In the Herald today:
Scotland’s top media academic: ‘BBC Scotland is biased branch office.’ Professor Catherine Happer leads Glasgow University’s acclaimed Media Group. She talks to our Writer at Large about why the national broadcaster is haemorrhaging public trust
When I saw her explanation of how this comes about, I fully agree with what is essentially a version of Hermann & Chomsky’s in Manufacturing Consent, forty years ago and one which I have largely embraced since then.
Many activists, I know, reject its subtlety and see, certainly in the reporting of the likes of Glen Campbell or Sarah Smith, a more intentional, explicitly Unionist agenda to harm the movement and the SNP.
Here’s what she says as reported by Neil Mackay:
Indeed.
I wish I’d kept them but in 2014, Chomsky and I had a wee email exchange where I like to think I converted him to the cause after explaining to him that Scottish Nationalism was of an inclusive and civic, not ethnic, form and essentially an anti-imperialist campaign at the end of the British Empire.
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It is unlikely that BBC Scotland and almost all the rest of the media in Scotland unless, to use Mrs Thatcher’s phrase, they were substantially, “one of us”.
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‘Scotland’s top media academic’: Apart from yourself 🙂
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Lol, in other words BBC PROPAGANDA.
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Having read the report of Professor Happer’s assessment of BBC Scotland in the main blog post, I note references to a number of possible influences: shared social backgrounds, attending same schools and same universities; a shared political ‘understanding’ and a political centrism; the mutually beneficial relationships forged with politicians and elites. I wonder if these have the same impact in BBC Scotland as they may have in London or Anglo-centric BBC?
Given the focus on the BBC and Scotland, is it not surprising – an odd omission – to have no acknowledgement of the influence of an (uncritical) adherence to Unionism and Britishness?
The professor’s diagnosis ends by seeming to claim that Holyrood as an institution and ALL MSPs are disadvantaged by the BBC attitudes. The implication here is of equal disadvantage i.e. regardless of party – really?
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