BBC Scotland’s troubles are because the corporation is living “in a bubble” and “sticking its fingers in its ears” rather than listening to its audience, a leading journalist and media academic has warned.

Speaking today on Good Morning Scotland, associate professor and investigative journalist Dr Eamonn O’Neill accused the BBC of using impartiality as a “shibboleth” or excuse and failing to address the real issues.

O'Neill said: “[Impartiality] is a huge sort of hidey-hole for people to cite. You’ve got Tim Davie coming in, who’s the new director-general, and he throws out the notion of ‘impartiality’, despite the fact that audiences have no clue what it actually means in practice - nor do most BBC producers have a clue what it means. They think they do, but they don’t.

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“You could debate this till the cows come home, right back to Socrates and Greek history for goodness sake. I think that it’s used sometimes as a bit of a shibboleth, but in practice really people need to sit down, look at it very carefully, and work out whether or not impartiality is important, or whether they should go more for a diversity of opinions as opposed to this very, very obscure notion, and very, very debatable notion of impartiality.

“Honestly, I think it’s management speak. If they want solutions at the BBC, why don’t they go and look at their own audience council reports and their own Ofcom reports. The solutions are discernable in those very, very carefully written documents.

“The audiences are telling the BBC what they want and the BBC are sticking their fingers in their ears and going, as usual, in their own strange direction.”

The Edinburgh Napier professor was discussing the failures of the BBC in Scotland in the wake of the news that the corporation will be losing a raft of its biggest talents.

The BBC announced in July that it would be accepting voluntary redundancies in an effort to cut costs.

So far Gordon Brewer, the frontman of Newsnight Scotland and Sunday Politics, the news anchors Bill Whiteford and Isabel Fraser, the presenter Gillian Marles, political editor Brian Taylor, and long-serving correspondents Reevel Alderson, Kenneth Macdonald, and David Allison, have all either quit or accepted the offer of voluntary redundancy.

O’Neill said some of those leaving would be missed and were considered “professionals’ professionals”, but added that the incoming head of BBC Scotland, Steve Carson, likely had plans to replace them in place.

O’Neill further took aim at the BBC’s social media strategy, which he said was “non-existent”.

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He said BBC Scotland had been “strangely disloyal” to its main audience, people over 54. Instead, he said, it is aiming to court younger viewers, aged 16-34, despite the fact that age group is not “remotely engaged with any of the channel’s services”.

O’Neill went on: “The solutions are discernable but there seems to be little or no action being taken about them.

“I would just assume, and I mean this very seriously, that meetings are taking place to address this, because on the one hand it’s an overall declining trend for BBC Scotland, and on the other hand, the bigger picture is, that it’s an overall changing landscape for everyone else.

“The BBC are sort of in a bubble, hoping that it will all go away.

“I could have come on this morning and not only talked about the BBC but actually highlighted that your neighbours next door, STV, are doing far better across all sections with less money and less investment.”

Chandrika Kaul, a University of St Andrews academic who was also featured on the radio programme, “absolutely” agreed, saying that the landscape was changing not just in Scotland but around the world. “Let the BBC learn from others,” she added.