this is bbc news, the headlines... uk conservative party chairman nadhim zahawi says an error in his tax affairs was accepted by aurthorities as having been "careless and not deliberate." president zelensky says he'll keep asking western allies to send modern tanks to ukraine, after a meeting of more than 50 countries ended without agreement. turkey cancels a visit to ankara by the swedish defence minister after authorities in sweden gave permission for a protest by a far—right politician. and britain's andy murray is out of the australian open. he lost to spain's roberto bautista agut in four sets, in what could be his last time at the tournament.

you're watching bbc news. now it's time for the media show. a warning — this programme includes frank discussion of misogyny, violence and allegations of sexual assault. hello and welcome. now, the chances are that six months ago you didn't know who andrew tate was, and the chances are that now you do. 0h, hello, hello... andrew tate�*s a former kickboxer. he's now a social media influencer. last year, he was more googled than donald trump or kim kardashian, and his content�*s amassed hundreds of millions of views. his enthusiasm for misogyny, cars and wealth has delivered fame, thousands of fans and many

thousands of dollars. he's also being held in romania as part of an investigation into rape and people trafficking. tate denies all the allegations. do you ever wonder why some people who you've never heard of before, all of a sudden, appear everywhere? and that clip we just heard? well, that was the journalist matt shea, who gained access to tate�*s compound in romania. to get inside, i had agreed to endure a professional cage fight in romania... i know he's going to lose, but wow, he's actually in there! ..along with a hundred tate superfans. matt shea, welcome to the media show. thank you. you've made this film for vice, it's called the dangerous rise of andrew tate. i wonder when you first decided to try and make contact with him? well, i was actually first brought onto this story by a brilliant journalist and producer called jamie thomson who's been following andrew tate for years before he became famous. so by the time we were filming in his compound in romania,

we were positioned in such a way that the calls for him to be de—platformed were just happening and we had a kind of inside view of him and his inner circle dealing with that. and how do you go about requesting access to andrew tate�*s compound and requesting an interview? well, i think andrew tate was, and his team, are quite aware of the fact that any publicity, even bad publicity, would help them. and that was perhaps one of the reasons they decided to let us in. i think what they didn't realise was that we were also simultaneously doing an investigation into him that ultimately led to us speaking to, for the first time, some of the women from his past who allege that he raped and abused them. and when he and his colleagues agreed to let you into his compound and to film, did they give you conditions? did they say, well, you can do this, you can't do that. you can ask this, you can't ask that? well, we're always up front with him that we would be making an objective documentary and telling

all the facts as we saw them. but, yes, when we were there, you know, there were attempts to control our access. we had chaperones constantly, we were told, don't go in there, that door is locked, if you try and go in there, someone will put a gun in your face. we had, you know, sort of tall, scary, intimidating, strong men behind us when we were interviewing everyone, monitoring our questions and all of that. so, yeah. well, thank you for coming on to speak about your film. and andrew tate�*s story more broadly connects directly to how media content is made, distributed, moderated and consumed. and we're going to spend today's edition of the media show understanding that with the help of matt shea, but also with helen lewis, who's staff writer at the atlantic, also presenter of the recent bbc podcast series the new gurus, which looks at online personalities with big followings. hi, helen. would you consider andrew tate a form of guru? 0h, absolutely. he fits very firmly into what's known as the kind of manosphere. so these are a suite of gurus who attempt to tell

young men how to live. and, you know, there is a very strong ideology behind them, which is that a form of masculinity has been lost. and, you know, having watched matt's excellent documentary, the thing that strikes me is it's very much like a 13—year—old boy's idea of what it means to be a man. a guy goes up and introduces us, my name is alpha wolf and how matt did not laugh at that point, but it's like so much stuff on the internet now where it is both ironic and not ironic in the sense that they're saying, i'm a misogynist, you know, of course everyone calls me a misogynist, you know? and there's understood to be a performance there, but it is also serious at the same time. and that's something i thinkjournalism really struggles to grapple with, is saying that someone is putting on a show for you, but underneath the show there is something nasty going on at the same time. and we're going to get into those dilemmas, questions for journalists when they choose to interact with someone like andrew tate. let's also bring in scott galloway, host of the biggest business podcast in the us, the prof g show, as well as being host of pivot, many of you listening will know it, it's a hugely popular tech podcast. scott galloway, you're very welcome to the media show. thanks for your time today. thanks for having me.

what lessons are you taking for the media from the story of andrew tate and the extent to which his content is consumed? and i think it's more - a spectacle than significant. the real learning is how to game the system. i and that is, he encourages peoplel to put out thousands of videos that go shorter and shorter and shorter. and he's tapped into the same rage i machine that the algorithms love, i that both donald trump and elon musk have tapped int0~ — and that is the optimal piece i of content is something short, compelling, resonates with 60% of your audience and _ enrages the other 40%. because the moment you have rage and conflict around content, - you get a lot of clicks and the algorithms . go, "we like this." and so, whether you say it's women have rape victims have to own up i to some responsibility for the rape, which is an outrageous statement, i it creates a lot of activity, - comments and more nespresso ads

and the algorithms . elevate that content. so he has gamified the system - and to a certain extent social media has kind of created this monster, if you wilt — and matt, when you were interacting not just with andrew tate, but some of his colleagues, were you aware that he was thinking about some of the factors that scott describes? yeah, definitely. and i think it's important to remember that one of the ways that he's been able to do what scott describes is through something called the hustlers university, which is ostensibly a kind of online course where andrew tate will teach you how to become wealthy and successful and an alpha male like him. it's now been shut down, but when it was running, it also ran a kind of affiliate marketing scheme where you had a financial incentive to share re—edited clips of andrew tape and students of the university, of which there almost 200,000 at the time, were instructed that the more controversial, the better in terms of sharing content of his. so, you know, it's notjust him posting these videos.

it's an army of young people and that's very difficult to take. tiktok and other platforms are finding it very difficult to shut that down. did he acknowledge as much when you spoke to him? i tried to get him to speak on that, and he sort of says, you know, oh, i wouldn't claim to have any control over his exact words, where some random 14—year—old singaporean who re—edits my clips and tried to sort of say that it wasn't his intention. but really this is a very well thought out and kind of ingenious campaign to make him famous. now, we've already alluded to some of the challenges forjournalists and for the media as to whether to engage with someone like andrew tate or not. it's fair to say at times, matt, you had a reasonably immersive experience when in the compound. this is part of your film when you are face to face with members of what's called the war room, the inner circle, if you like, of andrew tate. and you're at a boxing training session. i asked him specifically about

the lover boy method, which is... before the hustlers university, and you had something called the phd course, which is basically the pimping degree, which is instructs young men how to convince women to work for them in some sort of sex adjacent porn industry. so i kind of grilled them on that in the morning. and then in the afternoon he basically engineered a situation where we were in a boxing gym and he started punching me in the face. well, let's hear a little of how that went for you. oh, look, you're bleeding already. it's only the warm—up. i meet and get punched in the face by the inner circle of the war room. in the world andrew is creating, not only are women to be subjugated... sorry, that almost felt like i got knocked out. ..but men defined by their capacity to inflict violence. 0k. tap out. and when you tried to tap out

to stop the whole thing, they didn't look overly enthused about stopping. yeah. you know, one of the things they said was if this was a street fight, you couldn't tap out. and did you have anyjournalistic concerns about doing that or at one stage you get into a cage fight as part of a test that andrew tate had set some people who'd paid to visit the compound, did you think at any point, perhaps this is getting into territory i shouldn't be in? yeah. i mean, asjournalists, we often have to do, especially making a documentary, lots of uncomfortable things to get the access that we do. but the result was, you know, we were the first people and the only people to get access to his so called secret society, the war room. and ultimately, our access led to us being the only people who managed to give a platform and a voice to the women who allege that he sexually assaulted them and abused them. so, you know, ultimately, this investigation is, you know, gives the biggest picture

of his so—called secret society and the women from his past. what did you make, helen, as you watch that section of the film? i think it's extraordinarily powerful. i mean, we're talking about this in a week in which, you know, serving metropolitan police detectives convicted of a huge number of rapes, you know, with red flags for 20 years back. and i think matt's film makes very clear that there have been a number of red flags that were not picked up on in the background of andrew tate. and again, this speaks to an interaction with technology, which is that misogyny is often the onramp to other types of bigotry. it's often the onramp to far right content, for example, simply because it is so nebulous, so widespread so low levels tolerated. you know, the idea that womenjust need a smack is actually something that you can get away with saying, on pretty much every social network in the way that you cannot say overtly racist things. and so andrew tate had to push it a long way before he eventually got banned from all these social networks, which, as matt demonstrates, because he then had other people filling in, posting his content was not necessarily as effective. and, you know, this is somebody that elon musk brought

back to twitter as well. so this is a part of the story that's worth saying that the ban did not endure in the case of twitter. it's also worth saying that in the case of his detention in romania at the moment, andrew tate denies all the allegations. also, a statement given on behalf of him to the daily mirror reads andrew and tristan tate, that's his brother. have the utmost respect for the romanian authorities and will always assist and help in any way they can. scott, what's your view of how journalists and the media should interact with a phenomenon like andrew tate? it's tough because, you know, i i include myself in this loosely, i in the media, i'm not a journalist, i but you wonder if you're just adding more grist to the mill- when you highlight or bring attention to this kind of truth. and i would argue that the guilty. party are if he and his brother have committed crimes in romania, i hope he's held to account. i but i would say the culprit in the us or what is not i helping our social media platforms that see benefit, having _ algorithms elevate content

that's controversial, - that creates a discourse that's more coarse. - and they claim, if you i question tiktok, they'll claim he's been banned. they'll say, we've banned him and yet he's still everywhere. | and what you're seeing in the eu is taking a real lead on this - is they're saying if hate speech, speech offline is illegal, - it's going to be illegal online. but to that point, matt, you were saying that the hustlers university, which andrew tate has created, circumvents some of the bans from the big tech companies that scott's just listed. yeah, that's right. and it's important to remember, the university is not a place in the real world. but yeah, this is the thing. how do you stop kind of this kind of misogynistic content spreading when it's not him posting it, it's his army? and let me just read you a couple of comments. andrew tate was interviewed by hugo rifkind, the british journalist, recently. and towards the end of that article, hugo rivkin writes, if i had a son, i'd hate the thought of him being exposed to it.

and i'm farfrom wild about my daughters having to deal with teenage boys who have soaked in it. i've even agonised about whether i ought to do this interview. although if the most googled man on the planet can't be written about in a newspaper, then i'm honestly not sure what any of us are here for. what's your view of that, helen? is there a point at which journalists should stop engaging? well, i made that decision, actually. i was asked last year to go on a podcast, which was on a tiktok channel on a podcast, you know, and be, the other guest who was interviewed essentially and i turned it down because what i felt in that case was that was something that was going to get chopped up and clipped up. and i was there to be the, you know, woman that he get to call ugly and stupid and dunk on and the butt of the joke, essentially. and what would essentially happen was exactly as scott was saying, some more controversial content would be created. and i think you have to make that decision when you're covering people like this. as matt said earlier, for them, no publicity. you know, there is all publicity is good publicity because itjust puts them in front of people. and the other part of this is the kind of post—cancellation

sphere of social networks that we now have. so if you get driven off youtube, then you go to rumble, which is a, you know, has even fewer safeguards. hustlers university takes place on discord, which is chat servers that are closed to outsiders. you know, you can't surf past them accidentally. the tiktok algorithm itself is incredibly opaque. we don't know what it prioritises, who's in charge of it, what the rules of it are. so that is the other part of this is that it's actually functionally what happens is people get driven to places where you and i can't see them any more. you know, my tiktok algorithm delivers me videos of sharks and horses having their hooves cleaned. if i had logged into that and signed up as a 14—year—old boy and watched a few of these videos, it would be very different. and, you know, i interviewed jordan peterson, who is in different part of the manosphere from andrew tate in 2018. but my male friends kept reporting to me that when they watched that on youtube, they were then served 15 more jordan peterson videos. you know, the algorithms know very much what it is that you know who you are demographically and what you want to watch, and they serve you more and more of it.

i was going to say, i think sort of one exception to that is providing a useful context for people to learn about andrew tate within. so for example, he's already out there, his content has been viewed over 13 billion times on tiktok alone. right? so if your viewers haven't heard of him, there are sons and nephews of theirs will have. and for the first time through our reporting, we've managed to give a voice to kind of women from his past. so now when someone googles him saying they won't just see andrew tate and him talking about himself and justifying himself, they'll also get a chance to hear the voices of women who allege that he raped and physically abused them and make a more informed decision about whether to follow him. if he's committed crimes... and by the way, helen, _ i think he made absolutely the right choice because having someone who's a credible journalist— from the atlanticjust creates i a halo of credibility that he does not deserve being in- the same room with him. so i think i applaudl your decision there. but if he's committed crimes, i he should be held accountable. but it's debatable as to whether his

content online should be banned. l it's unhealthy, it's wrong. but you could find a lot l of other content like that that doesn't get banned. what i think we're missing. in the media is that i do think there are a lot of young men i who are looking for explanation i or they feel as if they haven't beenl given that they've been on the wrong end of a societal movement and that they aren't - being treated fairly. and i think there is a lot - of evidence showing that no cohort has fallen further, faster than young men, i and that there's a certain amount of masculinity, l whether it's being aggressive or physically strong, - that is conflated with toxicity. you hear the term toxic- masculinity more than you hear the term masculinity. and if we want to talk about what the media can do to help here, _ other than highlighting how wrong he is, which quite frankly, - is attractive to many young men, it's to start finding positive rolel models of masculinity and lifting them up and recognisingl that there is more benign and positive masculinity in the world than there i is toxic masculinity.

we need to fill this void - because there is a void there. there is a need amongst young men to understand why they are failing. i helen, do you think there's a void that the media could fill? to use scott's phrase. i think there's definitely something i found all the way through making the new gurus, which is a kind of search for either replacement father figures or replacement kind of, you know, for the sort of bar, the pub, you know, the kind of place that male spaces dominated by men where men can hang out. and i think that is one of the things that is a downside to so much more of social life having moved online is instead of going down to your local wetherspoons, where a kind of cross—section of people were there saying, don't worry, lad, you know, it'll all work out in the end. instead, young men end up finding themselves falling into these circles. the bit where i slightly deviate with it is that something i saw with all of the gurus and something that makes you very appealing online is a sense of injustice and being wronged. and this is sometimes voiced by actual literal millionaires and people with,

you know, russell brand has got 6 million subscribers on youtube and presents himself as this tiny, henpecked voice standing up against the man. well, he's any definition of the man that you want to have. so while i have sympathy with scott's position, i would also caution about uncritically accepting any guru's grievance narrative. what matt does very successfully is what he's talking about there is contextualizing andrew tate. so you don't just give andrew tate a platform to do the performance of andrew tate—ness, which is, you know, to be clear, extraordinarily charismatic and captivating. but you put it in in the context of both the victims of allegations. and one of the things i think comes out very strongly in the vice documentary is that he's got a set of lines as good as any politician i've ever worked with. if you get beyond the lines, he starts umming and ahhing and looks very uncomfortable. so what you have to be very careful not to do is set it up like a cage fighting match. you know, the guy is a kickboxer. he you know, he plays he's like a heel in wrestling and he will play that. but what you have to do, i think now we have to think more about in the media is about the idea

that when you put out your audience, what's the package, what's the stuff you put around it, how do you give people the information to understand not just this captivating performance that they're seeing? but, helen, you're right. if we watch the whole of matt's documentary, there's a huge amount of context which is valuable to judge the exchanges with andrew tate. but actually, matt, you document yourself how you went onto his podcast and then your appearance on that podcast and the way that tate dealt with you was chopped up in a way that presented the whole thing to viewers on tik—tok in a way that didn't really represent what had happened. so even though you were taking as many precautions as you could, your involvement with tate instantly got misrepresented. and that's the reason i went on the podcast was to try and figure out how this machine works. and you're right, within kind of seconds of going, within minutes of going on there, his arms were cutting, you know, that podcast up and resharing it and manipulating it in lots and lots of ways. however, now if you look him up along with my name or along with vice news, you'll hear from the women who allege that he, you know, again,

raped and physically abused them. and also, you'll hear what we've also published, which is voicenotes from these women. and this is the really crucial thing which purportedly appeared to show andrew tate discussing it, admitting to these crimes, voicenotes which were submitted to the police and the crown prosecution service in the uk and they declined to prosecute. and you're right, those are now in the public domain. but, scott, when you're creating media and when we look at the media around andrew tate, does everyone working within the media need to accept that anything that we all produce is going to be chopped up, twisted, turned around, and as such, the way it's consumed, immediately we lose control of that? yeah, well, whoever holds - the editing software can position it however they want. and unfortunately, he's enlisted this army that creates content . that's very snackable - and the algorithms love. but i wonder if we're talking about this. . i think he's the symptom,

he's not the disease. - and i think the disease _ is that there are a lot of young men in the us for every one male college graduate, which is still— the ultimate onramp to the middle class in america, there's _ going to be two female college grads ifour times as likely to be addicted, i three times as likely to kill themselves, 12 times - as likely to be incarcerated. and they're looking for answers. and i think until... and also i think we on the left - sometimes don't want to acknowledge that there is a difference in boys have different needs. _ they need male role models in their life. | and i think we have - to figure out programmes. helen was talking about third . spaces, whether it's afterschool | sports, whether it's boy scouts, j whether it's church, whether it's programmes that get more men, prison release programmes. - what happens when they have prison release programmes? i crime goes down because young males get more men back- in their neighbourhood. i think we're treating... he's a symptom. but the more thoughtful conversation is how do we find out, _ how do we address why young men have . become so susceptible to this blame l

game and create a much more robust, much more enlightened view- of masculinity, such that a guy. like me doesn't feel like he needs to deprogram his 15—year—old from this content. _ so he'sjust a symptom. from this content. - someone else will fill the void. from this content. _ we have to go after the... from this content. - how do you go about deprogramming a 15—year—old son? very carefully. does he want to be deprogrammed? well, that's the thing. when dad says it, you worry that| you're going tojust encourage it. and what i try to do _ is highlight some other examples of what i would call masculinity that are more and just some i basics, some basics. when you start blaming i women for your problems, you know you failed. that means you failed. that means you have lost the plot, basics. | and we know from the news that teachers and parents are engaging with an awful lot of teenage boys at the moment because of andrew tate�*s content. i mustjust ask matt and helen before we wrap up about the experience of being on the receiving end of a lack of enthusiasm, shall we say, from people who support the kind of figures

like andrew tate is, or that were featured in helen's programme as well. because i'm assuming, matt, that as well as being punched in the face a number of times during your visit since you left romania, you've also been attacked repeatedly online. yeah, that's right. i've got hundreds of death threats and also, you know, claims that... hundreds? the women... sorry, hundreds of death threats? yes. hundreds of death threats. and also claims that i've paid the women, you know, money to be in the film, claims that i've doctored the voicenotes that are clearly in andrew tate�*s voice, where he appears to discuss these crimes of rape and abuse. you know, all that's come through. yeah, in a big way. and helen, what about you when you made your programme? well, the response to the new gurus been one of the i mean, i was worried because, as you say, lots of these communities are innately hostile to the mainstream media. they don't want to engage with you and they think

you will only ever stitch them up. and any kind of objectivity is kind of taken as offensiveness. so but it was one of the less alarming response i've ever had. but matt's right to bring this up, this is a continuing issue forjournalists, is that luckily news organisations are becoming better at safeguarding their reporters from this. but if you are reporting on communities like this, you should expect everything from death threats to doxxing, to people trying to hack into your emails, to your social media accounts. and news organisations have to have a duty of responsibility to protect and supportjournalists in those circumstances. and to that final point, scott, if whole communities are set up to be suspicious of the mainstream, you're advocating mainstream media evolves what it does, but perhaps it can't reach those people because they already have a fixed view of the type of media content that will be coming from those sources. that's a tough one. look, it reverse engineers to any time you have an arbitrage, - you transition something to another source. - there's emissions, whether it's oil to petroleum or it's _ attention to advertising.

and we have these mediums now that are very profit motivated, _ where some of our most talented - people and well—resourced companies have a profit motive in elevating content that enrages people - because enragement. equals an engagement. and there's a real. externality to that. and until we hold these platforms to the same i responsibility and accountability that we would hold the bbc - or the new york times or the atlantic, they're going to continue to engage in these externalities and let people - continue to smoke or put carbon into the air~ _ it's that simple. scott, yours will be the last thought on this matter because we're out of time. thank you. to you, that's professor scott galloway from the prof gee podcast and the pivot podcast. thanks to helen lewis, staff writer at the atlantic, and to match matt shea, the film—maker who's produced the dangerous rise of andrew tate for vice. that's it for this edition of the media show. thanks as ever, for watching. we'll be back with you next week. bye— bye.

hello. northwest, mount atlantic care, a lot of cloud and rain coming in from the atlantic. some cloud could edge into westernmost part of england and otherwise clear skies, leading to some further fog particularly across eastern parts. that will be dense. a widespread frost for anger than wales, could be down to —7, also called an saudi scotland, the ritz—carlton northern ireland shooting temperatures above freezing. not quite as cold on sunday, further clad and outbreaks of rain from time to time. more client for wales and westernmost part of england, lifting campuses, midlands is committed to england some sunshine, fog in the morning,

one or two patches lingering into the afternoon, feeling cold. even when the sunshine comes out, three or 4 degrees, could make double figures in northern ireland and the far west of scotland.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm kasia madera. our main stories: the uk conservative party chairman nadhim zahawi says an error in his tax affairs was accepted by authorities as having been "careless and not deliberate". president zelensky says he'll keep asking western allies to send modern tanks to ukraine, after a meeting of more than 50 countries ended without agreement. translation: we will still have to fight - for the supply of modern tanks. but every day we make it more obvious, there is no alternative to making the decision on tanks. millions of people around the world prepare for lunar new year.