against mirror group newspapers — both of which he settled recently — and so, well, . in the last decade, at the very least. i 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 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 i that news uk might be trying to pick people off and to settle individual claims. | there's still about 40 claims . unresolved and heading to trial injanuary alongside prince harry. - but this is a — this i 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 — 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, fairenough. 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, well, apartment in nashville, was it? yes, i did, 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 around the interview. there was nothing i could and couldn't say. there was nobody sitting in the room. there was, you know, a relatively strict time limit — 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 way. 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's just 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. it's been a chilly start to the weekend. we've got some cold weather overnight where we have the clearer skies. temperatures may be a bit higher in scotland, mind you, because we've seen this cloud moving down from the north and we'll continue to see a bit of light rain or drizzle on that weak weather front there as it runs into our area of high pressure.

now, in between those two weather fronts, the potentialfor some slightly warmer air across scotland where we get some sunshine, and particularly northern ireland. but for england and wales, we're still in the cold air. so it's not going to be too hot for the runners in the london marathon. it should stay dry. there will be a cool northeasterly breeze and a top temperature 11 or 12 degrees. we will see some cloud developing in east anglia in the south east that could bring the odd light shower here and there. 0therwise, some sunny spells for other parts of england and wales, plenty of sunshine for northern ireland, much more cloud in scotland. we've got this rain and drizzle in the east pushing into the far north of england, pegging temperatures back here, a little bit warmer in western scotland where we've got some brighter skies, but the highest temperatures are going to be inland in northern ireland, a pleasant 17 or 18 degrees. the center of the high pressure is just getting pushed towards the west of the uk. it allows these weather fronts to take the cloud and rain southwards and this time we've got a cloudy picture. on monday we're going to find some rain and drizzle at times for england and wales.

it should turn drier and brighter with some sunshine in northern scotland. it may stay dry in northern ireland, but we've got more cloud around on monday. there is still some semblance of some warmer air in western scotland and northern ireland, but it's pretty cold elsewhere, particularly so across the south east of england after a chilly night and that cloud then coming in over the top and that cloud continues to push its way southwards together with those weather fronts and with the high out towards the west, we're left with a northerly breeze again on tuesday. still a bit of patchy light rain or drizzle to clear in the south. otherwise that northerly wind will bring a lot of cloud to eastern areas and maybe the odd shower near the coast. but out to the west, this is where we've got the best of the sunshine. and those temperatures getting up to 13, maybe 1a degrees, but particularly cold across the eastern side of the uk, 8 to ten celsius here. now, when is it going to warm up? well, no time soon. it looks like through the rest of the week we're still in this colder air. and if anything, with the pressure tending to fall, there's a risk of a bit more rain as well.

live from washington, this is bbc news. "the bill has passed!" the us house of representatives passes a long—awaited aid package for ukraine, worth $61 billion. the scene as israel strikes homes in southern gaza — nine people have been killed, including at least four children, after strikes in rafah. and — 25 years on from the columbine high school shooting, we reflect on the impact of the tragedy.

hello i'm carl nasman. the us house of representatives has passed a crucial aid bill for ukraine totalling nearly $61 billion. if passed by the senate, the long—awaited funds will provide roughly $23 billion to replenish us weapons, stockpiles and facilities, more than $11 billion to fund current us military operations in the region. and another $14 billion to help ukraine buy advanced weapons systems and other defence equipment. republican house speaker mike johnson — who brought the bill to a vote — said it was the right thing to do. from the capitol, our news correspondent helena humphrey, told us more about today's vote. it now heads to the senate.

president biden