By Professor John Robertson OBA
BBC Scotland‘s heartlessly titled Disclosure show, once more ignores the major crime worry for all of us – English County Lines drug gangs currently terrorising a town near you, and omits the fact that, according to the National Records of Scotland, suicide by women fell last year. In their BBC Breakfast insert this morning, they only had a Young Offenders Institute, Polmont, suicide, their Disclosure suicide teaser (above) and the possible visit of the mother of a 2021 English murder victim to a memorial in Edinburgh. Then it was on to rain and rain.
BBC Scotland have a fondness for the dark and tragic beyond that of STV.
In 2023, I carried out a four-week survey [6 to 30 June] of news reporting by BBC Scotland and STV and gathered objective data on fifteen measures, including references to bad news, to the devolved government within reports and reports of ministers or their party being causally linked to the content.
Twenty episodes and 102 reports from both BBC Scotland and STV, at around 06:30am, Monday to Friday inclusive, were transcribed and items codified, using clearly objective criteria.
While there were similarities between the two, BBC Scotland was very significantly more likely to report bad news, by a ratio of more than 5 to 3. It was 3 times more likely to link bad news to the Scottish Government or ministers and had a significantly heavier emphasis than STV News on reporting problems in those infinitely improvable and central public services – health, policing and education.
STV News was twice as likely to report good news about events in Scotland. Researchers have found that heavy consumption of negative news triggers the release of stress hormones and consequent increases in anxiety [i], [ii], [iii].
Studies of voting patterns have found that those with a ‘negativity bias’ derived from fear and anxiety about the world they live in, have a tendency to vote for conservative political groups promising to prevent change [iv], [v], [vi].
[i] https://patient.info/news-and-features/is-watching-the-news-bad-for-your-mental-health
[ii] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload
[iii] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9135112/
[iv] https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201612/fear-and-anxiety-drive-conservatives-political-attitudes
[v] https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections
[vi] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/158607199.pdf
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Thanks for the empirical data.
While I agree such reporting does promote a tendency to being conservative, this does not mean the Conservative Party, but a hesitancy about change. So, for example, trade unions under pressure from members are regularly hostile to change with the teacher unions being, probably, the most reactionary of all. It means that political parties which profess to be ‘progressive’ such as SNP or Labour regularly fail to make decisive change. Look at how the SNP has dealt with local government funding, for example. “Scottish'” Labour, since 2007 has, of course opposed everything, but UK Labour, which actually does have some genuinely progressive people in it seeks to hide its progressiveness by ‘triangulation’ and expulsion of people of more radical views or just preventing them from becoming candidates.
Ultimately, as is happening with Starmer’s Labour and happened under Bodger Broon, the Labour Party denies itself a transformative narrative because it is feart to annoy the Mail and Murdoch. Being charitable, I can discern within the fuzziness of Labour’s ‘pledges’ that there is, possibly, something transformative but it gets masked by babble about ‘toughness’ tough choices, hard choices, being ruthless, iron rules, etc. etc.
Alasdair Macdonald
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B B C = Bitter British C**ts !
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so you’ve got more chance of a full house in a game of Scotland is Shite bingo, on the BBC than STV, I’ll give them both a miss.
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I suspect STV, registered in London, don’t want to lose their audience, the BBC hang onto folks via the TV ‘license’ and is seen as a respectful platform yikes, especially for older ones so can get away with Scotland is very very bad for you and the pesky SNP are to blame so make sure you always vote for an English HQ’d party.
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Completely off topic, but I wonder if this article merits further investigation in terms of ‘England v Scotland’?
https://theconversation.com/home-education-why-are-so-many-parents-choosing-it-over-mainstream-school-228164?
The incidence of home schooling in England has been rising year after year, figures show that for last school year there were 92,000 children being educated at home – a rise of nearly 6,000 on the previous year, which itself was a rise of 5,000 on the year before. Meanwhile, in Scotland the last figure I can find is 969…
This strongly suggest to me that England’s Education system is failing children there – a view I’ve actually held for a number of years, even before reports started emerging that many local authority maintained schools were facing bankruptcy.
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Thanks
Will check out
John
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Yet EngUK Labourcons’ ‘change’ rhetoric worked to get them elected…
Great work there Prof in the stats you gathered, just wish more people were aware of Britnat lies and propaganda deployed against Scotland by the country next door.
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