Explain me this

Today the headline on the BBC website - the 'Home' page as well as the UK section - is:

Record university offers on A-level day 

I'm confused. A levels are exams that people sit in some parts of the UK. So shouldn't A level stories be on the website pages for England, Wales and Northern Ireland? I've had a wee look and yes, an A level story appears on the Wales page (predictably, a put-down that results are poorer this year) but not on the England or Northern Ireland pages.

Don't get me wrong: I'm delighted for everyone who sat those exams and got the results they wanted so they can now continue their education. That's not my point, which is that I don't understand the rules by which the BBC runs its website. There was no great fanfare when the Scottish exam results appeared - not even bad news stories. Nothing appeared on the 'Home' or UK section. The results were relegated to what James Robertson  calls 'The News Where You Are'* area of the website: Scotland.

I suppose I should be grateful the BBC quite often tells us when a news story applies only to England and Wales or England, Wales and Northern Ireland. You'll never get that clarification on ITN news or Sky. And I have to say Channel 4 news, for all its good points (like relegating the Olympics to a 5 minute slot while determinedly delivering reports from all over the world), doesn't always get the picture right: that things in the NHS, education, politics and the law are often different in Scotland.

And the websites of all these news outlets mirror their cloudy thinking.

The whole point about a news service is surely to clarify what's happening for the viewing public. But it's not the first time I've been told by Scottish people that the NHS is falling apart, that immigrants are 'flooding the country,' that 'our' schools are in a terrible condition. They heard it on the news or read it on a website so it must be right. Right?

The other problem we have with the news programmes and websites of both BBC Scotland and STV is that they are highly selective. Some bits of news are totally ignored, especially news from the Scottish Parliament. There's also very little attempt to work out what's going on in local Scottish councils until a crisis pops up: BBC news announced a couple of weeks back that the report on the 'Edinburgh trams fiasco' was delayed. Now that's an interesting way of putting it. STV's news programmes focus on a very small number of stories and bring in a very small number of talking heads, but I notice in recent weeks the BBC Scotland people seem to be trying to copy their style, although their talking heads tend to be BBC journalists rather than independent 'experts.'

Anyhow, the amount of time devoted to the Olympics has taught me this: it's perfectly possible to live happily without watching the news. I'd rather put the TV off than have to sit through 15 minutes on the Olympics, with another 5 minutes tacked on the end, and then the same thing again on 'The News Where You Are.'

*If you haven't seen James Robertson's take on the news in 365 words, have a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edrBBphznfw