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Scotlandshire: BBC Scotland Coverage Of The Independence Referendum


By David Cromwell

The BBC's 'Amazing Litany' Of Bias

Coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, due to be held on September 18 this year, is a compelling example of the deep establishment bias of the corporate media. Some critics have characterised the BBC's coverage, in particular, as though Scotland is merely a region or a county of the United Kingdom called 'Scotlandshire'.

The establishment, pro-Union bias of 'mainstream' coverage emerges clearly from a careful analysis by an experienced media academic, and by the BBC's reprehensible attempt to rubbish both the study and its author. The year-long study was conducted by a small team led by Professor John Robertson of the University of West Scotland. Between 17 September 2012 – 18 September 2013, the team recorded and transcribed approximately 730 hours of evening TV news output broadcast by BBC Scotland and Scottish Television (STV). The study concluded that 317 news items broadcast by the BBC favoured the 'No' campaign (i.e. no to Scottish independence) compared to just 211 favourable to the 'Yes' campaign. A similar bias in favour of the 'No' campaign was displayed by STV. Overall, there was a broadcaster bias favouring the 'No' campaign by a ratio of 3:2. In other words, there was 50 per cent more favourable coverage to the 'No' campaign.

Professor Robertson told Media Lens that 'more importantly', there was also:

'undue deference and the pretence of apolitical wisdom in [official] reports coming from London – the Office for Budget Responsibility and Institute for Fiscal Studies, for example; but, also, Treasury officials [were] presented as detached academic figures to be trusted.' (Email, March 18, 2014)

There was also a deep-rooted personalisation of Scottish independence by the broadcasters in their systematic conflating of the 'wishes' of Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, with the aims and objectives of the 'Yes' campaign. This was not the case with media coverage of the 'No' campaign. The objectives of the 'No' Campaign were not routinely portrayed as the 'wishes' of Alastair Darling, leader of the 'Better Together' group campaigning to keep Scotland within the United Kingdom.

Professor Robertson told us that:

'the conflation of the First Minister's wishes with the YES campaign seems a classic case of undermining ideas by association with clownish portrayal of leading actors [in the campaign].'

This media performance was, he said, reminiscent of past corporate media demonisation of former miners' leader Arthur Scargill and Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot.

Finally, Professor Robertson noted that there was a strong 'tendency to begin [news] reports with bad economic news for the Yes campaign [...]. Reports leading off with bad news or warnings against voting Yes were more common than the opposite by a ratio of 22:4 on Reporting Scotland (BBC) and a ratio of 20:7 on STV.'

Last year, Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, gave a dramatic illustration of this biased tendency to report bad news for the 'Yes' campaign with the following list of BBC headlines:

'Scottish independence: Pension shortfall warning'

'Scottish independence: Warning over "weakened military"'

'Scottish independence: "Havoc" warning from pensions firm'

'Scottish independence: Luxembourg warns against "going separate ways"'

'Scottish independence: Barroso warning on EU membership'

'Scottish independence: Michael Moore issues warning over vote question'

'Scottish independence: "Border checks" warning from home secretary'

Murray commented:

'Please note this amazing litany – and I use the word litany carefully, a verbal repetition to inculcate belief – includes only those where the deliberate practice of repetitive coupling of "independence" and "warning" has been captured by being written on the [BBC] website; there are hundreds of other examples of broadcast, spoken use of the words "Warning" and "Scottish independence" in the same sentence by the BBC.

'The presentation of every one of the above stories was in the most tendentious and anti-independence manner conceivable. They have all been countered and comprehensively rebutted.

'By contrast, there are no BBC headlines that promote positive claims about Scottish Independence. You will look in vain for headlines that say "Yes campaign says independent Scotland will be eighth richest country in the world" or "Official GERS [Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland] report shows Scotland's public finances much healthier than those of the UK".'

So how did BBC Scotland respond to Professor Robertson's documented evidence of clear bias in its coverage of the Scottish independence referendum? Derek Bateman, a retired journalist with decades of experience at the BBC, summed it up as follows:

'Instead of doing what any self-confident public service broadcaster should do and produce a news item out of a critical report from one of our own universities, they seem to have hidden it from the licence-fee paying public who bankroll them and then mounted a sabotage operation against the author.'

Amazingly, BBC Scotland sent a 6,000-word letter to Professor Robertson in an attempt to demolish his study and undermine his credibility, copying it to the professor's Principal at the University of West Scotland. This unprecedented move seemed deliberately calculated to intimidate the researcher. Certainly, Bateman and other commentators, as well as Robertson himself, described the BBC's action as no less than 'bullying'.

Bateman noted BBC Scotland's 'fury at being found out misleading viewers' and he concluded:

'It strikes me as the height of hypocrisy for the BBC to try to badger an independent organization because it can't stand it revealing the truth – that it is failing in its primary duty to the Scots...and they didn't even report it.'

In a careful and detailed response, Robertson rebutted the BBC criticism of his one-year study, and he concluded:

'I think I've answered all the questions needed to contest these conclusions. [...] The BBC response is a remarkably heavy-handed reaction. Why did they not report the research, let their experts critique it on air and then ask me to defend it? Instead we see a bullying email to my employer and a blanket suppression across the mainstream media in the UK. I'm shocked.'

source: http://www.medialens.org/index.php/aler ... endum.html