Credit: Creative Commons
BBC Director-General Tim Davie gave a speech this morning at The Lowry in Salford, Manchester on plans for how the BBC will grapple with the UK’s “crisis of trust” in order to become “an institution that builds social capital”.
He speaks on the aims to “focus on homegrown storytelling” which he says is “needed now more than ever”. Other changes include increasing “news presence on platform like YouTube and TikTok” to expand its reach.
“The future of our civilised, cohesive, democratic society is for the first time in my life at risk”. He acknowledges that “maintaining the status quo will not suffice” when it comes to building a “happier UK”.
He mentions that there is an “active distrust” amongst the UK public with 45% of people believing that most people can’t be trusted, according to the World Value Survey. He claims this to be a “shocking irony” due to the level of globalisation the internet has facilitated. “We are building an information rich age, but it is an insight rich age?”.
To counter this “erosion of deep connection”, he says that he would like to use “cutting edge tech” to offer “outstanding homegrown services”.
Davie says that trust in the BBC went up in 2024 with 80% of UK adults using BBC platforms on a weekly basis and it being the only UK media that young people use out of their top 5 platforms, with TikTok being the most used by British youth, as of November 2023.
To support young people and their families, Davie vows to offer a new BBC family account to every parent, helping to lay “the foundation for a lifetime of BBC support”. In addition, he would like to combine the power of BBC Bitesize, the UK’s leading revision service “with the power of AI” and give every child between the ages of seven and 16 access to it as a way of using “AI for good”.
Furthermore, he wants to “open the doors of our studios to social media creators”, helping them to have “more support, access and opportunities” as a way of bettering the creative sector and to ensure that British intellectual property creators get a “fair reward”.