by Rab Bruce’s Spider

Most people on the yes side of the Indy debate believe the BBC is biased against Indy in general and the SNP in particular. This view is, unsurprisingly, challenged by others who claim that bias is in the eye of the beholder and that, in fact, news reporting is pretty fair.

This is, however, not borne out by several facts, not least of which is the BBC’s reliance on Labour and Tory press releases to generate misleading headlines as witnessed recently in claims that the Queensferry crossing would be partially closed for months and the furore over single-crewed ambulances which proved to be a complete non-story.

In yet another example of either incompetence or deliberate lying (whichever you choose to believe), we submit the following video clip which shows a BBC report on the current alleged crisis in NHS Scotland.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/f11pqvQMjWk

Now, you will note that the claim is that over 100,000 people were not dealt with within the target 4 hours for accident and emergency. Let’s take a closer look at that claim.

It is true that the percentage of patients dealt with within four hours fell to a very disappointing 78% during the week in question. That was largely down to the very cold weather causing lots of slips and falls, plus the very large number of people suffering flu symptoms. But if 78% were seen within the 4 hours, that means that the 100,000 people must comprise the 22% figure.

So, if 22% equals 100,000, then the total number of people visiting A&E during that week must be over 454,500 (100,000 / 22 x 100 = 454545.5).

That means that, according to the BBC claim, around 8% of the entire population of Scotland went to A&E that week.

Seriously? Let that sink in. In one single week, 8% of the population went to A&E?

something seems wrong there, don’t you think?

let’s see if there are any other reports of the statistics.

Ah, the Daily Telegraph, a Right Wing newspaper not known for its support of Scottish Independence reported that only 5,686 people were not seen within the four hour period.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/09/scottish-ae-waiting-times-record-high-christmas-new-year/

So the BBC’s figure overstates the actual number by a factor of around 17.5. That’s quite an exaggeration. Where did they get the figure of 100,000 from? Who knows? But it sounds pretty dreadful, and that seems to be the main issue as far as BBC Scotland is concerned.

Does anyone else remember when Donalda MacKinnon was appointed as the new Head of BBC Scotland and said that they would work hard to regain people’s trust? Like so much else from the state propaganda outlet, that seems to have been empty rhetoric.

It’s no wonder that so many people have gained the impression that BBC news reporters either cannot check basic facts, or that they are deliberately lying to the public. Either way, the organisation is not fit for purpose. There may well be a flu epidemic on the go, but the number of misleading statements from BBC Scotland is also reaching epidemic proportions.