specters have been repeatedly delayed from visiting the scene where pro-government forces are accused of dropping a chlorine bomb meanwhile syrian rebels and civilians in a countryside area northeast of damascus have started to evacuate to the north of the country under a deal brokered with the government state t.v. says over three thousand rebels will leave three towns in eastern color moon over the course of the next three days it's the latest in a string of evacuations around the syrian capital that seen more than sixty thousand people displaced. india's government has approved the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under the age of twelve after widespread outrage over a number of recent attacks the order was approved by prime minister narendra modi's cabinet art requires parliamentary approval within six months to become law there's been widespread protests after a number of high profile rape cases including the killing of an eight year old girl in kashmir. i mean least one person has died in violence

between security forces and protesters in madagascar demonstrators have been rallying in the capital against a new electoral laws which the opposition says are meant to stop their candidate from running for president the city's hospital says at least sixteen more people have been injured in the violence. but we're going to bring you much more on the situation in madagascar and the other headlines i have another update in about twenty five minutes time so i will see you then coming up next on our it's the listening post. rescue work and. what were the club like and

i got a lot coming up after that. i felt like a while ah just right before the first. hello i'm richard just burn you're at the listening post here are some of the stories we're covering this week mission accomplished again allegedly syria the media on red lines humanitarian intervention and the need for military action in the enduring sexism on italy's airwaves have a tally and is missed there weinstein moment face book and its fact checking initiative in the philippines provoke a backlash from supporters of president to tear tanks and one state on t.v. channel in moscow provides russians with the news they can use how to survive world war three come off of him and his love company goes up by the in the media that it does love to you ask them they say that truth is the first casualty of war in the coverage of syria you can add evidence context and balance to that list when

footage of an alleged chemical weapons attack was beamed out of duma it set off an outcry and lit the fuse for counterstrikes the narrative for many in the western mainstream media echoed their own governments a red line had been crossed it was a transgression that could not go unpunished but those demanding evidence that the assad government was behind the chemical attacks the skeptics question in the rush to launch were given short shrift for media outlets in the u.s. u.k. and france particularly the twenty four hour news channels there was less concern about cause. proofs than the telegenic effect of war w m d's and iraq do come to mind a big part of this geo political showdown is being fought out over the airwaves and when it comes to state propaganda you've really got to hand it to the russians if only their media could bring the same scrutiny to the kremlin that they do with the white house our starting point this week are the skies over syria.

syria and sometimes news coverage has a quality to it that it's almost time. to talk. u.s. tomahawk missiles this is a russian violation worms that is. chemical weapons in the county planning. an economy like evidence shows. i know. none of those sound bites were from this past week they were broadcast the last time the us military targeted series in april of two thousand and seventeen but they could have the script this time around was beyond reminiscent tactlessness watched it. right down to the relative lack of journalistic scrutiny of the images that provoked the airstrikes whether they did indeed amount to proof that the initial attack involved chemical weapons let alone whether assad government forces

were responsible for. their king question of whiting for evidence that's one of the most fundamental things that seems to be missing from much meta discussion but we have. footage taken by. the villian adults and children dead and dying but that does seem to be. of any kind of critical scrutiny an idea that it would be immoral to question the images that quiet there is fighting here on the path of a lot of the my wealth to me. my the main point made in the russian media wasn't there was no chemical attack that there was no need for it's doing she will put out he what the solution and that russia was being blamed for something it had no role in when the western media to its about the chemical attack as

a fait accompli the russian media not just the state ones but more liberal balanced outlets with trying to understand what the reasons for such an attack would be our western colleagues don't even want to hear this kind of questioning. this war has claimed half a million lives and displaced millions more but the united states and its allies have chosen to intervene publicly only when the fighting is alleged to have gone chemical. chemical weapons are politically beyond the pale more than one hundred sixty countries have signed the chemical weapons convention of one thousand nine hundred two which outlawed their production and their use the way allegations of chemical warfare are reported the way it looks on screen triggers a response the footage is horrific the suffering is evident haunting images difficult to watch we can't even show you the worst of it however the images are not graphic in the way conventional bombing conveys that there's no blood or news

editors who shy away from putting the dismembered bodies of bombing victims on t.v. saying audiences cannot stomach such pictures can show the us and once the images turn up in washington and other western capitals the politics and the accepted rules of war do the rest it is not about images sufficiently it is about politicize ation of images in relation to political agendas the. that chemical warfare. in relation to syria has actually less to do with syria than western european history and you have been publics because suffering by bombings and by barrel bombs and arguably can be more damaging and kills more people images of course are always necessary to provide a kind of moral impetus to bombing there has to be a kind of like line that's crossed morally to justify why they're acting now this

one had a lot of video and of course that's going to kind of reaction because the only way that the united states britain and france know how to react this the bomb things that's what they do is the way i am governments come to office with political agendas some news organizations have them too we are at fox news headquarters in new york and washington bringing you the very latest develop back in two thousand and three rupert murdoch's media empire outlets including the fox news channel in the us and more than one hundred seventy newspapers around the world strongly backed the invasion of iraq either the iraqis use poison gas and biological weapons or they don't if they do then all bets are off the united states can go ahead and shoot anything it wants whenever it wants these days they are similarly hawkish on syria although some of the tactics have changed one of murdoch's papers has targeted critics of the airstrikes the times based in london published a list of british academics calling them apologists for the assad government the

paper was sending a message that would have registered with journalists as well as university professors. the day that britain france and america alone with strike syria without democratic or through the front page at the time and a tour. to vote to buy fifty three mary myself and my colleagues as. a public. main thrust of the argument that to question your own government is to be somehow an apologist for assad or a kremlin puppet i think that frankly is a really dangerous kind of power to go down but times is a right wing rag that's that's and that's mirrors everyone who questions the word narrative they want to create a chilling effect they want to make sure that if you're opposed to this bombing you're going to smear it isn't the saddest. uprootedness were crime denier classic tactics same stuff they used in the run up to libya same stuff they used in iraq

the goal is to create acceptable premolars of debate and to punish anyone of years off that even slightly journalists are easy to intimidate because they think they need that work and if they get branded as a conspiracy theorist or an assad is they don't find what they see on the door if conspiracy theories and a succession of voices sympathetic to the assad government are what you are looking for the russian media space is the place to go but if you have the news it's not. blush it's in the. village and he wanted it to actually know christiane that i would ignore the couple. but if state controlled channels like this one really wanted to get to the truth they would question why the kremlin's forces in syria are denying weapons inspectors access to the site in do they don't and they're far more interested in civilian casualties caused by western airstrikes than when the planes bombing syria are from russia i mean you can see so using. that to will not achieve the marquis show could have cost for what russian

t.v. host and commentator stressed is that in a confusing conflict clouded by the fog of war they are providing viewers with a perspective they will not see elsewhere. well night is a whole wave of fake information rumors in all directions and the syrian conflict is just one of them it's not even about. censorship it's about the inability to verify what's happening when i talk to my sources i just don't know whether what they're telling me is true and the worst part is that it's impossible to verify i report both positions but i don't know which one of them is true this is the most food of modern journalism what's written in the shuttle and unfortunately a lot of the discussions on media around syria have little to do with syria and they have much more to do it seems with geopolitical struggles about syria what we

don't see you know and the discussions around what's happening in syria because what we see is a lot of political positioning and. a lot of shouting about this is fake news this is not fake and really does not help the situation in syria or the suffering or scenes. we're discussing other media stories that are on our radar this week with one of our producers may knock she ravi i mean a court in moscow has banned one of the biggest messaging platforms in russia telegraph what's that about. this began with the russian media regulator across continents or demanding that telegram hand over its encryption keys to the russian intelligence service the f.s.b. now those codes would have enabled the security services to monitor the private messages of up to fifteen million russians and telegram refused to give them up its c.e.o. pavel doura of a russian who lives outside the country posted on his telegram account

a letter addressed to the head of the f.s.b. saying that if all they wanted was a pair of keys they could have the ones in the picture but the case then went to court and this past week the judge ruled in favor of the f.s.b. and now telegram is inaccessible in russia you mentioned the fifteen million russians possibly affected by this but has in the kremlin itself come to rely on telegram as well yes for instance dmitri peskov president putin's press secretary routinely used telegram to share do briefings with journalists but according to him a law is a law and if it is violated we will search for an alternative there is one more angle on the telegram story it is also the messaging app of choice in iran and the authorities in to hand have issues with it also regarding crippen so we'll be watching developments there as well social media platforms are also in the news in the philippines where supporters of the president rodriguez the territory are urging salute peano's to get off facebook for good was the issue is fake news and

what to do about it last week facebook partnered with two filipino news organizations rappler and better files to combat the spread of false information now these fact checkers will be flagging bogus stories and debunking them ditto to supporters have issues with one of those news sites in particular rappler one of detainees high profile backers polity fencer knack posted a message instructing her followers to migrate to the russian social network the contactor so that they could get the uncensored truth and that also said the new fact checking partnership would likely result in the shutting down of her facebook account but it hasn't deterred to himself than complaining about the state news in the philip. things yes but he accuses facebook's fact checking partners of dealing in fake news themselves we've reported before in rap less critical reporting of detainees so-called war on drugs and investigations into the president's personal wealth deter to has accused rappler of being run by americans and tried to have them shut down earlier this year so it's no surprise actually to see this reaction

from the productivity crowd ok thanks michel. it's been slightly more than six months now since a newspaper story in the new york times about a hollywood producer harvey weinstein set off a tsunami of sexual abuse allegations that took down dozens of well known men and gave birth to a hash tag that would go global me to the italian version of that hash tag tech a translates to that time when but that's where the similarities and in the us prominent figures in the news media matt lauer and charlie rose among them were pushed from their televised pedestals in italy there have been very few names names and much of the scrutiny has been directed at the accusers rather than the accused however by bringing out some of the worst tendencies in the country's male dominated media the story and the way it's been covered have enabled activists and certain journalists to draw attention to the deeper institutional issue here systemic sexism the listening posts flow phillips now on the italian media the role

women play on television and some of the people who say that they too would like to see change. this is as gentle one of italy's best known actresses in october last year the us magazine the new yorker published argento's allegations of sexual assault at the hands of harvey weinstein. the reaction gentle received in the italian news media was very different didn't. he go pour it out of you to go on yeah called. him a fake or. clinical indeed feel any. good you know. we're not. going to allow. your sympathy i interviewed a few days after his story was published in the new yorker she couldn't stand the

public abuse anymore the editor in chief of the newspaper leave it over. extremely brutal really attacking. voice day forty percent so it's just. you're not a thinker for sort of i wouldn't say it's comments were sexy you have to know them and it is well known that his journalistic career and his reputation are based on how direct and how blunt and how crude. he cuts the chase what you. see are gentles case is really a typical example of the recurring stereotypes and misrepresentation in media coverage of sexual violence cases against women there's a tendency to split the victims of sexual harassment into two categories the innocent ones and the women who asked for it want to move on now that's pretty much our concern. and take care of those here. are going to don't make an enemy of like

you know what i mean a computer but it was something i was really struck by is that in much of the coverage of the r.c. argenta affair the article or the report would be illustrated with a picture from a film she had starred in in which she played a lap dancer who kissed a dog it was as if to say how dubious her morals are and what i. thought. is only been i find it was just because of all the fear all i think the treatment of us here are gentle proved to be quite illuminating in terms of why women won't talk or why they may be reluctant to point the finger at powerful figures. the treatment of argento contrasted sharply with what was happening in the us media where allegations of harassment were being met with solidarity let me be very clear there is no excuse. it is systematic and pervasive and

accountability was a stunning headline to wake up to bad law. the longtime host of the today show has been fired six months on from the weinstein revelations more than a dozen major media personalities accused of harassment in the united states have either resigned or been sacked and this really there have been no exposes of harassment in the news media industry yet according to solon deluca a television presenter and producer such stories are not hard to find space so very often before becoming a journalist they used to say to me you want to become a journalist come out with me if you want the job you need to do something for me and sometimes it was more subtle because i would like to see you tonight in a dress i got harassed when i worked at by our public broadcaster then when i was at sky italia one night i was working late along with my editor in chief and we disagreed on a couple of things he looked at me and said if you want to play who's got the

bigger you're making a big mistake i was quite frightened to be honest i didn't know how to react i was speechless enough of a sense of i don't. program market harassment is everywhere literally just because there have been no denunciations to date doesn't mean it isn't happening in the media as well the problem is it's difficult to expose such cases especially when they happen in the industry that is supposed to be doing the expose and then they. italian media italian television especially have become notorious for how they treat and represent women objectification stereotyping and worse a common last year on channel five second most watched channel the talent show amaechi staged an elaborate prank on a pop singer just a little. bit. more. and.

i. was. happened on the set of was an extreme case but very much part of a trend that began on the same t.v. network in the one nine hundred eighty s. with the liberalization of the media at least future prime minister silvio berlusconi founded the media set. semi-naked showgirls usually alongside much older men soon became the formula to follow so much so they got to label him indestructible the billionaire i mean you know they finished this term refers specifically to the women who featured in a satirical news show from one thousand nine hundred eighty eight called study show . they would deliver the news to the two male hosts who then read it out as competition between t.v. channels intensified the presence of beautiful young half naked women became a standard gimmick in t.v. entertainment media said especially as

a rich gallery of examples. child out when there are lots of shows that still use women this way and live really ok they're still there. but it's in the name of satire you can make the same criticisms about cheerleaders at sports events in the us in a way it's like a beauty pageant the americans love to give us more lectures but they even have cheerleading competitions to me this seems much more sexist while the men are shown as articulate the women just have to throw their legs up in the air i think that's disgraceful if your live in. other symbol of a way of making t.v. the concept of a woman who's on stage and maybe dances but doesn't speak they don't represent actual women it's an idea that was manufactured to serve the entertainment industry by taking a stereotype of the extreme it was a way to satisfy a particular idea of what the average italian viewer wants a viewer that paradoxically is always assumed to be male there's never an. rich

female viewers there are no male the limit war meaning. the fact that it has overwhelmingly been men deciding what italian audiences want to see on screen and in the papers only partly explains the enduring sexism in the country's media after all male executives dominate media boardrooms in most countries another factor a more telling one is the power imbalance between men and women in italian society according to a recent index by the world economic forum italy has the widest gender gap in western europe but some see signs that things are changing slowly for the better including in the media. in italy there's a divide on one side we older conservative people who don't acknowledge or even see the problem on the other side there's a younger generation who are more open more and more critical

a major difference between the era when the billionaire became popular and today is that we're no longer limited to just italian t.v. it's much easier to see what's going on in other parts of the world model better more study to see one another there's no question that sexism in italian television is alive and well but there has been a change in the way such blatantly sexist practices are received by the public put instance in march two thousand and seventeen there was this right program partly ominous a bottle which asked why italian men have a preference for eastern european women are a problem at all and very often i felt that i just had a graph that there was a big reaction against it on social media to the extent that the producers decided to cancel the show the changes here have not been as dramatic as we might have seen with the me to campaign in the us but awareness is growing and society is changing slowly we all have to make sure that these baby steps continue and get ever bigger

one of the lot of them but if you. since have bruising encounters with. she said the country's climate of culture of victim was too much for her and her. and she spends much of the time outside. and finally just prior to the airstrikes against syria a good deal of hysteria was circulating online in russia and that provided one state on t.v. channel in moscow with an alarmingly obvious story opportunity it decided to prepare its viewers for world war three it was a four minute long segment on the rossiya twenty four s evening news program where the kremlin own channel suggested some essential items for life in a bunker iodine to protect the body from radiation rice and its seven year long shelf life and rule number one if you were sweets more water noted we'll see you

next time you're at the listening post is the police city gun now and i still can you not can your so if you for job in your book that if you read all we put out the spoken another station which i got to live it's a list of the opposite that you mostly stick to but that's a bunny it is just lays because union that because they've been these up us not us cousin corrected but the idea is that yeah and then you move their living it up because it's unity is that it was slow but at the plate which somewhere at least you look to a number. of notifies you soon. complete now and ends or. means just like the state of bushel of you started then you can when you see it but i don't be getting as good but i sub nobody is coop lucius here could i needs it he's sitting in device media up at all does he need a car needs i was younger i would throw gordon if he get a sheet and you pull your boredom and i did say really what the senior as much as i thought some of that on a man no is the father of profound i was and why should you use ideas i had but i did the subway wouldn't get it when you got on and wasn't going to give me. that it

davey i knew was that i stated what if what if i come off of him and you slug company you it's a by the and i me at that at the slug i yes come should go if you got a few at this and i'm a like or sort of daughter but he gets us by age but he is news reasoning as not like you some was lewd you should buy she said about the guy we need and you can get it is that possibly got of us women is the media this you or them and you will not go don't use most but i would as i said you know i think i would say but again just because of that but need. he was the world's most wanted man the last meeting i had with him was off to

a. bin laden was very nervous about nature has not met a western reporter before in part one of an exclusive two part documentary al-jazeera speaks to those who met osama bin ladin he never showed the hostility towards me of the west i knew bin laden on all jersey and. the strength of al jazeera is that because we have such an expansive knack for people were coming to us and actually shared information with the al jazeera team in shock after getting to the heart of the matter if will stuff i can see that such a supreme leader calls you today and says let's have talks would you accept facing realities what do you think reunification of look like there are two people think the peace corps unification is the only option for prosperity of south korea hear their story on talk to al-jazeera.