New research report – The Politicisation of BBC Reporting in the 100 days before the Scottish Election 2026 – Comparing BBC Wales and BBC Scotland

On Friday 17th April 2026, only three weeks before the Scottish Parliament election on May 7th, 2026, a research team at Talking-up Scotland completed a 100-day survey of the BBC Wales and BBC Scotland’s inserts in BBC Breakfast, Monday to Friday 6 to 9am. Despite both operating within a dramatic political context with pro-independence parties, Plaid Cymru (PC) and SNP, for the first time likely to win in both countries, the coverage differed markedly in terms of the politicisation of reports and in the overall level of negativity know to influence voter behaviour.

A 2023 study published by Talking-up Scotland, prior to the recent surge in support for Plaid Cymru, had revealed BBC Scotland to be twice as likely as BBC Wales, to politicise negative reporting, to platform opposition voices and to ‘accuse’ the devolved government.1

A similar study, in the same year found that BBC Scotland was very significantly more likely than STV, to report bad news, by a ratio of more than 5 to 3, and was 3 times more likely to link bad news to the Scottish Government or ministers.2

Researchers have found that heavy consumption of negative news triggers the release of stress hormones and consequent increases in anxiety. 3,4,5 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 often promising to prevent change or to return to earlier imagined more familiar times. 6,7,8

In 2014, research which covered the period from September 2012 to September 2013 which took in 730 hours of early evening TV news coverage broadcast by the BBC revealed the No campaign benefited by a ratio of 3:2 and personalised independence arguments as being the wishes of Alex Salmond, considered a divisive character by some. They appeared 35 times with no such personalisation of any of the No campaign’s arguments.9

This most recent study, of around 200 BBC Wales reports and 300 BBC Scotland reports, found, as in earlier studies many similarities between the two, of the kind some will argue is the nature of journalism – an emphasis in both on bad news and a tendency to try win audiences with moving tales of the lives of individuals who are in many ways similar to their audiences and with whom they might empathise.

BBC Scotland’s surface similarities, however, conceal sharp and hard differences in the underlying political messages being communicated and which researchers have shown will influence voter decisions.

First, BBC Scotland had significantly, nearly 50%, more negative reports, by 171 to 124, suggesting a darker, anxiety-inducing representations/constructions of life in Scotland, predisposing voters to prefer the more change-averse, conservative ideologies of the Unionist parties to the more radical, change-welcoming views of the SNP and Scottish Greens.

Second, more significantly, BBC Scotland was far more likely, by 39 to 9, to mention the Scottish Government in reports of problems facing their audiences. At times the Scottish Government or the SNP would be directly accused by an opposition politician of responsibility for events even though they were more accurately the direct responsibility of a health board, a chief of police or a local council. Repeated enough as any propagandist has long known since the time of Goebbels in Nazi Germany, this contaminates the SNP with apparent failures in, for example, schools, hospitals or in criminal events. BBC Wales did this rarely, 9 times in 200 reports.

Finally, BBC Scotland were three times more likely, 14 to 5 times, to report positively on the achievements of the UK Government.

Taken together, we have here evidence of unbalanced, inaccurate and deceptive, reporting of the news in Scotland, over a very prolonged period, which has played a significant role in suppressing support for the SNP and in particular, among BBC Scotland’s more mature audience.

That this is unchanged in BBC Scotland but not yet apparent in BBC Wales, despite the recent nationalist threat to their future, suggests a deep culture which takes years to embed and to become so resilient that it can quickly condition, if necessary, new staff

Sources:

  1. https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2023/06/02/new-research-finds-bbc-scotland-is-twice-as-likely-to-politicise-negative-reporting-to-platform-opposition-voices-and-to-accuse-the-devolved-government/
  2. https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2023/06/30/research-bbc-scotland-news-constructs-a-far-more-anxious-and-conservative-world-than-stv-news-does/
  3. https://patient.info/news-and-features/is-watching-the-news-bad-for-your-mental-health
  4. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload
  5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9135112/
  6. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201612/fear-and-anxiety-drive-conservatives-political-attitudes
  7. https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections
  8. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/158607199.pdf
  9. https://newsnetscotland.com/8598-broadcasters-favouring-no-campaign-according-to-new-academic-study/

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4 thoughts on “New research report – The Politicisation of BBC Reporting in the 100 days before the Scottish Election 2026 – Comparing BBC Wales and BBC Scotland”

  1. BBC Scotland shows bias against SNP – quelle surprise , NOT !

    Anti-SNP bias from the Beeb is as natural as Sarwar lying through his failed dentist’s teeth .

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    1. Ach let’s not give the Labour LIAR any, even negative, attention, he has enough of a platform to spout his massive LIES, via the English BBC operating in Scotland as it is.

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  2. Thank you for undertaking this objective research, albeit not ‘peer reviewed’, but confirmed by my own bias!

    A few disparate comments.

    1. When an opinion poll near voting day for the 2014 referendum suggested YES was going to win, the unionists panicked. David Cameron flew to Scotland. Bodger Broon made his notorious speech at Community Central Halls in Maryhill to Labour Party members (naebdy else allowed in) which the the BBC broadcast live and had ‘pundits who hailed it. The Daily Ranger published the mendacious VOW. A spokesperson for MI5 was interviewed and said that at times when the integrity of the state is at risk all agencies must act to protect it.
    2. Even though Labour did not win an overall majority in the Senedd at the last election it was still the dominant party in Wales until the 2026 bye election in Caerphili was won by PC, despite the media suggesting people might want to vote Reform to keep PC out, Weksh Labour always emphasised its Welshness. In that context, BBC Wales did not feel it needed to attack the Senedd (since they perceived it as securely unionist) or indeed things Welsh. Indeed, Wales was just something tacked on at the end of ‘England and Wales’.
    3. Establishing the Scottish Parliament was largely driven by Donald Dewar in honour of his friend, the late John Smith. Blair and the UK Labour Party were lukewarm at best, hostile at worst. Remember, Blair dismissively compared it to an English parish council. The powers given to Holyrood, though constrained by the Act, were much greater than those given to the Welsh Assembly. In addition, since Donald Dewar called devolution a ‘continuous process’ rather than a single act, there was the possibility that Holyrood could get more powers, as, indeed, it has. However, since Labour believed they were the ‘natural governing party of Scotland’, they believed Labour would always be the largest party and that there would always be a unionist majority. So, they were sanguine about Dewar’s ‘process’. But following Dewar’s unexpected death and Henry McLeish becoming FM and showing independence of thought, Labour mired him in scandal, forced his resignation and installed the compliant Jack McConnell, who did not rock the boat and actually sent unspent money back to the Treasury. From the day Holyrood was established the Scottish media in its entirety attacked it unrelentingly. The reason was to let Scots know ‘they urrnae very good’. BBC Scotland is continuing this practice.
    4. The UK unionist media as they did in 2014 are following their practice of criticising their own ‘straw man’ of ‘Scottish exceptionalism’. This is the context of baleful Libby Brooke’s’ knocking piece in the self proclaimed ‘progressive’Guardian.’. Look at the uniformity of the headlines in today’s Telegraph, Mail, Times, Express, Sun.

    I think all of this shows the unionists are really fears that their ‘precious union’ might indeed be falling apart due to Starmer’s and his government’s lack of a narrative and a direction, the rise of Reform and collapse of the Tories, the DUP’s recognition that a united Ireland is coming accompanied by the mollifying words of the president of the Gaelic Games Association, the rise of the Green Party to the left of Labour (Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are more leftwing than Labour), the likely third party status of Labour in Wales and the likely continuation of SNP governance in Scotland.

    WB Yeats was prescient when he wrote: “Things fall apart, the Centre cannot hold, mere anarchy rules”.

    The problem for us and the Welsh is that Britannia has always had a destructive balefulness – leave Britannia if you must, but we will impoverish and disempower you in the process.

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  3. So who is ‘responsible’?

    On April 15, the BBC News website carried an article on the NHS in Wales: ‘First minister admits north Wales NHS “not a pretty sight’.’

    In response to a barrage of negative criticism from all political opponents about Labour’s track record on NHS Wales during BBC Wales’ ‘Your Voice Live: Ask the Leader ‘ programme ahead of the Senedd election, this reported response from the Labour FM to negative criticism was notable: 

    “We don’t run the NHS directly. We appoint health boards to make sure that that happens.”

    Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yklvrvgwdo 

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