Alex Salmond has reheated his row with the BBC’s ex-political editor Nick Robinson, claiming the Corporation’s “biased” reporting was a “significant factor” in Scotland voting against independence.
The former leader of the Scottish National Party said last year’s referendum was decided by a “scaremongering campaign” , and said his biggest regret was not foreseeing the extent of the BBC’s “institutional bias”.
His comments, made in an interview with the Independent, are the latest salvo in a bitter war of words with the corporation’s reporters.
Salmond first vented his anger at Robinson last year, when he complained about reporting of a possible relocation of RBS in the event of a yes vote.
The politician, now a Westminster MP, accused the BBC of producing “Pravda-like” propaganda and said Robinson should be “embarrassed and ashamed” of his work.
The row ignited last month when Robinson described protests against the BBC at the time as “Putin-like” with journalists subject to intimidation and bullying.
In his latest broadside, Salmond said: “What decided the referendum was the renewed scaremongering campaign, and the BBC was one of the chosen instruments of that scaremongering.”
Asked if he regrets his spat with Robinson, he said: “My biggest regret of the campaign is I didn’t anticipate the BBC would be as biased as they were.
“I took the view the broadcasters would be fair, certainly when you got into the campaign period, because that had been my experience at every general election.”
Salmond also attacked newspaper coverage of the referendum.
Singling out the Scottish editions of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, he said some of the titles’ journalists produced “not just rightwing nonsense” but “mad rightwing nonsense” which “bears as much resemblance to reality as a Daily Express weather report”.
A BBC spokesman said: “As we said at the time, we believe our coverage of the referendum was rigorously impartial and in line with our guidelines on fairness and impartiality.”
