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The Media Show

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

This is the programme about a revolution in media.

Social media, anti-social media, breaking news, faking news: this is the programme about a revolution in media.

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The Media Show: Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief, Britain's Hardest Worker, Disabled people in TV

03/06/2015

Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief, Britain's Hardest Worker, Disabled people in TV

BBC Radio 4 - The Media Show, Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief, Britain's Hardest Worker, Disabled people in TV

Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Gerard Biard and disabled people in TV. With Steve Hewlett.

Steve Hewlett with news from the media world. Including Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Gerard Biard, the executive producer of Britain's Hardest Worker and disabled people in TV.

Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine, was attacked in January over its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Two gunmen stormed its offices shooting dead several people including the magazine's editor Stephane Charbonnier and four of its cartoonists. Witnesses said they shouted "Allahu Akbar" and "we have avenged the prophet". The attack followed a number of serious threats and a 2011 firebombing for Charlie Hebdo's satire on Islam. Gérard Biard has worked at the magazines since 1992, and has been editor in chief for the past 10 years. Steve talks to him about how the magazine can continue to publish in the same way, and whether free speech can exist alongside the threat of extremism. 

A petition calling on the BBC to abandon its plans for a series, 'Britain's Hardest Worker' which will pitch unemployed and low paid people against each other for a cash prize, now has over 25000 signatures. It's been dubbed by critics as 'poverty porn' and a 'Hunger Games style game show'. Steve Hewlett talks to Labour MP Louise Haigh who fears the programme will demonise working class people, and to executive producer Tim Carter from Twenty Twenty.

A workforce survey by Creative Skillset, the creative industry skills body, has found that just five percent of the TV workforce considers themselves to have a disability, compared to eleven percent of the wider UK working population. It's calling on broadcasters and indies to 'urgently' improve the number. Amongst its other findings, it revealed a marked rise in the number of people doing unpaid work in the creative industries. Steve talks to Dr Kion Ahadi, Head of Research at Creative Skillset about the findings and what needs to be done. 

Producer: Katy Takatsuki.

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