Media Bias in the Scottish Independence Referendum

[ggreig]

Over the last few years, it's often been something about the reporting of the independence debate that's spurred me to write about politics on this (generally) non-political blog. (Hopefully soon I'll have nothing more to say.)

Here's an interesting short online documentary featuring Professor John Robertson talking about his findings of bias in BBC and STV reporting during the independence campaign.

Comments

[tobyaw]

Your man Robertson makes some good points, although I think he ends up sounding a bit loopy towards the end of the video.

The key question is what we expect from the BBC. They are a media organisation with a massive audience, and an unrivalled power to shape opinions across the UK, and I think it is fair to assume that BBC employees genuinely believe that they are impartial. But that institutional impartiality is defined in terms of their institutional character, which has an inherent bias.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the Tories were convinced that the BBC were biased against them, and I think that is the same bias that the SNP see now.

The BBC is a massive organisation. They have an institutional mindset that believes in massive organisations, and collectivism rather than individualism. The BBC supports the United Nations, the European Union, and the Westminster government. They simply don’t understand the desire for independence at any level. They are unionised, unlike most workforces in the UK. When the BBC talks about business, it means big business, even though more people work in SMEs. The BBC understands cities, and views the countryside as a place of ecological rather than economic or social interest.

In short, the BBC has always been about togetherness. So no wonder it doesn’t get independence.