Trial by media: BBC set about convicting Alex Salmond in the minds of the public
Kirsty Wark pitching up outside the courthouse, coffee in hand, gossiping with fellow journalists
These days the channel could more honestly have a flagship programme called Brass Neck.
Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark fronted an hour-long report, The Trial Of Alex Salmond (BBC2), into the court case.
Last March the former First Minister of Scotland faced 13 charges of serious sexual assault.
Mr Salmond was totally acquitted on all counts. But that didn't stop Wark from raking up all the claims and interviewing three of the women who gave evidence. Trial by media, BBC style.
The report ended with an actress reading the words of one: 'I know I was telling the truth. I know what happened to me.' Another grieved: 'I'm worried about what this says more widely to other women, or just to us as a society. I mean, where does this leave us?'
Clearly, it leaves us in a situation where a BBC documentary can pour doubt on the findings of a jury that 'failed' to deliver the guilty verdict that was so obviously desired by some within the media.
And it leaves us with a national broadcaster whose double standards are as stark as they are Wark.
Kirsty Wark has been with Newsnight since 1993, after all, but as she lamented the damage wreaked by Mr Salmond's acquittal to the #MeToo movement, she said nothing of the programme's failings over an equally high-profile case.
Double standard of the night:
After the death of BBC presenter and DJ Jimmy Savile in 2011, a Newsnight investigation into rumours of his appalling crimes was shelved. It was deemed to clash with an adoring obituary and a planned Christmas special of his children's show, Jim'll Fix It.
Savile never stood trial and, even after he was dead, some at the Beeb tried to turn a blind eye to his vile activities.
Alex Salmond won his court case, he is innocent, by any legal standards, and he also scored a victory in an earlier civil suit relating to the handling of the allegations against him, where a judge ruled that the procedure used to build a case against Mr Salmond was both 'illegal' and 'tainted with apparent bias'.
Mr Salmond conceded that in hindsight, some of his behaviour towards women was boorish and embarrassing. But he maintained that it fell far short of being criminal — the jury agreed.
Unless the BBC is trying to argue that the country's entire judicial system is unfit for purpose, Kirsty Wark should not be suggesting the trial has done serious damage to women's rights across the country.
Instead, she should never lose sight of the fact that Jimmy Savile, a BBC employee, committed foul offences against women and children, sometimes within the BBC's buildings. And the Newsnight report (her flagship show) into that was dropped.
The BBC really have lost the plot in Scotland. Programs like this only serve to show their partisan underbelly to a Scottish public who are now highly suspicious of them, and can you blame them?
BBC employees are guilty of repeatedly making the grave error of thinking the wider public are sympathetic to the same whims and desires as exists within their media bubble. They're not.
After the BBC in Scotland acknowledged that they had lost the public over their biased and unfair coverage of the independence referendum in 2014, it vowed that it 'would win them back'. Wow, way to go, BBC.
They could perhaps shrug off this sort of criticism if it was coming solely from Mr Salmond’s supporters.
They could say: "Well, they would say that." Or words to that effect. But when harsh criticisms also start pouring in from right across the political and cultural divide in the UK, you'd think they'd stop and take a look at themselves.
The BBC should know they're in trouble when ultra Conservative, British nationalist newspapers like the Telegraph and the Daily Mail start sticking the boot in.
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