{"id":654294,"date":"2026-05-20T11:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654294\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:30:09","slug":"bbc-boss-tells-staff-he-will-use-data-to-build-sat-nav-around-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654294\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Boss Tells Staff He Will Use Data To Build “Sat Nav Around Bias”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: The BBC<\/a>\u2018s new director general has revealed that he plans to use data to improve impartiality, and has warned that iPlayer is not doing a good enough job of showcasing the corporation\u2019s content.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his first address to staff on his second day in office, former Google executive Matt Brittin<\/a> said that he wanted to use data to build a \u201csat nav around bias,\u201d according to audio from the all-hands meeting obtained by Deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said the BBC could deploy technology to analyse its news and content to establish patterns in output. Brittin said this could mean assessing how often the BBC uses certain words, or analysing the types of contributors appearing across its programming.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe did not expand on how the technology would be built, but it will likely lead to speculation that the BBC could use AI to achieve his aim of mining data. Brittin is a vocal proponent of artificial intelligence, and his experience at Google was attractive to the BBC\u2019s board when recruiting for Tim Davie\u2019s successor.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStories and data together are the way to understand the world,\u201d Brittin said. \u201c[This is] not to audit people, but as a kind of sat nav around bias or sat nav around these topics \u2026 So that\u2019s where I think I\u2019d try to complement our brilliant expert teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comments are interesting because Brittin has not put impartiality at the forefront of his agenda after being unveiled as director general. He did not explicitly reference impartiality in his three priorities for the BBC<\/a>, which was a break from his predecessor Davie, who put the issue front and center in his first days in the job.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrittin was speaking after a tumultuous year for the BBC, which has been roiled by repeated editorial crises over the war in Gaza and Donald Trump<\/a>. The latter remains a live issue, with the BBC locked in a legal battle with the U.S. president after a Panorama film botched an edit of Trump\u2019s January 6 speech.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Radio 4 Today show presenter Anna Foster in Salford, Brittin joked that he had spoken to four former director generals in preparation for the role, and the most \u201cpolite\u201d description they had for the job was that it is \u201cquite a handful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tiPlayer Not Doing \u201cGood Enough Job\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElsewhere in his address, which was streamed live for BBC staff around the country, he had a frank assessment of the UK broadcaster\u2019s streaming and online services.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur products, so iPlayer, Sport, and Sounds, aren\u2019t doing a good enough job for the content that we\u2019re all making,\u201d he told employees. \u201cThat\u2019s no criticism of the teams. We\u2019ve just funded content at the expense of the platform, and so we need those products to work better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrittin spoke about his own experience of using iPlayer. He noted that after watching breakout comedy hit Small Prophets, he would have liked iPlayer to recommend Detectorists, another series written by Mackenzie Crook. Brittin added that when he went to watch Silent Witness, he was served the very first episode by iPlayer, rather than the latest season.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Small<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMackenzie Crook in \u2018Small Prophets\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBBC<\/p>\n

\n\tA BBC insider said: \u201cHe was very keen to stress he wasn\u2019t criticising teams or individuals, it was a frank assessment from an outsider coming into the organisation, and no doubt reflects the views of some of the audience. He laid down the challenge for improvement and that should be welcomed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrittin suggested that the BBC could start pushing more investment into its products, though acknowledged that it was \u201csmart\u201d that the corporation had prioritised content spend in recent years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve spent quite a lot of money, including cash reserves, to try to make the content offer as big as possible coming into this charter. That\u2019s one of the reasons we haven\u2019t got the money we need to sustain the size and shape of the organization,\u201d the DG added, nodding to the \u00a3500M ($675M) of savings <\/a>the BBC needs to make.<\/p>\n

\n\tYouTube Deal<\/p>\n

\n\tBrittin said he was pleased that the BBC had struck a deal with YouTube to make more of its output available on the platform.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s quite helpful to me that the deal with YouTube was announced. I spent 18 years trying to convince the BBC that it should be on YouTube. Then I stopped working in technology, and then it signed a deal with YouTube, and I started working at the BBC, so it\u2019s nothing to do with me,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe might say, \u2018What are we doing in giving away our content?\u2019 Look, that game is over. We\u2019re not giving away our content, we\u2019re putting it in front of audiences that deserve to see it, and we need to figure out the right way to do that. And with other broadcasters, we can push for those platforms to give prominence and to respect public service broadcasting, and also the fight against fakery in our news business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrittin told staff that he has already held talks with the government over charter renewal and funding, but said he would not be negotiating in public. \u201cIdeally, you need to be in a situation where the people who consume [BBC content] continue to pay [the licence fee] and there are lots of mechanics in that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrittin added that he would appoint a deputy director general from within the BBC, with Rhodri Talfan Davies \u2014 who briefly served as interim DG \u2014 widely seen as the candidate to beat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: The BBC\u2018s new director general has revealed that he plans to use data to improve impartiality, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[8827,12,88,243753,92],"class_list":["post-654294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-matt-brittin","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}