TWO years ago then-culture secretary Angus Robertson argued that Scotland should have a new public broadcaster after independence to be "more representative" of Scots in a white paper.
But media policy experts who have argued the BBC must "democratise or die" in a new book have warned that independence supporters should be considering how an independent Scotland can avoid simply reproducing another version of the BBC where the public have minimal say in how the broadcaster is actually run.
Daniel Hind, Tom Mills and Tom Chivers have written The BBC: From Corporation to Cooperative – which will be released in January – which suggests practical ways in which the BBC could reform to ensure the public have more of a say in its coverage and programme-making.
They argue for a mutualised BBC in which its members—the British public and BBC staff—play an active and direct role in its governance and functions.
Despite being publicly-owned and funded directly by its audiences, currently nobody in the general public has any direct influence or say over the BBC’s activities or strategy, which is generally decided by the unelected BBC board.
Speaking to The National Media Watch podcast, Hind said Scottish independence supporters who have become frustrated with the BBC should consider how Scotland would create a more democratic public broadcaster and not fall into the trap of simply recreating another BBC.
"The challenge that an independent Scotland is going to have is how do you avoid reproducing another version of the BBC? " said Hind.
"How do you avoid creating something which will function as an auxiliary to representative bodies, like the legislature, but will be essentially oligarchic in its structure?
"James VI of Scotland called the judges the lions of the throne. The BBC is the lion under the throne of the Westminster system. It is crucial to how the Westminster system operates at the moment.
"If you’re going to create an independent and more deeply democratic culture, you need to re-examine the idea of public media.
"If you say well we’ll just have a BBC but it will only be Scottish elites running it then I fear that you will reproduce the pathologies of the Westminster system in your broader politics.
"So I think lot of what we say about the BBC would be applicable in the Scottish context."
Outgoing Today programme presenter Amol Rajan echoed some of the arguments made in The BBC: From Corporation to Cooperative when he appeared at the Edinburgh TV festival last week .
He criticised the current licence fee structure and urged leaders to consider the mutualisation of the BBC – a proposed reform model that would turn the broadcaster into a co-operative or mutual organisation owned and controlled by the British public rather than managed directly through Government oversight.
Hind, Mills and Chivers suggest the public should become BBC members and have two new powers – the right to allocate a share of the BBC’s budget to support independent public purpose content and be equally eligible to serve on member-led panels chosen by random selection which would, alongside staff, shape the BBC’s activities.
Hind said: "We would create juries within the BBC, people selected at random, who would be given a mandate to investigate a particular aspect of the BBC's operations.
"So in news and current affairs you might have a jury to look at economics coverage and they would look at what the BBC is doing and all the other independent media that's being funded by BBC money and they would be able to sit down with elite figures whether in the BBC or outside and say 'why do you keep saying this about the economy?'
"So you create a spectacle of a sustained engagement with economic and political elites by ordinary people, for ordinary people, in public, and the thinking is the interaction will steadily but quite rapidly improve the level of public discourse."
The book has been published ahead of the review of the BBC’s Royal Charter in 2027, which defines the BBC’s constitution and public purposes.
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The full interview with Mills and Hind will be in the Media Watch podcast released on Tuesday evening.
