Appointing Matt Brittin, a former Google executive, as BBC director general is smarter than critics admit. Although he was on the board of the Guardian’s publisher, Brittin is no journalist. He does understand platforms, scale and digital audiences.
Director generals come under scrutiny when crises hit, like last week’s sacking of Scott Mills over his “personal conduct.” It then emerged that police previously questioned the Radio 2 DJ over separate allegations of serious sexual offenses, closing the case due to lack of evidence. However, the role’s underlying challenge is facing future threats to the corporation’s audience.
On one measure, YouTube reaches more Britons than the BBC’s channels combined. However, hovering into view is AI, which facilitates misinformation, error and ignorance. It is already beginning to mediate the news and how it is understood. The UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) says about 30 percent of searches display AI summaries, seen regularly by more than half of adults. The BBC has tried, for good reasons, to stop its journalism being extracted by AI without payment. However, it risks excluding itself from a technology where many now get information. The Reuters Insititute for the Study of Journalism found that only about 6 percent of users turn to AI for news. However, as summaries embed in search, journalism becomes raw material, not the finished product.
A paper by Kai-Cheng Yang of Binghamton University last year showed that AI-generated answers draw on a narrow band of sources: OpenAI models rest on wire services; Google’s on search-driven global media; Perplexity on respected brands such as the BBC. The same question produces a different response depending on the system used. Despite the BBC being the UK’s most trusted news source, only two of four AI tools drew on its content, said a study from the Brthe UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The UK’s most popular AI tool — OpenAI’s ChatGPT — cited GB News more often. ChatGPT’s top citations often align with OpenAI’s publisher deals, including the Guardian’s. The lack of transparency around how AI’s sources are selected and weighted is problematic.
Audiences once chose between narratives. Social media made them navigate or trapped them in filter bubbles. Now, AI distills a single response. Nuance and plurality are at risk. Journalists traditionally judged what information to use and which sources to prioritize. Their mental models were built through reporting. AI systems perform those functions through hidden algorithms, privileging what is most common, not what is most true.
Control lies not just in owning information, but in structuring, modeling and understnading it. The IPPR rightly argues that the UK must combine transparency over how AI answers are generated, fair licensing frameworks to ensure publishers are paid and intervention to curb platform dominance over information. Public service media, especially the BBC, should anchor this strategy. Impartial, accurate news is essential for democratic stability.
The BBC’s charter review must secure funding and end the cycle of “existential” resets with a permanent settlement protecting its independence. The BBC has the scale, data and mandate to underpin a trustworthy “orchestration” layer for news. Its journalism must be machine-readable, queryable and interpretable on its own terms. Letting companies like Palantir, co-founded by the Trump-backing billionaire Peter Thiel, do this would be a mistake. The BBC has traditionally fused innovation with public purpose. It must do so again and ensure news stays contestable, transparent and accountable.
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) took the stage at a protest rally on Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei in support of former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption and embezzlement. Huang told the crowd that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) had sent a message of support the previous day, saying she would be traveling from the south to Taipei: If the protest continued into the evening, she had said, she would show up. The rally was due to end
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
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