The BBC is facing “quite a lot of pressure” to come off Elon Musk’s X, Director General Tim Davie has said, but he stressed it will remain on the platform.
Speaking to a UK parliamentary committee about the BBC World Service, Davie made the admission as he set out to prove that the BBC remains active where young people are getting their news.
His reference to Musk’s social media platform came as X faces criticism around the world over its AI tool Grok and deepfake nudes.
“I have quite a lot of pressure to remove the BBC from X by the way,” Davie told the Public Accounts Committee this morning. “That is not what I will be doing. Because we need to be on these platforms, we need to give quality information onto the social media platforms and bring people onto them. That is critical because otherwise the Chinese and Iranians are ‘flooding the zone’ and they are investing very hard.”
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Davie was responding to a question around how less and less young people now say they get their news from the BBC, preferring social media platforms like X and TikTok. He did not elaborate on who is pressuring him to remove the BBC from the platform.
BBC talent’s use of X has been a constant source of stress for the corporation, with big stars like ex-Match of the Day host Gary Lineker falling foul of the BBC’s impartiality rules over tweets. Elsewhere, in April 2023, X changed a label on the main BBC account, saying it is “publicly funded” instead of “government funded media” after the broadcaster objected to the latter term.