Last night’s STV and Reporting Scotland coverage of the UK rail strike had much in common but notably, STV had two elements making theirs much more balanced.
In interviewing passengers, STV repeated for us this sort of reaction:
‘hasn’t been so bad’
on using buses, ‘quite simple’
‘not a big deal’
While Reporting Scotland preferred:
‘It’s mad’
‘Not fair on customers’
More significant though was this stark contrast making the STV report far more balanced.
While Reporting Scotland did briefly add:
Scotrail staff are not directly involved
STV had:
There is growing frustration here in Scotland that we’ve been caught up in this and so badly affected.
And so from the SNP Transport Secretary:
Despite the fact that Scotland had no say in negotiations they were being badly affected, one of the worst affected parts of the UK.
Talking-up Scotland 
Is this really a surprise to us regarding BBC Scotland News and Current Affairs?
Although the BBC likes to boast about being the ‘most trusted news service in the world’, STV and the other ITV companies are bound by a charter relating to balance. While the BBC has a charter, it is not the same as that of the independent companies. I suspect that it was not subject to the same standards as the ITV companies is that its senior staff are ‘the right sort of people’.
I am always chary whenever vox pops are used but, increasingly, vox pops, including texts and tweets, constitute a very high percentage of news programme content from the BBC. On some occasions it appears to be the only form of ‘news gathering’.
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House Jock Peter Smith reporting from Scotland on ITV news Program after STV last night claimed things were worse in Scotland!
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An odd observation perhaps, but on a C4 video piece on RMT industrial action https://www.channel4.com/news/scotland-and-wales-hit-hard-by-train-strikes there was a perfect contrast re Edinburgh and Cardiff, the sheer hypocrisy of what purports to be “balanced journalism” in Scotland from Ciaran Jenkins laid bare…
Jenkins in Edinburgh deployed the HMS James Cook “One difference here is that Scotrail has recently been nationalised…” tactic at ca 1616.
When he turned over to the less audibly welsh intoned Andy Davies in Cardiff,
there was this at 1723 – “Most of the trains in Wales are operated by the Welsh Labour Government owned by ‘Transport in Wales” ”
Anybody else see the sheer hypocrisy of Ciaran Jenkins representing C4 and the blatant coordination of propaganda between he, the DRoss of humanity, the BBC in Scotland, the goons in the Scotland Office propaganda unit, and Anas Sarwar ?
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