BBC A “Disinfectant” To Disinformation On YouTube & X/Twitter, Says New Boss

BBC director general Matt Brittin has said that the British broadcaster will double down on YouTube and X/Twitter to counter the tidal wave of disinformation online.

Brittin may have spent the majority of his career at Google, but it did not stop him from acknowledging that YouTube is a breeding ground for deliberately deceptive information.

Giving evidence to UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Brittin said that the BBC must have a prominent presence on the platform to showcase its public service journalism, which strives to prioritize impartiality and accuracy.

“In this polarizing world, YouTube and other platforms have things which we would regard as disinformation. We have to be there. The BBC is like the disinfectant for misinformation if we get our journalism right,” Brittin told lawmakers.

He was talking as the UK government intends to legislate to ensure that YouTube, TikTok, and other major video-sharing platforms make it easy to discover content from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Paramount-owned 5.

Brittin said there would be opposition to the proposals at YouTube (indeed, Google has already called the plans unfair), but he added that there were good reasons for tech giants to be more transparent about their algorithms.

Brittin said he has recently reviewed the BBC’s presence on X/Twitter after Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced she was quitting Elon Musk’s social network because it favors “abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate.”

The BBC boss explained: “We strongly believe that we have to have things like BBC News on those platforms, because otherwise, where is the alternative to some of the misinformation?

“My view is we should always keep under review the third-party platforms where we appear. There will be new ones we should be on, there’ll be maybe others where we decide to pull back.”