''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 issues raised by a recent news story. Michael Buerk 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 * Nesrine Malik *

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 (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,

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, Michael Portillo,

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 and Roger Scruton, 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 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?'' 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 presents occasional episodes during Buerk's absence. Originally produced at the BBC North West'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. 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 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.

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