Unbiased BBC? The case of the Independence referendum.

 Checking the BBC News website I was directed to this by a button entitled "Why you can trust BBC news"

The BBC is recognised by audiences in the UK and around the world as a provider of news that you can trust. Our website, like our TV and radio services, strives for journalism that is accurate, impartial, independent and fair.
Our editorial values say: "The trust that our audience has in all our content underpins everything that we do. We are independent, impartial and honest. We are committed to achieving the highest standards of accuracy and impartiality and strive to avoid knowingly or materially misleading our audiences.
"Our commitment to impartiality is at the heart of that relationship of trust. In all our output we will treat every subject with an impartiality that reflects the full range of views. We will consider all the relevant facts fairly and with an open mind."
Research shows that, compared to other broadcasters, newspapers and online sites, the BBC is seen as by far the most trusted and impartial news provider in the UK.
Even so, we know that identifying credible journalism on the internet can be a confusing experience. We also know that audiences want to understand more about how BBC journalism is produced.
For these reasons, BBC News is making even greater efforts to explain what type of information you are reading or watching on our website, who and where the information is coming from, and how a story was crafted the way it was. By doing so, we can help you judge for yourself why BBC News can be trusted.
We are also making these indicators of trustworthy journalism "machine-readable", meaning that they can be picked up by search engines and social media platforms, helping them to better identify reliable sources of information too

More here, 

 So I had  a quick look at Wikipedis artivcle on criticism of the BBC and saw this

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) criticised the BBC in October 2012 for its poor coverage of the Scotland independence referendum which took place on 18 September 2014. The BBC reportedly "downplayed the costs of referendum coverage, claiming it was a 'one off'." According to a research team led by Dr John Robertson from the University of the West of Scotland the BBC's first year of referendum coverage (to September 2013) was biased towards the pro-Unionist No campaign.
Andrew Marr, the BBC presenter, was accused of expressing anti-independence views in a March 2014 interview with Alex Salmond.^[230][231] The BBC allowed the Better Together campaign to make a pro-unionist cinema advertisement at its Glasgow studios in April 2014 which was thought to contravene its editorial guidelines.^[232] According to The Scotsman, the BBC appointed Kezia Dugdale, Labour’s education spokeswoman, as presenter of Crossfire, a radio programme debating issues relating to the referendum. The newspaper believed this arrangement was also a breach of the corporation's guidelines and asserted that Dugdale is "a member of Scottish Labour’s Truth Team – set up to monitor all SNP and Yes Scotland interviews, press statements and briefing papers" in the run-up to the September vote.^[233]
A report by the Audience Council Scotland, the BBC Trust's advisory body in Scotland, questioned the impartiality of BBC Scotland in covering the independence referendum in July 2014.A Sunday Times article, also in July 2014, queried the BBC's approach to the independence referendum, and stated that emails by a senior member of a production company organising debates for the corporation gave advance notice to the No campaign.
On 10 September 2014 the BBC were accused of bias in their reporting of an Alex Salmond press conference for the international media. In a response to a question by the BBC's Nick Robinson, Salmond accused him of heckling and wanted an inquiry by the UK's Cabinet Secretary into a leak to the BBC from the Treasury concerning the plans of the Royal Bank of Scotland to relocate its registered office to London which had been in the previous evening's newsn response to complaints about editing of the live coverage of the conference for later bulletins, the corporation said: "The BBC considers that the questions were valid and the overall report balanced and impartial, in line with our editorial guidelines."
After a day of protests from Yes campaigners, and demands that Robinson should be sacked,he following Monday (15 September), Salmond responded to questions from journalists at Edinburgh Airport. About Robinson's report in later bulletins, he said: "I don't think it was fair for Nick to suggest that I hadn't answered a question when I actually answered it twice." He did not believe Robinson should be sacked.

Channel 4's director of creative diversity, Stuart Cosgrove called for a re-think at the BBC on the nature of balance and due impartiality based. This was during a BBC Scotland radio conversation hosted by John Beattie. Cosgrove commented: "Yesterday, I was watching the rolling BBC News very closely and it was clear that notions of balance were being predicated on a party political basis. It would go from Cameron to Miliband to Clegg and back. If you look at it as a different premise – it’s a yes/no question – then Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens, who is not the leader but is a significant political person within the Yes campaign, should have had exactly the same coverage as Ed Miliband. Do you think for a second he got that? Of course he didn’t. I think there’s been a failure of the understanding of the nature of balance and due impartiality. It’s simply wrong and not acceptable."
An interview of Alex Salmond for the Sunday Herald published on 14 September 2014 included his opinion that the BBC had displayed a pro-union bias during the referendum.

This is for the Scottish referendum if I was to list examples of perceived BBC bias I could go on for pages.

Accusations come from both Left and right, but it is my view that the BBC is biased towards the establishment  and  tries to avoid to muchcriticism of the sitting government  to protect its funding,

Personally  I see the principle f BBC claims to impartiality in by the old adage

  "The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons".

If the BBC was truly impartial it could be that they wouldn't  have to keep tell us about it.