The entire Scottish media and professional-politician community is currently in a self-righteous froth about a campaign ad being run by Reform for the Hamilton by-election targeting Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Obviously none of the acres of press coverage trusts voters to see the ad and decide for themselves, because that simply isn’t how journalism works nowadays. You’re told that a bad thing happened – whether it be a campaign ad, a comedian’s joke or the supposed terrible abuse sent to a celebrity – and how outraged various pundits or other celebrities are about it, with the clear implication that you should feel the same, but you almost never get shown or told what was actually said.
So to start with, as a basic journalistic principle, here’s the ad itself in its entirety.
Now let’s look at what you’re being ordered to think about it.
Because even although it’s part of a transparent attempt from the Record to deflect attention from the many shocking revelations of the last few days around the Salmond affair, it’s still unusual that a newspaper would make a front-page lead out of a claim it knows it can’t provide a single scrap of evidence for.
The Scottish Parliament’s inquiry into the disastrously botched investigation of false allegations against Alex Salmond, which has been paused for several weeks due to the Scottish Government’s repeated refusal to provide it with material it’s requested, resumes today and enters its final and critical phase.
In the next two months all the key players in the shambolic affair, including the current First Minister, her predecessor and both of their chiefs of staff, will give evidence. But today perhaps the most central figure of all will appear. Or rather, she won’t.
The apparent reason for this, according to a recent report in the Times, is Mackinnon’s being “targeted on social media”. No further details of this “targeting” are given.
And there’s one rather big problem with that claim.
The mainstream media is now, by our count, up to at least 13 sizeable articles on the Great Yes-Movement Schism Of 2017 – a minor online spat between a tiny handful of people who’ve never liked each other and most of whom the general public has never heard of – and shows no signs of tiring of gleefully revelling in the subject.
There’s nothing particularly surprising or even diabolical about that. As any reality-TV show viewer will tell you, viewers absolutely love to watch people fighting, and doubly so if it’s the summer silly season and there’s no real news. Most of the stories have attracted large responses and therefore lots of juicy and profitable clicks for tired hacks who long ago stopped having anything of any interest to say but still have to honk out 1000 words a week in order to get paid.
But the more sinister aspect of them is the way they’ve been weaponised to (further) demonise and silence the Yes movement. If someone attacks other Yes figures with a provocative, offensive and dishonest piece, the extra bonus for the media is that any legitimately angry response to it can be used as yet more proof of The Vileness Of The Cybernats: “Look! They even turn on their own if they dare disagree!”
For the Unionist press, that’s a win-win every way up, and there are some on the Yes side who seem only too willing to co-operate with the narrative.
“Colonel” Ruth Davidson took time out from her holidays yesterday to unleash an extraordinary (and unusually defensive) 35-part Twitter tirade about the reaction to her appointment as an honorary military commander. So barren is the summer political news desert that two newspapers put it on their front page today, giving the BBC an excuse to deem it the day’s biggest story.
Alert readers will of course be aware that one of this site’s most frequently-recurring themes is “phantom news”, whereby events or unpleasant opinions that newspapers or broadcasters really want to have happened are conveniently brought to life, either by some random nobody on the internet, or an unnamed “source” or “insider”.
So when Nicola Sturgeon did something today that nearly everyone in the Northern Hemisphere knew she was going to do sometime soon, but wasn’t expecting just yet, there wasn’t time to prepare actual real people with the required quotes.
In the modern media world, though, that isn’t a problem.
Alert readers will of course be aware that a recurring theme on this site is looking for the alleged abusive behaviour by supporters of independence which gets regularly reported in outraged terms by newspapers but is mysteriously almost never supported by any actual evidence of the supposed abuse.
In every case the papers and/or alleged recipients of all these dreadful separatist haranguings screamed “VILE ABUSE!”, swooning at the horror of it all, then suddenly turned deaf and dumb when asked to provide any examples.
So we were quite surprised yesterday when a previous complainant – brutal stickering victim and lonely Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray – actually came up with the proof.
For several years now this site has been drawing attention to the weird phenomenon of phantom news – stories presented by the media without even a shred of supporting evidence yet treated as unquestionable empirical fact. And recently there have been more phantoms around the Scottish press than an episode of Scooby Doo.
The thing Alan Roden – who prefers intimidating ordinary members of the public by doorstepping them and vilifying them in his paper – links to in that tweet is an article on the Herald website last night. And it’s a weird article, because it’s an extensive, quote-laden story about something that doesn’t appear to have happened at all.
Have you ever wondered how you try to poison and shut down a debate and a political environment that you fear you’ve found yourself on the losing side of, readers? Well, it’s funny you should ask, because as it happens we’ve got a visiting professor – an expert authority on the subject – with us today to give us a demonstration.
Make sure you’ve got your pens and notepads ready. He’s got a very busy schedule and we can’t afford to have him here for long.
We spent much of yesterday evening trying to actually track down the “vicious barrage” of vile cybernat abuse that Labour and “Better Together” activist Clare Lally says she was subjected to after being revealed to be rather less of an “ordinary” member of the public than the No camp presented her as at its recent Glasgow rally, and which has received wall-to-wall media coverage.
As yet, we’ve drawn a blank. We’ve made repeated requests, some to people who’ve contacted us angrily claiming to be her friends or family members, for evidence of any abusive comments at all. All have been met with an abrupt outbreak of silence.
Dan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Ach, as an occasional engine builder, I thought bigender described an entity that identified as being / or was attracted…” Jul 22, 17:53
DaveL on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “That’s a question for Greens MSP Patrick Harvie. He’s the proud recipient of an award from the deceased chief cheese…” Jul 22, 17:51
Fergus on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: ““… straight (attracted to the same gender)” I suspect “same” was meant to say “opposite”. [but they can’t say that…” Jul 22, 17:38
Neil Mackenzie on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Ah… Nope. If you’ve used ‘male’ or ‘female’ to mean someone’s gender, you’ve made a mistake and used the wrong…” Jul 22, 17:26
Rogueslr on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “We knew at 13 weeks that we were expecting a daughter, that’s approximately 24 weeks before birth. So AFAB is…” Jul 22, 17:20
James Barr Gardner on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “I wonder if NHS view Paedophilia as normal and reducing the age of consent down to 10 years is normal…” Jul 22, 17:16
KOF on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “” … an illustration of how far Scotland has sunk since Alex Salmond stood down.” Alex Salmond voted for the…” Jul 22, 17:04
agent x on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Meanwhile the warped and twisted evidence continues today with Kate Searle!” Jul 22, 17:03
Mark Beggan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “I would like to dedicate this song to Mr. Upton: “Boys Keep Swinging” Heaven loves ya The clouds part for…” Jul 22, 16:48
Mark Beggan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Holyrood is the only sinking ship where the rats have decided to stay.” Jul 22, 16:15
I. Despair on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Anent the uselessness and idiocy of NHS Fife management – I don’t know if her post technically counts as management…” Jul 22, 16:13
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Xaracen – thrown out is a figure of speech, it’s not been printed out and physically thrown out of the…” Jul 22, 16:12
Stuart on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Meanwhile in other news, (and pay attention to the last paragraph from the article re devolution) Farage has spoken, this…” Jul 22, 15:39
agent x on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Does NHS Fife not welcome Heterosexual? No mention of the majority of people.” Jul 22, 15:07
Xaracen on The Pillars Of Sanity: “But, Aidan, that is not at all the same thing as saying that Scotland’s petition was ‘thrown out’! You made…” Jul 22, 15:05
James Cheyne on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “For those still hanging on to the treaty of union, It must be correctly mentioned that there are only two…” Jul 22, 15:01
Andy Wiltshire on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “BBC News / Scotland / Edinburgh Fife and East. Nothing on the Fife NHS and Sandie Peggie case yet today.…” Jul 22, 14:34
crazycat on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Oh dear: a) NHS Fife re Intersex “…sexual organs. This can mean internal organs – such as chromosomes or ovaries…”…” Jul 22, 14:33
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Some may find of relevance this comment from a previous thread: DOOYEWEERD: NORMS AND NORMATIVITY https://wingsoverscotland.com/just-good-friends/#comment-3012464” Jul 22, 14:23
willie on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “To use the vernacular this article sets out the utter bollocks waste of time and resources that organisations like NHS…” Jul 22, 14:16
Aidan on The Pillars Of Sanity: “Because JPTI posted on their website that the case of Scotland couldn’t be discussed at the C-24 conference in June,…” Jul 22, 13:51
Mark Beggan on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “They may have a million or more genders on their charts but there is only a handful of nutters who…” Jul 22, 13:46
Jim Anderson on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “The definitions in the lesbian and gay boxes refer to girl and boy which is surely illegal given the age…” Jul 22, 13:45
David on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “Sandie Peggie’s going to win. NHS Fife is dismantling themselves. Right in time for the release of the Corton Vale…” Jul 22, 13:22
David on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: “NHS Fife has suggested Sandie Peggie is racist. So I’m going to call out the racist hiring policy of DEI…” Jul 22, 13:14
Xaracen on The Pillars Of Sanity: “@Aidan; I don’t know if you get this, but if they’ve made no announcements about it, how did you know…” Jul 22, 13:08
David Beveridge on Everybody’s Normal Nowadays: ““It is best to ask what term a person uses.” FFS! Aye, you can just imagine… “Can I introduce you…” Jul 22, 12:47