By stewartb
The contributions to life in Scotland by the public service broadcaster, BBC Scotland are well known to TuS readers. Most readily analysed is its output appearing daily on the BBC News website: context-free, perspective-free news on economic and political matters; politicisation of public service issues to a degree unknown in the output of BBC Wales; an evident preference for negativity – candidly, gaslighting; and to reinforce this, a practice of bias by omission. All the foregoing is consistent with exerting influence in support for the Union.
However, today on the Corporation’s News website we may be seeing a new tactic in BBC Scotland’s efforts to influence its audience. One might characterise the approach as ‘numbing the senses of the nation with trivia’!
The main Scotland page of the BBC News website has been displaying an article – posted on 10 May and then ‘updated’ on 11 May – entitled ‘Where did McDonald’s rule out for second Dumfries site?’ At mid afternoon on Sunday 12 May, it is the lead article in the website’s Scotland Business section!
See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scotland/scotland_business
The journalist gives the reader no clue as to the rationale for researching, writing up far less publishing this piece. However, we learn that burger giant McDonald’s has submitted plans for a second drive-through restaurant on the outskirts of Dumfries. In the final sentence of the article we also learn “Dumfries and Galloway Council’s planning committee will be asked to approve the scheme in due course.’ So far so normal? Or so far so not newsworthy for the nation?
What comes in between – as the headline foretells – opens up endless and new opportunities – vast new scope – for BBC Scotland’s journalism. Stories which tell us details of what firms didn’t do in terms of locating a new retail outlet!
We are given profiles of all the sites in the area that the company considered, however briefly, and rejected i.e. the places that McDonald’s ‘found unsuitable or unavailable’. I guess there may have been a good many sites that were ‘unsuitable or unavailable’ so we should probably be grateful that McDonald’s and subsequently BBC Scotland restricted matters to the following only moderately long list:
- a convenience store
- a ‘baroque town house’
- an old cinema
- an old discount store that had also been a cannabis factory
- an old book shop
- A former furniture superstore
- units at a retail park
- ‘land at the Peel Centre’
- ‘a vacant greenfield site at Heathhall.’
It’s obviously (to a BBC Scotland journalist and editor!) important – by way of prominent entries on Scotland’s pages on the Corporation’s News website – that the nation learns of the local sites that McDonald’s decided not to use. Gripping, fascinating insights!
What things that didn’t happen will BBC Scotland spend resources on amplifying for the nation next?
An audience fed this guff often enough may be less inclined to reflect on the bigger issues like whether life in Scotland could be more like that experienced by folk similar to us in Norway, Denmark, Ireland and other successful independent nation states with c. 5.5 million population.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Where is the polical history of the past 100 years?
BBC Scotland lost in Tory unionism of the Sir Keir Starmer kind.
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Irrelevant twaddle to most, but to desperate D&G Tories facing political humiliation possibly some free PR, and a year’s free supply of happy meals for the authors….
What you are perceiving as a new tactic is in fact an old favourite of BBC Scotland, the ‘cuckoo’ piece- The irrelevance which through limited space, ensures what is preferred NOT be in the news, never does…
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The Grauniad used to do this in their ‘Scotland’ section as well, Think they still do, but I stopped reading the paper a few years back. Even the cartoons. (Maybe, these days, especially the cartoons).
I remember on one occasion, the most importance news “where we are” was a bird sitting on a thistle.* I stopped reading the Scottish section because of it. No doubt I was being unfair. Sometimes it was a mountain. Or a loch.
Wasn’t it nice of them to give those of us whose location in The North renders them genetically incapable of governing themselves something pretty to look at?
*Ecologically speaking, the bird was probably very important. Also Graun readers could go somewhere nice for a long weekend in the hopes of seeing it. And buy some shortbread at the same time…
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A lister Jack will be raging he can’t get his Happy Meal.
we need the facts!
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You must be joking, Jack’s a snob and always has been – Such as ‘happy meals’ are for the riff-raff in his book…
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It’s not like A lister has ever been happy unless his bosses told him to be.
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McDonalds are being boycotted. Gaza. Sales are going down. Unhealthy products.
Press in Scotland full of sales of hotels. Irrelevant. To fill a page. No news day. Or ferry nonsense. Better than some bus services.
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The BBC today reports on the Spanish election results where the pro indy Catalonian parties lost ground. One reason given for this is “the issue of Catalonia’s relationship with the rest of Spain was pushed into the background by other challenges, such as the region’s drought and housing crisis”.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-69000823
This fits in well with issues we have discussed in other posts – concentrate on the Scotland is failing at education, health etc narrative, refuse to engage with the SNP white papers offering an alternative vision, swamp us with trivia, keep culture wars alive and chip away at individual reputations.
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A Scottish Labour politician resigned during a sleaze probe which found rules had been broken when her son was awarded a share in a £4 million contract award,
I have only noticed this an update on it as not seen anything on BBC.
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Will there be loads of police and her house or houses surrounded by blue tents
Angela Rayner ‘could be interviewed under caution’ by police
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A slow news day in BBC Scotland land…..is a day when there is no (new) emerging story that they, the BBC here can exaggerate as a significant and #BAD story , that is (they the BBC say is) connected to the SNP…..which is meant to signify, as a story, that only they, the SNP as a party within the UK , are #BAD.
Meanwhile in other news , via other news outlets outwith Scotland, as in elsewhere in the UK……the Natalie Elphicke story is till ongoing…yet still being ignored by the branch office of the BBC in Scotland.
The hilarious aspect of this story is that some Tories are now promoting how #BAD Natalie Elphicke was, via her actions, as a Tory MP….yet as all of this #BADNESS occurred when she was an MP in their Tory party , it seems, that for them, as in these Tories, that her #BADNESS, was never a problem that these same Tories felt inclined to highlight then when she, NE, was still a Tory MP……LOL
Starmer now knows that this defection has turned into an own goal….it now exposes him and his party to Q’s on why she, an ex #VERYBAD Tory MP Natalie Elphicke, is welcome in the Labour party yet the former longstanding Labour MP Diane Abbott is not, as she, Abbott, is now an independent after Starmer threw her out of his New New Labour party aka the pound shop Tory party…….
It also proves what many of us have been saying for yonks….the Labour party are #RedTories in all but party name…..
However the BBC news in Scotland would rather promote ‘mind numbing non stories’ than ever venture to associate , as in promote , that the Labour party are connected to/with any #BAD story on the pages of their website or in their news reports……even if that #BIG political current story is doing the rounds elsewhere within their UK…..until of course it’s a political current #SNPBAD story…….then it’s duck the ‘mind numbing non stories’ and get with the #SNPBAD top headlined story ( to also include other versions of this same #SNPBAD story ,via other articles, on their Scotland & Scottish Politics pages of their website)……with input on these #SNPBAD stories from the Labour party in Scotland (Jackie Baillie) and also input from the Tory party in Scotland (Craig Hoy)….as in two hypocrites who fail to see their respective parties as others really see them (hypocritically #BAD) but whose brass necks compels them to promote, in their ‘Playing politics’, that only the SNP, as a party and government, are #BAD…..
NMRN
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I would be forever in BBC Scotland’s debt if they could name the possible sites around Ardrishaig that the Austrian supermarket chain Billa might decide not to choose if they were ever to think of opening an outlet in Argyll.
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I vote SNP and always will so if Sunak thinks I am a terrorist tough s***
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this is done to make people beleive that there is nothing happening in Scotland or in the world that is newsworthy , it is a ploy to make people think all is well in Scotland and UK and the world , all is under control for your safety and enjoyment of life.The truth is this is a propaganda statement telling you that you are not going to get any news you are not going to be told anything about what is happening in your country or elsewhere in the world you are going to be controlled by the absence of pertinent knowledge and information being witheld from you.
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Sunak uploading ‘no one is safe’ propaganda. Supply weapons illegally to war zones. No one is safe from Tory austerity. Brexit and poor, bad decisions. Cameron is a disaster.
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