baby reindeer is a drama that purports to be based on a true story but a woman has come forward to say it is about her and that she has been misrepresented. i have a sneaky feeling you might be the death of me. and we will meet the reporter who has uncovered how ai—generated news stories have been passed off as the work of human journalists. the articles had a byline and head shot but it was all ai. let's start with baby reindeer. it tells the story of a scottish comedian, richard gadd, and how he was stalked after serving a woman a drink in a pub. his stalker, named martha in the series, allegedly sent him more than 41,000 emails and left 350 hours of voicemails to his phone. martha also turns up at his home and workplace. baby reindeer is the nickname that his stalker has given him.

and at the beginning of the first episode, we are not told this is based on true events — we are told this is a true story, and that statement has drawn a lot of attention. according to netflix, this has become a huge worldwide hit with 60 million views globally in one month. here is some of the series. every day now, martha would be outside. this ticking timebomb on my life. i would leave first thing in the morning and she would be there. i love you, nipple. think of me at work today. then i would come back, sometimes as late as 11:00 or 12:00 at night, and she would still be there. how was your shift, reindeer, did you think of me? - netflix has declined to comment, but benjamin king, who is netflix's senior director of public policy uk and ireland, did appear before the british parliament's culture media and sport select committee last week, and here he is answering questions from the mp john nicholson.

baby reindeer is an extraordinary story and it is obviously a true story of the horrific abuse that the writer and protagonist richard gadd suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker. we did take every reasonable precaution in disguising the real—life identities of the people involved in that story, in the making of the show... but she has been- identified, hasn't she? whilst also striking a balance with veracity and authenticity of richard's story. because we did not want to anonymise that or make it generic to the point where it's no longer his story because that would undermined the intent behind the show. the series is about its creator, richard gadd, being stalked. he also in the programme is groomed and raped by a male tv comedy executive. netflix and richard gadd have not named either that person — although names have been doing the rounds online —

or the female stalker, but a 58—year—old woman from scotland, fiona harvey, says it is about her, after being identified and named on the internet as the real martha. she gave an interview to piers morgan. it has been watched more than 11 million times. here is a clip of it. first of all, why have you decided to go public? the internet sleuths striked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats, so it was not really a choice. i was forced into this situation. the interview was labelled by unherd magazine as "the lowest form of television". i have been talking to piers morgan about it all. i thought about it carefully because, of course, i was still under the impression from netflix and richard gadd that she was a convicted stalker. i have interviewed a lot of serious criminals in my time for prime documentaries, from serial killers to psychopaths, so i do not take any of these things lightly. if she was a convicted stalker who had gone to prison and put his life through hell, clearly we had to think long

and hard about the public interestjustification in giving her the platform, but i felt there was enough of a question mark surrounding that part of the story to justify her at least giving her side of the story. she is emphatic that there was no court case, there was no conviction, she certainly never pleaded guilty, she says, and there was no prison sentence. did you check ahead of that? did you check that out? whether she had mental health issues, whether she had indeed stalked people? there were obviously other reports of her having stalked other people, but again, nothing that led to any apparent conviction. and i think that is a crucial distinction i would draw here, which is there is a big different legally, never mind anything else, between somebody who may have been obsessive towards people, may have even harassed them, but if it has not crossed the bar of a crime, then to call them in a series where they have been immediately identified, a convicted criminal, is a serious failure by netflix. now, i would counter that by simply saying,

we do not know yet. all we do know is the world journalists have been looking at this now for nearly a month and nobody has found any evidence whatsoever that she has any criminal record, let alone anything to do with richard gadd. i suppose there is a difference between having a criminal record and somebody who may have mental health problems, who may have been accused of stalking, who may have indeed sent tens of thousands of e—mails. i am trying to work out how much you considered all that side of things? we had long conversations about it but i actually have no... i have no qualms at all about offering her the platform because i certainly did not get the feeling when she came in i was dealing with somebody who was a vulnerable person. if anything, she was pretty combative with me. when it comes to the mental health issue, richard gadd has been very, very searingly honest about his own mental health issues, and yet that does not seem to have been factored into people's concerns. he was allowed a platform to tell what he said was his story. he has got self—confessed

mental health issues, he had heavy drug abuse issues, he had very promiscuous sex—life issues and so on, which he talks about very frankly — and to his credit — but if he's going to be allowed to do that, then i think the person that he has put up there as a convicted stalker, who has gone to prison for harassing him, should be allowed to have her say if, as she says, none of that is true. you have been celebrating the ratings, you got huge numbers on that interview. in hindsight, does it feel appropriate to celebrate that in these circumstances? well, i have seen the bbc celebrate for a lot less than this, i have to be honest. i will not take any lectures about boasting about how things are done successfully or otherwise... i'm certainly not lecturing you, absolutely not, i'm asking you a question... well, i would say this — the reality, as everyone knows, i pivoted to a full digital show several months ago, and the reason i did that is we were getting gigantic numbers anyway on our youtube channel,

piers morgan uncensored, and this was a perfect illustration a why i wanted to do this. it is a story that many people in the media are going to be pursuing for themselves because last week we had, for example, 200,000 plus new subscribers to our youtube channel, taking us to nearly 3 million subscribers. that makes us one of the biggest, if not the biggest, youtube channels in the world for news, opinion and interviews. we also have had nearly 12 million views of the interview. we've had millions more debates about the interview. we've had an extraordinary global response from all sorts of media and high—profile figures and so on, so this is exactly what i was talking about when i said this is now how younger people, in particular, want to consume their content. they do not want to be fixed to a particular schedule, they want to be able to watch these things when they decide they want to watch them, and this was proof in the pudding... crosstalk. in answer to your question,

am i going to be regretful we did really well? no, why would i? my whole job is to get people to watch the content. some people would say, if you have a business model where everything is about clicks and hits, understandable, that is the model, then this is where potentially you end up, potentially with somebody who other people are suggesting you have exploited by putting on television. the irony of that is, the whole point of her doing it was she felt exploited, and who is throwing these bricks back? the guardian have done about 18,000 columns so far, steaming with rage about this, and, of course, those columns are all getting click bait. to be fair, fiona harvey is now suggesting you did not pay her enough, that she feels used. she says you paid her £250 — is that right? we do not discuss individual payments. what i would say is she got paid the same as 95% of all our guests and was completely happy to be paid that amount before she sat down with me... she is quoted as saying she now wants £1 million. hang on.

we also paid for another very nice expensive haircut and we got a very nice car to bring her to and from her home. i think we treated her extremely reasonably and fairly. and certainly in keeping with how we treat most of our guests. we do not pay big money for any interviews with anybody. so there is nothing unusual about the way she was treated. the biggest interview i have had probably in my life was cristiano ronaldo, and i paid him naught pence, so she got £250 more than cristiano ronaldo, if you believe the figures that have been put in the papers. she says she wants £1 million. is she going to get it from you? she's not going to get £1 million from me, no, because she was perfectly happy with the agreed sum, and that was the condition under which we did the interview. it was all done completely normally. there is no question about that. in the question of whether i should feel regretful that it has been successful, i find that a very perverse charge to make. i do not see the bbc apologising when you do stuff which rates well... i'm obviously not a spokesperson for the bbc, i'm just a bbcjournalist.

crosstalk. did you consider, out of interest, that you had a duty of care towards her? absolutely. and i think we fulfilled that duty of care a damn side better than netflix. what did that involve? it involved two of my team spending a lot of time with her before, during and after and currently, spending a lot of time talking to her, aware that by doing this interview, she would be putting herself out there to the world and aware that clearly she might have — and i say might have — she might have mental health issues, but these are not any that she has admitted to. they are not any that anyone has provided any actual evidence of, and the suggestion that she is a convicted stalker appears to be untrue, so before we leap to presumptions about the state of her mental health, i would argue that for a first—time interview, with someone who is never given a tv interview, she equipped herself extremely well, very combative, very direct in her answers,

now, i did not believe a lot of what she was saying, but that does not make her mentally vulnerable or mentally ill. so i think people should be careful before they say she was. that was piers morgan. let's unpick some of the issues raised here with clive coleman, a former bbc news legal affairs correspondent. clive is also a trained barrister and works in pr and writes films and tv scripts as well. we're joined by clive and by chris banatvala, an independent media consultant and a former head of standards at 0fcom, which is the broadcast regulator in the uk. and, chris, what is your response to the whole saga around this series? first responding to piers morgan, i think this is becoming a media circus, and what i would urge netflix to do is to actually do an enquiry and a review into this and find out how this program was made, how accurate it was and whether any harm has actually been caused.

just to reiterate, i want to be absolutely clear, at the beginning of the series it says, without caveat, "this is a true story". yes, you're absolutely right, but it is also a drama, so there is a bit of artistic license there. so, this is a true story, you're watching a drama doc or drama, and what expectations do you take as a viewer, what do you expect? for instance, you've mentioned that she sent allegedly 41,000 e—mails. if it was actually only 400, that could be potentially problematic. if on the other hand it was 20,000, you might say, actually it doesn't make a difference — it would be inaccurate, but it would not necessarily be unfair to her, and that is really where the whole regulatory spectrum comes in with regard to this programme. is was it unfair to her and also did privacy without justification? was it the programme that created a jigsaw effect — ie lots of little pieces that

people could identify her — or had she already identified herself online as being the potential stalker of richard gadd? i do not know the answer to that. the information might have already been out there. i know netflix have said they did not mean to identify her, in inverted commas, but she may have already identified herself before. i do not know the answer to that. let me bring in clive coleman, former bbc news legal affairs correspondent, ourformer colleague, trained barrister, now writing yourself plays and films. what is your take both as a writer and a trained lawyer? as a writer, it is interesting. i have a brought with me a contract that i had to sign. the writers are asked to give warranties. and let me read this one from the duke, which was a film where the two principal characters actually were both dead... fantastic film. about the theft of the amazing artwork. correct, duke of wellington's portrait. thank you, that is kind of you. some of the other characters were still alive, so we had to sign this contract. and one of the clauses reads, "to the best of the writers' knowledge and belief,

"after due enquiry, the work will not contain defamatory "or obscene or racially inflammatory or blasphemous "matter of any kind. " as a writer, you take this incredibly seriously, and you really do do your due diligence. i take it maybe more seriously than other writers because i have also sat in a few defamation cases and i would never be want to be part of one myself. of course, richard gadd is writing a story about terrible things that happened to him, and you never want to stop an individual who has been the subject of abuse from telling their story, but there are boundaries and there are guidelines and the law of defamation provides those. what is so curious about this is that to have that statement, the bold statement with no qualification that this is a true story. you then have richard gadd saying, later on, that he in fact tweaked it slightly to create dramatic climaxes and then he says that it is emotionally true... is emotionally true a concept recognised in law? no, well, it is not in the law of defamation. you say something about

a character and it is either true or not true. i agree, there is so much we do not know here. an observation i would make about your interview — a pretty sparky one — with piers — not surprisingly — was that i would never confuse someone appearing to be very confident with the fact they did not have mental health issues because the two things are absolutely not one and the same thing. that is a really key point. when piers morgan says, "i do not think she had mental "health issues, i have no idea whether she has or has not," but i don't think piers morgan as a journalist is necessarily qualified to say whether or not someone has mental health issues. it is a huge thing. as you will know. in reality shows now, there is massive support for people who are suddenly going to be thrust into the public glare. they work with psychologists, they work before, during and after the programme, so this concept of duty of care is critical. i think there are three

key issues here for me. defamation is one — they are all related — duty of care and actually reputation because in terms of defamation, let's assume that fiona harvey is 100% right on everything — for the sake of this example — then she can bring a successful defamation action against richard gadd and netflix because all she'd have to prove is it was untrue, she suffered serious harm, and if there were death threats then that box is ticked, and that would lead to successful claim. then you have duty of care, and there are really big question marks about that. netflix might not care that they lose a defamation case, because they've got hugely vast amounts of money, but where i think it will bite, is if they failed in their duty of care, then it becomes a big reputational issue for netflix because people do not like that kind of stuff. they do not like a vulnerable person been thrown to the wolves and they do vote with their feet or their subscriptions. and i think there has been a kind of weird deafening silence from netflix

thus far on all of this, but i think if the public sort of change their view or are of the view that there was a massive failure of duty of care here, and fiona harvey's life has been really impacted negatively as a result of that, that is a big issue for netflix. we want to talk about the bbc news theme music because it is 25 years old, and the man who composed it is david lowe, and he has been explaining to us how we went about making it. we were just talking about sounds that we had heard that were sort of in a brain storming type meeting of sounds, and one of the sounds that came up as a recognisable sound was, of course, the greenwich time signal peep. so this is the peep sound. love it. and ijust thought, yeah, that is a really good sound because it is pure and singular in direction and it also gives it an idea of accuracy and reliability, which is one of the things we were looking for for the news. so i thought i could add

a dance beat to it, you know, and create a piece of music using that sound. then i got back to my studio and i sort of got the idea in my head when i sat down so the next thing i did was a baseline. the baseline gives the strength — a feeling of strength and depth, and it's also got a world feel because it is called the tresillo beat and you hear it in latin america, africa and india. it gives a sense of globalism to it. and then, of course, having the bass drum, bringing in that sort of feel, the beat happening then. and we wanted a big sound to herald the headlines coming in so i thought big drums, that is a way to go. and i wanted a sound that you could use at any time and it's retriggered, so no matter how long the headline is, you can retrigger it. the way they use it now is quite random, it is not actually musical, they sort of bring it in randomly, but that gives it almost

a sense of urgency more than having it reliably musical. and then at the next part was quite a tricky bit because it was chords and, of course, the chords for music are the most emotional bit. they are the ones that give you an emotional hit. and so for news, it has to be quite neutral, you cannot have it too happy or too sad, so i chose these two chords, minor to major, in a simple but beautiful chords change. and the peep stays on the same note all the way through, so it has a singular direction, and then you've got this sort of anxiety with the minor chord going into a majorfield which is calmness. this is fantastic. i ought to say there is a version of you doing this online. we have stolen the idea. that version has gone viral. hopefully this one will go too. i do want to bring in, victor vlam, who is a dutch newsjournalist and news theme expert and founder

of the website network news music. tell us the impact of this bbc news theme tune? it has been huge. sometimes ijokingly say that pop music was never the same after the beatles, news music has never been the same since david lowe. and the reason for that is he's been very influential. basically in the 1990s, news music tended to sound the same, it was very formulaic, lots of brass instruments that played a short but recognisable melody, there were some strings to add a sense of urgency and some timpani to give it some gravitas. and that was the basic ingredients for every single news theme. here along comes david lowe who completely goes into a different direction, who essentially uses music that is most familiar from nightclubs and adapts that as a news theme. that was just revolutionary. and the amazing thing is that a lot of european broadcasters and broadcaster around the world have adopted this style. so lots of them are adopting, for example, the peeps — even though they may

not be familiar with the peeps in those countries. but all the electronic elements are used in many different countries. so it has been very influential. thank you very much indeed to both of you, very good to have you on the media show. our last guest on the programme is thejournalist maggie harrison dupre. welcome to the programme. we've asked you back because back in november you ran a story about the us magazine sports illustrated and how it was being accused of publishing ai—written articles from writers who, it turned out, did not exist. you have come back to this story. where have you got with it? back in november, we published a report about how sports illustrated had been publishing these review—style articles. if i was interested in, say, a soccer ball, i would go online, i want the best soccer ball so i google "best soccer ball for me" and a bunch of seo list, best soccer ball 2024. this company, advon commerce, which we had been investigating for several months, they had provided a bunch of these

review—style articles for sports illustrated. you know, "what to look for in a soccer ball, "your list of 4 or 5 soccer balls. "here are the pros and cons of each and here's why "they are different." as it turned out, when we looked a little bit, dug around a bit, we realised that many of the writers or all of the writers in this section of sports illustrated website were entirely fake, they were fabricated. their head shots had been ai—generated. they had made—up bios. we kept following the story and in addition to that, sources we spoke to at advon told us that the company we using al to generate content as well. we kept following that and we realised that it is in a lot of places and notjust in sports illustrated. and i'd like to hear about that. just before i do, let me read you this statement from sports illustrated. you'd be familiar with it, but we should share it with everyone listening. "an article was published alleging that "sports illustrated published ai—generated articles. "according to our initial investigation, this "is not accurate. "the articles in question were product reviews "and were licensed content from an external third party "company, advon commerce. "a number of advon's e—commerce articles ran

"on certain websites. "we continually monitor our partners and were in the midst "of a review where these allegations were raised." what i am interested in, you are saying this is something happening much more broadly? what have you discovered in that regard? we have found advon's fake bylines and ai—generated content across the america media system. large regional newspapers in the us, like the miami herald, los angeles times, in national tabloids, we have found them in usa today, a major us newspaper, so a lot of different large media companies in the us. is your issue you want this to be labelled or you believe these publications should not be using content of this nature? that is an interesting question. the review style content, and what we would call affiliate articles, has proven to be quite lucrative,

and in some cases has done really good work for organisations in supporting newsroom. but at the same time, if at any point the nature of how a piece of content was created, by a writer or ai, that is not great for the publication or the rest of the media industry. it is a time where we have a fragmented media environment and trust in the media is at a very upsetting low so i personally believe all ai content should be marked as such and if something... sorry. not at all, i want to ask before the programme finishes, if it is marked as such, is there any research which helps us understand whether the consumer minds or not? perhaps the consumer, as long as he or she knows it is generated by ai will still see it as having some value? i think consumers want a choice. i would argue consumers deserve a choice. i think that there are some people who do not care if ai makes it as long as it is good.

which i should note, these articles were not good. but i think people want to know. in fact, after we published, sports illustrated, the aipi which is the artificial intelligence policy institute, did a survey and an overwhelming majority of participants said that they believed what happened at sports illustrated was wrong. we have seen a lot of pushback — similar pushback since we published the second report as well. thank you for updating us on that. that is maggie harrison dupre from futurism. that is it for today. thank you to all our guests. we will be back same time next week. it is goodbye from me, katie razzall. and from me, ros atkins. thank you very much for your company. if you would like to hear a longer version of today's show, search bbc the media show

wherever you get bbc podcasts. hello, thanks forjoining me. fairly quiet on the weather front across most of the uk right now. the storms have also cleared from southwestern england as well as wales. this is what we had during saturday — flash floods in places. how about the weather on sunday? it's actually not looking bad at all for most of us. a lot of bright, if not sunny weather on the way. however, some coastal areas, particularly around the north sea, could be grey and chilly. so this is how we start the day. inland and out towards the west, the weather's looking fine and sunny right from the word go. but these eastern counties, or here, it may take time for that sunshine to break through that layer of gray or that stratus and sea fog that will have rolled in overnight. so the afternoon looking pretty sunny across most of the uk, again, with the exception of some coastal areas. could be some showers across southwestern parts of scotland, maybe

the southwest of england. inland 22 or 23 celsius in that strong sunshine. but where the low, grey clouds stick around anywhere along the north sea coast, but particularly the further north you are, it will be chilly, maybe no higher than around 12 degrees. we have that on saturday. could happen again on sunday. so through the course of the evening, you can see that low grey cloud. once again it's going to roll inland out towards the west, it's going to stay generally clear. now, here's monday. cloudy skies out towards the east, but then the sun comes out and it's a repeat performance. a fine day on the way. again, temperatures in the low 20s inland, closer to the coast closer to around the mid—teens. now, on tuesday, subtle changes. showers will appear in different areas. we could see some forming across scotland, northern ireland, the lake district as well. but i think the further south you are, the better the weather will be. temperatures won't really change an awful lot. in fact, overall, the first half of the week for most of us isn't looking too bad.

but, as we head through wednesday and thursday, this low pressure sweeps in out of the east this time. it'll bring quite breezy weather and also a spell of persistent rain, and at times it will be heavy. so a change on the way second half of the week, and that's reflected in the forecast here. not really bad at all until around about tuesday, bar a few showers here and there. but then wednesday, thursday and friday, it's all change and it's hello low. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. israeli police break up anti—government protests in tel aviv as its military recovers the body of another hostage in gaza. president zelensky says ukraine only has about a quarter of the air defences needed to fend off russian attacks, warning moscow could increase strikes following recent gains near kharkiv.

plus: the president of georgia vetoes a controversial new law on foreign funding that's sparked weeks of protests. hello i'm helena humphreys. we begin in the middle east. tens of thousands of protesters gathered in israel amid anger over prime minister benjamin netanyahu's failure to secure the release of hostages still being held in gaza. these were the scenes in tel aviv. police have arrested some demonstrators and used water canon to disperse two rallies, which had merged. in the latest development, the israel defence forces say that they recovered the body of another hostage, identified as ron binyamin. in the latest sign of divisions within mr netanyahu's war cabinet, benny gantz has threatened to quit the government, unless he agrees to a far—reaching plan for gaza — with a deadline to do so in around three weeks' time. meanwhile, the united nations says more

than 800,000 people have now fled rafah,