Health Secretary Michael Matheson…..

On Reporting Scotland’s short broadcast at 1.30 today, both political stories, SNP bad.

2 min 30 on the above topic, then straight onto a report on smart meters.

Then at 4 min 47 sec in:

to dual the A9 by 2025.

20 sec on that.

Then should mobile phones be banned in School?

Nothing on Ian Murray’s AirBNB income, Reform MP, Lee Anderson’s suggestion of sending refugees to the Western Isles, or the Scottish Tories being forced to drop their opposition to abortion buffer zones.

This is all-too-typical.

From 2^nd June 2023

New Research finds BBC Scotland is twice as likely to politicise negative reporting, to platform opposition voices and to ‘accuse’ the devolved government.

Abstract

A four-week survey [8 May – 2 June 2023] of reporting by BBC Scotland and BBC Wales gathered objective data on fifteen measures, including references to the devolved government within reports and reports of ministers or their party being causally linked to the content.  Twenty episodes and 140 reports from both BBC Scotland and BBC Wales, at around 06:30am, Monday to Friday inclusive, were transcribed and items codified, using clearly objective criteria. While there were many similarities between the two, BBC Scotland was very significantly, by a ratio of 2:1, more likely to mention the Scottish Government or the SNP within reports of problems than BBC Wales was to mention the Welsh Government or the Labour Party. Similarly, but less often, BBC Scotland was also more likely to report that the Scottish Government had been, for example, ‘accused’ of being responsible directly for a problem and to offer a platform for opposition parties to criticise the devolved government. BBC Wales did not ever platform opposition parties.

Introduction

In Scotland, for many years now, researchers and commentators have pointed to evidence of bias in the reporting of the state broadcaster against the interests of pro-independence groups, the SNP, and since 2007, the SNP in government.

In most parts of the world, where an independence movement challenges the integrity of a multi-ethnic state, that the state broadcaster would work on behalf of the state to help maintain that integrity by undermining any pro-independence movement, would not be a controversial claim.

However, in the UK, the state-funded British Broadcasting Corporation has a ‘proud’, if often only self-attributed, view of itself as impartial and ‘objective.’ This is an assessment, in particular, of its World Service, quite widely shared globally.

In the devolved nations of Wales and Scotland, there remains a tendency in the BBC, to make similar claims of objectivity in simply reporting what is happening and in the public interest.

Critics in Scotland have pointed to many examples of apparent bias in reporting, of a pro-Union culture and instances of reporting which seem to clearly indicate bias against pro-independence groups and the Scottish Government. The state broadcaster and pro-Union politicians have disputed these claims, suggesting that the inherent subjectivity and inevitable selectivity of news reporting makes them unsustainable. Indeed, some Conservative Party politicians have even claimed bias by BBC Scotland, in favour of the Scottish Government and against the Conservative Party, the main Unionist party.

There is comparatively little research or commentary making comparable claims in Wales.

Research making international comparisons of media reporting has considerable problems in terms of the size, the diversity and the background cultures operating within the states being compared. However, Scotland and Wales have relatively similar sizes, demography, history within the UK and in the autonomy of the state broadcaster departments operating within each. The main political distinctions are the presence of the Labour Party and the SNP in respective governments in Wales and Scotland and the quite different levels of strength of the two main pro-independence parties in each, Plaid Cymru with 12 and the Scottish National Party with 64 members of the devolved parliament.

This makes a comparative study of BBC reporting in Wales and Scotland a valid study.

Methods

At around 06:30am, over four weeks in May and June 2023, the BBC Scotland and BBC Wales news inserts into the BBC Breakfast show, were recorded, transcribed and coded using these objective criteria:

Dev Gov ‘Accused’ Did the report include the use of wording from any source stating that the devolved government had been directly responsible for the problem being reported?

Opposition platformed Was there any naming of an opposition party in the report?

Negative W/S overall Did the report refer to a problem of any kind for the devolved nation?

Negative W/S politicised Did the report name the devolved government or the governing party specifically even if not causally?

Negative W/S not politicised Did the report not mention the devolved government or party?

Negative W/S Health/Care/Env Was the report about health, care or environmental issues?

Negative W/S Crime/Policing Was the report about crime or policing?

Negative W/S Economy Was the report about the economy, trade, employment or cost of living?

Negative W/S Education Was the report about education, pre-school, primary, secondary or tertiary?

Negative SNP/PC Was the report specifically about negative aspects of the SNP or Plaid Cymru parties?

Positive W/S Was the report about positive developments in the devolved nation?

Positive images Union Did the report show positive visual images of the UK as a whole?

Positive images W/S Did the report show positive visual images of the devolved nation?

Unreliable/partisan/single sources Did the report feature or rely upon sources with a known pro-Union agenda, from partisan groups such as trade unions, openly or hidden, or from single members of the public unsupported by any reliable statistics?

Positive UK Government Did the report make positive comments about reserved, UK Government, actions?

Findings

In terms of overall negativity, which has been associated with causing anxiety and depression in some heavy news consumers and perhaps leading to conservative, status quo-favouring, voting patterns, there was a heavy emphasis on the negative in both stations. This tendency is often justified as informing and satisfying public demand. Any suggestion that this bias derived from a political agenda would require far more data than is available here.

However, where reports refer to the devolved governments, regardless of any specific accusation of direct responsibility for the problem being reported, this, at the very least associates the problem in the minds of viewers, with the devolved government and, by implication blames them for it.

Examples such as this on 15 May:

“The Royal College of Nursing is warning that patient’s safety and dignity is being compromised as its becoming increasingly common for inappropriate areas such as corridors to be used for treatment….The Scottish Government says patient safety is paramount and its investing in frontline services.” 

where no direct causal relationship is stated, often took this form, leaving the viewer to make a connection.

In this, BBC Scotland was significantly more likely to do so, by a ratio of 2:1 (23:12), in the space of only four weeks. This can be taken as strong evidence of an underlying agenda to undermine the SNP/Scottish Government.

Far less common and so not statistically significant, evidence of bias, lies in those cases where reports included phrases in which the SNP/Scottish Government was specifically blamed or ‘accused.’

Examples such as:

“Humza Yousaf has been accused of negligence after it was revealed a key pledge to recruit an additional 1 000 mental health specialists has been delayed, Ministers confirmed to Scottish Labour the key promise that every GP practice would have access to a mental health and well-being service by 2026 has not yet commenced due to difficult decision set out in November’s emergency budget review.”

on 18 May, or:

“Environmental campaigners have launched a legal bid against the Scottish Government over damaging scallop dredging….it accused ministers of regulatory negligence.”

on 19 May, ‘accuse’ the Scottish Government of failure in a form not found once in BBC Wales reports.

While there were few of these, BBC Scotland was more likely to do so by a ratio of 2:0.

Similarly, where a report included reference to an opposition party – Labour, Conservatives or Lib Dems in Scotland, Conservatives, Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru in Wales, this can be seen to be platforming of that party as an alternative to the devolved government party.

Examples such as this:

“The level of violence in schools is a national crisis according to the Scottish Conservatives who are calling for more to be done to tackle the issue. The education secretary, however, says new material to help staff deal with behaviour will be published soon. The Conservatives say the level of violence in schools is increasing. They highlight a rise in the number of verbal and physical attacks on teachers and the number of dangerous weapons taken from pupils.”

on 23 May, offer a platform to opposition parties to criticise the devolved government. There were no such examples in BBC Wales reporting, during the survey.

Again, though again quite rare, this happened 4 times on BBC Scotland but never on BBC Wales.

Conclusions

In the evidence presented here there is one very marked and statistically significant contrast to be seen between the reporting of two otherwise similar BBC departments operating within two broadly similar devolved nations within the UK. That the reporting within the nation, Scotland, where the pro-independence movement offers a real and present danger to the United Kingdom’s continuance, is heavily biased toward the politicising of negative information with a view to associating the main pro-independence party with that information or even of direct responsibility for it, is incontrovertible evidence. That the reporting within the nation where the pro-independence movement does not as yet offer a real and present danger to the United Kingdom’s continuance, is not heavily biased toward the politicising of negative information with a view to associating the main pro-independence party with that information or even of direct responsibility for it, is conclusive confirmation that BBC Scotland operates consistently and frequently to weaken the case for independence by attempting to cast doubt on the ability of the SNP in government to run the country effectively.