Alex Salmond has been accused of using his spat with Nick Robinson to “foment grievance” about the BBC among Scots.
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader and a former journalist with the broadcaster, has claimed that the former first minister and his successor are using the corporation as a “political football” to further their “separatist agenda”.
Mr Salmond used a newspaper column this week to criticise Mr Robinson and the BBC, calling the corporation’s handling of the Scottish independence vote “a disgrace”. He said the former political editor should be ashamed.
The row dates back to Mr Robinson’s coverage of a press conference in the final days of the referendum campaign. He claimed that Mr Salmond had not answered his question — although the politician had spoken at length — sparking outrage from the Yes side.
There were marches on the BBC’s Glasgow headquarters, calls for licence fees to be withheld, and vitriol on Twitter. Mr Robinson was booed when he tried to cover a rally in Perth and there were calls for his resignation. He has compared the scenes to Putin’s Russia.
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The reheating of the dispute this week coincided with a lecture that Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, gave to the Edinburgh International Television Festival about the future of the national broadcaster in Scotland.
She, too, was critical of some of its coverage of the referendum and what she regarded as the ignorance of some journalists who went north and did not appear fully informed. She also called for a beefed-up Scottish service.
Ms Davidson said: “The SNP is using the BBC as a political football, desperately trying to reassure viewers that they’d keep popular programmes like EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing, but demanding a new Scottish-only channel without any clear idea how to pay for it or what they want to show on it.
“Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon’s attacks on the BBC this week are not about finding solutions — they are about fomenting grievance with another British institution in order to push their separatist agenda.”
Speaking at the TV festival yesterday, Philip Davies, the Tory MP, said Ms Sturgeon needed to “calm down”.
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A spokesman for the first minister said: “It is Mr Davies who perhaps needs to calm down, because all he has done is prove how out of touch with Scotland the Tories are.” He pointed to the BBC’s audience council research in Scotland, which found lower levels of satisfaction than in the rest of the UK.