BBC Scotlandshire receives its first ever letter of complaint.

Friday, 02 November 2012 19:07 |

By Gary Robertson, Acting Head of Bias

BBC Scotlandshire has just received the following letter of complaint, which appears to have been addressed to our competitor channel on the other bank of the Clyde, BBC Scotland.

In my role as Acting head of Bias at the channel, I would like to make the following points regarding the contents of this letter:

BBC Scotland is a spoof channel. It does not carry genuine news stories and exists simply to parody what it (unfairly) sees as the institutional bias of genuine news outlets such as BBC Scotlandshire. It should be treated with nothing more than contempt and must never be taken seriously.
Notwithstanding point 1 above, we viewed the episode of Questionable Time referred to in the complaint, and found it to be perfectly balanced and well within the parameters of the BBC Scotlandshire charter. In fact, it could easily have been produced by us, and would have fitted perfectly wihin the rest of our output.
As everyone is aware, seperatists are not only misguided, naive individuals, but are quite rare in Scotlandshire and have no serious political representation. The deputy First Minister was invited onto the program, not to provide a separatist viewpoint, but to provide gender balance, as the host, David Dimbledore was also a fully participative member of the panel and a proud and determined defender of the union.
The Welsh Union guy was invited to back up everything that Margit Curren said as, on her own, she is not only incoherent but barely credible. We were as shocked as were the BBC Scotland producers when he seemed to be arguing in favour of social democracy. Nobody expected that from a member of the Labour party.
In terms of regional balance of the audience, Questionable time is broadcast UK wide, and so the election results used to provide audience doping balance were the 2010 UK general election results, in which the SNP recorded only slightly over 2% of the 'national' vote.

In summary, I would remind viewers that it's still OUR job to tell YOU what to think - NOT the other way around.

To BBC Complaints

Complaint: Question Time, Easterhouse

First broadcast BBC One, 10:35PM Thu, 18 Oct 2012

I am complaining about the political bias on the above programme. My complaint is within the context of the forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence in which there are two camps, “Yes” and “No”

In the context of the choice facing Scottish voters, the make up of the panel was as follows:

Supporting an independent Scotland, i.e. “Yes”

Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister and SNP MSP

Not supporting an independent Scotland, i.e. “No”

Ruth Davidson, introduced as “Leader of the Scottish Conservative party” although the party’s official name is the “Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party”, clearly a “No” representative given her stance and party’s name.

Margaret Curran, Labour member for Glasgow East and also firmly in the “No” camp as stated on her website http://margaretcurran.org/bettertogether,

Alan Cochrane a journalist with strong unionist views - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/alancochrane/ and who was on the record in the programme stating that he wanted “less” devolution even though that is not on offer, clearly someone who will not be voting “Yes”

and finally Mark Serwotka who came over pretty neutral, in his own words as an outsider looking in, and argued more in favour of what a parliament should aspire to whether in London or Edinburgh.

By my reckoning that’s 3 for the No argument, 1 for the Yes argument and a neutral.

By contrast when you select members of the audience your Director General was quoted on 25^th August 2012 that:

Director-general Mark Thompson has revealed that the audience is selected to reflect the voter make-up in the region from which each edition of the topical debate show is broadcast – rather than the political landscape of Britain as a whole.”

This being the case, I analysed the political make up of Glasgow as a whole using the most recent election, the Scottish parliamentary election of 2011 as the basis.

The results were as follows:

SNP 7 seats (5 from constituencies and 2 from the list)

Labour 7 seats (4 from constituencies and 3 from the list)

Scottish Conservative and Unionist party: 1 list seat.

Green party: 1 list seat

Liberal Democrats: no seats

Overall the SNP polled the most votes with 39.8% of the list vote with Labour on 35% and the Conservatives on 6.1% just edging out the Scottish Greens on 6.0% by 295 votes. The Liberal Democrats came in fifth on 2.5%.

Could I ask therefore why

there was a unionist member from the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party to argue alongside Labour but no Green member to argue the Yes case alongside the SNP and represent a more balanced and diverse panel?
Both the Greens and Conservatives polled similarly in Glasgow so why were the Conservative and Unionist party represented but not the Green Party?
Why was a panelist affiliation 3-1 in favour of the union accepted by the producers as balanced within the context of the Yes/No vote?
On the Glasgow “list” vote in the 2011 election, the Independence parties (SNP and Greens) collectively outpolled the unionist parties (Labour; Conservative; Liberal), therefore if as Mark Thompson says that the panel should reflect the voter balance in the area why were independence advocates not in the majority?
Could I ask under FOI what the proportions were of the disclosed political affiliations of audience members (including none) so that I can see whether this was also reflective of voter balance in the area?

I have seen the stock response you have given to previous complainants on this issue and judging by the fact they have all received a more or less duplicate response I can only assume this is because you have received a large number of complaints on the issue. Under FOI could you tell me how many complaints you received please?

I note your response that the panel included a wide range of views. This wide range was precisely:

Voting for the union unchanged or less powers: 3

Voting for more powers for Scotland for any kind whatsoever including both devo-max and independence: 1

No clear view: 1.

That is neither a wide range of views (no one specifically representing Devo-Max as an arguing point) nor is it politically balanced in the light of the Yes/No campaign (1-3 against)

Could you send me details of the views which the panel gave you as part of their selection criteria to ensure the panel was balanced.

I quote from your guidelines on impartiality:

Impartiality lies at the heart of public service and is the core of the BBC's commitment to its audiences. It applies to all our output and services - television, radio, online, and in our international services and commercial magazines. We must be inclusive, considering the broad perspective and ensuring the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected.

The Agreement accompanying the BBC Charter requires us to do all we can to ensure controversial subjects are treated with due impartiality in our news and other output dealing with matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy. But we go further than that, applying due impartiality to all subjects. However, its requirements will vary.

The term 'due' means that the impartiality must be adequate and appropriate to the output, taking account of the subject and nature of the content, the likely audience expectation and any signposting that may influence that expectation."

I believe you have

Failed to consider the broad perspective and a range of views (not representing devo-max)
Not treated the questions from the audience regarding independence with impartiality as the panel answering them was imbalanced
Failed to meet the audience expectation

Finally could you confirm what steps are in place in the future to ensure fair and impartial broadcasting on Scottish Independence in the run up to 2014 referendum?

Could you reply within the next 14 days so that I have your response to hand when I write to the BBC board of Governors to get their views on this matter. I appreciate they will have a lot on their plates just now with the Jimmy Saville issue and I expect the last thing they need is a second scandal about the BBCs politics

Many thanks

Craig Cockburn

Comments

Due to the huge number of complaints, comments are no longer banned on BBC Scotlandshire News pages.

Comments or no comments, it's still OUR job to tell YOU what to think - NOT the other way around.