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BBC 'let themselves down' during Scottish independence referendum, says Angus Robertson

SNP's leader at Westminster says broadcaster 'must do better' after its coverage was 'not of the standards' voters expect

Chris Green
Scotland Editor
Friday 16 October 2015 21:02 BST
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Angus Robertson makes a speech during the Scottish National Party's annual conference in Aberdeen
Angus Robertson makes a speech during the Scottish National Party's annual conference in Aberdeen

Journalists at the BBC “let themselves down” during Scotland’s independence referendum by skewing the corporation’s coverage in favour of preserving the Union, one of the SNP’s most senior figures has said.

Angus Robertson, the party’s leader at Westminster, said the BBC “must do better” with its reporting if there is a second referendum in the future, arguing that several incidents during the campaign were “not of the standards” voters expected of the nation's broadcaster.

Mr Robertson is the latest senior SNP figure to criticise the BBC’s coverage of last year’s vote. Last month, the party’s former leader Alex Salmond told The Independent that BBC bias was a “significant factor” in Scotland voting to remain part of the Union.

“I thought the tone in which questions were asked of people favouring the proposition [of independence] was profoundly different to the way in which people on the other side were treated,” Mr Robertson said. “Gordon Brown literally just needed to stand up in the last few weeks of the referendum campaign and you had wall to wall BBC coverage, in a way that frankly you did not get for the Yes side.”

“I think the BBC know that they have an issue, and if they don’t know they’ve got an issue then they’re in big trouble,” he added, citing research which suggested that trust in the corporation was lower in Scotland than elsewhere. “Who knows, maybe we can give them the opportunity to do better in the future?” he joked.

Turning to the UK press, Mr Robertson said that while it was “entirely right” for newspapers to take their own editorial line, they ran the risk of alienating many of their readers by being anti-independence.

“It makes no sense to me on a commercial basis that one would fill a newspaper with slanted coverage supporting one side of the argument,” he added. “Some publications haven’t realised that they’re missing a trick.”

The MP also warned that if there was another referendum, newspapers may find that readers looked elsewhere if they failed to provide “balanced” and “neutral” coverage. “The group of the electorate that receives its news exclusively from the likes of newspapers is an ever-diminishing pool of the electorate,” he added.

A BBC spokesperson 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."

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