{"id":234252,"date":"2026-01-08T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/234252\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T13:19:08","slug":"bbc-facing-pressure-to-come-off-elon-musks-x-tim-davie-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/234252\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Facing Pressure To Come Off Elon Musk’s X, Tim Davie Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe BBC<\/a> is facing \u201cquite a lot of pressure\u201d to come off Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s X, Director General Tim Davie<\/a> has said, but he stressed it will remain on the platform.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tHis reference to Musk\u2019s social media platform came as X faces criticism around the world<\/a> over its AI tool Grok and deepfake nudes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have quite a lot of pressure to remove the BBC from X by the way,\u201d Davie told the Public Accounts Committee this morning. \u201cThat 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 \u2018flooding the zone\u2019 and they are investing very hard.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tDavie 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. <\/p>\n

\n\tBBC talent\u2019s 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\u2019s impartiality rules over tweets. Elsewhere, in April 2023, X changed a label on the main BBC account, saying it is \u201cpublicly funded\u201d instead of \u201cgovernment funded media\u201d after the broadcaster objected to the latter term.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore pro-Israel complaints than pro-Palestine<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJonathan Munro. Image: Leon Neal\/Getty<\/p>\n

\n\tDavie is set to exit the BBC soon following his shock resignation<\/a> due to the Donald Trump Panorama scandal. He was sat next to the BBC\u2019s interim news boss Jonathan Munro, with Munro having temporarily replaced Deborah Turness \u2013 another casualty of the Trump fiasco. <\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to accusations of pro-Palestinian bias in BBC Arabic\u2019s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, Munro revealed that the BBC gets more complaints about its coverage leaning pro-Israel than in the other direction. The BBC has previously said it is \u201ctaking action\u201d on the BBC Arabic \u201csystemic bias\u201d <\/a>complaints, which were contained in the excoriating leaked Michael Prescott memo<\/a> that led to Davie and Turness\u2019 departure. Coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and its aftermath has proved difficult for the national broadcaster, causing ructions within New Broadcasting House HQ and beyond.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have more complaints overall in the BBC that we are pro-Israeli than the opposite,\u201d said Munro. \u201cBoth complaints piles are relatively chunky as you would expect from a polarizing story but it is not the case that everyone thinks we are leaning in a pro-Arabic or pro-Palestinian way. The opposite is actually true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor the avoidance of doubt,\u201d Munro added that the BBC doesn\u2019t \u201ctake any perspective [on Israel-Gaza], but in terms of perceptions of audience, it is important to put that into the discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC is facing \u201cquite a lot of pressure\u201d to come off Elon Musk\u2019s X, Director General Tim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1578,65510,605,93,61,60,77472,282,6606],"class_list":{"0":"post-234252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-bbc-news","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-tim-davie","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-twitter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}