The political campaigns for and against Scottish independence were supposed to have operated a ceasefire for the duration of Glasgow’s hosting of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Yesterday, a police estimate of around 400 conducted a protest outside the BBC Scotland HQ in Glasgow. Wrapped in Saltires – and the Saltire is not the flag of independence but the flag of the country. The two are not co-terminous.
The demonstrators were protesting against what they persistently claim is the BBC’s bias in reporting the pro-indy campaign.
Now where exactly is the BBC Scotland HQ, the site of the demonstration, located?
Oh yes. It’s at Pacific Quay – party central for the Games and where, if you want publicity, this is just the place for a stunt. Turn up at the quay with a shed load of Saltires and cry ‘victim’ to an audience of the size you will find there – and regardless of the substance of the claim, you will be noticed. And you will be reported – by the BBC.
This is the third such demo at Pacific Quay. Anyone who suggests that these appearances are not known of and approved of – if not actually stimulated by – the pro-indy campaign is either innocently misled or one of the bravehearts who think that anything goes in this gig.
The reality is that this is an intensifying campaign of intimidation – bullying – of the national broadcaster, a campaign which owes almost everything to the template for media management created by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s literally licensed-to-kill apparatchik, in the run up to, during and after the Iraq war.
Campbell intimidated the media in general into a virtual silence which led to the public remaining uninformed on issues of substance around a war that made us illegal aggressors – a position we’re paying for today. Campbell achieved this by launching a continual barrage of loud complaints of bias on anything counter to what he perceived as Blair’s interests, by routinely haranguing media editors, CEOs and directors by phone as well as email – and by making sudden appearances at their studios. He wore them down.
This – and not any bias in reporting – is what can be seen to be happening to BBC Scotland’s output.
For example – every major media platform in the last few days reported the request to the Ministry of Defence to have the Red Arrows trail only blue and white smoke over the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games.
Who’s website and who’s newscasts made no reference to this whatsoever until it was to late to count as contemporary reporting and even then was muted? The BBC – not only BBC Scotland but the national website as well.
Anyone who relied only on the BBC for their news would have had no idea that this attempt at politicising the Commonwealth Games at source, in its own output, had taken place.
Alastair Campbell’s institutional bullying was allied to the report by the discredited Brian Hutton on his ‘inquiry’ into the still unexplained death of the arms inspector and scientist, Dr David Kelly. Kelly had correctly told BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, that the government was manipulating the analysis of the risk of Iraq’s mooted [but incorrect] possession of weapons of mass destruction. The result of Campbell’s consequent attack-dog frenzy was, in the most absolute sense, that Kelly simply didn’t last.
The Hutton ‘Inquiry’ report – which bizarrely blamed the BBC for pretty well everything – resulted in the BBC’s spine being broken. The national broadcaster forgot what it was for, lost its sense of direction and its self belief, becoming the purveyor of ridiculously celeb-led newscasting, ceding – long ago – the business of serious reporting to Sky News.
This is happening to BBC Scotland today, in full view – and who is protesting about that?
BBC Scotland is manifestly afraid to report facts related to the indy campaign. It is tired and listless under the barrage of continual orchestrated complaint it receives – ratcheted up, during a supposed cessation of hostilities by orchestrated demos in front of the omnipresent biggest live audience possible.
BBC Scotland was never more than a B team operation in the calibre of its news reporting. It is much less than that these days and that is just how the nationalists want it – frightened, bullied and afraid to open its mouth on factual matters relating to a country taking the risk of its life.
How could a principled country be won from an unprincipled campaign?
