Treatment of Catalonia crisis shows BBC Scotland news is not fit for purpose

What is the point of BBC Scotland?

I have just watched “the news from where you are” and have heard Sally Magnusson present the usual litany of news from the Scottish Courts which perpetuates the picture of Scotland as Taggart writ large. There was also an item about the conference of NFU (Scotland) which convened to debate the consequences of Brexit for the country’s farming community. BBC Scotland loyally reported the speech of the (Westminster) Scottish Office minister Lord Duncan offering soothing words about the effect of Brexit to the Scottish farming industry while affording no opportunity to Fergus Ewing, the Scottish Government’s cabinet secretary for the rural economy, to offer a contrary and more disturbing assessment – despite the fact that he attended the NFU meeting and could be seen among the platform party.

But the jaw-dropping omission was the total absence of any reference at all to the events in Catalonia. Later, on Newsnight, Malcolm Rifkind, the former Foreign Secretary, was apocalyptic in his description of what has happened in Spain: this was, he said, “the worst crisis facing Western Europe since the Second World War”. The fact the Scottish Government, through Fiona Hyslop, cabinet secretary for culture, tourism and external affairs, had issued a statement immediately upon the declaration of independence by the Catalonian Government – giving the Scottish Government’s support for Catalonia’s right to self-determination and affirming that democracy and human rights should be respected in all countries – was ignored.

One would have thought that a media channel that aspires to be our national TV broadcaster would report the support that our government is offering to the people of Catalonia ( one of the very few to do so) as headline news – particularly since Scotland and Catalunya are following parallel but different trajectories – but no: BBC Scotland failed in its duty to the Scottish public, failed in its journalistic duty to broadcast what was important and predictably preferred to wallow in the safety of its usual provincial kailyard. ALEXANDRA MACRAE

Jubilee Park Letham, Forfar