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Adam Fleming
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Gary O'Donoghue
hello,
Adam Fleming
the deadline is Friday. No, we're not talking about Donald Trump's deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, although we will talk about that later on. The deadline we're talking about is applying for tickets for castfest, which is our big podcasting jamboree we're doing at the BBC's famous Maida Vale studios on 25 April, where you will be able to see Newscast, AmericasT and a whole load of other BBC News podcasts being made right in front of your very eyes. And you will. You'll even be able to make your own podcast too. Potentially. You can apply for tickets by following the instructions which are in the episode description of this very episode of Newscast. So that's our deadline. We'll talk about Donald Trump's deadline for Iran in this episode of Newscast Newscast
Gary O'Donoghue
Newscast from the BBC. Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.
Adam Fleming
I was the tattletale in the class. Can I have an apology please?
Gary O'Donoghue
I trust almost nobody.
Adam Fleming
Then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.
Gary O'Donoghue
Next time in Moscow. I feel delulated.
Katie Razzle
Salulu, take me down to Downing Street.
Adam Fleming
Let's go have a tour.
Gary O'Donoghue
Blimey.
Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast studio. Last time I was sitting here it looked like the US was talking about negotiations with Iran to end their conflict. What has happened since then is that reports emerged that the US presented a 15 point peace plan that was roundly rejected by Iran, with an official saying that the US was just negotiating with with itself. And then during the day on Wednesday, word reached us that there was going to be an impromptu White House press briefing to try and clear the situation up. As we record this episode of newscast at 6:30 on Wednesday, that briefing with the President's press secretary has just come to an end. The BBC's chief North America correspondent Gary O' Donoghue was there and he's now here on newscast. Hello, Gary.
Gary O'Donoghue
Hey Adam.
Adam Fleming
Is it true that you're stood in a flower bed currently?
Gary O'Donoghue
I literally am. I'm about. Well, a couple of yards from the briefing room there's this truck that kept coming through. So we have moved into the flower bed. And yeah, this suit's gonna need a clean afterwards I think.
Adam Fleming
Okay, so you're very near the briefing room then. And we're very near the time that the briefing was happening. This was Caroline Levitt, the President's press secretary. What's the top line from what she was saying?
Gary O'Donoghue
Really not giving too much away to be honest. Confirming that the talks were continuing. That's what we've already heard from the President. But sort of trying to pour a bit of cold water on this whole 15 point plan idea saying there are elements of truth in it, but a lot of it from anonymous sources is just speculation. And she wouldn't get into what she described as the nitty gritty. I mean she mentioned a couple of the overall arching aims of the war and we know those in terms of taking away Iran's nuclear capacities. But some of the details that have been coming out from other parts of the world, from Israel, from Pakistan, have elements in them which really Iran would never agree to taking away its enrichment capacities, ending any support for proxy groups in the region like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those things would be completely unacceptable. And we've heard from the Iranians already through Press tv, the national television station there, the state run station there, that they have rejected it. Now there are some caveats around that because communications are difficult. It's difficult to know where the power really lies still in Iran despite the fact that the regime remains intact. And that's according to the Americans, that the regime remains intact. But the time is also running out because we've got this yet another deadline, haven't we? A Friday tea time where the President extended that original 48 hour deadline from for bombing Iran's energy targets if they didn't completely comply.
Adam Fleming
And have we got any more clarity about what kind of level or intensity these communications are between the US and Iran? Because on yesterday's newscast lease was sort of coming to the conclusion that it was messages being passed from one side to to the other, but not something you could really describe as talks or negotiations or even face to face.
Gary O'Donoghue
It's really hard to say. And I know that's for our listeners and our viewers that's a tricky thing to try and Process because we can't be sure because we're not really getting a clear picture. There are lots of players who are weighing in here. The Pakistanis are, other countries in the Gulf are weighing into. You're getting anonymous briefings all over the place. Unpicking that, I'm afraid is pretty hard as things stand. And there may be some advantage to some of these players in keeping things ambiguous and vague like that. Because if either side set things too much in stone, too much in concrete, then there really would be no potential room for movement forward. The uncertainty of is part of the strategy, I suspect, on both sides.
Adam Fleming
And also, what do you think was the strategy behind this briefing in the first place? Because my understanding is it wasn't the daily White House briefing. This was an ad hoc extra thing added to the schedule.
Gary O'Donoghue
Well, we don't get daily briefings from the White House. That was a long and distant memory. These are kind of events nowadays, I mean, I'm guessing off the top of my head, but maybe one every two to three weeks, maybe a little bit more frequently that, but not much more frequent than that. And they're pretty quick, you know, they're 40 minutes at the maximum. They don't drag on for these hour long things we used to have under President Obama, etc. So yeah, these are rare events. This one was meant to start at 1pm Local was delayed. That's not unusual, to be honest. I don't think that tell us it tells us anything necessarily. But people, I'll give you an indication of it. The, the room was absolutely jammed to the rafters. You couldn't get in or out. They were standing in every aisle as well as all the seats, of course. And you've been to the briefing room here. It's tiny. It's tiny. Yeah, it was rammed. There must have been dozens and dozens of cameras and people in there. They have to kind of keep the door open otherwise people start fainting.
Adam Fleming
I suppose that's such as the clamor for clarification or any kind of information.
Gary O'Donoghue
It's the vacuum. It's the vacuum, isn't it? It's the vacuum which is filled by the speculation that the White House then complains about. So, you know, there's a bit of a vicious cycle here. Now. There's all sorts of rumors, you know, that J.D. vance, the Vice President, might start being involved in potential talks, possibly in Pakistan. Again, none of that confirmed by Caroline Levitt today. But that would be a really interesting move, I think, on this one, because we know in this administration. J.D. vance is one of the more cautious ones about getting involved in these so called foreign entanglements, foreign wars, endless foreign wars as they're often referred to on the campaign trail. And to put him up front as a potential negotiator would be an interesting strategic move and may, you know, may unblock something or other, who knows. But again, no confirmation of it. And I reiterate Friday tea time, we've got another deadline coming along which the President will have to either justify blowing through yet again or we may see something more decisive happening in the military sphere before then. We're dealing with so little concrete information. It's, you know, I feel sometimes like we're shortchanging the people watching and listening to us a little bit and I'm sorry for that. But it's very difficult to get things clear.
Adam Fleming
Gary, I share yours and everyone else's frustration. Talking about military matters though. What do we know about this increased kind of troop buildup that the Americans are staging in the Middle east right now?
Gary O'Donoghue
Well, I can tell you a bit about that because the Pentagon has confirmed this morning that parts a battle combat team from the 82nd Airborne Division. Now you know, that's kind of legendary in the US armed forces. It's the creme de la creme. It's, you know, you roll in the SAS, SBS and everyone else together and you get the 82nd Airborne. I mean they are kind of right at the top of the tree and they are used to being dropped their paratroopers into sort of hostile environments, contested environments as the military like to call these things. And so a group of them, we think possibly a couple of battalions which could be maybe 15 or 1600 plus some divisional staff and support staff could be on their way. They're always there under rapid deployment, these combat teams from Fort Bragg in North Carolina. And that's led to a lot of speculation that maybe there's some consideration of taking this now famous Kharg island in the Persian Gulf, which is the Iranians main export terminal which has been bombed, but the oil facilities have not. That's absolutely vital to the Iranian economy. There's been talk that they could be used to try and neutralize some of the threats along the Straits of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman through which, you know, the 20% of the oils words, world's oil and gas flows and that's been closed since the beginning of the war and led to these hundred dollar plus a barrel prices of oil and the gas going up, petrol going up at the pumps. As well as them, there's a couple of what's called Marine Expeditionary Units also on their way. One from Okinawa in Japan, which was a forward deployed unit, which has been there some while, that should get there later this week. That's another two and a half thousand Marines. And another one from California, which has of course got to cross the whole Pacific. So it's going to take a little bit longer. But as well as the, you know, the talk about talks and the talk about them willing to talk, there is also a ratcheting up of strikes and now these sorts of firm kind of military boots, not so much marching towards the region, but floating towards the region or being flown towards the region.
Adam Fleming
And Gary, we've had two very clear examples already this year of when Donald Trump puts military assets into a zone, he then uses them, even though then people in the interim say, oh, maybe he's just using it to apply pressure. It tends to be the first one. It tends to be that he uses them.
Gary O'Donoghue
Yes, it does, it does. And we saw that obviously with Venezuela, but Venezuela is very, very different to the Middle East. You know, Venezuela is a much more contained idea. It had its risks. But I think, you know, I mean, this is. And again, I'm going to add to the speculation here. You know, if you start dropping paratroopers inside Iran or inside Iranian territory onto Iranian islands, then you're going to get casualties. There's no question you're going to get casualties. Americans have already suffered some casualties. They're in the very, very small numbers in this week. Well, what are we, week four of the war now? And the thing I would always say to people is that the one advantage, places like countries like Iran, potentially even, you know, other dictatorships, autocracies around the world, the one big advantage they have is that they don't need to worry about public opinion in the way an American president does, or any leader of a democracy. Publican opinion can completely dismantle your case for what you're doing. It can make things really difficult, really uncomfortable, really quickly and in a brutal sense starting to see, you know, service personnel getting killed, American boys getting killed, American boys and girls getting killed in the theatre of the war. That can shift public opinion enormously quickly and that is the asymmetric nature of what you're dealing with when on the one hand you're a democracy and you're taking on an albeit tiny minnow in military terms as an opponent.
Adam Fleming
Gary, live from the Floribad. Thank you very much.
Gary O'Donoghue
Bless.
Adam Fleming
Now, in other news The BBC has unveiled its new Director general who will be replacing Tim Davy, who's been at the helm for a few years now. It's a guy called Matt Britain who used to be a very senior boss at Google, the tech company. So what is a big broadcaster doing bringing in a big tech guy? The person who can at least speculate about that is the BBC's culture and media editor, Katie Razzle. Hello, Katie.
Gary O'Donoghue
Hi.
Adam Fleming
We should say this has been the worst kept secret in broadcasting, hasn't it? This guy?
Katie Razzle
It really, really has. I mean, I wrote an article that went out on Monday but it was being reported before that. In fact, Alex Farber, we just had him on the media show, he's the Times media correspondent and he had the scoop that Matt Britton was the front runner back in February. Yeah, so it has. He just said I joined the dots. Yeah, he said something quite funny, which was I, he said something like, I, I. People kept saying to me, it's going to be someone like Matt Britton. And he said, and then I joined the do. It wasn't like Matt Britain, it was Matt Britain.
Adam Fleming
But I suppose that just makes you realize this is not a normal job application process. There's a lot of stakeholders, there really
Katie Razzle
are, in fact, I should try and pull out for you, but I don't know where it is. But anyway, the, the job application which people did have to apply for this job and the deadline was New Year's Eve, that would ruin your New Year's Eve, wouldn't it? Or maybe it would be good because you'd get it done and then party. Or maybe they're not those kind of people, I don't know. Anyway, very, very lengthy job application process with all the attributes you needed, but they weren't expecting anyone to have all those attributes because it really is a lot because it's everything from editor in chief to, you know, chief strategist to the person who, you know, has the vision to the person who lobbies, to the person who speaks to government all the time, to, you know, it's just an endless list of things that you need to know and have.
Adam Fleming
And what do we know about Matt Britton?
Katie Razzle
Well, we know quite a lot, actually. The thing that people got excited about, or some people got excited about was that he once was an international rower. So in the 80s he was very good at rowing. He, he rode for Cambridge in the boat race and he also rode for Great Britain and won a bronze at a world championship back in the 1980s. Now that's sort of entirely Irrelevant, but also relevant because the number of people who are pushing at me in those behind the scenes conversations you have when you're trying to work out about somebody, all these people pushing me, it makes him a brilliant team player. In fact, someone said to me on background, the thing about Tim Davy, the outgoing one who was a big runner was he had the loneliness of the long distance runner. Someone told me where, exactly where is Matt Britton is a team player. He always uses rowing analogies. He's very much, you know, very, very into teams and building good teams and working with teams and actually rowing together. Someone said to me, so there we go.
Adam Fleming
David would be appalled at the idea that he wasn't a team player.
Katie Razzle
He absolutely would. And I, I'm sure he wasn't.
Adam Fleming
Metaphor of speak for itself.
Katie Razzle
Exactly that. All I'm saying is that's what people were telling me. But then more pertinent for the job, he spent nearly 20 years at Google. The last 10 he was president of Europe, the Middle east and Africa. So that's, you know, obviously the, the, the lead across those regions, but very much, I mean, what people, you know, because I guess some people might say, but look, hold on, it's a big tech company, all the decisions are made on the west coast of America. It doesn't really, you know, how powerful are you in that role? But I'm told, yes, very powerful in fact, particularly because a lot of the regulation drive was coming from Europe. So he was spearheading the response to, you know, the requirements for, for more regulation and how Google responded to that. And also there was a moment, the most testing moment I think probably in his time at Google, was when YouTube, which is owned by Google, there was an issue with the advertisers pulling their adverts after it turned out that their adverts were running next to various hate speech and various other things. That was a big problem obviously for Google and I'm told he dealt with it very swiftly. He apologized quickly, he was instrumental in getting it changed. So that's his experience actually. He has not been at Google since the end of 2024. I mean his salary is not public, unlike the director general salary. So his salary here will be public. We already know how much it is, £565,000 a year. But he, his, he, he must have earned an awful lot of money. Many millions, people speculate through his time at Google. Probably lots of shares and shares and all that. And he's taken a, what he called a mini gap year. He wanted to spend time with his family, he learned to scuba dive. As I understand it from his LinkedIn page, he bought himself a single sculling boat. So presumably he's been doing a bit more rowing than he had had at Google. Which does also mean, because that was the end of 2024, he left Google. He's, he's available, you know, he, he doesn't have this long notice period that a lot of these high profile bosses have when you're trying to get them over to a new company and gardening leave and all of that. So he can start immediately. And I would say based on the fact that the BBC needs to renegotiate its charter pretty fast with the government, they needed someone in position fast.
Adam Fleming
And Google is, is interesting. I'm thinking back to my time as a political correspondent in the 2010s actually. It was in the news a lot then because there was this stuff about content being adjacent to terrorist content on YouTube. There was copyright stuff, there was tax stuff. Yeah, that infamous clip of him in front of the Select Committee where Meg Hillier, the Labor mp, is like asking him how much he earns and he doesn't know exactly.
Katie Razzle
And that was, that was all back in the sort of mid 2010s, that was actually 2016, 2017. So, you know, he was there. Google had finally had agreed that they would pay some back tax after a great deal of, you know, headlines and controversy about how little tax they paid in the uk and they had arguments about why that was and why they were headquartered in Ireland and all of that. And they agreed to pay £130 million in back taxes, which people even then said wasn't enough. But, but that was an agreement. And, and he, he was the face of Google in the UK in front of the Public Accounts Committee and it got quite testy and at one point he was asked, you know, about his salary and he looked uncomfortable, said he couldn't remember and that he would give a figure. And that caused some pretty negative headlines about him. And you know, a boss who earned so much they can't remember their own salary, whether that was fair or unfair. But his salary was never made public. So he did say he let the committee know, but we certainly never found out what that salary was.
Adam Fleming
So in terms of the, the office he's walking into, what are some things, I don't want to use that horrible cliche of like what's in his in tray? Because no one has an in tray anymore. He certainly would have an in tray.
Katie Razzle
No, well, he might have a sort of Google based Sort of virtual in tray. I don't know.
Adam Fleming
Well, he said we use teams.
Katie Razzle
Oh, yes, good point. Sorry, teams.
Adam Fleming
Little BBC insight there. Yeah. What are some things that he'll be having to think about from day one?
Katie Razzle
Well, looming always, of course, is the President Trump defamation case, which is taking up quite a lot of headspace at the BBC, but that's being dealt with by lawyers in America, American lawyers for the BBC and obviously President Trump's lawyers. But that's, that's there. The key one in terms of the sort of short term, long term is obviously the charter renewal, the conversations with the government ahead of the next stage of that is a white paper, when the government sets out its thinking. The BBC has been lobbying, obviously, and, and did a response to the Green Paper in that it did not say what it's fund, what, how it thought the BBC should be funded. So there's still, that's still up for grabs. In terms of what, how is the BBC going to be funded into the future? What is, what does the BBC want that funding to? Where does it want it to come from and what is the government going to decide about that?
Adam Fleming
In other words, is it the license fee as it is now, but maybe a little bit smaller, or is it general taxation so that everyone pay kind of related to their income, or is it linked to council tax? But everyone seems to be rejecting the idea of advertising or subscription.
Katie Razzle
Yes. So everybody's rejected the advertising idea, basically. I mean, I, the way I see it, you can't do it from advertising because that would have such a terrible impact on all the other public service media that does rely on advertising. So, you know, and if you're talking about Google and how, you know, one of the criticisms, I suppose, of, of getting someone from big tech into the BBC is that sort of Silicon Valley mindset. Fine, you might think, great, he'll be able to lead us into the future. And that may well be true and steer us through in this new globalized media landscape. But if you look at the figures, you know, Google basically was responsible for decimating the ad market when it came to, for example, local and regional newspapers, as all that ad money moved from media to tech, not just Google obviously, but Facebook, now Meta, I think, you know, now I think Google and Meta account for at least half the ad spend in the uk. That's what the Press Gazette says anyway. And that would have been far lower, you know, at the beginning of his time there. So, so there's a sort of argument which is the ad spend now is so about A vital part of the media ecosystem and, and vital for the likes of ITV, channel 4, channel 5. If you said the BBC needed to be. Be dependent on advertising as well, that would, that would cause serious problems. But what is the answer then?
Adam Fleming
Yeah, well, we'll find out in the Next sort of 18 months, won't we? Because that's when it has to be decided. I'm thinking about Tim Davy has left him a little sort of welcoming present in his office, hasn't he, in that? One of the things that Tim Davy and the chair Samir Shah were fighting for was to end this. Every 10 years the BBC's existence gets renegotiated in this charter. And now basically the government have said, oh, we might make your charter permanent. So that actually your negotiations are just about how the BBC is operating and how the level of its funding as opposed to every 10 years. Is the BBC going to exist for another 10 years?
Katie Razzle
Yes, and I'm interested in how that works. But Lisa Nandy has pretty much said, the Cultural Secretary, she's pretty much said that is what they were going to do. She came on the media show last week and basically said that. And so that, that is something the BBC has been fighting for. Why do we always have to be justifying our existence again and worried about whether we're going to exist for the next 10 years? The only thing I'd say on that, if every 10 years you are renegotiating, which you will be, the BBC will be funding and its terms, then presumably you could see a situation where another government of a different kind came in and said, well, the funding settlement we're going to offer you this time is, I'm joking, but like 10p or 10p or whatever. And that would mean the BBC couldn't exist anymore. So I don't quite understand that existence thing, other than it's a signal, isn't it, that the BBC is an important part of national life, a light on the hill, as Lisa Nandy calls it, and therefore it's worth preserving.
Adam Fleming
And I'm just thinking back to Matt Britton's CV or his LinkedIn page. One thing that isn't really there is journalism and previous director generals have usually got in trouble for journalistic output at the BBC.
Katie Razzle
Yeah, so it's fair to say he has almost no journalistic experience, no editorial experience and also no program making experience. And you would say that those are two key things that the BBC now caveat, he will be getting a director, Deputy Director General who no doubt will have that experience. He's good at building teams around him, I'm told, who do. But you're right. If you look back at the series of mistakes that have happened, some of them, many of them have emanated from news and current affairs. And it's not just about the mistakes happening. It's also about the fact that it took the BBC a long time to act and make a decision, make us. It seems to me that what you've got to do is make a speedy decision, get that down off iplayer, apologize quickly. And yet the BBC time and time again does not manage to do that. I'm not saying it's the only company that doesn't manage, but it's so high profile and these kind of mistakes are so high profile that it gets in trouble in that. And, and now it may well be that he is a very swift decision maker. He takes decisions fast and you know, he will change things and he'll put in processes to change things. But at the moment you look from the, from the, well, outside. No, you look from the inside and you think the problem was they didn't make decisions fast enough. If you bring someone in who, who doesn't have the experience of, of news and how it works, then is that going to speed things up? I don't know.
Adam Fleming
Very interesting. I'm also just thinking back to last year when I was coming into our building and I was looking downstairs into the newsroom which is in the basement, and I saw the Director General, Tim Davy, showing Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, around the newsroom and I thought, that's weird. But then I thought about it a bit more and I was like, actually, no, in the modern world, the BBC Director General and the CEO of Apple have maybe got more in common than you would have thought, like 10, 15, 20 years ago. And so now that sort of. If you're the chair of the BBC and the board of the BBC looking for a new dg, you can then see why they'd want a sort of. Of Apple y techie kind of guy.
Katie Razzle
Exactly. And that's what they say in the press release. Samir Shah, who's chairman of the board, he talks about Matt Britain having the skills to navigate the organization through the many changes taking place in the media market and in audience behaviors. And he's talking about, sorry, where is it?
Adam Fleming
Katie has printed off the press release.
Katie Razzle
Actually, Roxanne, my lovely producer printed it off in this press release. Matt Britton says this is a moment of real risk, yet also real opportunity. The BBC needs the pace and energy to be both where stories are and where audiences are. And I think that's the, that's the sort of key thing, isn't it? The BBC has just recently done a deal with YouTube to put his content, more its content onto YouTube. He is seen as the man who can steer the BBC with all his digital, technical but you know, big tech expertise and knowledge that he can see where things are going is the hope and he can make sure that the BBC is there, not just sort of surviving but thriving. But then I suppose some people would point to, you know, there'd be moments and you know the BBC is a place of innovation. It has been the whole, you know, it invented, you know, the media as we know it, if you like. And in recent years the iplayer was such a kind of innovative product and really ahead of its time and was the fastest growing streaming platform in the UK and all of that.
Adam Fleming
But, and it still is huge, and
Katie Razzle
still is huge, but has felt now it's been kind of slightly outpaced and out innovated by its competitors partly because they are putting so much money into it. So it's, you know, these are the areas where you think this guy's going to come along and have a look and, and, and, and really for force or forge some real change.
Adam Fleming
And that's what I think will be very interesting about what Matt Britain, what his pitch is when he comes to introduce himself to his new colleagues. Because in this studio last year Tim Davey, the DG did an all staff call. I was kind of hosting and it was about his vision for the, the next charter and the future of the BBC. Sensible stuff. And it was well presented with lots of energy like he always does. But in the back of my mind I was like this is just more of the same and we don't feel like we're in a very, more of the same kind of world for anything these days.
Katie Razzle
We, we don't. And I think it sounds to me from, from what I've gleaned about Matt Britton from people who know him is that, and they actually said this in the famous press release that you're joking about. But, but he, the plan is that he comes in and he arrives I think the day after Tim Davy leaves. So that's next week and then he will sort of watch and meet people and learn and all that and he'll officially take up the role on the 18th of May. So he's got sort of say six weeks to kind of observe and it seems to me some of the best leaders they do that, don't they? They come in and they look at things before they make any decisions. But I would expect that there will be. Well, he would plan to make some big decisions. He's got to make huge cuts. I mean, they've already announced these, you know, hundreds of millions of pounds that they need to save. If he's going to want to then spend it, you know, investing in the iplayer, for example, or making BBC, he's going to have to cut even more and he's going to have to be making these, these hard choices pretty fast.
Adam Fleming
I wonder what his favorite podcast is.
Katie Razzle
It's bound to be the news. I mean, the media show.
Adam Fleming
I mean, you can have more than one favorite podcast, I think. Casey, thank you very much.
Katie Razzle
Thank you.
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Gary O'Donoghue
This is Mike Borlow of Lexicon Valley and I'm Bob Garfield. Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words? Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language? Hey, us too. So join us on Lexicon Valley to chew over the history, culture and many mysteries of English, plus some wisecracks. Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts.
Alex Kanchowitz
Hi, this is Alex Kanchowitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Adam Fleming
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Gary O'Donoghue
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Date: March 25, 2026
Host: Adam Fleming
Guests: Gary O’Donoghue (BBC Chief North America Correspondent), Katie Razzle (BBC Culture and Media Editor)
This episode of Newscast delves into two major stories:
The episode is structured in two main segments, featuring expert insights and candid commentary, with Adam Fleming hosting in his signature, conversational tone.
[00:56–13:22] Discussion between Adam Fleming and Gary O’Donoghue
Confusion and Contradiction: Reports surfaced of a 15-point US peace plan, but Iran rejected it, calling the US "negotiating with itself". The White House held an unusually timed press briefing to address the confusion but revealed little concrete progress.
Iran’s Red Lines: Demands reported in the plan—such as ending uranium enrichment and support for proxies—remain non-starters for Iran. Rejection was broadcast via Iran's state TV, but communication lines are murky.
Opaque Negotiations: Little clarity on the real level of communication; much of the information flows through intermediaries and anonymous sources, fueling speculation.
The Strategy of the Briefing: The press conference was an exceptional event—rare, crowded, charged by a vacuum of information.
Military Buildup: US is deploying elite 82nd Airborne units and Marine Expeditionary Units toward the Middle East, with speculation around possible direct military action, especially involving key oil export infrastructure.
Domestic US Political Risk: The presence of troops often signals eventual action from President Trump, which can result in American casualties—this can sway public opinion back home in ways autocratic regimes don't have to worry about.
[13:34–29:30] Conversation between Adam Fleming and Katie Razzle
Appointment Details & Background: Matt Britton, formerly president at Google for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, is announced as the new Director General (DG) of the BBC, replacing Tim Davy. His selection was an open secret in media circles.
His Qualities and CV:
No Journalism Credentials: Britton lacks any direct experience in journalism or programming, although a Deputy DG with editorial experience is expected to be appointed.
Immediate Challenges:
Media Ecosystem and Advertisements:
Innovation and Digital Direction:
Permanent Charter Debate:
Leadership Style and Plans:
On the unique demands of the DG job:
"The job application...very lengthy job application process with all the attributes you needed, but they weren't expecting anyone to have all those attributes because it really is a lot because it's everything from editor in chief to, you know, chief strategist to the person who, you know, has the vision..."
—Katie Razzle (14:40)
On the significance of tech background:
"In the modern world, the BBC Director General and the CEO of Apple have maybe got more in common than you would have thought, like 10, 15, 20 years ago."
—Adam Fleming (25:34)
On his transition into the role:
"The plan is that he comes in and...he will sort of watch and meet people and learn and all that and he'll officially take up the role on the 18th of May."
—Katie Razzle (28:21)
Throughout, Adam Fleming and guests maintain a lively, accessible, but authoritative tone. Interviews are both informative and conversational, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and wry observations.
"Sort of trying to pour a bit of cold water on this whole 15 point plan idea...she wouldn't get into what she described as the nitty gritty."
—Gary O’Donoghue [03:13]
"It's the vacuum which is filled by the speculation that the White House then complains about."
—Gary O’Donoghue [07:23]
"If you bring someone in who doesn't have the experience of news and how it works, then is that going to speed things up? I don't know."
—Katie Razzle [25:22]
This episode sheds light on the confusion and high stakes in current US-Iran relations, making sense of diplomatic rumor and military posturing, while also giving listeners a first look at the BBC's surprising new leadership choice and the challenges facing modern public service media. Both stories are treated with a blend of journalistic rigor and accessible, relatable commentary.
For listeners who want to dive deeper into either international affairs or the future of the BBC, this episode of Newscast provides insider context and a range of informed perspectives.