The new Scottish Six orthodoxy

Today’s report by Douglas Fraser of The Herald (one of a handful of political journalists in Scotland with something interesting to say) for the IPPR sets out some arguments about the role of the media in post-devolution Britain.

As part of the report, Douglas looks at the issue of the Scottish Six and suggests, in line with other recent comment, that the debate over a Scottish produced news bulletin to replace the UK-wide six o’clock news is essentially an analogue argument in a digital age.  Viewers, so the argument goes, can get their news from a variety of sources – such as the internet  – without having to rely on the BBC’s main early evening news bulletin. Moreover there will soon be a range of Scottish digital channels, producing Scottish news, so Scottish viewers, if they want to, will be able to opt-out of the UK bulletin and into the tartan version. In short, the old 1990s debate about the influence of the BBC’s main bulletins is dead.

Except – it’s not. And all this talk about new technology ignores the realities. First of all – the internet.  The BBC last week ran a series of items asking viewers: “How slow is your broadband connection?” For the 68 per cent of households in Glasgow who, according to Ofcom, do not have broadband, that question would have seemed rather redundant.  But the presumption from those immersed in the media is that of course everyone has broadband - nobody only watches the TV anymore, stupid.   

Secondly the idea that a Scottish digital channel funded by the licence-fee payer is the answer, is well wide of the mark. The last time I looked there was no proposal for such a channel. Even if there was, this entirely misses the point. Under-resourced opt-outs are BBC Scotland’s speciality. Talented journalists are used to working on badly-funded programmes with an editorial remit which forbids producers to venture further than the Tweed. Indeed such weak programmes play into the hands of the Scottish middle-class cringe-mongers by allowing them say we must never, ever watch anything not produced by London.

The answer now, as it was in the 1990s, is in fact a well-funded national news programme, produced in Scotland covering Scottish and international news; the kind of news programme every other country in the world enjoys. This would mean an end to the nonsense of Scottish viewers hearing more about the English health, education and criminal justice systems than their own. It would mean the Scottish electorate being properly informed about their country by the BBC.  That is not a parochial aspiration. It’s what a state funded broadcaster, is supposed to do.