The Moral Maze

The Moral Maze
Genre Individual cross examinations of successive witnesses by a group of panellists on live radio
Running time 45 mins (Wednesdays 20.00)
Country of origin UK
Language(s) English
Home station BBC Radio 4
Hosted by Michael Buerk
Created by Rev Ernie Rea
Produced by Dan Tierney (BBC Religion & Ethics)
Recording studio BBC Manchester
Original release 20 August 1990 – present
Website Website

The Moral Maze is a live discussion programme on BBC Radio 4, broadcast since 1990. Since November 2011 it has also been available as a podcast.

Structure

Four regular panellists discuss moral and ethical issues raised by a recent news story. Michael Buerk delivers a preamble 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:

The panellists mainly fall into two opposing camps of broadly centrist and right-wing viewpoints, and the discussions hence often revolve around whether newer liberal values are eroding more traditional values. This binary split is often complicated by differing philosophical views the panel hold which do not conveniently sit in a simple left-right political divide.

Notable former panellists include Rabbi Hugo Gryn (who died in 1996), Janet Daley, Edward Pearce, Geoffrey Robertson, Michael Mansfield, politician Michael Gove, Ian Hargreaves, Kenan Malik, scientist Steven Rose, philosophers Simon Blackburn and Roger Scruton, and historian David Starkey, who often attracted controversy for his allegedly blunt manner.

History

The first programme on Monday 20 August 1990 was forty minutes long from 11 am, and followed by Poetry Please. 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 9 am news, until 9:45 am (a slot similar to the current In Our Time). In July 1991, it had moved to 8:05 pm until 8:50 pm on Fridays, replacing Any Questions? for the summer recess. There was then a repeat at 1 pm on the following Saturday, and a phone-in from 2 to 2:30 pm, replacing Any Answers?. There was also an end-of-year programme. In July 1992 it had moved to Thursday mornings following the 9 am news. It became a de rigueur listen for Westminster MPs. By 1997 it was fifty-five minutes long, lasting until 10 am. 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 10:15 pm.

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, the programme production base is Salford Quays. The programme is broadcast live from BBC Broadcasting House in London.

TV pilot

In early 1994 a television version was considered, which eventually took off on Saturday 10 September 1994 on BBC2 as a trial series of six 45-minute-long programmes broadcast around midnight, perhaps influenced by Channel 4'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 11 pm.

Criticism

In his book Bad Thoughts (US title Crimes Against Logic), libertarian philosopher Jamie Whyte 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 criticized 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.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Cohen, Nick (July 2010). "Wireless: Long March to the Microphone". Standpoint Magazine. Retrieved 8 February 2018.

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