Michael Buerk, who has presented the Radio 4 debating programme The Moral Maze for more than three decades, has claimed that “freedom of speech is seriously under threat” at the BBC. The presenter said he is concerned that his show, which sees different guests debate on the ethics behind the news stories of the week, will no longer be able to be provocative in a time when “public discourse, poisoned by social media, is ever more inclined to regard anybody with a different view as not just wrong, but evil”.
In an article for Radio Times, he wrote that Radio 4 has a “hopeless yearning to connect with yoof”.
Buerk said The Moral Maze is already “less abrasive” than it used to be and added that half the audience “feel like drowning themselves in their cornflakes” after listening to the Today programme because of its “woke” editorial choices.
“We used to pride ourselves it was a programme on which ‘the unsayable gets said’,” he continued.