BBC Scotland resorts again to simplistic straw-man defence

The National

18-07-2025

SO that's Professor Richard Murphy ended his chances of ever being invited back on BBC Scotland after he called out the corporation's obvious biases on the issues of Scottish independence, Israel-Palestine, and its constant platforming of right-wing views and news framing.
During a phone-in on BBC Radio Scotland's Mornings Show discussing BBC impartiality, hosted by Connie McLaughlin, Murphy noted quite accurately that the half of the Scottish population who support independence have no trust in the broadcaster because it is 'so absolutely pro-Unionist'.
Until Murphy's intervention the programme had largely consisted of McLaughlin, former BBC political editor Brian Taylor, and former BBC Radio 4 presenter Roger Bolton mutually patting one another on the back about how wonderfully impartial the BBC is and what a great job it does.
When Murphy was brought in to have his 'final word', he said: 'We've gone on for 40-plus minutes and all I've heard so far is pro-BBC propaganda from the BBC.'
After calling out McLaughlin for constantly interrupting him when she'd allowed her BBC colleagues to speak without interruption, Murphy was finally allowed to say: "The BBC is biased in favour of big business, it is biased in favour of the right wing media because it uses that as its news sources in the main for discussion, it is biased against the nationalist cause in Scotland, it is biased against the Palestinian cause in its claim and its right to have a state, it is biased in favour of Israel very clearly."
The BBC likes to delegitimise those who call it out for its obvious bias, particularly on the issue of Scottish independence, by characterising its critics as conspiracy theorists, and indeed this was in essence the defence attempted on the programme by Brian Taylor, who claimed that he was 'never at any point asked within the BBC by managers to tailor a report to fit an agenda dictated by the BBC' adding that he had witnessed 'endless complaints' about BBC Scotland coverage.
Taylor's response represented a simplistic and self-serving mischaracterisation of how bias operates. No one is alleging that BBC managers issue instructions to journalists and reporters to alter their reports in particular ways. That's not how institutional bias works.
Institutional bias arises from a culture within an institution which creates and fosters perceptions that a particular institutional policy is fair, deserved, or justifiable in some manner. In the case of the BBC that policy is the belief that Scotland being a part of the UK is a natural and politically neutral state of affairs which does not require to be defended or justified. The BBC is a quintessentially British organisation and as such is incapable of viewing Scottish independence as anything other than a threat to the proper and natural order of things.
This institutional culture permits those BBC employees who possess personal beliefs against Scottish independence permission to allow these beliefs to colour their reporting, safe in the knowledge that pro-UK bias will go unchallenged or will be tacitly supported by senior management, while those who have personal views in support of independence will self-censor.
This is compounded by the BBC's unshakeable belief in its own impartiality, which inhibits staff from speaking out against bias from within the organisation, which allows bias to continue uncorrected and to become compounded over time.
Institutional bias also shows itself in the choice and framing of news stories. The BBC has a symbiotic relationship with the print media, which in the UK is largely right wing, and which in Scotland is both largely right wing and overwhelmingly anti-independence. In both these aspects the print media is wildly out of kilter with the views of the Scottish population as a whole, yet the BBC's own pro-British and establishment institutional bias prevents it from recognising that it allows print media bias to determine the BBC's own news agenda and presentation.
Evidence of BBC bias, particularly when it comes to the coverage of the Scottish constitutional issue, is overwhelming, but the BBC Scotland's institutional bias prevents the Corporation from recognising it as such. Recognising it would entail making a radical change to the entire structure, organisation and ethos of the BBC. Instead, it resorts to the simplistic and comfortable kind of straw man defence which was witnessed from Brian Taylor on this morning's BBC Scotland programme which implies that there is some sort of conspiracy being alleged. This protects the BBC from having to examine the more fundamental and systemic issues which are responsible for the bias which is so plain to see but which the BBC cannot admit to.
Ian Murray visits Faslane nuclear base
Ian Murray, the Governor General of North Britain, and a man whose views are remarkably plastic, changing over time to suit the requirements of his political masters, today visited the Faslane nuclear submarine base on the Clyde, to announce a £250 million investment in the ageing and polluting site. The cash will be spent over the next three years to improve infrastructure at the site, ensuring that the base can house the next generation of nuclear submarines. Murray was previously opposed to nuclear weapons, he's now an enthusiastic cheerleader for the UK's weapons of mass destruction.
The £250m won't be spent on cleaning up the radioactive waste which the MoD has released into the Firth of Clyde. In 2009, The Guardian reported that there were repeated leaks of radioactive waste from broken pipes and storage tanks at the site into the waters of the Holy Loch. The leaks were so serious that that the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) warned that it would consider closing the base down if it had the legal powers to do so.
There is no reason to believe that the MoD has cleaned up its act in the intervening sixteen years. Indeed, in 2020 it was reported that the MoD was planning to increase discharges of radioactive waste into the Firth of Clyde by up to 50 times. That's something else that BBC Scotland didn't give a lot of publicity to.
[[BBC Scotland]] is quite content to push the UK Government line that its nuclear base on the Clyde is nothing more than an extremely generous job creation scheme for the greater Helensburgh area.