BBC Scotland’s head of public policy appeared on The Nine last night to give the corporation’s take on why the First Minister’s briefings will no longer be broadcast on TV.
After the decision to only show briefings based on their “editorial merit” sparked a furious backlash, with more than 35,000 people signing a petition urging a U-turn and senior health and care experts speaking out, Ian Small gave his side of the story on the news programme.
The decision to scale back on the briefings came as new coronavirus restrictions were brought in across Scotland – and case numbers continue to rise across the UK.
John Beattie asked Small why the move had been made. The head of corporate affairs replied: “I think, John, we’re looking at the way the situation is evolving and we’ve been looking at that clearly over the last few weeks.
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“And we’ve seen that, the last two weeks aside, I would say that things were slowly getting back to normal, people were going back to work, services were going back online, schools were going back and the Parliament clearly was back in business as well.”
He added that those circumstances led the broadcaster to feel it should “properly review how best to make sure that we’re getting the information that comes from these briefings across to audiences”.
He claimed there has been “misreporting” around the issue and denied the BBC was “abandoning” the conferences altogether.
He added: “We will continue to cover the briefing when there is evidence of clear messaging that requires to be given across. But I would emphasise that we are not stopping doing briefings. To suggest that is simply untrue. We’re simply finding ways which can better impart that information.”
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Beattie asked Small if the broadcaster had come under political pressure to make the move, after Labour and Conservative figures spoke out against the First Minister’s updates frequently.
The head of public policy told viewers: “Well what I would say is there’s been treaties made to us by political parties, that’s not unusual, that’s an everyday event for the BBC. But what I can clearly say is that all the decisions around this have been made by our editorial teams, by our news teams by our editorial stance team basically.
“We have determined that the best way forward would be not necessarily to be there every single day but to be there when important messages are being imparted.”
Yesterday the First Minister spoke out against the BBC’s decision, reminding it of its role as a “public service broadcaster”.
She warned the lack of TV briefings could deny some of Scotland’s most vulnerable communities of vital public health information.
From Monday the BBC will stream the regular sessions online, and only show them on TV when they have ”news value”.
Yesterday, the corporation revealed that the average viewing figures have been 280,000 on BBC One Scotland and 40,000 on BBC Scotland – big numbers for a Scottish broadcast.
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