A presenter for BBC’s flagship Breakfast programme, Naga Munchetty is a familiar face to the British households, and often makes headlines, while telling news stories.
A crucial test came in 2019, when the corporation ruled that she has breached the guidelines over comments she made about a tweet from Donald Trump, in which the then US president asked four female politicians of colour to “go back” to “places from which they came”.
Discussing the comment on the show, Munchetty said: “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism. Now I'm not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean.”
As the BBC said she had gone “beyond what the guidelines allow for,” there was an outpouring of support for Munchetty, with dozens of black actors and broadcasters called on the broadcaster to overturn its decision in an open letter. Within a week, then BBC director general Lord Hall reversed the decision, noting her words were not “sufficient to merit a partial uphold” of the complaint against her.
Later, writing in the backdrop of the global protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in the US, Munchetty – daughter of an Indian mother and Mauritian father, both nurses – opened up her experiences of racism.
“You never forget the first time you hear that painful and distressing word. I was seven, when someone I thought was a friend at school, told me we could no longer hang out. They used the P-word, making clear the reason was because of the colour of my skin,” she wrote.
She was also a part of an equal pay campaign at the BBC in 2017, which led to all the main presenters of BBC Breakfast getting paid equally for their work.
Many a time, her interventions have brought oft-neglected issues to the forefront, such as the conversation about how women’s pain is viewed after she shared her experience of contraceptive coil fitting on her BBC Radio 5 Live show, prompting many women to share their stories.
Revealing that having an IUD inserted was “one of the most traumatic physical experiences” she has ever had, Munchetty explained how some women are made to feel that their pain is something to endure, not a problem to solve, particularly when it comes to gynaecological procedures such as having a coil fitted.
“We all know that coils are safe and effective and lots of women have no problem at all with them,” she said, “but like all medical procedures, there's a vast range of experiences.”
Her show led to a petition by health campaigner Lucy Cohen, who called for better pain relief for intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as ‘the coil’, and inserted into the uterus, procedures in Wales.
Born and raised in South London, Munchetty’s favourite subject at school was maths, but the love of reading won out and she studied English at Leeds University. A post-graduate diploma in newspaper journalism from City University led to her first jobs writing for the city pages at The Evening Standard and The Observer.
She then moved to TV, joining Reuters Financial Television as a reporter, and then working for CNBC Europe, Channel 4 News and Bloomberg Television before landing at BBC Two’s business show Working Lunch in 2008. She has won many fans as a business journalist, with her authoritative coverage of major news events including the collapse of Northern Rock and the US Federal Reserve’s introduction of ‘quantitative easing’.
In 2014, she switched over to BBC Breakfast, the UK’s most popular morning news programme which turned 40 this January, and has never looked back. In 2021, she ventured into radio, presenting three days a week in the mid-morning slot at Radio 5 Live. The 48-year-old journalist hosts the radio show on Mondays to Wednesdays, and keeps her spot on the famed red sofa from Thursdays to Saturdays.
As well as making sure that the audience stays informed during breaking and developing news stories, she enjoys asking questions that the audience would like to ask. Munchetty has grilled countless political heavyweights from Hillary Clinton, to David Cameron and Tony Blair. She also enjoys the lighter side of the job, with favourite celebrity interviewees including Mick Jagger and Benedict Cumberbatch.
She is passionate about keeping an active lifestyle – her Instagram page is dotted with sweaty selfies from the gym – and ran the London Marathon in 2013, raising money for mental health charity United Response, and cycled 100km for Ride the Night in 2015. And, golf is a passion she shares with her husband, TV director James Haggar, who she has been married to since 2007. She is now a committee member of Moor Park Golf Club, where she presents the annual Charity Golf Day in June.
She appeared in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, paired with Pasha Kovalev, in 2016, and was a judge on the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in the same year.
