Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S4 Episode 11: In conversation with Julian Worricker
40 Plays4 months ago
Today John and Dejan are discussing journalism, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Israel=Palestine conflict with BBC journalist Julian Worricker. Please follow us on all platforms @debatablediscussions, and rate us 5*.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Dejan
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the debatable discussions podcast. Today, we're incredibly lucky to be joined by our guest Julian Warwicker. Many thanks for coming today.
00:00:11
Julian Worricker
pleasure, Diane and john.
00:00:13
John Gartside
Thank you. So for our listeners who don't know, Julian Warwicker is an esteemed presenter on the BBC World Service. He's also presented for many other BBC programmes, notably BBC Radio 4.
00:00:28
John Gartside
So it is an honour to have you on today, Julian.
00:00:32
Julian Worricker
Thank
Journalism in Conflict Zones
00:00:32
Julian Worricker
you.
00:00:34
Dejan
To begin with, some questions about sort of journalism overall. Some of our viewers may be interested in sort of either entering their profession or how does it work from a bit of a behind the scenes sort of perspectives.
00:00:47
John Gartside
Thank you.
00:00:48
Dejan
So how do journalists report from areas of conflict?
00:00:53
Dejan
Sort of are there any limits in that reporting, do you think?
00:00:57
Julian Worricker
Yeah, there are. depends what kind of organization you're working for. If you're working for one of the longer established media organisations, then there are all sorts of protocols and obviously security issues for people to consider.
00:01:10
Dejan
Thank you.
00:01:18
Julian Worricker
mean, I've never been a sort war correspondent or on the front line, but I have been to one or two places around the world where conflict is happening, albeit in my case at a fairly safe distance.
00:01:30
Julian Worricker
But certainly my colleagues who do go to the front line and who do take sort of the bigger risks, they will always go through a really rigorous series of safety training exercises before they go anywhere near a war zone.
00:01:46
Julian Worricker
and there will always be within the system that they then operate from somebody actually in charge of their safety. And that person's role is obviously to sort of monitor on a day-to-day basis how the reporting team, so that would be obviously the person did see on the camera, but the camera crew and all the other people involved,
00:02:08
Julian Worricker
monitor how they are and where they're going and what is changing on the ground to make any new risks more significant. But they will also be there to deal with those who are sort ultimately in charge of the actual conflict itself, because inevitably you'll be behind the the front lines to ah an extent.
00:02:17
Dejan
Thank
00:02:31
Julian Worricker
And you might have situations, for example, where where a particular correspondent or reporter is embedded, as they call it, with particular groups of military forces.
00:02:42
Julian Worricker
So you basically are with the people doing the fighting, you can only do that if you are entirely sort in the hands of those in charge of that conflict, and if they tell you that you've got to get out because it's too dangerous, you get out.
00:02:58
Julian Worricker
And that's the way the sort of the bigger media organizations operate in those situations. What you might though see on a slightly smaller scale is individuals who decide that they want to try and get the story ahead of the rest.
00:03:14
Julian Worricker
They might be prepared to take more risk as a result. does mean they might sometimes get the story first, But sadly, during the time that I've worked as a journalist, there have been one or two cases, thankfully not too many, where somebody has taken what turned out to be a rather unwise level of risk might not have come out alive from the situation. So it's dangerous, it's difficult. Big organizations have a pretty organized way of dealing with it.
00:03:44
Julian Worricker
those who decide to operate almost as a sort of separate entity have to, to an extent, look after themselves. But it's difficult. i I mean, I'm too old now, but even when I was younger, I don't think I'd have fancied being a frontline war reporter because it's very full on and it's pretty hard.
00:04:03
John Gartside
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Challenges in Reporting from China and Russia
00:04:04
John Gartside
And sort of of similar to this idea of the limits of reporting, I guess that's physically quite a large limit in a war zone. But what are the sort of limitations when a journalist is reporting from a country which is perhaps very ideologically different, somewhere like China?
00:04:21
John Gartside
How is that regulated or allowed journalism from the Western world there? Yeah.
00:04:28
Julian Worricker
Well, in China, the BBC has got correspondence based in Beijing, and they are able to tell the British audience pretty accurately and pretty reliably what their sort reading of the politics of China is at any given moment.
00:04:45
Julian Worricker
And the Chinese government is reasonably accepting of that arrangement because they appreciate that the audience for that is not the audience in China.
00:04:45
Dejan
Thank you.
00:04:55
Julian Worricker
Where the government in China becomes much more wary of, for example, BBC output is when the BBC World Service, for example, is beaming its own output into China, because then, of course, the Chinese population is potentially hearing stuff that the Chinese government would rather they didn't hear.
00:05:15
Julian Worricker
And that's when it gets slightly more complicated. mean, the same is true, for example, when you look at the BBC's long-established Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg, who's been based in Moscow for years. He speaks Russian. He's very highly respected around the world.
00:05:29
Julian Worricker
and the Russian authorities who have thrown out quite a lot of Western journalists, particularly in last couple of years since the full-scale war in Ukraine began. He has managed to stay. He's been to a few press conferences over the years where he's asked some reasonably tough questions of Vladimir Putin, and he's still there.
00:05:45
Julian Worricker
But again, what Russia would not want to have happen is for a great deal of BBC output to reach the wider Russian population. If Steve Rosenberg tells the story of Moscow and the Kremlin to a British audience, they're okay with it, by and large.
00:06:02
Julian Worricker
if they hear the BBC's version of the story of Russia into a Russian audience, then it's more difficult.
00:06:10
John Gartside
Hey.
00:06:12
Dejan
Talking about sort of countries like Russia and China, where the press is controlled, we live in sort of Western Europe, where there's freedom
Press Freedom and Impartiality in the West
00:06:24
Dejan
of press. But I want to just ask you about that notion.
00:06:28
Dejan
Do you think the press is truly free?
00:06:32
Julian Worricker
Truly, interested you had the word truly. Probably about as free as it'll ever be, by by and large. And the reason I say that is that clearly when you look around the enormous array of choices that a typical British audience has in order to consume its news, then accepting the fact that if you go to the newspaper industry for example, the ah newspaper industry is all by and large owned by some extremely wealthy people might have particular reason to promote certain stories above another and all that kind of thing.
00:06:55
Dejan
Thank you.
00:07:11
Julian Worricker
We know that kind of happens and I think the the savvy audience do that. It's not true of all newspapers but quite a lot of them it is. When you look at the broadcast media, you've got the BBC and Sky and ITV News who are all doing similar things in terms of how they are, what they are aiming to do under the Ofcom rules about being impartial and fair and all the other things that we know that they're supposed to be. And I think by and large, they are.
00:07:37
Julian Worricker
And of course, all that is regulated by an independent body called Ofcom who keep an eye on them to make sure that they do what they say they're going to do. And we'll wrap them over the knuckles if they don't. And and more than that.
00:07:48
Julian Worricker
And of course, far, far more now, certainly than when I began in the world of journalism, is determined by what people are reading online and what people are putting online.
00:07:59
Julian Worricker
So actually, I mean, I think the world of of media and storytelling now is arguably far more democratic. than it was when I started out, because none of the kind of stuff that you can now see online existed in the mid-1980s when I began.
00:08:10
Dejan
Thank you.
00:08:15
Julian Worricker
mean, i clearly the problem with it, or or sometimes the problem with it, is that there's so much of it and it's quite hard to determine the bits that you can rely on and the bits that you can't.
00:08:25
Julian Worricker
it does rely on the audience to be reasonably discerning in terms of what they believe and what they don't. And ideally, you know, try and find a number of different sources for a particular story to try and make sure that it's backed up by another, that it's, you know, so it's not just some rogue report on something that turns out not to be true because there are some fair number of bad actors out there online.
00:08:49
John Gartside
Thank
00:08:51
Julian Worricker
I think in in terms of truly free, um yeah, I think it probably is because there's now so much of it and there's so much choice. But the onus is now more on the consumer to navigate a way through all of that.
00:09:04
John Gartside
And Julian, you mentioned there your experience as a journalist. And so I thought perhaps we could ask you about sort of the World Service and obviously your role in the World Service. And how does the World Service manage to provide a sort of British standard and a British sort of honesty of broadcasting whilst having an audience in regions where perhaps they hear a very sort of different story from their own domestic news?
00:09:34
Julian Worricker
Well, the World Service, because it's part of the BBC, um has to adhere to the BBC's rules about impartiality and how we cover news and how we broadcast that to the wider world. So the BBC internationally is no different than it is nationally in terms of the standards it tries to adhere to.
00:09:56
Julian Worricker
So I think when people tune into the BBC World Service, they kind of know that. certainly in terms of the correspondence that we get from people who are listening, they really do, well, they recognize that.
00:10:10
Julian Worricker
and they value that. often what they highlight if they get in touch is the contrast between what they might be being fed in their own country, especially if that country is quite restrictive in terms of what it will allow its people to read and hear.
00:10:13
Dejan
Thank you.
00:10:26
Julian Worricker
and they suddenly hear the difference and something a little bit more critical sometimes of that country's own government they regard that as something of a breath of fresh air.
00:10:30
John Gartside
Okay.
00:10:37
Julian Worricker
actually it's interesting, in even in the context of another democracy, arguably the most powerful, it is the most powerful democracy in the world, the United States, we get quite a lot of correspondence from people who listen to World Service Program in America who do so because they want to hear something which is aiming to be impartial rather than the kind of material you now get coming out of your television screens and your radios in America, which is quite openly partial in one direction or another, that's Fox News on one side or MSNBC and on the other.
00:11:01
John Gartside
Thank you.
00:11:16
Julian Worricker
people are, there's an appetite
00:11:18
Dejan
Thank you.
00:11:19
Julian Worricker
for something that sort of is trying not to bang one particular political drum. also in America particularly, most of those networks will concentrate very, very, very much on American news and they will see everything through an an American lens.
00:11:37
Julian Worricker
And one of the things that the World Service still tries to do is, while yes, it's coming from London and it's therefore got a ah ah slight British bias, we will still try as hard as we can give as wide a perspective as we as possibly can on stories that we are telling from from all over the world. And I think there is bit of a difference.
00:11:57
Julian Worricker
you listen to an American radio station and then you listen to the World Service, I think you will hear a big difference in both the agenda and the treatment of the various stories that are covered.
00:12:08
Dejan
Mentioning bias there, how does a journalist with the BBC sort of leave their personal agenda before going on air? How do they manage to sort of say, this is what I believe, but I'm not going to say it. I'm going to sort focus on the facts.
00:12:26
Julian Worricker
think it's something that it's ah increasingly difficult to communicate how that happens these days, because, you know, when I was starting out, that was just the accepted way that it was done.
00:12:38
Julian Worricker
And the kind of material that we now read and see that is very openly of one particular opinion, didn't really exist to anything like the extent it does now.
00:12:50
Julian Worricker
So as I was starting out, your usual mode of operation was that you read stuff that you kind of trusted and you knew it was kind of balanced either way or the other. Now, it didn't stop people in the 1970s and 80s accusing the BBC of being biased, believe me.
00:13:04
Julian Worricker
But there was less going on around it that necessarily meant that people were absolutely as as loud and critical of an organization like the BBC as they are now. In terms of how we operate, I mean, I think most of us who do what I do, we do wear it as a badge of honor that when we walk into the studio, we do genuinely sit there thinking, okay, it really doesn't matter the the jot what I think about this.
00:13:30
Julian Worricker
The reason I'm sitting in front of this microphone is to ask the kinds of questions that I think a curious audience wants answers to.
00:13:40
Julian Worricker
So that might mean that you have to give a reasonably searching interview of a minister of the right politically, just as you do a minister of the left.
00:13:50
Dejan
Thank you.
00:13:52
Julian Worricker
If you're dealing with international news, it means that you might have to be as rigorous with somebody representing the Israeli point of view, as you do with somebody representing the Palestinian point of view, knowing full well that in doing that, there will be a body of people watching or listening who immediately assume that you're biased because you've asked a reasonably searching question of the person that they already agree with.
00:14:16
Julian Worricker
And that doesn't mean that we get it right all the time. I think there are plenty of examples in recent times of when we didn't get it right. the aim is always to achieve that kind of ah ah approach.
00:14:28
Julian Worricker
And I think at a time when opinion generally across this country and across the world is so polarized, organizations like the BBC and Sky and ITV and one or two others of the more established media world
00:14:44
Julian Worricker
We're all getting it in the neck a lot because we're still trying to steer this impartial course where the vast majority of people watching and listening are very partial on one side or the other, and therefore they see impartiality as bias.
00:14:59
Julian Worricker
And I think that's problem that we're not very successfully tackling at the moment.
00:15:05
Dejan
And before we move on to the more current world events section, I've just got one last question regarding sort of your work at the BBC, which is that how do you both personally and sort of the BBC as an organisation...
00:15:05
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:15:20
Dejan
come to peace with people online, being angry and saying, well, that's not impartial.
Social Media's Impact on Journalism
00:15:27
Dejan
You're clearly biased, you know, and making all these claims when, how do you sort of balance
00:15:33
Dejan
Do you think it's hard for journalists nowadays, harder than it was maybe earlier?
00:15:37
Julian Worricker
Yeah, I think it is.
00:15:37
Dejan
Yeah.
00:15:38
Julian Worricker
I think it probably is harder. I mean, clearly the level of scrutiny is far, far, far higher than it once was. level of instant engagement that now exists didn't used to exist.
00:15:49
Julian Worricker
mean, I'm a little bit wary of being... on social media or some elements of social media, particularly visibly, because I don't really want to end up having endless arguments with people who are are watching or listening every word that I've uttered on the air.
00:16:09
Julian Worricker
somebody sends me an email that's criticising something that I've done or said, assuming it's not just sort personally offensive, I'm quite happy to engage with it because I quite enjoy the level of hopefully reasonably civilised debate
00:16:16
John Gartside
right.
00:16:22
Julian Worricker
that occurs in those situations and sometimes it's quite refreshing when you actually get to the point at the end of that kind of exchange and somebody says, okay, yeah, I kind of see what you mean. I don't entirely agree with you, but you that's good. It's good that you sort of had the the the conversation.
00:16:34
Julian Worricker
Quite happy to do that. But if somebody just gets in touch and calls you every name under the sun, then you don't really see much point in responding to that, to be honest. I try and avoid reading that kind of stuff because clearly you we have to be reasonably thick-skinned when we do what we do.
00:16:48
Julian Worricker
But there is a certain point beyond which you think, well, frankly, you know, life is too short to be dealing with this. And just, I mean, one thing on that, and I mean, I'm on the radio now, so I'm not visible when I'm on the air, obviously.
00:16:59
Julian Worricker
I have done television in the past, where I think the wider public thinks that somehow they have a slightly more of an entitlement to get in touch and make often quite personal observations about what they see.
00:17:08
John Gartside
Thank you.
00:17:12
Julian Worricker
And sadly in that context, and I don't know what it is or why it is but there is still undoubtedly case where women on the air get far more really pretty unpleasant stuff from a small cross-section of the public.
00:17:13
Dejan
Thank you.
00:17:28
Julian Worricker
They get more than men do, and I don't know what that's all about, but unfortunately it is still the case.
00:17:34
John Gartside
But I think that is quite interesting what you said there, especially how social media in general has made us almost a bit more opinionated and it has opened, I guess, organisations like the BBC up to this sort of realm of scrutiny.
War in Ukraine and Geopolitical Responses
00:17:50
John Gartside
Shifting the focus on to some current geopolitical affairs, which I'm sure you're very well versed in, were wondering if you could perhaps provide us with some analysis and our listeners as well, covering the recent developments in the war in Ukraine.
00:18:06
John Gartside
It's dominated the headlines recently with Trump. Why, perhaps?
00:18:13
Julian Worricker
Well, I think it's since Donald Trump became president, there's obviously been a serious doubt in the minds people in Ukraine and in the countries that are supporting of Ukraine as to whether he is on their side, frankly. I think it got to that point because there were all manner of public statements that were made by him and other senior figures within his administration.
00:18:38
Julian Worricker
that raised questions about that that situation. And of course there was that famous moment in the Oval Office where President Zelensky visited and President Trump and the Vice President as well with Zelensky ended up having an argument with him in front of the cameras, which was quite one of the most extraordinary things that I've seen.
00:18:58
Julian Worricker
on the international stage in terms of diplomacy for quite a while.
00:18:59
John Gartside
Bye.
00:19:03
Julian Worricker
And there were questions as to whether or not you Donald Trump was actually thinking that this was an even contest in terms of the war, even in the sense that he regarded Vladimir Putin in the same way that he regarded Volodymyr Zelensky, which I think to a lot of people who were supportive of Ukraine looked utterly baffling because, you know, whether you like it, whatever you else you think about that conflict, it was pretty obvious who started it.
00:19:27
Julian Worricker
And I think that's where the problem arose in in sort of wider public's mind.
00:19:27
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:19:33
Julian Worricker
We do now, though, we are talking on the 15th of July, we do now seem to be in a slightly different place, potentially. Donald Trump famously said he could stop that war in a day after he became president.
00:19:41
Dejan
Thank you.
00:19:46
Julian Worricker
Well, he hasn't. Vladimir Putin is a smart, arguably quite devious character who is quite good at leading people into a mindset that says, oh, we've nearly got a deal done here. It's close to being resolved. And then he sort of pulls back from where people thought he was.
00:20:06
Julian Worricker
Donald Trump now seems to be losing patience with him. He's made some public statements to that effect in recent times. He suddenly changed his mind about supplying some weapons to Ukraine via NATO, which he previously suggested he wouldn't do.
00:20:21
Julian Worricker
And all of that actually is interesting in domestic politics in the United States, because... Quite a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump did so because they were very drawn the idea that America would no longer be involved in foreign wars in the way that they had before, because it was all about America first.
00:20:40
Julian Worricker
So the fact that they're now watching their own president suddenly saying, well, actually, I think we have got to supply some weapons to Ukraine and this war is dragging on and this is why. And maybe I don't trust that in Putin any longer.
00:20:53
Julian Worricker
So think we're seeing a switch at the moment. That sadly means that I fear there's no sign of that war ending. I've spoken to several people recently on the air, experts in sort of conflict and that part of the world, none of whom can see an obvious way in which it's going to end. mean, the horrible fear is that it sort of drags on and on with no one winner emerging.
00:21:21
Julian Worricker
You know, we've got to the point now where enough weapons have been supplied to Ukraine for them to effectively sort of stand still pretty much militarily. Russia clearly could do more. Let's hope they don't, but they could.
00:21:35
Julian Worricker
So you just, you can't really see how it ends at the moment. You know, you've got Russians occupying roughly 20% of what was Ukrainian soil.
00:21:47
Julian Worricker
The Ukrainians want that back. I think it's hard to envisage a situation when they'll get all of it back. But, you know, while there's such a gulf between the two sides, I fear that war is going to carry on for quite a long time to come.
00:22:05
Dejan
My question there is why do you think that Putin hasn't done more? Why do you think he hasn't sort of either supplied more tanks, more people, more weapons, or even, you know, pushed the big red button.
00:22:20
Dejan
Why do you think he's sort of taking this war in the way he's approaching it? Why is he not just trying to go for a decisive blow?
00:22:29
Julian Worricker
Well, I think the only thing you can assume is that deep down he knows that if he did did push it significantly further, that there is now a quite obvious alliance of countries now perhaps more clearly backed by the United States than people thought a few weeks ago.
00:22:50
Julian Worricker
who would do something quite significant in response. I mean, when he invaded in February 2022, and obviously, you know, the war has gone on in smaller parts of Ukraine since 2014, but the full-scale invasion in 2022, most experts say that Vladimir Putin assumed that in a few days, maybe a few weeks,
00:23:13
Julian Worricker
he would have succeeded in taking Kyiv and other significant parts ah of of Ukraine because he didn't anticipate the level of resistance that occurred. The fact that he didn't achieve that and the fact that very quickly after that this alliance of countries came together in an unusually united way actually across the whole of Europe and then backed by President Biden as it was then in the United States, I think he did underestimate that I think and that certainly seems to be the reading of most most military and diplomatic observers.
00:23:46
Julian Worricker
think he's surely got to be a little bit more wary now, of what would happen if he went further than he has, because he knows there is that quite strong bond amongst the countries who who are backing Ukraine. And of course those countries know that they've kind of got to carry doing that, because clearly one of the other things that people were thinking about was that if Vladimir Putin succeeds in Ukraine, whatever success means in his mind,
00:24:14
Julian Worricker
Then what does that mean for other nearby countries, countries that were once part of the Soviet Union in the past? So Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova, close to Romania, all of those kinds of ah ah smaller countries that were once part of the Soviet Union look very anxiously at what happens in Ukraine because they wonder if they'll be next.
00:24:36
Dejan
My also that around that, do you think he got lied to? Do you think, you know, people lie to Putin saying, for example, his sort military people said, we're going to take it in in four days.
00:24:49
Dejan
We're tremendous shape. Do you think people are afraid to sort of tell him a truth that he doesn't like that he won't like?
00:24:55
John Gartside
Thank you.
00:24:57
Julian Worricker
I don't know. i mean, it's a possibility, isn't it, when you think about it? Because, you know, there did seem to be an extraordinary confidence as to what they thought they could achieve.
00:25:08
Julian Worricker
And the fact that it didn't happen does make you wonder what kind of miscalculation took place before the actual invasion began. mean, one day, I suspect, we might know the truth to that.
00:25:21
Julian Worricker
But I think it's a reasonable theory. And let's face it, it wouldn't be the first time that military organisers have felt unable to tell a very powerful leader the truth about something like that.
00:25:34
Julian Worricker
So, um yeah, it's a distinct possibility. You might well be right.
00:25:39
John Gartside
And sort of similar to that, it's, yeah, to reiterate your point, it is just so interesting thinking that Putin probably just did not realise how strong and united the Western reaction would be.
00:25:50
John Gartside
And in fact, as I'd imagine he was probably a bit taken back by that.
00:25:52
Dejan
Thank you.
00:25:53
John Gartside
He thought, you know, he could easily take it. But actually, the West and rightly has posed a very strong challenge to him.
NATO's Future and Global Defense Dynamics
00:26:01
John Gartside
And a formative part of this challenge has been NATO.
00:26:05
John Gartside
And there have been lots of questions of whether Ukraine would join NATO and other countries in Eastern Europe. In your opinion, what does the future of NATO look like? Will countries, can a country like Ukraine feasibly join NATO?
00:26:20
John Gartside
Or do you just not think that'd be possible?
00:26:23
Julian Worricker
I think it's unlikely that Ukraine would join NATO in the in medium term because it's something that Russia are absolutely dead against.
00:26:33
Julian Worricker
And I think when it comes to some kind of conclusion to this conflict, I think that would be a significant sticking point from the Russian ah ah perspective. They just wouldn't accept that because it would... I mean, one of the things that the Russian argument has always gone back to is how NATO has, as you say, already expanded since the Iron Curtain went down, since countries in in under former Soviet control in Eastern Europe became part of the West, in quotes, and most, if not all,
00:27:02
Julian Worricker
joined NATO, Russia saw that as a sort of an encroaching border which they didn't welcome at all. I think there is an argument that says, you know, maybe some of the NATO countries didn't necessarily take into account exactly the kind of the impact that would have on the psyche of somebody like Vladimir Putin. That's not to say that it it shouldn't have happened, but I think that was probably a miscalculation.
00:27:26
Julian Worricker
the West. But that said, I don't know, I don't think Ukraine can join NATO because I don't think the Russians would tolerate it. In terms of the future of the organization, well again, going back to what we were saying about Donald Trump, again, I think that now looks a little rosier than it did, partly because he once said he thought it was a ah bit of an obsolete organization and he didn't much relish it at all and he got very annoyed and had a point actually.
00:27:37
John Gartside
Yeah.
00:27:50
Julian Worricker
about how much America spends on defense as part of NATO compared with other NATO member countries, ah ah because it was significantly different. He has, and he wasn't alone in this, actually. Barack Obama made this point, and i think Joe Biden probably did too. It's been a fairly consistent refrain from American presidents that why should we do all the heavy lifting when it comes to spending money on defense?
00:28:12
Julian Worricker
as part of NATO. But gradually other NATO member countries, with a few exceptions, have pulled their socks up on that. And there was this commitment made in the last couple of weeks that ultimately they would aim to spend as much as, I think it was 5% of their GDP on defence, not all of it on actual weapons, but the 5% figure was divided up into two different elements.
00:28:32
Julian Worricker
I mean, that said, most of them hadn't said how how they'd pay for it. I don't think, for example, in the current financial situation that the British government finds itself in, I don't understand quite where Sir Keir Starmer thinks he's going to find 5% to spend on defense, but that's his look at it. Well, it's not until I think it's 2035, so they've got 10 years to...
00:28:52
Julian Worricker
to do their sums. But the fact that that NATO have come together with that kind of agreement and that makes Donald Trump happier means that actually I think it looks a slightly more successful and harmonious organization today than it did even a few months ago.
00:28:59
Dejan
Thank you.
00:29:09
Julian Worricker
I think when Donald Trump went back into the White House in January, I suspect there were quite a few NATO member countries who were genuinely concerned about the future of that organization.
00:29:20
Julian Worricker
but now it looks on slightly firmer ground again.
00:29:24
Dejan
And now moving on to sort of east and the conflict going on in Israel-Palestine area.
Israel-Palestine Conflict and Two-State Solution
00:29:34
Dejan
What do you think that will do you think that will come to a solution similarly to sort of your answer regarding the Ukraine? Or do you think there's any any hope there?
00:29:46
Julian Worricker
I was talking to somebody on the air about that this weekend. She is a senior figure within the government of the United Arab Emirates. And her take was to try and steer what she's argued was a kind of moderate route through that particular conflict and wider situation.
00:30:06
Julian Worricker
And I suggested to her that the problem with that conflict was that there aren't many moderate routes. and there aren't many moderate voices emerging from it.
00:30:11
John Gartside
Thank
00:30:14
Julian Worricker
And she acknowledged that. and Her analysis was along the lines of, at the moment, you have an organisation in Hamas in charge in Gaza, who of course the killings and the kidnappings on October the 7th, 2023 in Israel, and we've still got some hostages that are being held to this day, and others who we know are being held, even though they've been killed.
00:30:41
Julian Worricker
You've got them on one side, One of their reasons for existing still is that they don't believe that the state of Israel as it's currently constituted should be on the map.
00:30:54
Julian Worricker
Although there's some argument about whether the military element of Hamas and the political element are are necessarily see eye to eye on that, but you've got that on one side. And then you have a current Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu, which does not believe, and he's very open about this, he does not believe in what was seen as the two-state solution.
00:31:13
Julian Worricker
He's got extreme elements within his coalition who would go far further from that and have done quite publicly about what they say should happen to Palestinians still living in Gaza, not least ones who are living in the occupied, and it is occupied and illegally occupied under international law, West Bank,
00:31:31
Julian Worricker
So you've got such extreme positions who are in theory, according to the wider world, still going to end up concluding with some kind of, as the world advocates, still advocates, two-state solution.
00:31:37
Dejan
Thank
00:31:48
Julian Worricker
And when you talk to experts on in the region about that two-state solution proposal, which has been on the table even since before I was born, pretty much, so that she was older kids.
00:31:58
Julian Worricker
You know, we know, we we are a million miles away from that at the moment. there There have been the odd glimpse during my sort of journalistic career when particular individuals were in the right positions on either side of that debate to make that possibility look as if it was maybe just within reach and then it didn't happen.
00:32:20
Julian Worricker
But none of those individuals are in the right position now, it seems to me. So I think what you might get Again, because President Trump is putting pressure on the situation, whatever you think of some of the things he said about it, it might well be that secures some kind of temporary ceasefire, I'm not convinced it will take you a great deal further than that.
00:32:35
Dejan
So.
00:32:42
Julian Worricker
And of course, amidst all of that, some of the scenes that we witness in Gaza are just beyond horrendous. And I find it, I think it's, well, A, we know how polarizing it is. We know how strong people's opinions are on it.
00:32:58
Julian Worricker
I think it's a horrendously difficult story to tell because people have such strong views on the subject. The Israelis will not let independent journalists into Gaza, so you can't tell the story independently.
00:33:09
Julian Worricker
But then the Israelis will criticize you for telling the story via figures that Hamas supply from Gaza. So constantly, are left without the full picture because so many of the main players involved are making sure that we don't get to see the full picture.
00:33:27
Julian Worricker
I think that's what makes it particularly difficult.
00:33:30
John Gartside
And that does really highlight there, as you said, how a two-state solution is almost incompatible with that level of hostility.
00:33:32
Dejan
Thank you.
00:33:39
John Gartside
Anyway, so thank you very much, Julian, for coming onto the podcast. It's been a really sort of insightful for me, and I'm sure for Dan as well, discussion about journalism, but also these world events, which I think we all see on the news, but it's sort of hard to gain an in-depth and analytical understanding of them.
00:33:58
Julian Worricker
Well, thank you. I've enjoyed it.
00:34:01
Dejan
Thank you yet again, Julian, for coming on. And as always, if you enjoyed the episode, do leave us comment, a review, and do go back to our previous episodes, either with guests or with just John and I. Thank you and see you next week.
00:34:16
John Gartside
See you then.