''Moral Maze'' is a live discussion programme on
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
, broadcast since 1990. Since November 2011, it has also been available as a
podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
.
Structure
Four regular panellists discuss
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
and
ethical
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...
issues raised by a recent news story.
Michael Buerk
Michael Duncan Buerk (born 18 February 1946) is a British journalist and newsreader. He presented BBC News from 1973 to 2002 and has been the host of BBC Radio 4's ''The Moral Maze'' since 1990. He was also the presenter of BBC One's docudrama ...
delivers a
preamble
A preamble is an introductory and expressionary statement in a document that explains the document's purpose and underlying philosophy. When applied to the opening paragraphs of a statute, it may recite historical facts pertinent to the subj ...
launching the topic, then a series of 'witnesses' – experts or other relevant people – are questioned by the panellists, who then discuss what each witness said.
Panellists
The regular panellists are:
*
Nazir Afzal
Nazir Afzal (born October 1962, Birmingham) is a British solicitor and former prosecutor within the Crown Prosecution Service.
Afzal spent most of his career in the Crown Prosecution Service, rising to be Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West ...
*
Ash Sarkar
Ashna Sarkar (born 1992) is a British journalist and libertarian communist political activist. She is a senior editor at Novara Media and teaches at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Sarkar is a contributor to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Ind ...
*
Andrew Doyle
*
Giles Fraser
Giles Anthony Fraser (born 27 November 1964)[Nesrine Malik
Nesrine Malik is a Sudanese-born journalist and author of '' We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent''. Based in London, Malik is a columnist for ''The Guardian'' and serves as a panellist on the BBC's weekly ...]
*
Anne McElvoy
Anne McElvoy (born 25 June 1965) is a British journalist, contributing to ''The Economist'', London ''Evening Standard'', and the BBC.
Early life
McElvoy attended St Bede's RC Comprehensive School in Lanchester, County Durham, and read German ...
*
Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips (born 4 June 1951) is a British journalist, author, and public commentator. She began her career writing for ''The Guardian'' and ''New Statesman''. During the 1990s, she came to identify with ideas more associated with the righ ...
*
Mona Siddiqui
Mona Siddiqui (born 3 May 1963) is a British academic. She is Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, a member of the Commission on Scottish Devolution and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. ...
*
Tim Stanley
Timothy Randolph Stanley (born 1 January 1982) is a British journalist and historian.
Early life
Stanley was educated at The Judd School, a grammar school in Tonbridge, Kent. He then attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied moder ...
*
Matthew Taylor
Notable former panellists include
Rabbi
A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
Hugo Gryn
Hugo Gabriel Gryn (pronouned ''green'') (25 June 1930 – 18 August 1996) was a British Reform rabbi, a national broadcaster and a leading voice in interfaith dialogue.
Hugo Gryn was born into a prosperous Jewish family in the market town of Be ...
(who died in 1996),
Janet Daley
Janet Daley (born 21 March 1944) is an American-born conservative journalist living and working in Britain. She is currently a columnist for ''The Sunday Telegraph''.
Life and career
Daley studied philosophy at the University of California at ...
,
Edward Pearce,
Geoffrey Robertson
Geoffrey Ronald Robertson (born 30 September 1946) is a human rights barrister, academic, author and broadcaster. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship. ,
Michael Mansfield
Michael Mansfield (born 12 October 1941) is an English barrister and head of chambers at Nexus Chambers. He was recently described as "The king of human rights work" by The Legal 500 and as a Leading Silk in civil liberties and human rights ( ...
, politician
Michael Gove
Michael Andrew Gove (; born Graeme Andrew Logan, 26 August 1967) is a British politician serving as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations since 2021. He has been Member of Parli ...
,
Claire Fox
Claire Regina Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley (born 5 June 1960), is a British writer, journalist, lecturer and politician who sits in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated life peer. She is the director and founder of the think tank Institute of ...
,
Michael Portillo
Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo (; born 26 May 1953) is a British journalist, broadcaster and former politician. His broadcast series include railway documentaries such as ''Great British Railway Journeys'' and '' Great Continental Railway Journ ...
,
Ian Hargreaves
Ian Richard Hargreaves CBE (born 18 June 1951 in Burnley) is Professor Emeritus (formerly Prof Digital Economy) at Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
Career
His career in British journalism includes several beats at the ''Financial Times'', as well a ...
,
Kenan Malik
Kenan Malik (born 26 January 1960) is an Indian-born British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, trained in neurobiology and the history of science. As an academic author, his focus is on the philosophy of biology, and contemporary theories of mu ...
, scientist
Steven Rose
Steven Peter Russell Rose (born 4 July 1938) is an English neuroscientist, author, and social commentator. He is emeritus professor of biology and neurobiology at the Open University and Gresham College, London.
Early life
Born in London, Unit ...
, philosophers
Simon Blackburn
Simon Blackburn (born 12 July 1944) is an English academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts ...
and
Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.
Editor from 1982 t ...
, and historian
David Starkey
David Robert Starkey (born 3 January 1945) is an English historian and radio and television presenter, with views that he describes as conservative. The only child of Quaker parents, he attended Kendal Grammar School before studying at Cambr ...
, who often attracted controversy for his blunt manner.
History
The first programme on Monday 20 August 1990, was forty minutes long from 11am, and followed by ''
Poetry Please
''Poetry Please'' is a weekly radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in which listeners request poems, which are then read by a cast of actors. It is broadcast on Sunday afternoons and repeated the following Saturday night. The current presenter ...
''. It was made by the Factual Unit of Religious Programmes (later called Factual Programmes Religion) at
BBC North
BBC North (Group) is an operational business division of the BBC.
It is also a brand that has been used by the BBC to mean:
*The large ''BBC North'' region, centred on Manchester, that was active from the late 1920s until 1968 and was based up ...
in Manchester. It was hoped that the programme format would involve the panellists' views being revised during the course of a programme, but this rarely happened.
In April 1991, it had moved to Tuesdays, and followed the 9am news, until 9:45am (a slot similar to the current ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
''). In July 1991, it had moved to 8:05pm until 8:50pm on Fridays, replacing ''
Any Questions?
''Any Questions?'' is a British topical discussion programme "in which a panel of personalities from the worlds of politics, media, and elsewhere are posed questions by the audience".
It is typically broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Fridays at 8 p ...
'' for the summer recess. There was then a repeat at 1pm on the following Saturday, and a phone-in from 2 to 2:30pm, replacing ''
Any Answers?
''Any Answers?'' is the companion programme to BBC Radio 4's ''Any Questions?'', in which a panel of notable figures drawn from politics, media or the arts are asked for their views on current affairs by members of an invited audience assembled in ...
''. There was also an end-of-year programme. In July 1992, it had moved to Thursday mornings following the 9am news. It became a ''
de rigueur'' listen for Westminster MPs. By 1997, it was fifty-five minutes long, lasting until 10am. It moved to Wednesday evenings from 13 May 1998, in the 1998 schedule changes, with a repeat of the forty-five-minute programme on Saturday night at 10:15pm.
Michael Buerk has presented the programme since August 1990.
David Aaronovitch
David Morris Aaronovitch (born 8 July 1954) is an English journalist, television presenter and author. He is a regular columnist for ''The Times'' and the author of ''Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country'' (2000), ''Voodoo ...
presents occasional episodes during Buerk's absence.
Originally produced at the
BBC North West
BBC North West is the BBC English Region serving Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, North Yorkshire (western Craven), West Yorkshire (western Calderdale), Derbyshire (western High Peak), Cumbria (Barrow-in-Furness and So ...
's
New Broadcasting House on
Oxford Road in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
, the programme production base is
Salford Quays
Salford Quays is an area of Salford, Greater Manchester, England, near the end of the Manchester Ship Canal. Previously the site of Manchester Docks, it became one of the first and largest urban regeneration projects in the United Kingdom foll ...
. The programme is broadcast live from
BBC Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main ...
in London.
TV pilot
In early 1994, a television version was considered, which eventually took off on Saturday 10 September 1994,on
BBC2
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
as a trial series of six 45-minute-long programmes broadcast around midnight, perhaps influenced by
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...
's successful late-night discussion programme ''
After Dark''. The pilot had audiences of around 1.3 million. It was last broadcast on 15 October 1994, at 11pm.
Criticism
In his book ''Bad Thoughts'' (US title ''Crimes Against Logic''), libertarian philosopher
Jamie Whyte
Jamie Whyte is a New Zealand classical-liberal academic and politician who was the Leader of ACT New Zealand in 2014. He unsuccessfully contested the Pakuranga electorate in the 2014 general election. At the election, Whyte held the first po ...
, who has been a witness on the programme, advises readers to listen to ''The Moral Maze'' for innumerable examples of faulty reasoning. Journalist and author Nick Cohen has also criticised the programme, in a piece highlighting the media careers of Trotskyite-turned-libertarian former cadres of the
Revolutionary Communist Party, centered around the
''Spiked'' magazine.
On 2 April 2021, Scottish broadcaster
Lesley Riddoch
Lesley Anne Riddoch (born February 1960) is a Scottish radio broadcaster, activist and journalist who lives in Fife. During the 1990s, she was a contributing editor of the ''Sunday Herald'' and an assistant editor of ''The Scotsman''. Since 2004, ...
criticised the programme, for taking an approach where observers and experts would discuss a particular problem, without the actual participants being part of the discussion. Riddoch also stated that the programme was too selective, elite and abstract.
See also
*
* ''The Choice'' – radio series
* ''Heart of the Matter'' –
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...
programme presented by
Joan Bakewell
Joan Dawson Bakewell, Baroness Bakewell, ('' née'' Rowlands; born 16 April 1933), is an English journalist, television presenter and Labour Party peer. Baroness Bakewell is president of Birkbeck, University of London; she is also an auth ...
References
External links
''Moral Maze'' minisite on BBC.co.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moral Maze
BBC Radio 4 programmes
British religious radio programmes
1990 radio programme debuts
Applied ethics