Barnett worked for BBC Radio 5 Live for six years, beginning in 2014, after three years working for LBC. 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. In autumn 2017, she was one of the presenters on the live discussion programme After the News on ITV. Between 2019 and 2022, she was a regular presenter of the BBC's news and current affairs show Newsnight. In March 2024, Barnett announced she would step down from Woman's Hour in April, to join the BBC's long-running Today programme, as part of their presenting team.[2][3]
In 2010, Barnett's father was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for operating brothels in the Greater Manchester area, following a prior eight month suspended sentence in 2005, after which he had continued to operate the brothels under other people's names.[11] Her mother received a suspended sentence for money laundering related to income from the brothels.[12] According to Police, they "found emails between Mr Barnett and his daughter Emma, talking about his `whores'".[12] Although Barnett refuses to talk about or answer questions concerning her father's conviction,[13] she has written that the experience traumatised her[14] and that it has been a "long, horribly bumpy road to forgiveness".[13]
Career
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,[15] and then, from 2012, the women's editor. Barnett launched The Telegraph's digital section, "Wonder Women", in October 2012 with contributors such as Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News.[16][17][18] She also became chair of the UJIA Jewish media network[19] and of the UJIA Skirt Network, a networking group for Jewish women.[20]
A radio presenter for LBC for almost three years until early 2014, Barnett joined BBC Radio 5 Live that summer.[21] From November 2014, she presented the station's Hit List programme, a countdown of the 40 highest profile online news stories of the week.[22] 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.[18]
In April 2014, Barnett was a judge for Woman's Hour (on BBC Radio 4) power list,[23] a programme on which she had already been an occasional presenter, the youngest in the programme's history.[24][25] A decade before Barnett began her role on Woman's Hour, at 17, she did work experience with its presenter, Jenni Murray.[24] Additionally, she has made documentaries for Radio 4.[10]
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"[26] "after pleading guilty to keeping brothels with a turnover of more than £2.5m".[27]
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.[28] In 2019 her book Period. It's About Bloody Time was released, which covered her experience of endometriosis.[29]
In January 2021, Barnett became the main presenter of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.[30][31] In Barnett's first week, a guest on the programme, Kelechi Okafor, refused to be interviewed by her after overhearing her discuss with the programme producers what Barnett called "allegedly anti-semitic comments" previously made by Okafor.[32] In the following month, one hundred public figures signed an open letter to the BBC criticising what they called Barnett's "strikingly hostile" interview of Zara Mohammed, the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain.[33][34] In June 2021, Sinéad O'Connor complained about how Barnett had questioned her about her mental health during a Woman's Hour interview. O'Connor announced, because of the interview, she would retire from performing, but two days later retracted her decision to retire.[35]
In January 2022, Barnett started a new role at Bloomberg, hosting the weekly show Emma Barnett Meets.[36] In this role, she has interviewed prominent figures including Al Sharpton, Anthony Fauci and Tim Berners Lee.
In March 2024, Barnett announced she was stepping down from Woman's Hour in April, to join the presenting team on BBC Radio 4's Today, replacing Martha Kearney, when she steps down after the 2024 General Election.[37][3] She presented her first edition of Today on 15 May 2024.
Awards
Barnett was named in two consecutive annual lists of the Radio Academy's 30 under 30 list.[22] She also made the 20 under 30 Hot List feature in Red magazine in 2011.[38] While at The Telegraph, Barnett was named Digital Journalist of the Year by the Association of Online Publishers and Digital Writer of the Year at the 2011 Online Media Awards.[15] She was named best newcomer at the Arqiva commercial radio awards in 2012.[21] She was named Broadcaster of the Year in 2017 by the Political Studies Association[39] and Radio Broadcaster of the Year in 2018 by the Broadcasting Press Guild.[40]
Barnett met her husband at university and married in 2012.[42] In 2018, she had a son and in 2023, she had a daughter, after five rounds of IVF and experiencing one miscarriage.[1][43][44] She lives in Brixton, south London.[45][46]
She is not highly religiously observant,[4] and is ambivalent about both Orthodox and Reform Judaism.[47] In a 2014 BBC Radio segment, she expressed discomfort at women being rabbis.[48] She has volunteered for British Jewish welfare charity Norwood.[19]
Barnett suffers from endometriosis and inflammation.[50] In August 2024 she discussed living with pain in an interview with Kirsty Young.[51][52][53][54]
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