THE SNP launched its European elections campaign yesterday – but users of the BBC’s news website will have been hard pushed to know it.
Any mention of the launch was absent from the BBC Scotland news page all of yesterday.
By around 5pm, a four-line story and 53-second clip of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s speech had been posted on its politics page, later updated to four paragraphs.
READ MORE: BBC lacked knowledge of Scottish affairs, says ex-staffer
By contrast, a story on the Scottish Greens launching their manifesto for the European elections on Tuesday was around four times as long.
Willie Rennie’s LibDem launch, which took place in a fishmonger’s, was absent entirely, despite the importance of the May 23 vote.
Neither of these events featured on the broadcaster’s dedicated European elections 2019 section, though coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour launch was put up for online audiences at 12.30pm, appearing in the election section as well as the main UK news page.
It also ran as the top story on the UK politics section, which had no mention of any Scottish parties.
The coverage of the election manifesto launches was more thorough on the BBC’s television channels.
The UK-wide News At Six covered UK Labour, and included a roughly two-minute package on the SNP’s event.
Reporting Scotland’s coverage had details on all of the Scottish party launches, with reference to the Greens, Change UK and The Brexit Party also.
With the Scottish manifesto launches absent from the BBC Scotland news homepage, the top story was instead about a prison officers’ union calling for a strike.
The “Scotland Politics” section led with a story about NHS Highlands staff saying they faced “fear and intimidation”, as detailed in a new report.
It comes after the Sunday National revealed that the SNP appeared on BBC political shows fewer times in April than the LibDems.
The LibDems had eight slots, while the SNP had just seven across the month – the same as both the Greens and Change UK.
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