THE BBC were recently caught red handed, setting up a blatant anti-independence propaganda stunt. The story has even made it into the Unionist part of the Scottish press, with every new revelation making things seem worse.
Scottish social media exploded with righteous outrage, perfectly summarised by this – “Surely BBC Question Time has to be taken off the air, BBC? It has blown its, and indeed your, credibility clear out of the water. Endless deceit”.
So are we about to see the demise of Question Time? Well, much as I would like to see the end of stage-managed confrontation masquerading as serious political TV, probably not. Because, living in Bromley in Greater London, I think that I’m about to rain on your parade. The problem is that, as so often with political discussion on Scottish social media, no account is taken of England.
Scotland’s satisfaction rating for the BBC may be the lowest in the UK, and only 37% of Scots think that the licence fee is good value for money, but English attitudes to the BBC are very different.
This is based on my personal experience and strictly unscientific research amongst friends, business clients and dog walkers in my local Greater London park!
Firstly, no-one I spoke to was aware of the Motherwell Question Time controversy and, when it was explained to them, the universal view was that it must just have been a mistake – a flaw in the system which had now, presumably, been corrected.
Secondly, there’s broad support for the BBC across the political spectrum. A typical response in Conservative-voting Bromley and Chislehurst was that, while we all knew that the BBC was dominated by the Luvvies and the Liberals, it did try hard to be impartial and could be relied on as an unbiased news source. A broadly similar view came from the centre left, and the only dissenting voices came from right-wing Brexiteers – who think the BBC was far too left wing.
So where does this leave the SNP? Probably in a rather more complicated place than it seems at first sight. The BBC can simply portray the SNP as serial grievance merchants or even associate them with the views of the mad Brexiteers.
The BBC is run from London. In England it is seen as, broadly, impartial. There is zero chance of Question Time being cancelled or re-formatted, so why tilt at windmills? A more satisfactory solution might be for the SNP to issue a statement condemning the show in robust terms and refusing to participate in future editions.
But, instead of continuing to complain about BBC bias, it should then restrict its TV appearances to pre-prepared statements, delivered by representatives who can deal with questions without getting diverted. Incidentally, this is very similar to the Sinn Fein approach and, whatever you think of their politics, have you ever seen them in difficulty in the last 20 years or so dealing with the media? No.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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