Emma Barnett

Emma Barnett (born 5 February 1985) is a British broadcaster and journalist.

She has been the main presenter of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 since January 2021.

Barnett was born on 5 February 1985 in Manchester to Jewish parents, Ian, a commercial property surveyor, and Michele Barnett.

She has no siblings.

Her grandmother fled Wiener Neustadt, Austria, to escape the Nazis.

During Barnett's teenage years, her father ran brothels in the Greater Manchester area.

The family home was used for publicity shoots of some of the women and for the recording of sex films.

In 2006, she graduated with a degree in History and Politics from the University of Nottingham.

She took a postgraduate course in journalism at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.

Following the postgraduate course at Cardiff, Barnett began her career in journalism at Media Week in 2007 and joined The Daily Telegraph in 2009, later becoming the paper's first digital media editor, and then, from 2012, the women's editor.

Previously convicted of "living off immoral earnings" and subjected to a suspended sentence, in 2008 Barnett's father was sentenced to immediate imprisonment for keeping brothels and controlling the prostitution of a trafficked woman; Barnett’s mother received a suspended sentence for money laundering related to income from the brothels.

Barnett attended Manchester High School for Girls, a private school.

Barnett launched The Telegraph's digital section, "Wonder Women", in October 2012 with contributors such as Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News.

She also became chair of the UJIA Jewish media network and of the UJIA Skirt Network, a networking group for Jewish women.

Barnett worked for BBC Radio 5 Live for six years, beginning in 2014, after three years working for LBC.

A radio presenter for LBC for almost three years until early 2014, Barnett joined BBC Radio 5 Live that summer.

From November 2014, she presented the station's Hit List programme, a countdown of the 40 highest profile online news stories of the week.

In April 2014, Barnett was a judge for Woman's Hour (on BBC Radio 4) power list, a programme on which she had already been an occasional presenter, the youngest in the programme's history.

A decade before Barnett began her role on Woman's Hour, at 17, she did work experience with its presenter, Jenni Murray.

Additionally, she has made documentaries for Radio 4.

Between 2016 and 2020 she presented 5 Live's mid-morning weekday programme.

Before beginning her broadcasting career she worked for The Daily Telegraph, first as its Digital Media editor and latterly its Women editor, being credited with bringing a more serious edge to the coverage of women's issues in the paper.

Between August 2016 and 2020, she was a columnist for The Sunday Times and, from June 2017, a co-presenter of BBC One's Sunday Morning Live.

After leaving The Telegraph, Barnett started presenting the morning slot on BBC Radio 5 Live in September 2016, being the first woman to have a solo daily slot since the departure of Shelagh Fogarty and Victoria Derbyshire two years earlier in a new-look schedule.

In August 2016, Barnett's 'Tough Love' agony column began in The Sunday Times Magazine.

To encourage her readers to write in about difficult issues, she referred to "the most painful chapter of my life" when her father was "imprisoned for living off immoral earnings" "after pleading guilty to keeping brothels with a turnover of more than £2.5m".

At her mother's related trial for money laundering, police found emails between Barnett and her father talking about his "whores".

In autumn 2017, she co-presented the live discussion programme After the News on ITV and between 2019 and 2022 she was one of the presenters of the BBC's flagship news and current affairs show Newsnight.

The conversation overheard was a discussion with her producers, concerning alleged anti-Semitic comments made by Kelechi Okafor, one of the show guests, who had been booked to talk about the legacy of the #MeToo movement and had defended similar comments made by Reggie Yates in 2017 about record company managers.

Upon realising Okafor had heard the exchange, Okafor was offered the opportunity to comment on air but declined to be interviewed.

Sharing the incident on Twitter moments later, Okafor said that "I'm coming off Woman's Hour because what I’ve just had to witness is absolutely degrading and vile".

In March 2018, Barnett began a series of podcasts for Historic England entitled Irreplaceable: A History of England in 100 Places.

The podcast, presented by Barnett and Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb, was nominated for the British Podcast Awards in the 'Best Branded Content' category in April 2018.

In March 2019 she became one of the regular presenters on BBC Two's Newsnight.

In 2019 her book ''Period.

It's About Bloody Time'' was released, which covered her experience of endometriosis.

During December 2019, Barnett was widely criticized for her line of questioning towards Angela Rayner in an episode of the BBC's Question Time, where she referred to Labour as the "party of the big state" and asked if they would "nationalise sausages".

In September 2020 Barnett was announced as the new main presenter of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.

She started presenting the programme on Monday to Thursday in January 2021.

On 6 January 2021, it was widely reported that, in her third Woman's Hour programme, Barnett was involved in an incident when she was overheard by guests after inadvertently leaving her microphone on.