THE BBC has been accused of letting “truth take a back seat to convenience” after a top news editor dismissed an SNP MSP’s concerns about a “misleading” headline.
Kevin Stewart, the MSP for Aberdeen Central and a former transport minister, had written to BBC director-general Tim Davie raising concerns about an article on the two-child benefit cap that appeared on the BBC on July 15.
The BBC article had been headlined: “SNP join push to scrap two-child benefit cap.”
Its first paragraph then reported: “The SNP has announced plans to join Labour rebels in trying to force the government to scrap the two-child benefit cap.”
"join"? Perhaps if the BBC had paid more attention back when @theSNP were leading opposition to the two child limit and the rape clause in 2015, and regularly calling to scrap it for the past nine years, perhaps we wouldn't still have to be fighting against it now. 🙄 https://t.co/M3y4fBGcZA
— Alison Thewliss (@alisonthewliss) July 15, 2024
Various SNP figures took issue with the headline, with Scottish Agriculture Minister Jim Fairlie saying: “If the BBC do not want people to mistrust their motives then this kind of misleading headline is exactly what not to do.
“The SNP have opposed the two-child cap since its introduction and have consistently campaigned on it. You need to sort this, BBC.”
Stewart raised his concerns directly with BBC director-general Davie, writing in a letter: “SNP plans to table an amendment to the King’s Speech to remove the cap are clearly a continuation of the SNP’s seven-year fight against this horrific policy.
“I fail to understand how this latest move can in any way be described as ‘joining’ the push to scrap the two-child benefit cap, when it is the SNP that have been spearheading that push all along. To suggest otherwise, as this headline does, is simply misleading.”
Responding to the letter in Davie’s stead, BBC executive news editor of politics Hilary O’Neill dismissed the concerns.
“I understand that the SNP has a long-held opposition to the two-child benefit cap. However, this particular story from July 15 focused on the challenge to the new Labour government over the policy,” she wrote in an email reply seen by The National.
“We wanted to reflect the range of opposition to Labour’s stance and considered it key to the story that there were dissenting voices within the Labour party, after the Labour MP Kim Johnson said she planned to lay an amendment to the King’s Speech.
“Given the restrictions of space, a headline can never reflect the story in its entirety, which we can cover in the body of an article. With this in mind, this headline aimed to focus on the current situation and not the SNP’s historic stance on the cap.
“I hope that helps explain the headline. We will no doubt return to this ongoing story and when relevant, include the SNP’s position on the policy.”
Stewart has now responded to O’Neill, saying he “must take issue with the explanation you have provided”.
In his letter, the SNP MSP goes on: “Regardless of the desire to highlight the dissenting voices within the Labour party on the two-child cap policy, the headline was still inaccurate.
“The SNP group was laying its own amendment rather than simply backing an amendment from a Labour MP – an amendment which has since been selected and voted on, unlike the amendment from the Labour MPs.
“They were in no way ‘joining’ a Labour action, and if space was genuinely the issue, ‘SNP push to scrap two-child benefit cap’ would have been both shorter and more accurate.”
Stewart pointed to another BBC report on the two-child cap amendment to the King’s Speech, which appeared on July 23 and was headlined “MPs to vote on two-child benefit cap”.
He said it was “certainly an interesting editorial decision that there was suddenly no need to mention any political party in the headline”.
Stewart then went on: “I suspect you know more than me about the power of headlines – there is a reason they exist in the first place, after all.
“Many people see a headline and don’t bother to read the article, so it’s imperative that they are accurate, since this may be all a person takes in about the story.
“The latest BBC Annual Report shows that the percentage of Scots who believe that the BBC is ‘effective at reflecting people like them’ continues to fall, from a net score of +26% last year to +17% this year.
“If truth takes a back seat to convenience when it comes to reporting on the SNP, is it any wonder that trust in the BBC is reducing in Scotland?”
The BBC annual report was published last week and also showed that tens of thousands fewer Scots were paying for a TV licence than they had been the previous year.
Across the UK, around half a million fewer people were paying for a TV licence year-on-year, it showed.
