Pro-independence activists say BBC news ‘lies’ to viewers

AN anti-BBC billboard campaign is to be launched by pro-independence activists after they raised more than £8,000 within a week.

The Inform Scotland group, which accuses the broadcaster of distorting the news agenda, said it planned to pay for 10 giant posters across Scotland aimed at drawing the public’s attention to “the ways in which they are being lied to”.

A mock-up of a billboard design states “BBC is mis-reporting Scotland” and includes a link to the campaign group’s website, which hosts a string of articles supportive of the Scottish Government and claiming to expose media misinformation. More than 400 people have donated to the project in six days, putting it on course to easily meet its target of £8,500.

Its appeal states: “We know a significant minority of people in Scotland still trust the BBC as a publicly-funded broadcaster, and are quite unaware as to how they are being misled.”

The BBC strongly rejected any claims of bias in its news coverage and launched a thinly-veiled attack on “those who would clearly like our journalism to pay deference to one particular political viewpoint or another”.

The campaign follows protests against alleged BBC bias by Yes campaigners ahead of the 2014 independence referendum. Alex Salmond backed the protects, outside the corporation’s Glasgow headquarters, after he became embroiled with a public row with then-political editor Nick Robinson.

Professor John Robertson, who recently retired as a professor of media politics at the University of the West of Scotland and has previously published research disputed by the BBC which he said backed up claims of bias, is acting as a spokesman for Inform Scotland.

He said the group had been set up by “frustrated Yes supporters” who believed the BBC favoured a Unionist perspective in its news coverage.

A BBC spokesman said: “Because of the way we are funded we don’t, as some newspapers do, follow any particular political viewpoint – it is our responsibility to provide outlets for as many voices as possible.”