Peter Hitchens - British Broadcast Media

British Broadcast Media

A regular on British radio and television, he has been described as "a formidable interview subject, with a hostility simmering just beneath the surface – perhaps because, in his words, he is used to having to be "hit hard" whenever he is given the chance to air his unfashionable views".

People like me – though still allowed to speak – are allowed on to mainstream national broadcasting only under strict conditions: that we are 'balanced' by at least three other people who disagree with us so that our views, actually held by millions, are made to look like an eccentric minority opinion.

In 2011, Hitchens was booed by the audience for a Question Time programme, on which he appears regularly, when he said that sex education was causing teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. During the same programme, chairman David Dimbleby quoted to Hitchens comments made by John Bercow that The Mail on Sunday was "a bigoted, sexist, homophobic comic strip". After his appearance, Hitchens wrote "Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?" Hitchens is also heard on Any Questions?, This Week, The Daily Politics and The Big Questions.

Hitchens has authored and presented several documentaries on Channel 4, including critical examinations of Nelson Mandela and David Cameron. In the late 1990s, Hitchens co-presented a programme on Talk Radio UK with Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell.