Some of history’s greatest American journalists are working right now. Exceptional minds with years of experience and an unshakable devotion to reporting the news. But these voices are a small minority now and they don’t stand a chance against the circus when the circus comes to town. They’re over matched. I’m quitting the circus, switching teams. I’m going with the guys who are getting creamed. I’m moved. They still think they can win and I hope they can teach me a thing or two.
From this moment on, we’ll be deciding what goes on our air and how it’s presented to you based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. We’re not waiters in a restaurant, serving you the stories you asked for, just the way you like them prepared. Nor are we computers, dispensing only the facts because news is only useful in the context of humanity.
The above is a quote from Aaron Sorkin’s excellent TV show The Newsroom where the main character decides to move away from the tired excuse for journalism that reporting in the US has become in order to usher in News Night 2.0.
As this weekend’s reporting of Scottish Politics testifies, we could do with a bit of the same in this country.
In my own job, as an accountant, there is often pressure to obscure the facts, to downplay bad news and exaggerate the good news. A particularly senior manager once told us to remember that we in Finance should be the single arbiter of the truth, the honest broker and that we should never go native in aligning ourselves with the somewhat murkier business side of our company, those that we face off to that don’t own the reported numbers. I would expect that if there was any other profession out there that should hold the same mindset, it would be journalism.
So it was depressing to read Nicola Sturgeon’s account of the backstory behind the BBC’s news article headlined “EU application would take time” that suggested a difference in opinion between Ireland and the Scottish Government on Scotland’s continued membership of the EU, post-independence. The Irish Minister herself has written to Nicola Sturgeon “concerned that an interview which I conducted with the BBC is being misconstrued” and was of the belief that she “thought that my reply was largely in line with that of the Scottish Government”.
The clear inference to be drawn is that a decision was taken, subconsciously or otherwise, that such alignment between Ireland and the Scottish Government would not be newsworthy and Lucinda Creighton’s quotes would have to be cherry-picked in order to carve out a certain angle, a negative angle, as seems to have been the case.
That the national news organisation should take a foreign Minister’s words “out of context” (according to the Minister herself) should concern us all, but how many people will delve past the headlines and the news stories on the BBC website to know what’s really going on? Not many, sadly. The Scottish public’s news stories are being served to them warm, just the way they like them.
It is, regrettably, a similar story today for the Scotland on Sunday.
The paper has kicked off its “Scotland Decides” series today by inviting Nicola Sturgeon to write an article for the paper on the constitutional question. The front page has the paper’s own take on the arguments being made by the Deputy First Minister and it seems to have fallen back on old tricks once again.
The Scotland on Sunday’s classic ruse is to talk up how balanced it is being when it invites a senior SNP individual to write for it, only to paint the SNP in a negative light with a dubious spin on said article from its all important front page.
That was Stephen Noon’s experience last month when he wrote a wonderful article for the paper about how each Scottish political party could help drive an independent Scotland forwards in their own way and that Stephen wouldn’t be sure who he would vote for in that happy scenario. The SoS’ front page ran with the angle ‘SNP could disband after independence’. This was not at all the message Stephen was looking to get across and his positive arguments were drowned out by a rather hollow debate surrounding the SNP as an entity post-2014.
It was the Deputy First Minister’s turn today with the opening lines of the front page article rather negatively stating that “Voting “No” in the independence referendum would be “a vote for nothing”…, Nicola Sturgeon claims today”.
However, the quote was truncated and missed out the “other than” which is in Nicola’s own article, significantly altering the meaning of what that part of the article was about, that voting No will result in no guaranteed changes to Scotland’s constitutional setup.
This difference changes the meaning from saying (quite reasonably) that a vote for the status quo brings no change to a suggestion that the UK has no value, you are voting for something worthless (which would be unreasonable).
These examples of the questionable objectives and purpose of the Scottish press abound, across the entire gamut of Scottish political reporting, and have become very tiring indeed. This is where I could put in a few petty paragraphs regarding the Scotland on Sunday’s circulation and BBC Scotland’s downwards spiralling budgets, but nobody wins if you go down that road of mutual loathing.
A strong Scotland requires a strong press, which is why I bought copies of both the Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday today, but a basic requirement of the Scottish press must surely be that it respects the Scottish Government, whichever party forms it, and treats it with decency and integrity.
We’ll continue to stay a long way from that goal for as long as the circus remains in town.
#1 by Craig Gallagher on January 27, 2013 - 5:43 pm
My sense here Jeff is that you’ve know this to be the case for a while, but in the absence of obvious proof – the Scottish media, like all media, being well practiced at covering their tracks – you’ve been reluctant to make an issue of it. One of Better Nation’s virtues as a discussion space is the need to balance the somewhat more conspiratorial tone (sometimes justified) of other blogs advocating, or at least discussing, Scottish independence.
This is one of those cases, though, where the point needs to be made. I have my doubts as to whether the editing of Creighton’s interview was deliberate (I have no such doubts about the SoS) but I think it does speak to a belief amongst the media generally that Unionism is the prevailing spirit in Scotland and to appeal to that audience, the Nats and their referendum must be bashed.
The truth is, I’m not so sure. About the only Scottish newspaper these days whose tone on this debate could honestly be said to more Yes than No, the Scottish Sun, is the only one thriving. The rest, with their daily diet of “Too Wee, Too Poor, Too Stupid” are seeing their circulations plummet. Whatever people think of independence, I’m not sure the electorate like being told constantly that the government they elected and the institutions they rely on are worthless money sinks threatening the very well-being of the country.
#2 by Jeff on January 27, 2013 - 6:03 pm
Yep, can’t disagree there Craig. You do have to pull back from the temptation to opt for the ‘biased media’ claim as it is overplayed and a Government should of course be held to account. These are different examples to rigorous probing of this in power though, in my view.
I have always thought that the Sunday Herald has the right tone and approach, and it’s the only paper I buy regularly.
I do wonder if either the Herald or Scotsman came out as pro-independence would it boost revenues, or even save them from seeming inevitable ruin. I don’t know, but worth considering I would have thought. Also, I guess the BBC has an understandable threat to its being if Scotland go independent.
#3 by Cyril Matvech on January 27, 2013 - 6:48 pm
I was unfortunate enough to be travelling in the family car this morning (Sunday) when my wife turned on the car radio in the vain hope of receiving the latest news from our national broadcaster. After 4 sucessive newspaper stories were abridged & debated, (health, education, crime and the economy) all openly highly critical of the Scottish government, a fifth on the latest estimated failing support for Scottish independence had been selected. The BBC claims assuredly that less than 23% of Scots want “separation from the UK” As the question used was about “Separation”. Whilst the Britannia Broadcaster employees stated clearly that this was a poll but not a full poll, it was entirely consistent with the actual poll which converely found “Salmond” was the most likely leader to win a Scottish election “because Scots are happy with the status quo which means being a part of the British Union”. Salmond’s bid for “cessation” is ill fated & ill advised was the conclusion of the show before Mrs Matvech turned the car radio off as she aplogised for the idiots working for the BBC. The sooner Scots no longer need to be fed this version of “TOKYO ROSE” which aims to thwart the cause of democracy disguised as Goodmorning Scotland, the sooner Scots will be able to receive unadulterated facts in their news. Roll on 2014 when these Unionists are reminded how wrong their claims of Unionist support was in 1979, 1997, 2007 & 2011. The BBC are now accepting that there will be a referendum on Indepence in 2014 despite their attempts to stop Scots having a say. it was just VERY disappointing to hear the BBC claim that the Home office’s incompetent Electoral Commission are highly critical of the referendum question and are still trying to take control of the referendum itself. The BBC is clearly animated that the SNP think they somehow have a right to set the referendum question?
#4 by David Lee on January 27, 2013 - 7:41 pm
Given the result at the last Holyrood election, I’d imagine that an SNP-friendly editorial line would be a pretty populist choice for a newspaper. As stated above, no-one has really gone with it. Even the Sunday Herald, barring Messrs McWhirter and Bell, has been noticeably more unionist-leaning in the last year or so.
#5 by Indy on January 27, 2013 - 8:40 pm
I don’t think there is an intentional, conscious, pro-Union bias which is orchestrated to do down the SNP/independence at every opportunity. I think it is much more subtle and also more crude than that.
Subtle in that independence is ridiculed not only by the establishment in Scotland but also by the metropolitan media establishment that so much of our own media still looks towards to set the tone.
Crude in that “getting” a minister or spokesperson is the name of the game now. Catching someone out, tripping them up, making them look stupid – that’s what journalists are going for when they interact with politicians these days. It’s not just Scotland – it’s very much a UK phenomenon.
The BBC, along with other media outlets, hasn’t done straight, informative reporting of political events for years, probably decades. And in fairness to them that style of reportage would probably look very deferential now. But only because it has become the established norm that political reporting must be antagonistic or it isn’t real.
There is also another factor in Scotland I think, which could loosely be dubbed the cybernat factor. Kevin McKenna wrote a very interesting column yesterday where he mentioned this and said that some of the “amateur” political sites have a high standard of writing and analysis – he mentioned Bella Caledonia but this site would also come into that category I think. He was basically saying that the professional media talk down the non-professional bloggers but in fact the distance between them is not that great.
That explains something that has always puzzled me – why there is this journalistic obsession with cybernats and so on. But if they see online commentary as a serious threat then you can understand why they get super sensitive about it. If I was in their shoes I guess I would too. And since most of the widely read bloggers are pro-independence – or at least not anti-independence – I wonder if that is also a factor in making some journalists anti-SNP.
They certainly seem to hold the SNP accountable for every single person who supports independence even though a lot of pro-independence voices aren’t actually SNP at all. It’s like a mirror image of people who believe there is a conspiracy in the media to do down the SNP. There are definitely journos out there who think there is an SNP organised conspiracy to do down the media! Quite funny when you think about it.
All in all, it would be nice if everyone just settled down and discussed this like grownups but I’m not holding my breath.
#6 by Caron on January 27, 2013 - 9:01 pm
“It respects the Scottish Government”. Eep! The last thing the media should be doing is respecting the powerful! Good journalism should seek to inform, inspire the reader t find out more & be part of the mechanism of holding the powerful to account. The moment they get too respectful, they risk getting deferential and that is a bad thing.
#7 by Rory on January 28, 2013 - 5:23 am
Great piece as always Jeff – I do think the Sunday Herald has been far better than the Scotsman in its coverage of the referendum, and has displayed a great deal more imagination about the possibilities on offer than its rival. I think a lot of the failings of the Scotsman can be boiled down to its fundamental conservatism – it has an evidently conservative ideology that refuses to give arguments about equality, social justice, democracy etc an equal platform with those about business, defence, tax and so on, and that negatively affects the Yes campaign (who focus on the former) far more than Better Together (who focus on the latter). Of course, this is turn reflects the conservatism of many of the Scotsman’s readers, and you can hardly blame the media for its enslavement to market forces…
I guess while I’m here I should also point out that The Newsroom is misogynistic, condescending, floppy liberal nonsense that is also unfortunately very watchable.
#8 by BaffieBox on January 28, 2013 - 11:03 am
It’s very difficult to shine a light on the Scottish media – one look at Alan Cochrane’s piece today and a conveyor belt of Better Together personalities on Twitter such as George Foulkes and Jim Murphy, demonstrates how asking reasonable questions will be turned on the Yes Campaign with interest. It seems acceptable to scrutinize the political sphere, however grubby that is, but it is unacceptable to question the motives of the MSM.
I stopped buying newspapers over 5 years ago when it was very clear just how politicised they are. This made me question other aspects of journalism – if they could be so brazen in certain aspects of their work, how am I trust anything they print? So far from reading only the political coverage with distrust, I’d increasingly read day to day news, sport, world affairs with a certain mistrust and awareness that I might not be reading the full picture. And slowly, I become more cynical and turned to the internet for aggregated feed of the news. Sourcing information from a wide range of papers, blogs, forums, etc was more time consuming but it only highlighted earlier suspicions that newspapers couldn’t be trusted. A wide range of sources though helped iron out the fluctuations of any single source. I’ve rarely bought a paper since.
Newspapers are nothing more than a glorified collection of opinion pieces. The articles are normally so skewed you can almost guess the writer without a byline, or there is so little fresh content, it’s a regurgitation of old news hacked together from last week’s editions. Another error is the need to ensure every article stands alone – that the reader needs the context and history explained each and every time, old quotes and all. The BBC news website is the worst for this – if you stripped old material out, you would be lucky if there was 3 paragraphs of new content.
The biggest problem for me though is Scottish journalists having no problem betraying their bias on social media. I accept the usual disclaimer that these forums are personal opinions and “not that of their employer” but the open bias, mocking and outright hostility shown to Scottish independence is astonishing. I do not object to them having an opinion, but is there any other industry that would happily air their grievances in public in this way that fundamentally undermines public trust in their business. When I read dozens of journalists on Twitter openly sneering and mocking the SNP or Yes Scotland, am I really supposed to read their work and believe they are impartial? Not a chance. They’d be as well as claiming every article as an opinion and be done with it. It’s too little too however.
Newspapers won’t be saved. It’s a terminal decline. Anyone thinking a pro-independence editorial line will save a paper is kidding themselves – it’ll be a false dawn. Political coverage is only a small part of MSM, but it has gone a long way to being the biggest problem in decaying trust of what they do. I have little sympathy for them.
#9 by Grahamski on January 28, 2013 - 11:55 am
Jeff
The Irish minister said: “If Scotland were to become independent, Scotland would have to apply for membership and that can be a lengthy process..”
What context can that be put in which changes the meaning of the sentence?
Furthermore, the e-mail which purports to come from the Irish minister to Ms Sturgeon was obviously written by somebody attached to the SNP.
And of course as Matt Qvortrup will testify the SNP administration has form for bullying people into signing letters that have been written by SNP spin doctors.
The e-mail is particularly clumsy in the paragraph that begins “As SNP Westminster Leader, Angus Robertson said…” Really? Why would Ireland’s EU Minister refer to something said by the “SNP Westminster Leader” – without being prompted to do so by someone from the SNP?
The really worrying thing here is the SNP’s continued reliance on the Groucho defence: Who do you believe, me or your own eyes?
The fact of the matter is that when somebody appears on telly saying things like ‘We have, yes’ or ‘Scotland would have to apply for membership’ it is an insult to our collective intelligence to suggest that we didn’t hear what we undoubtedly did.
#10 by Andrew Smith on January 28, 2013 - 11:59 am
Some good examples of sloppy journalism.
I don’t have such an issue as others with Scotland’s two ‘quality’ papers. I think both provide a good variety of analysts and pundits. Remember that depsite it’s unionist editorial the Scotsman/ SoS also carries regular articles by Gerry Hassan, Joyce McMillan, George Kerevan, Euan Crawford, Andrew Wilson and others. The piece by Sturgeon was obviously very pro-indi and ditto the Stephen Noon one a few weeks back. That isn’t to say that the reporting is always impartial, but I think the twist on Sturgeon’s words was as much about trying to increase sales as it was anything else (and anyone who read the piece would pick-up on this straight away).
Similar comments could also be made about the Herald.
The point I would make is that some journalism is sloppy and some takes comments out of context, there probably is a political element, but it doesn’t just impact on the pro-indi side. What about Lamont’s ‘something for nothing’ speech? The fact is that she didn’t actually accuse Scotland of being a ‘something for nothing’ country, at least not in the sense the media interpreted it.
The standard of journalism needs to be better, but I don’t view their decisions as all being about pushing an anti-nationalist agenda. Some writers (Kenn F at the SoS for example) will have an anti nationalist bias, but I think the extent to which this is reflected in the publications and their overall coverage of the debate is often overstated.
#11 by Chris on January 28, 2013 - 5:15 pm
It hurts when the media edge to get a story and sell papers affects your own side. It’s quite nice being in opposition thinking that the media like you and then when it all changes you realise they don’t.
Think back to Tony Blair and the Parish Council. This distortion was created by the media and has been ran and ran again by the SNP even though they know it is the opposite of what he said.
So it might be a dark day for you when you realise that the media distort facts to make a story. But the dark day didn’t happen the day that it upset you, it happened all those times in the past when the same distortions happened to people you didn’t agree with.
#12 by Derek Watson on January 30, 2013 - 10:20 am
Jeff
Your former accounting colleague and right-back defensive partner here. I stumbled upon this site and really like it, congratulations, and I’m looking forward to making regular visits in the future.
Your post rightly criticises media standards but I’m not sure about the extent to which that is down to partisan journalists and conspiracies.
I think there are some other important factors which contribute to, or a least exacerbate, this not very new phenomenon (if that’s that the right word).
The quality of News will mirror the quality of political debate in general i.e. not enough substance, too focused on the sound-bite de jour, too shallow and infantile out of fear of, heaven forbid, anyone saying anything that could potentially be construed as offensive to either professional minority lobby groups or the masses of unthinking knee-jerk reactionaries out there. This may be a by-product of not being completely responsible for ourselves, and I would hope in an independent Scotland the quality of political debate would increase significantly. It would no longer be affordable or practical to continue as a left-wing talking shop when there is a new country to run.
You have also got to consider that there is a high level of cynicism to just about anything the SNP say – to such an extent that it is impossible for the media to ignore it. I think this is a problem of the SNP’s own making as they have not been able to adapt their tactics from being a historically minor opposition party to a party of responsible government. There is too much undignified bullyboy shouting and too many abrasive unsubstantiated or straw man arguments presented as fact. Why is it that whenever I hear their favourite term ‘the overwhelming majority of Scots’ this majority never includes me or any of my associates? Could it be because it isn’t true and they are exaggerating just a teeny bit?
I’ll be clear, I dislike the SNP and I always have, but I do support independence because the need for fundamental change is glaringly obvious. I am frustrated that the SNP, although being responsible for getting the referendum on the table, have at the same time failed to present a convincing case through intelligent debate and intelligent compromise in the interests of the people not just their party.
You say the Scottish Government, which ever party forms it, should be respected. I agree, when a new government is formed, however continued respect has to be earned and unfortunately the SNP have blown it in terms respect for the government and the case for independence.