Freedom of speech is treasured by all Scots, except the Nationalists
WHEN I was BBC Scotland’s lawyer, the SNP was forever taking us to court accusing the BBC of anti-Nationalist bias. The party always lost, often because their case proceeded on an inaccurate factual basis.
Such repeated forays into court show just how excited Nationalists have always been over BBC Scotland’s news coverage. Also, I couldn’t help noticing that their excitement extended to some rather, shall we say, ‘creative’ explanations, when interviewed by the media, as to what had happened in court. The SNP and accuracy just didn’t seem to be at ease in each other’s company.
At a meeting at BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow in the late 1990s, aimed at clearing the air, we were regaled by the holder of the SNP’s media brief, Mike Russell. Most of his accusations against the BBC’s perceived failings on coverage of the SNP were proved to be pure fantasy when programme editors produced evidence to show that he was talking nonsense.
It is unlikely the SNP’s paranoid belief that the Corporation is biased against its interests will ever fade away. In my experience over many years of having to deal with them, all political parties earnestly believe they are given a raw deal by the BBC in its news coverage.
Plainly this is because they view all media coverage with the extreme bias which is a consequence of their political leanings. Generally, politicians reason by applying their bias to a set of facts. In their opinion the media should follow the same idiotic thought process. Thankfully our law doesn’t allow that.
IN the UK broadcasters are only allowed to report on news and current affairs in an impartial manner. You only have to view the American Fox News or Russia’s RT channels to see what happens if a country doesn’t have these legal rules.
Alarmingly, there is now growing reason to fear that this SNP bias could begin to be brought to bear on the BBC’s news agenda. In a worst case scenario, this could result in Scotland having a news system of which the KGB would approve.
The reason is the current controversial proposal for the Scottish Six – an hour-long news programme produced by BBC Scotland in Glasgow – which is now a big part of the debate on how the BBC (and other broadcasters) should report Scottish news post-devolution.
Recent reports seem to indicate there is a greater chance of such a programme replacing the BBC national and international six o’clock and ten o’clock news in Scotland.
I express no view here on the merits, rights, wrongs and difficulties of such a news service. But I must raise a matter of considerable legal concern about the danger of future SNP attempts to interfere with the BBC’s editorial independence.
That independence was established and then fought for by a Scot, John Reith, the Corporation’s first Director General. During the General Strike of 1926, he insisted on the BBC not taking sides. The fiercely independent Reith stuck to the same line during the Second World War, much to the annoyance of Winston Churchill who thought the BBC should do what the War Cabinet instructed.
From those days till the present, the BBC has always upheld and observed its legally enshrined duty of impartiality in its reporting.
This is the very essence of the BBC. It is the reason politicians fall out with the Corporation. What can be more terrible for politicians than the world’s most influential news service telling the truth about them?
Should the Scottish Six be brought into being, an SNP Scottish Government will try to insist BBC Scotland reports annually to a Holyrood committee. Even more worryingly, it might try to have some control over part of the licence fee settlement.
I am equally sure that the presently dominant SNP members of that committee would try to pressurise the Corporation to bend its legal obligation of political neutrality by having its journalists report in a fashion sympathetic to SNP objectives.
Remember, at parliamentary level, the SNP comprises MPs and MSPs who are willing to follow the party line like Stepford Wives.
Such obedient, unthinking people are not likely to see anything wrong in trying to interfere with the editorial independence of the BBC. To a political party which has one obsessive aim, and is essentially run along Stalinist lines, principles and freedom mean nothing.
In all my dealings with the SNP, I found them to be blissfully unaware of all fundamental, constitutional legal principles such as free expression – something rather vital, we lawyers think, to the existence of a democratic state. They are frighteningly close to Kim Jong Il and President Erdogan in their approach to the concept of a free media. In fact Erdogan’s urging of his bone-headed supporters to ‘take to the streets’ had a precursor in Scotland.
Just before the independence referendum in September 2014, Yes supporters gathered outside Pacific Quay, BBC Scotland’s Glasgow headquarters, to hurl abuse at the Corporation’s coverage of the referendum and demand the sacking of a BBC journalist. This followed Alex Salmond’s attack on Nick Robinson, the then BBC Political Editor, whom he accused of ‘metropolitan’ bias. I suppose we are meant to believe that this demonstration was spontaneous. And the band played Believe It If You Like, as my mum used to say. Even Alastair Campbell, arch-enemy of the BBC, judged this protest to be ‘something you might expect from Putin’.
FOR all these reasons it is vital that the future legal relationship between the Scottish parliament and BBC Scotland is precisely the same as that wise old Scot John Reith set up in 1925. There must be nothing in the processes put in place which affords the opportunity to politicians to threaten and bully the Corporation over its news output. That’s simply because, under present management, Scotland is no better than an infant democracy.
Paradoxically, and unlike the SNP, Scotland and the Scots have always recognised the importance of freedom of speech. Burns himself wrote:
Here’s freedom to them that wad read,
Here’s freedom to them that wad write,
There’s nane ever fear’d that the truth should be heard,
But they whom the truth would indite.
Burns’s approach is the correct course for Scotland.
Alistair Bonnington was BBC Scotland’s in-house counsel from 1992 to 2008.
Under present management, Scotland is an infant democracy