The prospect of UK state media being run by a former Google executive raises serious questions

~ punkacademic ~

News that Matt Brittin, the former head of Google’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is the front-runner for the poisoned chalice of BBC Director-General, comes as the BBC finds itself under constant attack during the renewal of its Charter, which gives it a statutory footing and ensures its remit and funding settlement.

His predecessor, Tim Davie, was forced out of his job over a Panorama report that drew Donald Trump’s Ire. A former Tory candidate appointed during the coalition years, Davie had thrown plenty of bones to the right, but found that despite decrying ‘virtue signalling’ and cancelling The Mash Report, his ‘war on woke’ was never enough to satisfy them.

In theory at least, a new Director-General with a tech background and connections with the same companies which have thrown their weight behind Trump might prove more palatable to Britain’s liege-lord in the White House, and his lieutenants. But the potential appointment of a former senior tech executive to run UK state media raises other serious questions.

As anarchists we would always be sceptical of the BBC’s claims to probity and impartiality. In many respects, Brittin and Davie are cut of the same cloth: wealthy, white, middle aged men – there is only a year between them – educated at independent schools and Cambridge University. Both had commercial careers; Brittin most notably at Google and Davie most notably as a Vice-President at PepsiCo. Both are guilty of speaking in LinkedIn bullshit.

Brittin, however, was also once the public face of the Google tax avoidance scandal in the UK, hauled before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee during the Coalition years. These hearings saw him rise to the task of explaining just how it was possible that a multi-billion dollar enterprise could pay precious little corporation tax.

During his time at Google, Brittin once famously claimed in a Parliamentary hearing that he didn’t know how much he himself was paid, to much amusement from politicians and public alike. Evasion was very much the order of the day in his performances. He received a CBE in January and a Royal Television Society Fellowship last year.

At a time when what often masquerades as ‘artificial intelligence’ is promoting an anti-human agenda on behalf of a small coterie of fanatical billionaires (of which the present British government is in thrall), it might be expected that more, not less, scrutiny be applied to it by institutions in the public sphere.

Is that what can be expected of Brittin’s BBC? Can the man who was once responsible for YouTube’s sales performance in Europe be the man overseeing an organisation both in competition with it and committed to scrutinising it, and platforms like it, ostensibly for the benefit of the public sphere?

This anarchist is doubtful, to put it mildly.

Davie, for his part, last week offered a lament at the Royal Television Society, where he reflected on his tenure in post. He championed the BBC’s successes under his leadership. He noted – correctly – the reach the BBC still has, with 94% of the public using a BBC outlet at least once a month. And he implored his successor to demonstrate ‘energy’ and ‘resilience’ in the role. Interestingly, Davie argued that the function of the BBC was to drive a more ‘participative’ society.

The last part is wrong-headed at best and hypocritical at worst – it is Davie after all who has overseen a bloodbath in local radio, the arm of the BBC closest to communities. If anything, it is anarchist and radical media, rooted in communities that transcend borders, that have never been more important.

The solutions to the pervasive alienation from this capitalist, extractivist system are indeed participative – but they transcend the narrow, bleak realm of participation Davie has in mind. They are social, ecological, and ours. So whilst the BBC goes through its latest psychodrama, we too will need our energy and resilience to advance and promote the analysis and the solutions which people in all places need and deserve.

Image: Ben Sutherland on Flickr CC BY 2.0