Tim Davie’s first speech as director general was greeted on Twitter with a deafening silence by BBC staff, many of whom seem to have taken a recent sabbatical from social media.
All those that depend on the BBC for their livelihoods had already read the memo that anyone wanting to be an “opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media … should not be working at the BBC”.
He didn’t name names, but some of the corporation’s most prolific tweeters – such as its media editor, Amol Rajan, and political editor, Laura Kuenssberg – have been very quiet on the platform recently, while others content themselves with promoting their own work.
Only Gary Lineker continues regular updates for his 7.6 million followers. His name was trending on Twitter for his support for refugees while Davie spoke in Cardiff. He lists the BBC, BT Sport and Walkers on his bio, but who knows for how much longer.
But while the headline writers will focus on the social media edict, Davie’s surprisingly punchy speech addressed far more fundamental issues.
In focusing on impartiality, universality and funding, Davie set out his vision of who and what the BBC is for. With its language of “them and us” and “inalienable rights” it was a political speech aimed directly at those outside the BBC – in Fleet Street and Downing Street of course, but also the high street.
It was there in his call for a “radical shift in our focus from the internal to the external, to focus on those we serve: the public”.
“We can surround ourselves with people like us,” he said.
It was a pitch to outsiders – and it had to be. With a hostile government and a difficult market, the BBC needs all of its licence fee payers if it is to survive. Not just the young, not just in London, not just the rich.
Davie’s speech was full of targets regarding diversity in terms of gender, race, disability and socio-economics. But his aim seems most laser-focused when it comes to diversity of thought.
It was a speech that had to steer a course between those rightwing columnists shrieking about the “wormhole of woke” and those on the left who will hear damaging whispers of the “silent majority” in his speech.
BBC research shows it is the have-nots, far from London, who feel most unheard by the corporation.
This bid for impartiality and the “pursuit of truth” seems more about broadening issues covered than the sort of fence-sitting nonsense that saw climate emergency deniers given equal billing on flagship news shows.
Davie made clear that he would not be abandoning “fair debate or an abhorrence of racism”.
Davie, who once stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative councillor, was talking to political leaders when he spoke out against subscription too.
”We could make a decent business out of it, and I suspect it could do quite well in certain postcodes, but it would make us just another media company serving a specific group,” he said.
The BBC is also going to have to make cuts. His predecessor made several speeches about this, yet, as Davie pointedly remarked, the BBC has increased its public service headcount over the last three years.
In a world in which political leaders use social media and favoured news outlets to spin their own truths, the fact that the BBC is trusted by 60% of the population is to be cherished.
It’s too early to tell whether Davie is the man the BBC needs in order to survive – but given the political reality, he appears to have made a promising start.
