A FEW days ago, ahead of the launch of the new BBC Scotland channel a week on Sunday, the corporation issued a group picture of the reporters on the flagship news show, “The Nine”. It was rather like a school photo, with everyone dressed up in their best smart-casual clothing, smiling awkwardly at the camera.

There was something missing though, items the BBC wardrobe department ought to be issuing to the team as a matter of urgency: tin helmets. There might be a worse time to launch a new BBC channel in Scotland, but you would be hard pushed to find one.

READ MORE: BBC Question Time faces fresh row over claims it edited SNP retort to former UKIP candidate 

First came the row over Question Time, when it emerged a member of the audience who attacked the SNP on last week’s programme from Motherwell, was a failed UKIP candidate who had been on the show not once, not twice, but three times before.

Next to arrive was the Cairncross Review of the press, which called on Ofcom to investigate the effect the BBC’s licence fee-subsidised journalism was having on paid for newspapers.

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To these two events can be added a general discontent with the BBC in Scotland, with a UK Government study finding Scots were the least satisfied viewers in the UK with the output they received.

Given all this, perhaps the first words to be spoken when the new channel goes live at 7pm on February 24 should be “Sorry, Scotland, shall we start again?”

There certainly needs to be an apology for the Question Time fiasco, not from the new channel, it is nothing to do with them, but from the makers of the Motherwell programme.

Before we start on that, I have to interrupt this column to declare that I worked for BBC television many years ago and I still do radio on occasion. At one point in my time at the BBC I was responsible for putting together audiences for Mrs Merton-style heated debates. There was a vetting process, not least because you could be sure that as soon as the programme ended there would be complaints from all the political parties represented on the panel that the audience was full of plants.

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The first thing you realise if working on programmes like QT is that there is no such thing as an ordinary member of the public. Television likes to give the impression that there is a pool of political virgins out there, with no biases or hinterlands, just waiting to be discovered. Nonsense. The purpose of vetting is to give as balanced a spread of views as possible, and to either remove those with an obvious political agenda, or to make their position clear.

How William Mitchell beat the system not once but three times – his other appearance happened after he “sneaked in” – is extraordinary. His past political endeavours are a matter of record, and his views have hardly been hidden. Of further concern is Mr Mitchell’s claim that he was invited on to the show.

Still, mistakes happen. Even more than once. What matters after that is putting matters right, starting with an acknowledgement that something went wrong. If this kind of mistake had happened on a newspaper a correction would follow quickly. Instead, we have Auntie reacting in her usual dowager duchess fashion: a gasp, a clutch of the pearls, and a lie down in a locked, darkened room.

As luck and a quick internet search would have it, the director of the Motherwell show, Rob Hopkin, did once give an interview about how the programme is put together. In 2010 he told a journalism student at Coventry University: “We don’t invite anyone. We have a dedicated producer who chooses a representative audience." The questions come from the audience and the audience alone, he added. “This is the crucial thing because we are always being accused of telling the audience what questions to ask. People think that what we do is take our questions, give them to the audience, and get them to read them out. But that absolutely does not happen. Doing that would undermine the whole premise, and what’s the point in that? The programme is absolutely upfront, it does what it says on the package: this is the audience asking questions to (sic) the politicians."

Except in this case the audience member was a failed politician, and he was giving his views unchallenged.

Question Time is made for the BBC by Mentorn Media, an independent production company. Although Mentorn has a production hub in Glasgow, and one in London, QT is a network programme that travels all over the UK. It may be that the people who put together the Motherwell show, and the others Mr Mitchell were on, did not recognise him because they are not from Scotland, or they are not very familiar with Scottish politics. When the BBC tends to get things wrong, as with Nick Robinson’s reporting of his tussle with Alex Salmond during the independence referendum campaign, is when it parachutes in staff from London.

Which brings us back to that photo of the happy, smiley people on the new BBC Scotland channel. On the day it was published the response from some on social media was ferocious. Anyone would think it was a photo of Interpol’s most wanted rather than a bunch of tv reporters starting new jobs. Talk about sins of the father.

So it is not the Scottish Six that a sizeable number of people wanted. So the new channel's budget of £32 million a year is a fraction of what the BBC raises from Scottish licence fee payers. But it is a new presence on the Scottish media scene, and one that has brought new jobs to Scotland, just as Channel 4 will do with its Glasgow hub.

It was to better serve a Scottish audience that BBC Scotland was created in the first place. The creation of the new channel stems from the same aim.

It remains to be seen whether it is any good. They have everything to prove, and no shortage of critics ready to pass judgment. It is only right the BBC should be held accountable for its failings, and by the same token given credit for its successes. To condemn a new channel sight unseen, as some are already doing, is short-sighted and unfair. Scotland is bigger than that.