THE Director of BBC Scotland has been asked to defend the corporation against accusations it was biased in favour of “anti-independence statements” during the referendum.
In a letter to Ken McQuarrie, Dundee West MP Chris Law, who said he “supported and commended” the work of the BBC, pointed to the analysis of University of West Scotland academic Professor John Robertson that found “a preponderance of anti-independence statements over pro-independence statements by a ratio of about 3:2 on Reporting Scotland.”
Law’s letter to McQuarrie follows an exchange between the two men at a meeting of Scottish Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the creative industries. The video of that exchange has now had more than 108,000 views on the MP’s Facebook page.
At that meeting the BBC boss told Law the corporation rejected the methodology of Robertson’s research. Law writes: “You stated at the Committee meeting that you did not accept Professor Robertson’s findings, and that you had some concerns about some of his methodologies. I am keen to understand more about your concerns and would be grateful if you could elaborate on those.”
He also asks McQuarrie to respond to criticisms made by the Audience Council Scotland. Law said the council had criticised some network programmes for appearing to adopt what the council called an “Anglified perspective” during the independence debate and focusing too much on the official campaigns “at the expense of the wider civic and community engagement.”
Professor Robertson welcomed Law’s letter. The professor told the National: “As regards my methods, I await any precise critique. Notably, no UK professor has written to me to question my methodology.
“Why would I use a flawed methodology in my position and after more than 30 years of teaching research methods in Higher Education? Really, it’s my findings the BBC did not like.
“They could not contradict them because they are accurate, so they resorted to the lazy, flawed methodology argument.”
He continued: “I understand from [former BBC journalist] Derek Bateman that, at the time, BBC Scotland had just recruited a number of new graduates to work on improving their coverage of the forthcoming referendum but quickly redeployed the team to pick my research apart. They did find some little inaccuracies in terms of dates or quotes and tried to use these to condemn the whole thing. It was a big project. Minor errors are always there in such work.”
A spokesman for the BBC said: “We’re very pleased that Chris Law supports and commends the work of the BBC and recognises the value of having a public service broadcaster. We’ve had several discussions with him recently when we’ve talked over a number of issues he has raised with us. As we have said previously, we have concerns over the research methodology used, and the conclusions reached, by Professor Robertson. We’ll be very happy to discuss this, and any other issues Chris Law has about news coverage, in person with him.”
The BBC in Scotland have received considerable of criticism over its referendum coverage.
In their Annual Review published in July, the BBC’s Audience Council found only 48 per cent of people in Scotland thought the corporation good at representing their life in news and current affairs content, compared with 61 per cent in England, 61 per cent in Northern Ireland and 55 per cent in Wales.
During a speech at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she didn’t believe the BBC was biased but rather their coverage had often been “ill informed” and had “totally failed” to cover the process of constitutional change happening across the UK.
She said: “I am not saying there was institutional bias in the BBC’s referendum output. However, there were occasions when its coverage – through oversight, apparent ignorance of the detail of an issue or as a result of simply following the agenda of openly partisan print media – lapsed from the objective output the referendum deserved into what could seem partial and, at times, pejorative.”
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