ALEX Salmond has lashed out at the BBC, denouncing its coverage of the 2014 independence referendum as a “disgrace”.
The former First Minister also attacked Nick Robinson, saying the outgoing BBC Political Editor should be “embarrassed and ashamed” of his coverage of the campaign.
Mr Salmond, now the MP for Gordon, used a newspaper column to retaliate over comments Mr Robinson made last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where he was promoting his Election Diary.
The 51-year-old journalist, who will shortly join BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, said he regretted his row with Mr Salmond at the time of the referendum but criticised the "intimidation and bullying" of journalists during the campaign. At one point, the BBC hired a bodyguard to protect Mr Robinson.
The row with Mr Salmond flared up after his story about the possibility of Royal Bank of Scotland moving its headquarters south of the border should Scots have voted Yes to independence. Subsequently, Mr Salmond clashed with Mr Robinson at a press conference and accused him of heckling. A BBC inquiry later cleared its Political Editor of bias.
But later, Mr Robinson accused the ex-party leader of using him as a “symbol of the wicked, metropolitan, Westminster classes...sent from London to tell the Scots what to do” and likened 4000 Nationalists protesting about his reports outside the BBC in Glasgow to something out of “Putin’s Russia”.
In his response, Mr Salmond noted how he had not spoken out before because “auld Nick” had been in ill health, recovering from treatment for lung cancer, and it would have been unfair to criticise someone who had no ability to respond.
Saying he was glad Mr Robinson had been “restored to health,” Mr Salmond made clear he now felt he could speak out and declared: “Now he’s back; the BBC’s coverage of the Scottish referendum was a disgrace.
“It can be shown to be so as was Nick’s own reporting, of which he should be both embarrassed and ashamed.”
The ex-FM then turned to Mr Robinson’s comparison of “4000 Scots peacefully protesting outside BBC Scotland as something akin to Putin’s Russia”, saying it was “as ludicrous as it is insulting”.
Mr Salmond added: “It is also heavily ironic given that the most commonly used comparison with the BBC London treatment of the Scottish referendum story was with Pravda, the propaganda news agency in the old Soviet Union.”
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