Uh oh. Back to Scotland where, for once, the chaos doesn’t concern the country’s biggest nationalist party. This time Alex Salmond’s pro-independence group, Alba, is in the spotlight over a rather public debacle with Scottish broadcasters STV.
Salmond has taken issue with STV’s decision to move his party’s election broadcast slot from this Friday – the same day Scotland will play Germany in the Euros – to next week. The broadcaster changed the timings over concerns that the party would have an ‘unfair advantage’ if the screening went out before or after the game – to which Alba have responded by sending out a number of fiery press releases that demand STV be taken to ‘Ofcom’s election court’ and shown the ‘red card’. Goodness…
The former first minister fumed that:
STV are riding roughshod over fairness and accepted practice by sidelining our only broadcast. We have now taken them straight to the VAR referee. Alba will not be silenced or intimidated by a Broadcaster whose main preoccupation seems to be sucking up to the political establishment. Scotland badly needs an independence party and that new force is Alba.
The party is also concerned that the new timing means the broadcast will be aired after the first issue of postal votes. A party insider added that although younger viewers might be less likely to tune into politics before the big game, a number of the over-fifties would likely be watching the match from their homes – and would have caught the party broadcast before kick off with the original timing. ‘That’s where a big vote is,’ they insisted.
Alba’s latest outburst comes just weeks after Salmond’s band of nationalists issued STV a ‘yellow card’ for cutting the former first minister’s new party out of its first leaders’ debate of the election season. So annoyed was the party – none of whose politicians have been elected under the Alba banner – that its Glasgow South West candidate, Tony Osy, brought a modest group to STV’s headquarters to protest during filming. It hasn’t been enough to spook the broadcasters, however. While Salmond’s separatists have urged Ofcom to consider the matter, STV says it is ‘comfortable that our election coverage across the board complies with the Ofcom Broadcast Code and its guidance around due impartiality’. The war wages on…
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