Day 5 and still only Scotland’s coronavirus deaths are headlined by BBC

No mention of the 1 408 UK deaths, no NHS England figures at all nor the 6.3% UK mortality rate.

No UK deaths or cases figures on the UK page but a link to Scottish deaths.


The Scottish deaths TWICE for impact.

That’s five days in a row where the UK and England pages do not list deaths or cases but the Scottish page does and often twice,

6 thoughts on “Day 5 and still only Scotland’s coronavirus deaths are headlined by BBC”

  1. I experienced a fairly rare event today – a story on the BBC News web site about Coronavirus in Scotland that was positive, measured and offered sensible perspective.

    Mind you it is overwhelmed in terms of page prominence by two headlines that manage to report Cofid-19 deaths in Scotland in two different ways!! This rare article is prominent only in the Edinburgh, Fife & East page.

    Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-52097379

    Headline: “Coronavirus: Edinburgh hospital ‘calm, controlled and ready'”

    It reports a consultant stating: ‘there were not the “apocalyptic” scenes that people might be imagining.’ And he says it was important to “keep things in perspective” as
    “Many more people have died in recent weeks of heart disease, strokes, dementia and other illnesses than from Covid-19,”

    Without wishing to downplay the seriousness of this public health crisis, I was prompted by that last sentence to seek out relevant statistics for perspective. The time series data from the following sources are fascinating (well they are to me!) – data I have never had the need or interest in examining before.

    1) Office of National Statistics (ONS): Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales (since 2010)

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

    2) National Records of Scotland (NRS): Weekly data on birth and death registrations in Scotland (since 2004)

    https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/general-publications/weekly-and-monthly-data-on-births-and-deaths/weekly-data-on-births-and-deaths

    Note: in both cases these statistics are for ‘registrations’ which will lag behind day-to- day government/NHS announcements of Cofid-19 fatalities.

    (Longstanding followers of the TUSC will recall the host’s analysis of the causes of death listed in a death certificate. I suspect the status accorded Cofid-19 in death certificates will further influence the statistical analysis of the overall impact of the virus in the coming months.)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. Thanks John – the pattern of editorial choices being made daily for the BBC News web site are now beyond ‘odd’.

    I see today that the ‘Scotland’ home page has TWO headlines devoted to death stats for Scotland: they even manage in these two headlines to report the data in two different ways! Not satisfied with this, on the Scotland Politics (yes the politics page) page there are again two ‘death’ headlines . And there is a similar ‘death’ headline on each of the ‘regional’ pages but giving the Scotland statistics, not the regional ones. (My eyes must have failed to see the UK or England figures on any of these web pages for comparison and context – or were they not given?)

    There is NOTHING comparable to this relentless style of coverage anywhere else on the BBC News site that I can find. Even the home page for London today makes no mention of any deaths statistics.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. Its to put the frighteners onto older and more vulnerable people into thinking Scotland is a terrible and deadly place—much worse than good ol’ blighty, run by that wonderful Boris guy.

    As the polls show, it doesn’t work for everyone–though it will for some Sunday Post readers.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. Pingback: BBC Bias at its most vivid as England’s tragedy is hidden from it – Talking-Up Scotland Collective

Leave a reply to stewartb Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.