Kenny McBride is a Wings reader. This is his personal experience and view.

A couple of weeks ago Ian Small, BBC Scotland’s Head of Public Policy, wrote an article for the Scotsman addressing the question of anti-independence bias at Pacific Quay. Naturally he defended the Corporation strongly, but he also made what seemed like an invitation:

“The issue over BBC content being posted online brought a further consequence, with over 200 people turning up at Pacific Quay in Glasgow last week to demonstrate against BBC bias. We offered to talk. That offer still stands. We want to engage, constructively, in dialogue with those who question our journalism or are suspicious of our decision-making.”

I was sceptical, of course, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I decided to act.

I didn’t want to go in without hauners, and I knew who I wanted by my side: David Hooks. I actually knew Dave back when we were both boy sopranos in a choir, but we reconnected recently when I saw this video:

I knew Dave was determined to see a better media landscape in Scotland and had a good grasp of the issues. I got in touch with him and we made a plan of action. We called the BBC and fairly quickly got to speak to Mr. Small’s secretary. She was very friendly and immediately offered us an appointment for yesterday.

We were met by Mr. Small and his colleague Alasdair MacLeod, the head of Editorial Policy and Compliance for BBC Scotland, who offered us tea, coffee and biscuits and were generally very welcoming. We didn’t expect to have much time, so we got right down to business.

In advance of the meeting, we sent an agenda/summary of our concerns to try help make the meeting go smoothly and be sure of saying all we wanted to say. This is what it looked like:

KEY CONCERNS Structural Bias – England as Britain: not enough distinction given to Scottish differences within the UK and those that are given tend to be negative comparisons. Not enough clarity on what is devolved versus reserved and often blurring that line. “National” news routinely covers England-only issues (e.g. education, policing, national sports teams) but only rarely covers stories from the other nations of the UK. Reporting Scotland is required to cover not only Scottish national stories in the same way as the “national” news but also cover stories that would be “regional” news in England. This leads to a perception of Scottish issues as parochial and insignificant. – Lack of Scotland-specific political coverage: total airtime for Scottish political programming has fallen substantially in recent years. This is particularly problematic as this fall has coincided with an increase in the responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament. Proposals: BBC Scotland should lobby BBC HQ for greater resources and more input into “national” news programming. BBC Scotland should reinstate Scotland 2018/Newsnight Scotland with appropriate resources and consider a daily show comparable to Politics Live. BBC Scotland should lobby Westminster parliament for devolution of broadcasting to the Scottish Parliament. Editorial Policy Almost half of the country supports independence but there is a significant lack of representation of this in most current affairs and cultural programming. Guests on commentary shows are often vehemently anti-independence and those who are pro-independence are often unrepresentative of the movement as a whole but rather of smaller, fringe groups. Methods of reporting and interview often appear biased towards a unionist perspective: There is an apparent pattern (especially on Sunday Politics Scotland) of an SNP representative being interviewed remotely or before the broadcast with 3 opposition representatives then given the chance to debate and rebut what was said with no easy right of reply for the SNP. Newspaper reviews (and allowing newspapers to lead the agenda) poses a specific problem due to the disproportionate number of strongly unionist newspapers and an almost complete absence of reference to websites which may have comparable readerships and trust levels to mainstream newspapers. Stories involving the Scottish Government often refer to “the SNP government” where the UK government is mentioned without party name Similarly, when a councillor, MP or MSP is involved in any kind of scandal, there is an apparent pattern of referring to that person’s party only when that party is the SNP. Differential reporting of accusations against SNP or their representatives versus other parties Michelle Thompson and Alex Salmond vs Ruth Davidson, Alistair Majury and David Mundell Nicola Sturgeon was doorstepped about Jenna Marra’s false claim regarding an NHS payoff on Monday but on Tuesday Ruth Davidson was named in a headline for criticising Boris Johnson’s burka remarks without even appearing on screen, with no mention made of her own councillors, MPs and MSPs apparent epidemic of racism and bigotry. Bias by omission and story selection It often appears that positive stories about Scotland and the Scottish Government are given a lower news value (shorter items, lower down the running order) than negative stories. Lack of pursuit of Ruth Davidson over the “Dark Money” scandal and over racism and bigotry in her party. This is particularly problematic given that BBC journalists have expressed their frustration at Davidson’s lack of availability for interview, yet this stonewalling has never become a story in itself nor led to the kind of doorstepping that the FM faces regularly. Proposals: On each press or news review segment, prominent new media sites should be included in the review. A pro-independence commentator should always be present to offer the alternative perspective to the (almost exclusively) unionist newspapers. BBC should commission and publish independent academic research to examine BBC news output for signs of bias and to make recommendations for improvements where needed. Conduct an internal review of editorial policy to examine how decisions about story selection and running order are made. Transparency and trust The BBC’s complaints procedure is unwieldy and difficult to navigate. Complaints are often met with evasion, deflection and obfuscation. BBC Scotland is unreasonably secretive, misusing journalistic exemptions to FOI requests to avoid even providing viewership figures to journalists. BBC journalists often seem combative and overly defensive on social media. This is not helpful in building trust. Proposals: Simplify the complaints procedure and seek independent scrutiny of the process. Monitor complaints and respond meaningfully and publicly to the most common ones. Be more open and transparent about the inner workings of the organisation. Avoid using journalistic FOI exemptions to prevent the release of information that cannot realistically be considered a journalistic source in need of protection. Engage meaningfully with the independence movement through public and private meetings to rebuild trust.

We tried to work through this systematically, but in any conversation tangents are inevitable. We began with the structural issues since these are the ones we felt we might have the greatest agreement on.

We highlighted the “News Where You Are” problem in depth, discussing the conflation of England and the UK in “national” news and current affairs programmes, the recent decline in political programming in Scotland and the complications of guest selection for shows like Question Time.

Our hosts agreed this was a real problem. No immediate answers were forthcoming, but they did stress that the recent correction made on the “national” news about GERS had been as a result of bosses at BBC Scotland yelling at their London colleagues about how important it was to get this stuff right.

According to them, they insisted that the correction even be delivered in the same slot the next day so that it would reach as close as possible to the same audience as had heard the original mistake.

They also hoped that the news hour on the new BBC Scotland channel would help to redress some of the imbalance, as would a new political magazine show that is in development for the channel. There was also a slightly more nebulous hope that the new channel would have the resources to produce more content for the network, thus inserting more Scottish content into Politics Live and Newsnight.

There were obviously no guarantees about any of this, but both men stressed that the BBC in London has been told that if the channel fails, it will be the fault of Broadcasting House for not supporting it enough, and not Pacific Quay who failed to deliver.

Their ambition is laudable and I believed their intentions were good. Of course, the success of the channel’s news output will be determined by whether our editorial concerns are addressed.

We accepted, as Derek Bateman and others have said, that there’s probably no grand conspiracy to denigrate independence, its supporters, the SNP and Scotland. Nevertheless, we perceive significant problems in how things are done at the BBC. This part of the discussion covered several different topics from different angles, including interviewing styles, story framing, headline selection, running orders, accuracy and unequal treatment of each side of the constitutional debate.

Unsurprisingly, this was when our hosts became most defensive. However, they did listen to all we had to say and on a few issues we saw both take notes on things they wanted to check up on. When we mentioned the “Protecting Ruth Davidson” video we were met with a passionate retort of “I can assure you we don’t protect Ruth Davidson!” After we went into some of the details of how we perceived things though, that defence became much more muted.

Everyone has biases. It is possible that all the bias we see is actually our own confirmation bias letting us see what we want to see. We acknowledged that and so two of our key recommendations were that BBC Scotland should commission independent research to identify any areas for improvement and conduct an internal review to determine how decisions on running order and story selection are made. There are ways to reduce bias and ways to check for unconscious bias. We urge the BBC to do so.

Our final concern was transparency and trust and again, on this issue there was a fair level of agreement. We talked about the BBC’s almost universal rejection of FOI requests. Ian Small himself is responsible for much of their FOI compliance and he felt there was some misunderstanding about FOI. He claims that on most occasions, the best thing to do is just to call him and ask for the information, while FOI requests have to be treated within a very narrow scope.

We don’t know how true this is, but we hope journalists from the pro-indy side of the fence will take the advice on board and let us know how they get on.

Our hosts recognised that the BBC Complaints procedure is clunky, slow and frustrating, but they also insisted that it is scrupulously fair and honest and that the third stage of the process can even be intimidating for them as it is seriously forensic. We also talked about the behaviour of BBC journalists and officials in dealing with the public. They agreed that it was the BBC’s job to rebuild trust and that they would look into any ways they could do so.

The meeting lasted almost two hours – far longer than we had expected – and we both left feeling about as positive as possible. There was no outright admission of guilt but no-one expected that. There was an acknowledgement though, that some things don’t work very well and need to be improved.

Our hosts agreed to review our concerns, look into a few specific issues that arose and get back to us in a week or so to update us on what actions they plan to take. As we said several times during the meeting, our solution would be to become an independent country with its own national broadcaster, but we have to work with what we’ve got and make our existing institutions better. They were committed to listening politely, if nothing else.

We can only hope that meaningful action will be forthcoming. We believe that if the new channel is to be a success then some of our proposed actions MUST be taken.

In the meantime, if you have a group that would like to talk to the BBC about its news output, now is the time to ask for that meeting. If you have something you want to say, write them a letter.

We often complain that we don’t get the BBC we deserve and that it doesn’t listen to its customers/owners very well. For once it appears that they’re listening, so let’s make ourselves heard.