Newspaper misses accuracy targets 95
Posted on
August 07, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is the front-page lead on today’s Herald.
Let’s fact-check that, shall we?
Archive for the ‘media’
All the way down 201
Posted on
August 03, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Today’s edition of The Times contains a textbook example of a phenomenon that we highlight regularly: how newspapers gradually unpick their own dishonest headlines to grudgingly admit a truth which is often the polar opposite of the initial claim.
Or as we more punchily tend to put it, “The Headline Is Always A Lie”.
This won’t take long.
The bad losers 322
Posted on
August 02, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The BBC’s Reporting Scotland is, in our view, directly responsible for at least 80% of Yes supporters’ belief that the UK’s state broadcaster is biased against independence. Almost all of the worst examples of unbalanced or downright dishonest coverage over the last five years come from the flagship teatime bulletin.
But last night’s edition made even the most wearily cynical jaws drop.
Let’s just take that in for a moment.
Choco ration soars again 170
Posted on
August 01, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The Pollyanna Problem 69
Posted on
July 21, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Broadly speaking, the psychological phenomenon known as the Pollyanna Principle is a tendency to neurotically see the most positive possible view of a situation. It’s not generally widely found in newspapers – for whom bad news as a rule sells much better than good news – but for some reason the Scottish press makes a uniform exception when it comes to military shipbuilding.
This, for example, is today’s Herald:
Now, in itself that headline is – unusually – true, so far as it goes. But it only takes until the first sentence of the article text before things start to fall apart.
The second-class licence fee 301
Posted on
July 19, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Today the BBC finally officially revealed what everyone already knew.
So now Scottish viewers definitely know where we stand.
The Victim 452
Posted on
July 16, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Deep in the summer news desert, the papers today are struggling for material again. The Sunday Herald has a shock-horror front-page exposé about some photos from an Orange Lodge party that turn out to be from 2010 and 2013, while the Scottish Mail On Sunday reaches all the way back to 1940 to fill a couple of pages.
But the Sunday Mail’s timing is even weirder.
Good news is no news 97
Posted on
July 13, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
In a month of positive statistics for Scotland – including unexpectedly high economic growth figures, continuing to lead the UK and hitting its own tough targets for hospital waiting times (which drew an incredibly petty and insulting response from Scottish Labour), and huge progress in rail punctuality (now also the best anywhere in the country) – perhaps the most welcome of all was the release yesterday of the lowest unemployment figures for quarter of a century.
(Again the best in the UK, and in fact the best in Scotland of all time, since separate Scottish records only started to be kept in 1992.)
The Scotsman commendably gave the glad tidings top billing on its front page.
But despite it being slow news season, the rest of the media was a little less excited.
To last throughout the years 319
Posted on
July 12, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We’re not often genuinely shocked, readers.
But then we switched on BBC1 Northern Ireland today.
Lies spring eternal 502
Posted on
July 08, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
“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.
But that wasn’t the bit that caught our eye.
Fake news: a case study 112
Posted on
July 07, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The term “fake news” has become somewhat devalued from overuse recently, and often translates simply to “news I disagree with or don’t like”. But this, from today’s Scottish Daily Mail, is a bona fide sighting:
Let’s just break that down.
High on their own supply 241
Posted on
July 05, 2017 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Here’s the doom-and-gloom front-page headline of the Herald today:
It refers to a new report from the Nuffield Trust called “Learning From NHS Scotland”. Its 61 pages contain precisely one mention of independence. Let’s see what it said.
