WHEN Question Time heads to Glasgow this week, perhaps not coincidentally following Nicola Sturgeon’s scheduled appearance at the UK Covid inquiry, it will be interesting to see what those aspiring to emulate debate hosts Fiona Bruce, Stephen Jardine or Jo Coburn will learn about the current guidelines for “impartiality” at the BBC:
• Ensure you are well prepared to counter every possible SNP or Scottish independence argument and to defend every Tory argument no matter how morally reprehensible (and make sure your earpiece is fully tested so that programme directors can assist with slanted comments or questions).
READ MORE: Who needs facts when you have BBC Scotland and British nationalism?
• Seat panel SNP and Labour politicians (unless in Scotland) as close to you as possible (preferably either side) so you can easily interrupt them or distract them by waving your arm or pen in front of them while allowing right-wing and Conservative panelists the space to speak with few or no interruptions (there must be at least one Tory politician or activist on any panel, even in Scotland where the Tories have not had a majority of the vote at a General Election since 1955). Wherever pro-independence panellists are placed, attempt to cut them off mid-sentence and prevent them from completing any argument they appear to wish to make.
• Pose all questions in a manner sympathetic to the Union and particularly Tory party policies (although avoid any mention of Brexit) while taking every opportunity to denigrate arguments for Scottish self-determination. Pre-selected questions to be discussed by the panel should preferably be chosen from Tory or (in Scotland) Labour Party activists or any independence supporter who is clearly unhappy with the SNP, and these audience members should be repeatedly asked for their views (again with the assistance of programme directors if required).
READ MORE: The Traitors on TV brought to mind all the lies told by the Brexiteers
• Avoid serious discussion of the UK’s failing constitutional arrangements and seek to always let the Tory representative (or Labour representative in Scotland) have the last word in any controversial debate before winding up the programme with an appropriately contrived pro-Union remark.
Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian
A RATHER odd “debate” is frothing about the UK’s public broadcaster in relation to bias. As someone who gave up TV last century because I felt the BBC had long given up either representing the whole of Britain or understanding what impartiality really meant, I’m somewhat at a loss.
I cut my political teeth on the miners’ strike, but forget that catastrophe of public broadcasting. Has everyone forgotten the very recent scandal of the BBC being chaired by a Tory donor and former advisor to both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak? Has everyone forgotten that Richard Sharp finally left under a cloud – not because he should never have been there in the first place but because he was embroiled in the ugly scandal of acting as some sort of grubby money fixer for the odious liar and chancer Boris Johnson?
READ MORE: Tory Lucy Frazer would not know BBC bias if it got up and bit her
The BBC regularly platforms speakers from right-wing think tanks without explaining who they are, like Reem Ibrahim from the Institute of Economic Affairs on Politics Live the weekend before last.
More recently, as the BBC serves up another pointless brain-dead reality show fronted by over-paid “talent” Claudia Winkleman – The Traitors – it was ITV that delivered the earth-shattering Post Office drama – very much in the public interest and service of the public.
Surely we are missing something here…
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
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