Wings Over Scotland

Every single line a classic.

Sometimes there isn’t much happening in the world of politics, but it’d be a bit of a stretch to describe this week as one of those times. So we’re not sure in what context this article on the BBC website today counts as “news”.

Read the rest of this entry →

Curiously, the only place in the media we’ve been able to find even slightly detailed coverage of Gordon Brown’s speech on independence to a group of Labour MPs, MSPs and party apparatchiks in Govan this week was in Newsnet Scotland.

The press, which gave extensive coverage to the former Prime Minister’s last intervention in the debate, has barely mentioned the latest one, made again in the name of the figleaf “United With Labour” brand created to convince the party’s more gullible grassroots supporters that it’s not walking hand-in-hand with the Tories.

That may, of course, be because the media, while more or less obliged to cover UWL’s launch, is generally rather uncomfortable about it and doesn’t want to shine too much light on the group. But it may also be because Brown’s speech was such arrant, obvious nonsense that even Scotsman readers would be insulted by it.

Read the rest of this entry →

And just to finish off our in-depth study into respective coverage of the recent YouGov and Panelbase polls in the Scottish media, here’s the Scottish Daily Express.

Reporting of the YouGov poll (giving the No camp a 30% lead) is at the top, and the Express’ coverage of the Panelbase poll (putting Yes narrowly in front) is below.

Read the rest of this entry →

Alert readers will, we trust, remember how yesterday we highlighted the somewhat differing approaches that the Herald and Scotsman both took to reporting the two drastically-opposed independence polls of the last 48 hours.

Here’s the Daily Record’s version.

Read the rest of this entry →

There’s something subtly different about the wording of these two Scotsman headlines.

Well, not very subtle. Can you spot it, readers? Tell us your answers in the comments.

Read the rest of this entry →

Now, this is interesting. Alert readers will have noticed (by which we mean “be sick of us banging on about”) the fact that we recently conducted a poll which suggested the Yes and No votes were a lot closer than the media portrayal, and the media blanked it with a bunch of feeble excuses including “you had a satirical option in one of your questions”, “you used leading wording” and “we were all on holiday that week”.

We’re not making that last one up.

The media coverage we got for our troubles was a nasty smear campaign (warning: image Not Safe For Anyone). On the other hand, despite being at the beach and the zoo and goodness knows where else, the Scottish press managed to splash another poll a couple of weeks later, showing a massive lead for No, all over the front pages.

The fishy smell, though, was about to get a lot stronger.

Read the rest of this entry →

Saturday is notionally our comedy day, but it’s nice to see the Scotsman joining in with the fun this week. We’re rapidly coming to the conclusion that the failing paper is now being operated as some sort of elaborate ironic prank, and the lead home-news story this morning does nothing to dispel that theory.

Read the rest of this entry →

Having spent the best part of two years shining an unforgivingly critical spotlight on the Scottish and UK media, we can have no complaints when we come under the same sort of scrutiny. So we didn’t mind a bit when the right-wing Spectator columnist (is there any other kind?) Alex Massie had something of a swing at us yesterday in a no-punches-pulled column entitled “The Closing of the Nationalist Mind”.

The theme of the piece was the beastly manner in which awful cybernats, typified by ourselves, refuse to even countenance the other side of the argument. Ooft!

Read the rest of this entry →

Alert readers will be aware of the occasional service provided by this site whereby we help out time-pressed citizens by letting them know when they can safely stop reading an article in the Scottish media. This morning we noticed a tweet from Unionist/Tory commentator Alex Massie, drawing attention to a Scotsman piece he described as “a v important column on banks. Not ‘Scaremongering'”.

Despite the obvious we respect Massie’s views on a lot of subjects, so we had a look.

Read the rest of this entry →

This was waiting when we got back to Wings HQ this evening:

“Dear Sir,

Thank you for taking the time to write.

I agree the leader column should have said Labour introduced the policy and we are printing a clarification. However, we are making no apologies for highlighting the ConDem witch-hunt against people like Anthony Walker.

Kindest regards

Allan Rennie
Editor in Chief

Media Scotland
Daily Record and Sunday Mail
Scottish & Universal Newspapers”

Fair enough. Can’t ask for more than that, and we’ve got no desire to see the Record apologise for continuing to highlight the appalling reality that is WCAs. It’s the paper’s finest quality. Nice to see part of the Scottish media holding up its hands and righting a wrong, too, rather than responding with censorship and tantrums. Naming no names.

…about the sales figures of “regional” Scottish newspapers, released today:

Numbers (for Jan-June 2013, compared to the same period in 2012) are below.

Read the rest of this entry →