As alert readers will know, one of the primary purposes of this website isn’t just to tell people when the Scottish and UK media is lying to them, but to teach readers how to spot that for themselves. And one of the keys to learning that is to ask yourself what a story in the press is leaving out as well as what it’s telling you.
So last week, when several newspapers went on an orgy of shock-horror reporting about SNP MPs’ expenses – focusing mostly on aeroplane flights and only quoting figures for a small handful of MPs who’d allegedly been claiming far more taxpayers’ money than their Unionist predecessors – alarm bells started ringing everywhere.
And just as we’ve taught them to, Wings readers leapt into action to do the hard work that Scotland’s professional journalists don’t want to do, in order to provide Scots with the facts that the media doesn’t want them to know.
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Tags: flat-out lies
Category
debunks, investigation, media, reference, scottish politics
This article by US writer Emily Robinson is probably more instructive than anything we could post today (the Sunday papers are a news desert again, frankly). It doesn’t take a very great feat of imagination to transpose the American terms to Scottish ones – for “Berniebros” read “cybernats”, etc. Phantom news, it seems, is universal.
Category
comment, media
Nobody could ever accuse the Scottish press of underpromoting its grievances – alert readers will still recall, for example, the long procession of articles with near-identical content in the Daily Mail last year about SNP MPs and their “second jobs”. For 2016, though, the media’s obsessive repeating of the exact same story every few weeks has manifested itself over Nat members’ expenses.
So let’s take a quick look.
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Category
comment, debunks, media, scottish politics
Can be half-full or half-empty. Neither of the stories below is untrue.
Readers can make their own judgements on the Scottish Daily Mail’s agenda.
Category
comment, media, scottish politics, stats
One of our favourite things to remember is what Scottish Labour regional manager Kezia Dugdale said when she was elected to the head-of-branch post 15 months ago:
We like to periodically check how that’s going.
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Category
comment, scottish politics
I haven’t worn a poppy in 20-odd years, for my own reasons.
But this chilling clip, from the 2005 BBC series “Auschwitz, The Nazis And The Final Solution”, is the most important thing about war that humanity should never forget.
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Category
comment, history, video, world
Even seasoned and cynical observers of the Scottish opposition and press such as ourselves, readers, have been rubbing our eyes in startled disbelief this week at the spectacular about-face performed by the aforementioned parties with regard to the Scottish Government’s £10bn Chinese investment “deal” that was never an actual deal, and which may or may not have collapsed.
But today’s Times just about boggled our minds completely.
Well, who could disagree with that? Who would suggest otherwise?
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Tags: hypocrisy
Category
comment, media, scottish politics, wtf
Because, astonishing as it might seem in the circumstances, Ruth Davidson actually genuinely tried to get away with this at First Minister’s Questions yesterday:
They really do think we won’t remember, readers.
(Source 1, Source 2)
Tags: hypocrisy
Category
comment, history, idiots, scottish politics
This week, in Snide Troll News, this happened:
We expect nothing but idiocy of Fraser. But Mr Torrance, who is a ubiquitous presence in the Scottish media, appears – by no means for the first time – not to have the facts at his fingertips. So let’s see if we can help him out.
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Category
analysis, debunks, idiots, scottish politics, world
Regular readers of this site will be impressed, if perhaps less than astonished, at the new high score achieved this week in the timeless game of McTernan Predicts:
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Tags: toldyouso
Category
analysis, europe, scottish politics, uk politics, world
It’s 4.36am. I’m going to go to bed in a minute. I’m hoping that I get up in a few hours and laugh at this, delighted at my own unfounded pessimism.
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Tags: toldyouso
Category
analysis, history, world
