Nicola Sturgeon has claimed the BBC's coverage of last year's independence referendum was unfair.

The First Minister claimed the corporation only analysed the SNP's case for independence and failed to consider the consequences for Scotland of staying in the UK.

She also complained 'network' journalists, reporting the story for the whole of the UK, were poorly informed.

Delivering the Alternative McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, she launched a strongly-worded attack on the BBC.

She said: "I am not saying there was institutional bias in the BBC's referendum output.

"However, there were occasions when its coverage - through oversight, apparent ignorance of the detail of an issue or as a result of simply following the agenda of openly partisan print media - lapsed from the objective output the referendum deserved into what could seem partial and, at times, pejorative.

"I don't doubt the effort and integrity that went into the Corporation's coverage.

"And, for the record, I think that the BBC, and BBC Scotland in particular, has some of the finest political journalists in the land.

"But that was undermined on occasion by those lapses, some of which have been recognised and flagged up by the BBC's own internal processes subsequent to the vote."

She said it was right the case for independence should be analysed to a greater degree than the case for staying in the UK.

But she complained: "The status quo and the consequences of voting No were not really analysed at all."

She also said the BBC's 'network' journalists - those covering the story for the whole of the UK - came late to the campaign and "sounded less than fully informed" to audiences in Scotland.

She added: "The frustration that many felt was not borne out of a misplaced desire to control the media, but from a genuine concern that the playing field didn't always feel even."