Marie Helly

Marie Helly joined the BBC World Service in 1987. She spent several years working on a diverse range of domestic factual radio programmes, including Woman’s Hour, the Food Programme, and Costing the Earth. She produced award winning investigations and documentaries on the environment, science and the world of work. This was followed by a period of time with BBC News on the daily current affairs programme, The World Tonight, producing coverage of big domestic events, as well as bringing in depth analysis of global affairs to a UK audience.

Ms Helly has returned to the World Service throughout her career, including a period editing Business Daily during the financial crisis 2007/8. After leading coverage of the Brexit referendum campaign she once again returned to the World Service in 2016. The BBC has made tackling the challenges of disinformation a strategic priority, and so Ms Helly was asked to lead a project for the World Service, to develop content and events that would hold social media companies and politicians to account, whilst building partnerships to develop solutions. This became the BBC’s “Beyond Fake News”. As part of this project, the BBC has hosted high impact conferences across India, Africa, Brazil and Serbia; commissioned original research into why people share fake news; created media literacy workshops and other content for young people in the UK and globally.

Ms Helly holds a degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics.