hello Oxbridge good to see you today
what is a revolution so the oxford
dictionary defines a revolution as a
dramatic and wide-reaching change in the
way something works or is organized or
in people’s ideas about it and in the
next 15 minutes I’m going to explain to
you why we need a new media revolution
and how it’s already happening right now
so firstly could you all just reach into
your pockets and take out your mobile
phones well done and now raising have
you had a wave them like you’re at a
rock concert that has absolutely nothing
to do with this analogy but it’s really
fun to get people to do that so if I
said to you that that phone in your
pocket that’s it for phones it’s
impossible for humankind ever to better
that phone you’d probably call me crazy
and that’s because you have belief in
technological revolutions of the past
and the future to do better
we can’t would like that with science in
technology so we actually eagerly
anticipate revolutionary change because
of the anticipated benefits of
technological progress but when it comes
to socio-economic matters or politics or
economics we are trained largely bar
media to be Philistines well we look at
the people who are advancing progress in
technology and science there is
celebrated as pioneers and the people
that are pushing the boundaries of
revolutionary social and political
change are often dismissed as dreamers
and that stark difference places limits
it places limits on our ability to
create
revolutionary human progress it tells us
that it’s impossible to build a world
that works for everyone
and these limiting thoughts are shackles
that we have to break so this chat
behind me Martin Luther King never said
I have a time boxed pragmatic five-point
plan he said I have a dream
he stood in an imaginary future and
shared it so vividly that the people of
1963 could hold it in their hands as
real the task of building a world that
works for everyone
demands that we have the audacity to
dream that big and the courage to settle
for nothing less and this is why we need
a new media revolution in Britain and
around the world
stories are everything your story about
yourself what you’re capable of who you
are and what you can stand it will
define you and if you listen to those
people gossips bullies even the negative
voices in your own head that tell you
you are small you end up shrinking well
the same is true of the world the role
of the media in shaping our view of
ourselves each other our world and
what’s possible within it is enormous
and it’s gotten us into some real
trouble now the first time I learned
that there was something very wrong
with the political and media
storytellers of our time came in 2002
during my first year at Sussex
University I went to a talk about Israel
and Palestine a group of students had
been and they were sharing videos and
speaking about their experiences and
what I saw blew my mind and a few weeks
later I
the next delegation to visit Palestine
to learn about life the reality of
Israeli occupation
I saw Janine all those to dust
I saw Nablus in tatters and I saw
Ramallah defiant
despite occupation I saw Palestine a
place I had been led to believe with
some sand pit full of savages and find a
thriving vibrant culture theatres
cinemas universities technology
technology savvy human beings with
dreams not unlike my own and I felt
conned and on our last night in Ramallah
Israel invaded we went from bearing
witness to the aftermath of an Israeli
invasion to being caught up in a new one
and that’s how I spent my 21st birthday
as a human shield occupying a key
building in Ramallah in the hopes that
Israel wouldn’t bomb it with Brits
inside that’s where I was f-16 fighter
jets roared over our heads Apache
helicopters thundered past the building
shaking windows clean out of their
frames tanks tore up the concrete
streets shaking the building to its
foundations everywhere was the sound of
exploding cars and homes it was
nighttime but the sky was lit up like a
kind of Martian daylight with fires a
munitions engulfing the time so this was
the period of time where rolling news
was just becoming a thing so he rushed
into the TV room turn on BBC News 24
thinking this has got to be on the news
and finally after a couple of items they
came to a BBC news
correspondent in Jerusalem I will never
forget the words that came out of his
mouth he said it is a quiet night in
Ramallah Israeli forces have withdrawn
to the gates of the city meanwhile we
were in Ramallah and all hell was
breaking loose and I realized that even
if I cared enough about this to have
chind into the BBC that evening to find
out what was happening not only would I
have been uninformed I would have been
misinformed I would have been relieved
I’d have been telling people the good
news and unwittingly parroting fake news
the reality of this and everything I saw
in Palestine break me I came home filled
with the kind of anger that consumes you
I dropped out of university and spent a
couple of years drug-addled
I’m working a number of temp jobs in
fields factories and care homes my story
about myself was it’s over for me
I’m building a world that works for
everyone that dream is too big for me to
bear and in time thanks to my family and
some extraordinary friends I threw
myself into creating a new life I built
a successful career in project
management in banking NHS and the local
government working on multi-million and
multi-billion pound projects I met and
married the woman of my dreams I was
happy and live in the kind of life that
I thought was impossible when I was in
those wilderness years if I’m completely
honest a part of me knew I wasn’t doing
what I was here for I wasn’t building a
world that works for everyone
and then the Occupy movement happened
and my wife reminded me that I’m a
person who’s here to change
world so I wind up my management
consultancy business and went to live in
a tent
in London in the middle of winter with a
bunch of other people who wanted to
build a world that works for everyone
and if anyone ever asks you what did the
Occupy movement ever achieve well it
reengaged thousands of people like me
with the dream of building a world that
works for everyone everywhere you look
now in campaigns in education in new
media you see former occupiers we never
went home
while I was at Occupy I started writing
a blog called script tonight daily each
day I wrote a story about an issue or an
event which I felt needed to be retold
and over the course of five years it
became one of the most one of best-known
independent political blogs in the
country and if we’re going to build a
world that works for everyone we have to
start with getting real about what’s
actually happening in the world as it is
so my role my fight would be creating a
new media now we have a media in Britain
which is almost entirely owned by three
corporations three the journalists who
staff them are mostly white and mostly
male they attended a handful of
universities and graduated six inches to
the left or the right of each other and
this gap between them forms the
miniscule arena in which all of our
media debate happens on politics on
economics on the kind of world we can
and want to build together
it is a lid on our ability to dream
together and a barrier to telling the
stories that this tiny slice of
humanity neither understand or value
worse their stories about us each other
and our ability to change the world keep
a small passive and disenchanted so in
this spirit a new media revolution is
happening instead of begging the old
media for space on their platform we are
building our own
and that’s what’s kryptonite daily was
for me then 12 years after my first trip
to Palestine Israel launched a
devastating 52 day assault on Gaza in
the summer of 2014 I never let go of
Palestine I continued to visit my
friends and deepen my knowledge of the
history and reality of life under
occupation and as I sat watching the
news in 2014 feeling that familiar anger
rising at the absence of truth I
realized something this time I could do
something about it this time I had
script tonight daily so I set up a
crowdfunding campaign inviting readers
of my blog to fund me to be their
reporter on the ground in Gaza and they
did weeks later I was in Gaza witnessing
a fresh kind of Hell being meted out
upon its 1.8 million civilian residents
every day I published detailed accounts
of what I saw
and every night I did a live video
report with a question-and-answer
session and I made a documentary film
which I screamed at venues across the
country when I came home and this is an
excerpt from one report and this is what
I found talking to patients
along just one corridor in our Shiva
Hospital in Gaza City a man sits in a
wheelchair his left leg was blown off
while he sat on his own doorstep Israel
had announced a four hour ceasefire so
he was about to go and find food and
supplies during the break from shelling
instead and his Rayleigh shell landed in
the street killing 12 and injuring 120
of the residents his lifelong best
friend was killed he tells me he does
not even know how to live in the world
without him a child just eight years old
lays on a gurney his pelvis and femur
were shattered when he was blown from
his fourth storey home by an f-16
missile which killed most of his
relatives a plaster cast covers him from
his chest to his knees a father and son
sit alone in a side room they are the
only two of their families left alive an
Israeli missile hit their car as they
fled their battered tang his teenage
daughter was decapitated in the blast he
had to carry her all the way to the
hospital
headless in his arms these stories
change minds and the difference between
coming home from Gaza in 2014 and coming
home in 2002 could not be more stark
when people have the opportunity to see
the real story in its true context they
make better decisions so I wanted to
build a bigger platform to reach more
people in this way and a little over a
year ago I co-founded a media outlet
called the Canary
we set up with less than 500 pounds no
network no powerful political or media
friends just a bunch of writers with a
dream within months we entered the top
100 new sites in the UK overtaking the
likes of New Statesman The Spectator and
even The Economist in the UK these are
veteran publications with power money
and influence we’ve now reached over 20
million readers that’s a conversation
big enough to change the world or at
least our a bit of it and every day we
get to tell the unreported underreported
and misreported stories of our time and
our newsroom is made up of all the
people that fall outside the confines of
the mainstream press we look and we
sangd
as diverse in every way as Britain and
the world in which she sits I don’t look
or saying like the editor-in-chief of a
reading media outlet I’m a brain gay
working-class girl from Bristol who
dropped out of university in her second
year but luck and curiosity have granted
me this series of life experiences that
gave me both the audacity and frankly
the sheer bloody mindedness to settle
for nothing less and pursue this dream
my parents my grandparents my teachers
my friends each of them has been an
inspiration a signpost and a guide along
the way and every day now at the canary
we are telling the untold and miss told
stories that the world needs to hear and
we’re doing that in a human voice that
anyone with a reading age of 8 years old
could understand
because stories are everything for each
of us to be a part of building a world
that works for everyone
we have to know what doesn’t work what
needs to change and feel empowered to
change it I don’t do what I do because I
believe humanity is doomed and people
are wretched I do what I do because I
believe people are infinitely capable we
are empowered or we are limited by our
stories about ourselves and each other
and we can quite literally become the
authors of our own story we can choose
what’s written on our page of human
history and today our world feels like a
pretty scary place and it seems like
kind of a lot of us are looking over our
shoulders and behind us saying where’s
the cavalry well here’s the cavalry
that’s going to come and fix this mess
but the cavalry isn’t coming because we
are it we are the cavalry this is our
time and our world to shape throughout
history and today individuals and groups
of people have committed themselves to
the valiant and all inspiring task of
building a world that works for everyone
a world where race religion class gender
sexuality and any other arbitrary
distinction that separates you from me
ceases to define us each of our efforts
is a tiny drop but together they form a
tsunami an unstoppable wave of human
progress for people and
a planet just as the technological
revolution enabled the media revolution
the media revolution will enable our
collective human revolution how do we
build a world that works for everyone
we write our own story in which we have
the audacity to dream big and the
courage to settle for nothing less thank
you
[Applause]
what is a revolution so the oxford
dictionary defines a revolution as a
dramatic and wide-reaching change in the
way something works or is organized or
in people’s ideas about it and in the
next 15 minutes I’m going to explain to
you why we need a new media revolution
and how it’s already happening right now
so firstly could you all just reach into
your pockets and take out your mobile
phones well done and now raising have
you had a wave them like you’re at a
rock concert that has absolutely nothing
to do with this analogy but it’s really
fun to get people to do that so if I
said to you that that phone in your
pocket that’s it for phones it’s
impossible for humankind ever to better
that phone you’d probably call me crazy
and that’s because you have belief in
technological revolutions of the past
and the future to do better
we can’t would like that with science in
technology so we actually eagerly
anticipate revolutionary change because
of the anticipated benefits of
technological progress but when it comes
to socio-economic matters or politics or
economics we are trained largely bar
media to be Philistines well we look at
the people who are advancing progress in
technology and science there is
celebrated as pioneers and the people
that are pushing the boundaries of
revolutionary social and political
change are often dismissed as dreamers
and that stark difference places limits
it places limits on our ability to
create
revolutionary human progress it tells us
that it’s impossible to build a world
that works for everyone
and these limiting thoughts are shackles
that we have to break so this chat
behind me Martin Luther King never said
I have a time boxed pragmatic five-point
plan he said I have a dream
he stood in an imaginary future and
shared it so vividly that the people of
1963 could hold it in their hands as
real the task of building a world that
works for everyone
demands that we have the audacity to
dream that big and the courage to settle
for nothing less and this is why we need
a new media revolution in Britain and
around the world
stories are everything your story about
yourself what you’re capable of who you
are and what you can stand it will
define you and if you listen to those
people gossips bullies even the negative
voices in your own head that tell you
you are small you end up shrinking well
the same is true of the world the role
of the media in shaping our view of
ourselves each other our world and
what’s possible within it is enormous
and it’s gotten us into some real
trouble now the first time I learned
that there was something very wrong
with the political and media
storytellers of our time came in 2002
during my first year at Sussex
University I went to a talk about Israel
and Palestine a group of students had
been and they were sharing videos and
speaking about their experiences and
what I saw blew my mind and a few weeks
later I
the next delegation to visit Palestine
to learn about life the reality of
Israeli occupation
I saw Janine all those to dust
I saw Nablus in tatters and I saw
Ramallah defiant
despite occupation I saw Palestine a
place I had been led to believe with
some sand pit full of savages and find a
thriving vibrant culture theatres
cinemas universities technology
technology savvy human beings with
dreams not unlike my own and I felt
conned and on our last night in Ramallah
Israel invaded we went from bearing
witness to the aftermath of an Israeli
invasion to being caught up in a new one
and that’s how I spent my 21st birthday
as a human shield occupying a key
building in Ramallah in the hopes that
Israel wouldn’t bomb it with Brits
inside that’s where I was f-16 fighter
jets roared over our heads Apache
helicopters thundered past the building
shaking windows clean out of their
frames tanks tore up the concrete
streets shaking the building to its
foundations everywhere was the sound of
exploding cars and homes it was
nighttime but the sky was lit up like a
kind of Martian daylight with fires a
munitions engulfing the time so this was
the period of time where rolling news
was just becoming a thing so he rushed
into the TV room turn on BBC News 24
thinking this has got to be on the news
and finally after a couple of items they
came to a BBC news
correspondent in Jerusalem I will never
forget the words that came out of his
mouth he said it is a quiet night in
Ramallah Israeli forces have withdrawn
to the gates of the city meanwhile we
were in Ramallah and all hell was
breaking loose and I realized that even
if I cared enough about this to have
chind into the BBC that evening to find
out what was happening not only would I
have been uninformed I would have been
misinformed I would have been relieved
I’d have been telling people the good
news and unwittingly parroting fake news
the reality of this and everything I saw
in Palestine break me I came home filled
with the kind of anger that consumes you
I dropped out of university and spent a
couple of years drug-addled
I’m working a number of temp jobs in
fields factories and care homes my story
about myself was it’s over for me
I’m building a world that works for
everyone that dream is too big for me to
bear and in time thanks to my family and
some extraordinary friends I threw
myself into creating a new life I built
a successful career in project
management in banking NHS and the local
government working on multi-million and
multi-billion pound projects I met and
married the woman of my dreams I was
happy and live in the kind of life that
I thought was impossible when I was in
those wilderness years if I’m completely
honest a part of me knew I wasn’t doing
what I was here for I wasn’t building a
world that works for everyone
and then the Occupy movement happened
and my wife reminded me that I’m a
person who’s here to change
world so I wind up my management
consultancy business and went to live in
a tent
in London in the middle of winter with a
bunch of other people who wanted to
build a world that works for everyone
and if anyone ever asks you what did the
Occupy movement ever achieve well it
reengaged thousands of people like me
with the dream of building a world that
works for everyone everywhere you look
now in campaigns in education in new
media you see former occupiers we never
went home
while I was at Occupy I started writing
a blog called script tonight daily each
day I wrote a story about an issue or an
event which I felt needed to be retold
and over the course of five years it
became one of the most one of best-known
independent political blogs in the
country and if we’re going to build a
world that works for everyone we have to
start with getting real about what’s
actually happening in the world as it is
so my role my fight would be creating a
new media now we have a media in Britain
which is almost entirely owned by three
corporations three the journalists who
staff them are mostly white and mostly
male they attended a handful of
universities and graduated six inches to
the left or the right of each other and
this gap between them forms the
miniscule arena in which all of our
media debate happens on politics on
economics on the kind of world we can
and want to build together
it is a lid on our ability to dream
together and a barrier to telling the
stories that this tiny slice of
humanity neither understand or value
worse their stories about us each other
and our ability to change the world keep
a small passive and disenchanted so in
this spirit a new media revolution is
happening instead of begging the old
media for space on their platform we are
building our own
and that’s what’s kryptonite daily was
for me then 12 years after my first trip
to Palestine Israel launched a
devastating 52 day assault on Gaza in
the summer of 2014 I never let go of
Palestine I continued to visit my
friends and deepen my knowledge of the
history and reality of life under
occupation and as I sat watching the
news in 2014 feeling that familiar anger
rising at the absence of truth I
realized something this time I could do
something about it this time I had
script tonight daily so I set up a
crowdfunding campaign inviting readers
of my blog to fund me to be their
reporter on the ground in Gaza and they
did weeks later I was in Gaza witnessing
a fresh kind of Hell being meted out
upon its 1.8 million civilian residents
every day I published detailed accounts
of what I saw
and every night I did a live video
report with a question-and-answer
session and I made a documentary film
which I screamed at venues across the
country when I came home and this is an
excerpt from one report and this is what
I found talking to patients
along just one corridor in our Shiva
Hospital in Gaza City a man sits in a
wheelchair his left leg was blown off
while he sat on his own doorstep Israel
had announced a four hour ceasefire so
he was about to go and find food and
supplies during the break from shelling
instead and his Rayleigh shell landed in
the street killing 12 and injuring 120
of the residents his lifelong best
friend was killed he tells me he does
not even know how to live in the world
without him a child just eight years old
lays on a gurney his pelvis and femur
were shattered when he was blown from
his fourth storey home by an f-16
missile which killed most of his
relatives a plaster cast covers him from
his chest to his knees a father and son
sit alone in a side room they are the
only two of their families left alive an
Israeli missile hit their car as they
fled their battered tang his teenage
daughter was decapitated in the blast he
had to carry her all the way to the
hospital
headless in his arms these stories
change minds and the difference between
coming home from Gaza in 2014 and coming
home in 2002 could not be more stark
when people have the opportunity to see
the real story in its true context they
make better decisions so I wanted to
build a bigger platform to reach more
people in this way and a little over a
year ago I co-founded a media outlet
called the Canary
we set up with less than 500 pounds no
network no powerful political or media
friends just a bunch of writers with a
dream within months we entered the top
100 new sites in the UK overtaking the
likes of New Statesman The Spectator and
even The Economist in the UK these are
veteran publications with power money
and influence we’ve now reached over 20
million readers that’s a conversation
big enough to change the world or at
least our a bit of it and every day we
get to tell the unreported underreported
and misreported stories of our time and
our newsroom is made up of all the
people that fall outside the confines of
the mainstream press we look and we
sangd
as diverse in every way as Britain and
the world in which she sits I don’t look
or saying like the editor-in-chief of a
reading media outlet I’m a brain gay
working-class girl from Bristol who
dropped out of university in her second
year but luck and curiosity have granted
me this series of life experiences that
gave me both the audacity and frankly
the sheer bloody mindedness to settle
for nothing less and pursue this dream
my parents my grandparents my teachers
my friends each of them has been an
inspiration a signpost and a guide along
the way and every day now at the canary
we are telling the untold and miss told
stories that the world needs to hear and
we’re doing that in a human voice that
anyone with a reading age of 8 years old
could understand
because stories are everything for each
of us to be a part of building a world
that works for everyone
we have to know what doesn’t work what
needs to change and feel empowered to
change it I don’t do what I do because I
believe humanity is doomed and people
are wretched I do what I do because I
believe people are infinitely capable we
are empowered or we are limited by our
stories about ourselves and each other
and we can quite literally become the
authors of our own story we can choose
what’s written on our page of human
history and today our world feels like a
pretty scary place and it seems like
kind of a lot of us are looking over our
shoulders and behind us saying where’s
the cavalry well here’s the cavalry
that’s going to come and fix this mess
but the cavalry isn’t coming because we
are it we are the cavalry this is our
time and our world to shape throughout
history and today individuals and groups
of people have committed themselves to
the valiant and all inspiring task of
building a world that works for everyone
a world where race religion class gender
sexuality and any other arbitrary
distinction that separates you from me
ceases to define us each of our efforts
is a tiny drop but together they form a
tsunami an unstoppable wave of human
progress for people and
a planet just as the technological
revolution enabled the media revolution
the media revolution will enable our
collective human revolution how do we
build a world that works for everyone
we write our own story in which we have
the audacity to dream big and the
courage to settle for nothing less thank
you
[Applause]
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