It’s couthy, it’s cringey, embarrassing and twee: that’s Bonnie Scotland on the BBC |
With the broadcaster under attack on all sides and accusations flying of falling standards, our Writer at Large Neil Mackay looks at what’s gone wrong and why
THE BBC should take the removal of Kaye Adams as an opportunity to reimagine itself.
Adams was accused of inappropriate behaviour. It’s said she called a colleague a c**t, and threw a pen at a producer. Reports claim she “shouted and screamed” at staff. Her show, for which she received up to £155,000 a year, is now axed.
The programme was dreadful. It summed up everything that’s wrong with BBC Scotland: low-brow at best, and clickbait at worst; more interested in sensation than fact. It was guilty of journalism’s cardinal sin: wanting to be the story.
It set the tone for BBC Scotland’s decrepit output. Whilst the BBC across Britain has serious problems, the broadcaster nationally has at least some elegance and intelligence. BBC Scotland is like the bumpkin neighbour, often merely embarrassing.
BBC Scotland has many more uncomfortable questions to answer, though, than failures in tone and style. SNP culture secretary Angus Robertson has accused the BBC of “misleading” viewers and “misreporting” news. He believes the broadcaster has a “systemic problem” with its Scottish reporting.
Robertson’s criticism should be approached with two thoughts in mind: first, he’s an SNP minister and there is no love lost between the party and the BBC; second, he’s a former BBC reporter so knows of what he speaks.
Kaye Adams has now left BBC Scotland (Image: BBC)
Robertson focused on three key issues: misreporting the Scottish budget; the failure by Radio 4’s flagship show Today to report on the budget; and the failure in reporting to differentiate between Scotland and England on issues like student funding.
Robertson spoke to the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie about the budget. Robertson said that Davie “agreed the matter was so serious I should speak with the head of news, and the editor of [Today], who both conceded that both examples were a failure”.
The BBC is in such a calamitous state across the board that attempts to find a replacement for Davie, who is leaving his post after a series of crises, are proving difficult. The job is a poisoned chalice.
However, it’s BBC Scotland which stands out as the worst of the worst. More corrections have been issued by BBC Scotland over the past three years than for BBC Wales, Northern Ireland and all English bureaux combined.
Evidently, criticism of the BBC from the SNP has deep roots. Just before the independence referendum, Alex Salmond was questioned by journalists over interventions by leading business figures.
Salmond gave a seven-minute reply. In news bulletins, Salmond’s response wasn’t included. Nick Robinson - who now presents the Today programme - claimed Salmond “didn’t answer” his questions.
Alex Salmond (Image: PA)
The spat resulted in independence supporters protesting outside the BBC. Nobody came out looking good.
The BBC’s credibility plummeted in the eyes of nearly half of Scotland, and the Yes movement could now be accused of intimidating journalists. Indeed, Robinson even compared anti-BBC demonstrations to “Putin’s Russia”.
Back in 2019, Ofcom ruled that a BBC interview in which Andrew Neil called Scottish primary school children “functionally illiterate” misled viewers and seriously breached the broadcasting code.
Ofcom said the way Neil “misrepresented statistics … would have had the potential to affect negatively and erroneously viewers’ understanding of educational standards in Scotland”.
There are prominent members of Scottish society who refuse to watch the BBC due to such past behaviour, including a well-known writer and well-known charity leader of my acquaintance.
Nor is the BBC helped when pro-union journalists say ‘the quiet bit out loud’. When the Murdoch-owned Times runs think pieces headlined ‘BBC bias against independence was essential’, or the rightwing Spectator publishes columns entitled ‘Yes, of course the BBC is biased against Scottish nationalists’, you can hardly blame Yes voters for thinking the dice are loaded.
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Such comments were catnip to the anti-BBC posse when the broadcaster cancelled Nicola Sturgeon’s daily Covid briefings. Even though the BBC was still going to air live briefings if there was a significant announcement, the poisoned atmosphere allowed accusations of anti-Scottish bias to flourish. The BBC inevitably u-turned.
There’s also a sense of editing by omission. The UK government has just refused requests to hold talks with the Scottish government on the path to a second referendum. It’s an important story. You’ll search for BBC coverage of it in vain.
Nor are BBC problems confined to factual news reporting alone. Debate Night, for instance, is Question Time dressed in rags. Both are dreadful, but at least Question Time’s sets don’t wobble.
Coverage of uniquely Scottish culture is being undermined. Changes to BBC Radio Scotland’s line-up have prompted concerns that emerging Scottish talent will simply not get enough exposure.
A decision was taken to axe four curator-led specialist shows and replace them with a play-list led programme. Analysis showed that in the first two weeks of this year, new music fell by 69%, with unique tracks by Scottish artists down 70%.
That’s not good by any measure.
Content which appears Scottish is often simply dressed in a kilt. The BBC itself was prompted to a run a piece headed ‘Why do so few Scottish-based people work on The Traitors?’.
Claudia Winkleman, host of the Traitors (Image: BBC)
Note the qualifier ‘based’. It’s been estimated as few as 6% of the production team are ‘based in Scotland’.
Now consider what Games of Thrones did for Northern Ireland. It’s estimated the show created 900 full-time jobs from carpenters to hair stylists, armourers to makeup artists. Clearly, there’s a difference in the size and scope of the two productions. But the point stands.
In the eyes of BBC commissioners, Scotland is a quaint back-drop, not a talent source. That means money which could be earned and spent in Scotland flows elsewhere.
No wonder the Scottish comedian and musician Tommy Mackay - who runs the Daily Reckless website - wrote a particularly stinging song mocking the BBC.
It opens: ‘It’s couthy, it’s cringey, embarrassing and twee, the Scottish news on the BBC. It’s like watching a toddler explain the news to strangers. It’s murder, it’s “think o’ the weans”, it’s Celtic and Rangers.'
One BBC Scotland producer told me cuts have killed the broadcaster. They worked at the Beeb for well over a decade. “Ultimately, they got rid of all the good people,” they said, and “the only people left … were the least capable”. The producer worked across many differing shows and knew the Scottish operation intimately.
They noted the current preponderance of “true crime podcasts”, which “don’t serve the people of Scotland” and “aren’t fulfilling the public service remit”.
The “very well paid executives” currently in charge are mostly “mediocre” and have “no actual proper programme making experience … which is why in my opinion most of the shows on the BBC Scotland channel are very poor”.
They added: “It’s really sad what has happened to BBC Scotland.” They called the BBC a tragicomedy “but not a very entertaining one, least of all for the audiences”.
The BBC is in the same place as Britain’s two main political parties: trapped in the 20th century. Labour and the Tories are dying because they haven’t learned how to navigate this new era.
The BBC is the same, only the malaise is deepest in Scotland. The broadcaster isn’t yet ready for the graveyard, but unless it changes soon and fast it may never emerge from intensive care.
Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics