Jeni Barnett - Biography

Jeni Barnett (born 24 March 1949 in London) is an English actress and TV presenter who grew up in Borehamwood. She is married to Yorkshire-born actor Jim Bywater and has one daughter, Bethany.

Acting career

As an actress she appeared on several TV shows, including Revolting Women (BBC2, 1981) and Doctors, and has also been a panelist on ITV's Loose Women and Five's The Wright Stuff, and was a long-time presenter of the children's TV series You and Me.

TV presenter

Barnett became well known after appearing on British breakfast station TV-am as a weekend presenter. She courted controversy in 1986 by breast-feeding her new daughter Bethany live on air.

Between 2002 and 2007, Barnett was host of UKTV Food's flagship food show, Great Food Live (previously known as Good Food Live) and its spinoffs Great Food Bites and Great Food Live Extra. In 2004/2005, Barnett also hosted the second series of the ITV1 cookery show, Too Many Cooks.

Radio presenter

On 16 June 2007 Barnett presented her first radio programme on LBC 97.3, when she stood in for Chris Hawkins on Saturday afternoon. Barnett soon returned to the air filling in for more presenters, including Jim Davis' Lifestyle show. As part of a new Sunday schedule she was given a new 2 hour programme talking about food.

A further change on 7 January 2008 saw Barnett move to weekday afternoons, 1-4pm, as part of the new weekday line up. The programme is a topical debate featuring aspects of news and views, in which the public are encouraged to call in with their views.

Barnett continued to present the Sunday Food programme as well as the new weekday afternoon programme until 20 January 2008 when Bill Buckley replaced her on Sundays so she could concentrate on the weekday programme. She was dropped from the LBC schedule quietly on 17 September 2010 replaced by Petrie Hosken. She started a Sunday morning show on BBC London 94.9 on 9 January 2011 and stood in for Vanessa Feltz during the weeks commencing 21 February 2011 and 31 May 2011.

2009 MMR vaccine controversy

In a show broadcast on 7 January 2009, Barnett's topics included the MMR vaccine. She and some callers expressed negative opinions of the vaccination and conventional medicine in general, and disagreed that recent disease outbreaks should be blamed on parents who choose not to vaccinate their children. The views reflected those expressed in the late 1990s when the media took up concerns about possible linkage of the vaccine to autism raised by Dr Andrew Wakefield, at the time overhyped and since shown to be wrong. When a nurse phoned in to the show and asked Barnett if she knew what was in the MMR vaccine, Barnett admitted that she did not.

The discussion attracted criticism of its accuracy and possible negative influence on public health by doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre, who described the show as "irresponsible, ill-informed, and ignorant".

Following Goldacre's criticisms, which he placed on his blog along with an audio clip of the show in question, the companies that aired Barnett's show (LBC and Global Radio) issued legal threats to force removal of the audio clip on copyright grounds. Goldacre removed the audio, but it, and transcripts prepared from it, have been made available by others via alternative sources in what the blog Techdirt called a 'Streisand effect', alluding to the wider publicity arising from an attempt to remove material from the internet. Following this, the controversy received wider attention.

After the broadcast, Barnett admitted on her blog that she "did not have the facts to hand...[was] ill informed...As a responsible broadcaster I should have been better prepared" when she discussed her claims with medical professionals who called in to question her statements. Subsequently to this, all comments submitted to the blog entries dealing with this episode were removed from her site (although they have been archived elsewhere). According to Barnett's agent, Robert Common, they contained "extremely personal and abusive comments" although no such examples have been provided, and third-party archives of the comments do not appear to support this assessment.

An Early Day Motion criticising her broadcast was tabled by Norman Lamb MP.

Barnett's broadcast was the recipient of complaints to OfCom, and Ofcom investigated the show. Ofcom's found that Based on the inclusion of alternate viewpoints from those expressed by Barnett, namely callers that included medical professionals criticising Barnett's statements, Ofcom's final ruling was that the broadcast did not violate rules against misleading portrayals of factual matters or undue prominence to minority views and opinions on matters of political or industrial controversy.

External links

• Jeni Barnett (Personal website/blog)