The BBC Board has appointed Matt Brittin, former boss of Google’s European operations, as the new Director-General of the BBC. He succeeds Tim Davie, Director-General since 2020, who announced his resignation in November 2025.

MRC statement on the appointment of Matt Brittin as the Director-General of the BBC:

The BBC’s new Director-General has a duty to break with the failures of his predecessors and act as a champion for the British public, by putting the needs and interests of the public at the centre of everything the BBC does.

This will require an entirely different way of thinking from Matt Brittin’s previous role at Google, an unaccountable Big Tech company which profits from treating its users as consumers to be exploited, rather than as citizens and partners in building a healthy media ecosystem.

The new Director-General will need to prove that he is fully committed to the principles and values of universal public media, serving the needs and interests of all audiences.

It is deeply disappointing that the BBC Board has refused to use this appointment to challenge the entrenched privilege and elitism within the BBC. Whatever his previous successes and qualities, Matt Brittin joins the long line of white, privately-educated Oxbridge graduate men at the top of the BBC.

The British public and BBC audiences already feel that the BBC is not effective at representing them or reflecting the diversity of thought and identities that make up the UK. With this appointment, the BBC Board risks adding another barrier to a democratic partnership with the public – distancing the BBC’s leadership even further from the audiences it is supposed to serve.

Brittin will also need to show he will protect the BBC from political attacks and corporate complacency. As the recent ‘Our BBC, Our Future’ survey of over 870,000 people showed, the BBC’s independence is a top priority for licence fee payers. While Matt Brittin may bring extensive ‘connections’ across politics and the media industries, these links must not become another backdoor for murky, unaccountable influence over the BBC.

For too long, the BBC’s leadership has been easily cowed by government pressure and put commercial objectives over the BBC’s essential mission to inform, educate and entertain all audiences. In choosing a Director-General with no broadcasting or news experience, over other candidates with leading roles in UK public media, the BBC Board seems determined to ignore widespread criticisms of the BBC’s strategic failures and its glaring lack of democratic accountability.

Matt Brittin has no editorial experience, yet he will be editor-in-chief of the UK’s largest news organisation. Without substantial changes to the BBC’s editorial processes, in particular introducing transparent public oversight of BBC editorial decision-making, his appointment risks repeating the same errors and institutional blindspots that have persistently weakened public trust in the BBC.

Finally, Matt Brittin has an historic opportunity to rebuild the public’s democratic connection with the BBC as a vital national institution. As he takes leadership of the BBC’s negotiations over its next Royal Charter, Brittin must listen to and speak for the tens of millions who use and fund the BBC, but currently have no say over how it is run or governed. Without these essential changes, ‘Our BBC’ will remain nothing more than an empty marketing slogan.