Rod Liddle
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Rod Liddle (born 1960) is a British journalist best known for his term as editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Liddle was born in South London but brought up in Guisborough. He attended Leeds University and the London School of Economics. Liddle was a member of the Socialist Workers Party in his youth but worked between 1983 and 1987 for the Labour Party Shadow Cabinet. He then returned to journalism. Liddle was appointed Editor of the daily early-morning Today Programme in 1998, partly as a result of a high-profile attack on his main rival by Alastair Campbell, the press spokesman for Tony Blair.
The Today Programme was established and highly influential through its political interviews, but Liddle was determined to increase the influence of the programme by breaking new stories. To do this he hired newspaper journalists who had experience in investigative journalism. Among the most prominent was Andrew Gilligan, who transferred from the Sunday Telegraph in 1999. Four years later Gilligan was a central player in the controversy over the September Dossier and the death of David Kelly.
In addition to his work on the Today Programme, Liddle wrote a column under his own name for The Guardian newspaper. On September 25, 2002, he titled his column 'Marching back to Labour': making reference to a march organised by the Countryside Alliance in defence of fox hunting, Liddle wrote that readers may have forgotten why they voted Labour but would remember once they saw the people campaigning to save hunting.
The BBC considered that this was unacceptably partisan and gave Liddle an ultimatum either to end his column or resign. Liddle chose to resign. He continued to write for the Guardian, wrote a book of short stories, became a team captain on Call My Bluff, and also took a job as Associate Editor at The Spectator. He was at the forefront of defending his programme, and Andrew Gilligan, in the media during the Hutton inquiry. In 2004 his personal life was the subject of much comment when he cut short his honeymoon to return to London so he could be with his mistress; his marriage ended in a swift divorce.
External links
- Rod Liddle: Marching back to Labour (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,798398,00.html)