Media Tribe

This episode features RTE television and radio broadcaster, Claire Byrne. Claire hosts Claire Byrne Live on RTE television and Today with Claire Byrne on RTE Radio 1 and is one of the most prominent journalists in Ireland. We chat about Claire's journey from BBC to ITN back to TV3 and RTE in Ireland. We talk about her finding a mentor of sorts in Gay Byrne and we discuss the mother and baby home scandal in Ireland and how journalists must try to keep this story in the news.

This episode features BBC journalist and author of Bear Markets and Beyond, Dhruti Shah. Dhruti specialises in news verification, user-generated content, investigative reporting and creative storytelling through social media. She has worked across much of the BBC including its news website, flagship investigations program Panorama, the business unit and the World Service.

This episode features Ben de Pear, the Editor of Channel 4 News in the UK. Ben started his career in local journalism and then joined Sky News in 1994. From 2000-2005 he was based in Johannesburg as Africa editor for Sky and in 2005 he joined Channel 4 News as a foreign producer. He became foreign editor in 2008 and was appointed editor in August 2012. Ben has won numerous Royal Television Society awards, FPA awards, BAFTAs and Emmy awards. He was also part of the 'For Sama' team that was nominated for an Academy Award.

This episode features James Foley's mum, Diane Foley. James was a freelance journalist who began reporting in Iraq, then Afghanistan, Libya and finally Syria. In 2011, Jim was detained by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s Libyan regime for 44 days. In January 2012, Jim began what would be many trips in and out of northern Syria as a freelance video journalist. The Foley Family’s final communication with Jim was one week before he was kidnapped on November 22, 2012 in northern Syria. The family never heard his voice again. Jim was murdered by ISIS on August 19, 2014 in the Raqqa region of Syria.

This episode features Carole Cadwalladr, a journalist for the Guardian and Observer in the United Kingdom. Carole worked for a year with whistleblower Christopher Wylie to publish her report into Cambridge Analytica. The investigation resulted in Mark Zuckerberg being called before Congress and Facebook losing more than $100 billion from its share price. Carole's work has won a Polk Award and the Orwell Prize for political journalism, and she was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting in 2019.

This episode features the Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK, Greg Williams. At WIRED, Greg is responsible for all aspects of content including print digital, online, events, consulting, podcasts, video and other publishing ventures as well as supporting all commercial aspects of the business.

This episode features ProPublica's A.C. Thompson. His reporting has helped lead to the exoneration of two innocent San Francisco men sentenced to life in prison and the prosecution of seven New Orleans police officers. As well as reporting for ProPublica, Thompson has worked extensively for the PBS documentary series FRONTLINE. His life was fictionalized on the HBO show “Treme.” In this episode we chat about white supremacy, neo-Nazis and the insurrection on the US Capitol.

This episode features the BBC's Special Correspondent, Nawal Al-Maghafi. Nawal has been one of the few journalists reporting the ongoing conflict in Yemen over the past few years. Her investigation into a 2015 attack on a Yemeni funeral — the deadliest of the conflict so far — provided key evidence in the case against weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by the US and UK and her recent documentary, Iraq’s Secret Sex Trade which aired on the BBC and PBS FRONTLINE won two Emmy awards in 2020.

This episode features Oscar nominated and Emmy winning producer, Nick Verbitsky. Nick has been producing for FRONTLINE PBS since 2013, when he directed To Catch a Trader, an investigative look at Wall Street insider trading. Nick also produced Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature, and has produced/co-produced films like Weinstein and Documenting Hate, as well as Opioids, Inc with the FT.

This is the second of the Media Tribe Spotlight series. This episode features CEO and Editor of Rappler, Maria Ressa and award winning Filipino-American documentary filmmaker and director of 'A Thousand Cuts', Ramona Diaz. In 2015 Maria Ressa interviewed Rodrigo Duterte, the now President of the Philippines, where he confessed to killing three people. When Duterte took office in 2016, Maria Ressa and her colleagues started reporting on the president's brutal war against drugs and the spread of disinformation on social media in the Philippines. Maria has remained in Duterte's crosshairs as his crackdown on the press has intensified and she’s been accused of fraud, tax evasion and receiving money from the Central Intelligence Agency. She has been arrested twice and has posted bail nine times. Maria is now the subject of the film ‘A Thousand Cuts’ directed by the indomitable Ramona Diaz, which premiered at Sundance last year and is now airing on PBS Frontline.

This episode features Channel 4's Editor at Large, Dorothy Byrne. Dorothy is an iconic figure in the world of broadcasting in the UK and is one of the longest-serving heads of commissioning in the television industry. She has been responsible for news and current affairs programmes that have had global and national impact, winning her numerous international Emmy, BAFTA and RTS Awards. We chat about Dorothy being a single mum having to return to work five weeks after giving birth, we talk about her film on marital rape in the UK which proved a huge challenge to get commissioned and we delve into a hilarious quagmire Dorothy faced in an edit suite with two male colleagues.

This episode features Josh Baker, the award-winning documentary maker and journalist and the host and writer of the BBC Sounds podcast 'I'm not a Monster'. We chat about Josh's four year investigation into the story of one US family's journey into the heart of ISIS in Syria which aired on BBC Panorama, PBS FRONTLINE and became a podcast called 'I'm not a monster' on BBC Sounds. We also talk about Josh's experience directing the likes of Louis Theroux and Stacey Dooley from the BBC.

This episode features Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Brussels correspondent for The New York Times. Before joining the Times, Matina covered East Africa for the Wall Street Journal and was also their Europe correspondent. We chat about Matina's work covering the refugee crisis in Greece and beyond, we discuss her reporting from Eritrea, one of the most secretive countries in the world and we also chat about Matina's escapades travelling rural Uganda.

This episode features Versha Sharma, the Managing Editor and Senior Correspondent at NowThis. NowThis News is a progressive social media-focused news organisation. Versha started her career after university on the Obama campaign trail and quickly went on to work for the likes of MSNBC and Vocativ before joining NowThis. Versha and I delve into millennials consuming news and the business models new media organisations are using to remain profitable. We chat about Mitesh Patel fighting for his dad's murderer's life to be spared while on death row in Texas and we also talk about Versha's time in Russia conducting a very surreal interview with Pussy Riot, the feminist protest punk rock, in the back of a taxi.

This is the first of the Media Tribe Spotlight series where every month we'll be discussing a big issue in our industry with a high profile guest. This month features ex-Fox News anchor, Gretchen Carlson. Carlson is the fearless journalist who publicly accused the then CEO of Fox news Roger Ailes of pervasive sexual harassment in the workplace and subsequently paved the way for the #MeToo movement. Carlson is now a special contributor for PEOPLE TV and host of a daily news podcast “Get The News With Gretchen Carlson” on Quake Media. Carlson is also the author of the New York Times bestseller “Be Fierce” and “Getting Real,” and co-founded the non-profit Lift Our Voices to end the silencing of harassment victims through forced arbitration and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Carlson was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and is a member of the TIME’S UP Global Leadership Board.

This episode features the New York Times' UK investigative correspondent, Jane Bradley. Jane previously worked as a senior broadcast journalist at the BBC and a senior reporter on the Buzzfeed investigations team in the UK. She's a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her investigation into mysterious Russia-linked deaths in Britain and she's a two-time Orwell finalist for her expose of the trafficking gangs recruiting Britain's homeless into slave labour. We chat about Jane's career trajectory, starting at a local Hull newspaper, her investigative journalism which has created so much impact and a crazy experience involving Jane walking across hot coal in her bare feet all in the name of good journalism.

This episode features one of Ireland's best known personalities, Ryan Tubridy. Ryan presents the Late Late Show on RTE, the world's longest-running live TV chat show and The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTE Radio One. We speak about Ryan’s career trajectory becoming a journalist at the tender age of 12, valuing our frontline workers and that time he went wandering in the White House and ended up in a car with Gerry Adams, the Irish Republican politician.

This episode features Deborah Rayner, the Senior Vice President of International Newsgathering at CNN. Under Deborah's leadership, CNN has won several prestigious awards including Peabodys, Emmys and Overseas Press Club awards. We discuss Deborah’s humble beginnings sending corporate Christmas cards at Channel 4, finding a mentor in the famous broadcaster Jon Snow, working in Iran and a crazy experience involving Simon Mann, the British mercenary.

This episode features award-winning investigative reporter Azmat Khan. Azmat is a contributing writer to New York Times Magazine, a visiting professor at Columbia University and a fellow at Carnegie. Azmat previously worked for PBS Frontline, the Buzzfeed investigations team and AlJazeera in the US. She has exposed major myths of war, prompting policy impact from Washington to Kabul, and she has won nearly a dozen awards including the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club Ed Cunningham Award for Magazine Reporting; the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism; the Deadline Club Award for Independent Digital Reporting; the Deadline Club Award for Magazine Investigative Reporting; the SAJA Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting on South Asia.

This episode features Oscar nominated, BAFTA and Emmy award winning director, Edward Watts. Edward has directed twenty-five narrative and documentary films, telling true stories from far flung corners of the world. His most recent film 'For Sama', which he co-directed with Waad al-Kateab received worldwide critical acclaim. Ed has made documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and PBS Frontline to name a few. We chat about Edward’s humble beginnings making tea for TV executives, the responsibility that came with making a film like 'For Sama' and 'Escape from ISIS', his film about Yazidi women being held captive by the Islamic State.

This episode features CNN's Donie O'Sullivan. Donie is a politics and technology reporter who covers everything from big tech, conspiracy theories, fake news and disinformation campaigns targeting the American electorate. Donie was previously part of CNN's social discovery team and before that he worked for Storyful, the social media verification news agency.

This episode features Farai Chideya. Farai is the creator and host of the podcast 'Our Body Politic' and she has worked for NPR, CNN, ABC, Newsweek and the Intercept. She was a distinguished writer in residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute from 2012-2016 and she currently serves as a Program Officer focusing on journalism with the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression team.

This episode features Peter Geoghegan, the Irish writer, broadcaster and investigations editor at the award-winning news website openDemocracy. Peter is the author of Sunday Times bestseller Democracy for Sale Dark Money And Dirty Politics, a book about the role of dark money in the Brexit referendum. Peter's work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian and The Irish Times among other outlets.

Basma Khalifa is a filmmaker, director and presenter. We talk about Basma’s childhood growing up in Northern Ireland as a person of colour, her return to her birthplace in Saudi Arabia in 2018 which was documented in a brilliant BBC Three documentary and eventually getting kicked out of Saudi and we also chat about Basma’s perseverance and the hard graft that has gone into her career to date.

This episode features one of the main anchors on Channel 4 News in the UK, Krishnan Guru-Murthy. We chat about Krishnan choosing journalism over a career in medicine, a trip to war torn Yemen in 2016 that stuck with him and how he famously asked some tough questions to Hollywood stars Quentin Tarantino and Robert Downey Jr.

This episode features Raney Aronson-Rath, the Executive Producer of PBS FRONTLINE, PBS' flagship investigative journalism series. We chat about Raney’s time in Taiwan as an English teacher, how she was always destined to work in public broadcasting, the PBS Frontline Transparency Project and an intriguing story involving pictures of George Bush!

The BBC's former veteran war reporter, Kate Adie talks about her iconic reporting of the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980, witnessing the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and getting the only Western TV footage of the atrocities that took place, how Colonel Gaddafi nearly ran her over with his little Peugeot while she was reporting from Libya and her reporting of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Pulitzer Prize winning Malachy Browne from The New York Times visual investigations team talks about the his journey from engineering into journalism, how he and his team pioneered a new form of explanatory and accountability journalism at The Times, the Las Vegas mass shooting, Syrian hospitals being bombed by Russian pilots and the killing of a young Palestinian medic along the Gaza-Israel border.

Waad is an award-winning Syrian filmmaker. She became a citizen journalist in 2011, after protests broke out across Syria against the Assad regime, and in January 2016 she began documenting the horrors of Aleppo for Channel 4 News in a series titled, “Inside Aleppo.” Waad’s first feature documentary, For Sama, documented her life over five years in Aleppo. The film, directed with Edward Watts, received worldwide critical acclaim, winning numerous awards, including the Prix L'Œil d'or for best documentary at Cannes Film Festival, Best Documentary at the BAFTAs and a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards. After fleeing Aleppo in December 2016, Waad, her husband, and their two daughters now reside in London, United Kingdom. Waad continues to work with Channel 4 News and dedicates time to her advocacy campaign, Action For Sama.

Samantha Barry is the Editor-in-Chief of Glamour magazine in the US. Samantha has worked for RTE, ABC Australia, BBC and she served as CNN’s Head of Social Media. While at CNN, Sam led news coverage of the 2016 presidential election across social platforms. She received the first-ever Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in social media and a Webby Award recognizing her campaign work.

Julie Cohen is an Oscar nominated and Emmy award-winning director. Julie is best known for a feature film she co-directed with Betsy West called RBG about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg which premiered at Sundance in 2018 and had an all-female crew. Julie also directed 'The Sturgeon Queens', a feature film about a famous smoked fish shop called 'Russ & Daughters' in New York. Prior to this Julie was a producer at NBC Dateline.

Evan Davis is an economist, journalist, and broadcaster for the BBC. Since 2018, he has been the lead presenter of PM on BBC Radio 4. Previously Evan was the lead presenter on BBC Newsnight and before that he worked on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He has presented Dragons' Den (the UK's answer to Shark Tank) since 2005.

I’m speaking to CNN’s fearless Senior International Correspondent Nima Elbagir. We talk about Nima’s experience of being a person of colour in a very white industry, her powerful investigation into slave auctions in Libya, the time she was given a machete for protection in the DRC and the difficulties of returning to work after maternity leave.

Giles Duley is an English portrait and documentary photographer and writer. He is best known for his work documenting the long term impact of war.

Lyse Doucet OBE is the BBC's Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter.

Jon Snow is one of Britain's most well-respected journalists. He's best known as the longest-running presenter of Channel 4 News, which he has presented since 1989.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross is the host of Reset, a podcast that re-evaluates the role of technology in our lives, from Stitcher and Vox Media.

Rana Ayyub from the Washington Post is listed by Time Magazine as one of ten international journalists facing the most urgent threat.

Media Tribe is a show that tells the story behind the storyteller. It's an opportunity to step into the shoes of the most well-known journalists, directors and media executives.