Before joining Tortoise, Katie worked on BBC Radio 4’s daily news podcast, Beyond Today, and was a regular producer on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show.
Katie Gunning
Producer
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Friday 22 September 2023
Are journalists too obsessed with bad news and did Rupert Murdoch make a secret deal with Prince William?
Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and author of Enlightenment Now, criticises the news machine. Plus whether Prince William reached a secret out of court settlement with Rupert Murdoch and News Group over phone hacking and Canada’s row with India.
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Monday 18 September 2023
William and Rupert: the prince and press baron
Paul Caruana Galizia investigates whether Prince William reached a secret out of court settlement with Rupert Murdoch and News Group over phone hacking. What were the terms of the reported deal and how much money changed hands?
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Monday 7 August 2023
Johnny Depp: The great uncancelling
In 2017 the MeToo movement swept through Hollywood. Some men, such as Harvey Weinstein, went to prison. Others who were accused of sexual misconduct and assault were ostracised and struggled to find parts in big movies. But six years on some of these same people are back on the red carpets. Is Hollywood trying to rewrite history?
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Friday 21 July 2023
Post Office scandal, Starmer benefit row, and grain deal
In this episode, recorded in front of an audience in the Tortoise newsroom, James Harding is joined by Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, Liz Moseley and Katie Gunning.
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Monday 19 June 2023
Gender GP: inside the world of private trans healthcare
The story of Gender GP and its founder Helen Webberley, labelled by one newspaper as one of Britain’s most controversial doctors
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Thursday 18 May 2023
The News Meeting Live: immigration, Ron DeSantis and Zelensky’s European tour
James Harding is joined by Tortoise’s Alexi Mostrous, Liz Moseley and Katie Gunning in front of a live audience at London’s Picturehouse Central.
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Tuesday 9 May 2023
Blackout: Coal, corruption and cyanide
South Africa was once a symbol of hope. Now the country experiences regular blackouts. This is the story of how the lights went out in Mandela’s country – and how criminal gangs and flawed political leadership are holding back the world’s efforts to deal with climate change
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Friday 14 April 2023
Pentagon leaks, China’s war games and sewage dumping
Journalist and broadcaster Rachel Johnson is joined by Tortoise reporter Will Brown, climate editor Jeevan Vasagar and producer Katie Gunning. In this episode they discuss the leak of classified US intelligence documents, Chinese military exercises around Taiwan and the report which revealed that sewage was dumped in UK waters for almost a million hours last year.
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Monday 13 February 2023
The prince against the press
The Harry show – the bestselling memoir, the Netflix documentary, the rounds of television interviews – isn’t over. In fact, it’s only just begun: the prince’s legal claims against Britain’s biggest media groups are headed to court this summer
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Monday 12 December 2022
The real scandal
Polly Curtis investigates why NHS England accelerated the closure of GIDS and what the future of the service could look like for children and young people
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Monday 12 December 2022
The noise
The public debate around the work of the Tavistock is getting louder. Kiera Bell wins a landmark ruling at the High Court which halts all new referrals for puberty blockers for under 18s on the NHS in England and Wales. She was prescribed puberty blockers at 16 but later decided she wants to de-transition. The Tavistock appeals and the ruling is overturned. But for many people the narrative of the Gender Identity Development Service is now set in stone
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Monday 5 December 2022
The enemy within
As the increase in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service increases, the profile of the young people seeking treatment changes too. There are now two natal girls for every natal boy, a complete reversal of what it had been a decade before. Polly Curtis tries to make sense of this change and goes to Blackpool which has the highest referral rate of anywhere in England
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Monday 28 November 2022
Thin ice
As the increase in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service increases, the profile of the young people seeking treatment changes too. There are now two natal girls for every natal boy, a complete reversal of what it had been a decade before. Polly Curtis tries to make sense of this change and goes to Blackpool which has the highest referral rate of anywhere in England
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Monday 28 November 2022
The broom cupboard
Polly Carmichael became the director of the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock in 2009. “I remember our office was literally a room that had probably been a broom cupboard at one stage”, she recalls. But the decision in 2011 to start offering puberty blockers to people under the of 16, and in 2016 to widen the professionals who could refer a child to GIDS had a major impact. The numbers of people on the waiting list ticked inexorably up, until the clinic felt it could barely cope
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Monday 28 November 2022
A verdict
In the summer of 2022 the NHS announced it was winding up the Gender Identity Service for children and young people at the Tavistock. Critics of the service celebrated, its supporters were left in despair. In this series journalist Polly Curtis has spent months trying to understand what happened at GIDS. Why has it attracted such criticism and what is the best way going forward of treating young people with gender dysphoria?
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Thursday 23 June 2022
Episode 6: Lord of the spies
It’s no secret that political patronage can get you a place in the House of Lords. But even people who understand the system well – even peers themselves – were appalled when Boris Johnson decided to extend his patronage to Evgeny Lebedev.
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Thursday 16 June 2022
Episode 5: A blind eye
The Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament produced a report into Russian interference in British democracy. Boris Johnson saw it before his general election landslide in 2019. But his government went out of its way to make sure it didn’t see the light of day until long after the election had been fought and won
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Thursday 9 June 2022
Episode 4: Doubling down
Years of warnings about Russia’s intentions had gone unheeded; discounted as scaremongering. But then came the invasion of Crimea, and the end of any doubts. In spite of it all, the Lebedevs’ ascent in London continued, and so did the extraordinary parties
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Thursday 2 June 2022
Episode 3: Project Venus
There comes a moment in any successful invasion of a country when you can no longer hide, your plans have to become obvious. It’s a moment of jeopardy but if you can get through it – as Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev did in Britain when they bought first the Evening Standard and later The Independent – then the scale of your ambitions can shift dramatically
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Thursday 2 June 2022
Episode 2: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Moscow
The oligarchs who made their way to London in the early 2000s and changed it presented themselves as embodiments of the new Russia; members of the global elite, and arms-length beneficiaries of Vladimir Putin’s new order, not slaves to it. Those were the terms on which Britain let them in, but it was mugged
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Thursday 2 June 2022
Episode 1: The advance party
Britain prides itself on being impregnable; a country which hasn’t been invaded for 1000 years and can’t be bought. The Lebedevs give the lie to all that. They spent a lot, but not a fortune, buying their way into British public life. And they did it in a way which perhaps nobody had tried before: they amused the people who mattered
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Monday 11 April 2022
Greg Barker: the lord’s work
The days of the Russian oligarch in London are numbered. What fate awaits the enablers – those well-connected people who worked for and provided services to wealthy Russians? This is the story of one of them
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Monday 7 March 2022
Russian warship, go f*** yourself
We thought the Russians were masters of the information war; that they’d sweep Ukraine aside. Why is it not turning out that way?
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Monday 14 February 2022
Modi’s warrior pose
Narendra Modi’s dominance of Indian politics is built on a knowing appeal to traditional Indian values: Hindu values. He has turned yoga into an unlikely but powerful weapon in his campaign