Today programme presenter Nick Robinson has said that former SNP leader Alex Salmond is just the latest in a long line of politicians who have sought to the control the BBC.
Writing in The Guardian he lists Winston Churchill (during the General Strike), Anthony Eden during Suez, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher as other politicians who he says have “failed to understand why the nation’s broadcaster doesn’t see the world exactly as they do”.
Robinson declines to go into the the nitty gritty of the row between him and Salmond, saying that he must remain“impartial”, but he does write:
Salmond’s assertion that the BBC is a state broadcaster that dances to a tune written by the Whitehall and Westminster establishment is wrong. History shows that. 'If only it were so' would have been the response of all those prime ministers who clashed with it in the past."
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Salmond has described BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum as like Pravda in response to Robinson's claim that Scottish protests about BBC coverage were like something out of Putin's Russia.
Picture: Reuters.
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