The recent TuS reports on Professor Danny Dorling of Oxford University and the Child Payment reminded me of this
By reader Scott on 27 February 2020:
Tonight on BBC 4’s Beyond 100 days:
‘Infant mortality began to rise after 2015. More babies died at a higher rate each year in England. They didn’t in Scotland. And in Scotland they actually decided to spend more on infants and babies and there they have reduced the infant mortality rate.’
The presenters’ faces a second after he said that.
They didn’t have a follow-up question on the Scottish situation but went quickly on to talk about how their US viewers might think about this. Dorling then referred to the lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality there, before saying:
‘England is getting to be more like a state of the United States. Scotland, interestingly, is moving towards being more like the Scandinavian countries which have incredibly good health outcomes.’
Presenter: ‘Sooo interesting.’
“The SNP posted it on Facebook on 27 February 2020 and uploaded it to YouTube on 2 March 2020 under the title “Oxford professor Danny Dorling: Scotland is choosing a better path on health.” Did any other MSM outlet in Scotland including BBC Scotland or STV share or report this?
Searches of BBC Scotland, STV, The Herald, The Scotsman, and similar outlets for contemporaneous coverage of this Dorling interview, the infant mortality England-vs-Scotland comparison, or the SNP clip turn up nothing from February–March 2020. There are social media posts from the time questioning the lack of coverage on BBC Scotland specifically, but no articles, TV segments, or shares from those outlets appear in the results.
Dorling has spoken on BBC platforms (including Radio 4) around that period on related topics like life expectancy and health trends, and Scottish media have covered other mortality/health inequality stories involving him or similar data in other years. However, this particular February 2020 segment does not appear to have been picked up or amplified by Scottish MSM beyond the SNP’s own distribution.
This is clear editor-level deliberate bias.
Did BBC UK/England or ITV cover it?
The transcript of the clip the SNP posted includes the interviewer saying: “the image people have here in America of the UK is that this is a country with a very robust social welfare net…” This indicates the interview was conducted for (or broadcast in) a US-facing BBC programme, most likely BBC World News, BBC News America, or a similar international/US strand rather than a domestic UK bulletin. There is no indication it was a domestic BBC UK/England or ITV report that was then clipped.
