Catalunya and Scotland

Peter Preston of The Guardian had an article in the paper about Catalunya: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/15/catalan-secession-incubated-media-cocoon

I won't pretend to understand everything he writes in the article: I think there are problems with translation from Spanish in one place and a couple of places where Preston expresses himself badly. But I have extracted a few things because he makes interesting points and also because they show such a contrast with what's happening in the media in Scotland.

1 It only takes Preston till line 3 of his article to take aim at the SNP:  "We know what the SNP would have done if they’d won their referendum. Set up a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation on the grave of the BBC."

Can I point out - yet again - that supporters of independence in Scotland in 2014 were not all SNP? There were and still are Green Party members like me, Labour members for independence, etc. 

His opinion that the SNP would have taken over the BBC and turned it into the SBC is based on nothing. There were lots of ideas going around at the time but no definite plans for broadcasting. Preston's suggestion seems to be that change would be somehow sinister - just the use of the word 'grave' tells me that. 

2 Preston points out that Catalunya has 5 TV stations and one radio station all broadcasting in Catalan. They've had these since 1983. He says these stations are paid for by the Catalan government. Presumably, before the present government took office, other parties ran these stations. What happened then? Were there accusations of bias by the Socialists, for example? 

For those of us in Scotland, the very idea of 5 dedicated TV stations is wonderful. Imagine having that number of stations broadcasting home-grown news, dramas and soaps. Think of the well-trained people we'd be offering jobs to: writers, technical staff, editors, producers. All fully employable in our Scottish film studios. 

3 Preston accuses these Catalan stations of living in "a media cocoon of settled opinion." By that I think he means there is no argument, debate or discussion. It is taken for granted that independence is the way forward. 

I have to point out that no one has to watch or listen to these Catalan stations. Other Spanish-language stations are available. Preston admits elsewhere in the article that Spanish-language TV and radio stations showed anti-independence and anti-Catalan bias in their broadcasts during the recent referendum but he doesn't try to analyse the under-lying anti-Catalan feeling that was encouraged by Franco's Falangists right up to 1975. 

Do I really need to tell Preston about the attitude of TV stations here in the UK to Scottish plans for independence? Last week on the Sky news review a journalist was allowed the luxury of a 3 minute monologue (on the day the SNP conference started) devoted to why the SNP is finished; how great the Tories in Scotland are doing; and how independence in Scotland is dead in the water. This on a programme with a total broadcast time of 18 minutes. 

When the BBC broadcasts programmes like Question Time, we're quite used to seeing one representative of the SNP or the Greens facing up to 5 pretty hostile representatives of the 'main' political parties. Even when this programme comes from Scotland, the Scottish politicians are likely to be outnumbered just the same. We've got used to seeing the face of Nigel Farage, although UKIP represents no one.  

But I don't have to watch these stations. So I don't.

Preston concedes: "Nor should anyone believe that the BBC, charting its lugubrious, legally mandated way through the thickets of bias, can ever achieve consensual calm."

But it could try. 

4 Preston also says that independence is the preferred model for people living 'up-country,' rather than in Barcelona. It is favoured in areas where Catalan is the everyday, sometimes the only, language in use. Preston seems to object to Catalan TV focusing on violent attacks from the Guardia Civil and discussions where panels are weighted in favour of Catalan-speaking supporters of independence.

That's another problem some of us have with journalists like Preston: I might not mind so much being told endlessly how well Ruth Davidson is doing if the TV pundits pointed out that the Tories do not represent the Central Belt (half the population of Scotland), any more than the Tories represent London - and if they could dig themselves out of their 'big city' bunker and maybe get out more. Barcelona does not represent Catalunya. 

5 Preston asks "How did Catalonia wander so close to the edge of a cliff? Because – on screen, on the airwaves, in cosseted print – there was no real debate." I'm not sure what the cosseted print refers to. I find it hard to believe newspapers in Spain did not produce articles about Catalan independence, some of them even hostile.

Compare that to our own blessed UK: 37 newspapers are published in Scotland every week. One daily and one Sunday paper support independence. The other 35 are feverishly - and sometimes disgracefully - filling their pages with anti-SNP propaganda on a daily basis. The Times last week printed a photo showing an empty hall when - it claimed - Nicola Sturgeon should have been speaking. It was a lie, of course: the Times photographer carefully selected a moment 40 minutes before the speech was due to start when delegates were off eating their lunch. 

Incidentally, I used to take the Guardian but gave up a long time ago when I realised that journalists like Peter Preston really want to talk about themselves, their own wee world of the media, and don't actually need readers getting in the way. 

And, Mr Preston, in terms of Catalan and Scottish independence, that cliff edge is still there. Except we don't call it that: to us, it's a launchpad.