We have known for a long time how the senior officers of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London regard Scotland and the regions as we are reminded of it every weekday evening around 6.30pm. That’s when amiable George Alagiah looks meaningfully into the camera and says: “And now the news from where you are.” This little sentence suggests that another one preceding it has been left unsaid, something like: “Right, that’s the important stuff out of the way… ” Scots, not unreasonably, do not believe that they inhabit a region of England such as the north-east or the south-west.
So here’s the latest news about the future of the BBC from the Scottish district of Wheryouarr. Last month, the incoming director of BBC Scotland, Donalda MacKinnon, was interviewed by the National about her vision for the service north of the border. Ms MacKinnon was remarkably frank and direct about the perceived breakdown in trust that had occurred between the BBC and many people in Scotland in the course of the independence referendum. Indeed, according to the new director, this wasn’t just a perception, it was a fact.
“There is a significant number still in Scotland whose trust we lost,” she said, “and I think there’s still a bit of work to be done in that regard. I think it’s part of my mission to try to address these perceptions which may have led to that loss of trust.
“I don’t think that’s across the piece, but I think we have to be alive to it and I think part what I’m trying to do is to demonstrate that we want to be open; we want to understand why people don’t trust us; we want to be able to explain what it is that we do more clearly perhaps. There will be efforts taken particularly on my part and on the part of colleagues here to do a bit more of that.”
The National, which recently celebrated its second anniversary, is the only daily newspaper in Scotland that supports independence. As such, MacKinnon was rebuked by assorted unionist voices for even having granted an interview to such a perfidious organ. That she exacerbated this by readily admitting to a breakdown in trust between the corporation in Scotland she now leads and a significant section of its audience led to some familiar claims and accusations being laid at her door.
It was yet further proof of SNP bullying not only the BBC but also STV, Scotland’s main independent television station, and forcing them to bend the knee to the forces of Scottish nationalism.
It is in this atmosphere of political tribalism that MacKinnon will seek to address concerns about BBC news coverage of Scottish affairs in the months ahead. Her first big decision will be to decide, once and for all, if the fabled Scottish Six evening flagship news programme will go ahead. This would see the national News at Six replaced in Scotland by a one-hour news programme offering Scottish, UK and international news but produced and anchored almost entirely in Scotland.
The same unionist voices in Scotland have always resisted the Scottish Six. Despite offering no evidence, they claim that any programme made here would become a propaganda tool for Scottish nationalism. Some of them, who are quite happy to collect fees for appearances on BBC Scotland, are openly contemptuous about the ability of some of their broadcast colleagues to make “a serious news programme”. Ironically, none of them would ever question their own ability to write for UK national newspapers if they were ever afforded the chance.
Already, several pilots have been made inside BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow. Senior BBC staff I have spoken to have stated that these were of a high quality and designed to cover all the major UK and international stories, giving due weight to them within the programme’s running order. Ms MacKinnon is due any day now to learn if BBC Scotland will receive the extra funding required from London to make a Scottish Six. The case for this has been long argued and is now beyond reasonable debate. The BBC’s own figures reveal that its Scottish operation receives barely 50% of licence money raised in Scotland as opposed to 74% in Northern Ireland and 95% in Wales.
Yet even if MacKinnon is minded to give the green light to a Scottish Six she will still have to sell it to Tony Hall, the BBC director general, a man who believes that the corporation’s national news bulletins are the glue that keeps the union together. Under MacKinnon’s predecessor, Ken MacQuarrie, all discussion of more autonomy for the BBC in Scotland was simply dismissed or ignored. His successor, though, knows that maintaining the status quo is simply unthinkable.
How much money she feels she needs to produce an hour-long nightly news bulletin from Scotland is debatable. Those who inhabit television land will tell you that any major changes that occur in their environment are necessarily expensive. Their news-gathering operations are so much more complicated than in any newspaper newsroom. Much of this, though, simply doesn’t wash with the public. BBC Scotland has more than 200 full-time journalists and hundreds of regular freelances and contributors. Many of its staff reporters and presenters are gifted and highly trained journalists who gather and present the news without bias.
It has a massive Glasgow headquarters the size of an aircraft hangar that has tumbleweed blowing through it in some parts of the week. The notion that an operation such as this might not be up to delivering a one-hour long nightly news programme is bizarre.
The two biggest ongoing stories dominating the UK news agenda for the past six months have been Brexit and Donald Trump. Each of them possesses several uniquely Scottish perspectives: the nature of Brexit will probably determine Scotland’s constitutional future while the US president-elect is virtually a Scottish national and has significant business interests here.
BBC Scotland desk editors are accustomed to being treated with disdain by their London counterparts when seeking to book interview time with overseas correspondents, despite their salaries being partly paid by funds raised in Scotland. If the director general is incapable of altering that mindset then the case for BBC Scotland’s own correspondents being stationed in news hot-spots around the globe and paid for by fees raised in Scotland cannot be resisted.
