You very rarely get useful stats about online newspaper readership, so we were quite intrigued by this snippet on tonight’s BBC2 Scotland documentary “Paper Thistle”, about the 200th anniversary of The Scotsman.
We don’t know what the numbers are or how brief the period was, but Wings’ average traffic is higher now than it was in 2014, while we suspect The Scotsman is moving in the opposite direction. For a single-issue website to be anywhere even in the same ballpark as a two-centuries-old broadsheet news brand with scores of full-time writers and production staff and a daily newsstand presence is a remarkable thing indeed.
We might start doing classifieds and sport just to see what happens.
It’s a well-known fact, of course, that 87% of all statistics are made up. But as this site regularly observes, if you’re the Scottish opposition and media there’s no need to invent fake ones when you can twist the real ones to present an image completely at odds with the reality.
The Sunday Times today has some fine examples of the craft of massaging figures for the purposes of deception. It carries two separate scare stories on the NHS, both of them using figures which aren’t based on any sort of news, but on opposition spin on existing stats. One comes from the Tories, under a dramatic headline:
The banner is pulling a classic trick – the £685m figure is actually the total sum spent in a decade, not the single year that most people would assume (since there’s no good reason to measure spending in decades, so headlines usually don’t do it). But remarkably it’s just about the most honest thing in the paper’s health coverage today.
While normally the Unionist media deploys the ever-reliable blunt sledgehammer in its tireless war against Scotland controlling its own affairs, it’s also occasionally capable of more subtlety, slipping in a sneaky stiletto of a lie in passing. Take this piece from today’s Mail On Sunday:
The thing is, that’s not how currency reserves work.
As we’ve always understood it, readers, the definition of “news” is supposed to be “a new thing which has happened that people didn’t previously know about”.
Evidently the rules have changed since we were young cub reporters.
We weren’t going to dignify the utterly absurd media stushie over a tweet by Glasgow MSP John Mason yesterday with any coverage because it was too cretinous to even bear thinking about, but this from today’s Daily Record was just too good.
It might only be the 2nd of January, but it’s already pretty clear what we should expect from Scottish politics and the Scottish media in 2017.
Yesterday saw an absurdly petty response from Scottish Labour to the SNP’s “baby box” initiative, sourly carping at a dirt-cheap measure with a proven record of reducing infant mortality and providing vital help to the poor.
Today’s Herald, meanwhile, leads on a meaningless story about people being opposed to having a second independence referendum in 2017 – something nobody has proposed and which has no prospect of happening barring wildly unforseeable events.
The National has an interesting-sounding front page lead story today.
Donalda MacKinnon’s immediate predecessor Ken McQuarrie has been a hostile and toxic presence at the top of BBC Scotland for many years now, so we were naturally intrigued to hear if a change of heart at the Corporation was on the horizon.
While its pages are mostly filled with toadying drivel about the Royal Family, today’s Scottish Daily Mail does manage to squeeze in a bit of supposed politics news.
We say “supposed” because as alert readers may have already suspected, the story quickly disintegrates under inspection. The figure of 3000 police officers leaving the force since it became Police Scotland (buffed up with a hysterical editorial on page 14 talking about the “truly alarming scale of the mass exodus”) is presented without any context as to whether this is a higher number than one would normally expect.
And sure enough, a few paragraphs in we find out that the vast majority have quit after 20 to 30 years of service, which is entirely normal – the article notes that “most officers retire in their late forties or early fifties”.
The line that caught our eye, though, was this:
“Last night, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said: ‘Officers seem to be leaving Police Scotland in their droves.'”
Last night? You mean on Christmas Day Ruth Davidson had nothing better to do with her life than offer vacuous quotes to justify meaningless non-stories in the Daily Mail? For the love of God, someone get the poor woman a Netflix subscription.
This is a lie. There are in fact no “tax hikes” in the budget at all. The threshold for the higher rate of tax is increasing with inflation, ie in real terms it’s staying the same as it is now. Councils are being ALLOWED to raise Council Tax but not FORCED to.
But the Mail lying is a reflex action. What about the rest?
Figures released yesterday indicated that the number of full-time teachers employed in Scotland had risen by 253 over the past year, despite budget cuts imposed by the UK government’s austerity programme. This obviously presented the Scottish media with a dilemma: how could such statistics be presented as an “SNP BAD” story?
Luckily, we’re dealing with experienced professionals here.
We often say here on Wings that our job is to teach people to instantly recognise the sneaky tricks used by the media to try to create false impressions without saying things that are technically untrue. (Because despite the tiny size they’re allowed to print corrections at, they’re still rather embarrassing.)
A key technique is to look at a headline or story and immediately ask what you’re NOT being told. So here’s an easy example from today’s Scottish Daily Mail.
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “Interesting how quickly, all things considered, that things have moved on since Auld Lizzie the lizard shuffled off this mortal…” Feb 20, 22:53
chic kirk on When the law breaks the law: “i donated but will do so again as needed, we the public must step forwrd to support people like mark…” Feb 20, 22:23
David Holden on When the law breaks the law: “Perhaps we should be running a crowd funder for the world’s greatest living half Greek former prince who has fallen…” Feb 20, 16:07
sarah on When the law breaks the law: “@ Mark Hirst: I donated when you first opened the crowdfunder and will do so again. I note that the…” Feb 20, 15:55
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Well, well! Grudging respect to Professor Baird. Precisely as predicted by Fanon, Memmi, et al, the linguistically colonised YL has…” Feb 20, 15:08
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Hasn’t the world’s greatest living half Scot, President Donald Trump, defunded that useless, toothless talking shop and safe haven for…” Feb 20, 14:38
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “HMcH Eh? Sorry, no idea what you’re talking about. Have you been indulging in self-trepanation again..” Feb 20, 14:35
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: ““The Act of Union at least protected the Scots legal system” ? ————- Worth listening again to the seminal speech…” Feb 20, 14:22
dearieme on When the law breaks the law: “All this is a powerful argument against devolved Scottish government. Scrap the bloody thing, it’s failed. The Act of Union…” Feb 20, 13:27
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Great stuff, Northy. I’d heard of galactic clusters. Now you’re teaching me about galactic clusterfucks.” Feb 20, 12:07
Northcode on When the law breaks the law: “Chris Wormald… former Cabinet Secretary for Great Britain, UK, and England recently replaced by: Dame Antonia Rebecca Caroline Angharad Catherine…” Feb 20, 11:39
McDuff on When the law breaks the law: “Donated. Best of luck Mark as you have been severely wronged and the thugs that targeted you need to be…” Feb 20, 11:20
Northcode on The Future Is Yesterday: “The past is tomorrow… not least because us humans insist on repeating history, and with not a single lesson ever…” Feb 20, 11:17
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “Aye, Alf, I guess if the only tool in your armoury is a spoon, every situation must look like a…” Feb 20, 10:48
Alf Baird on When the law breaks the law: ““The case we’re discussing here is entirely home grown” Don’t be silly. Despite the inevitable ‘on-the-ground indigenous agents'(Elkins) operating in…” Feb 20, 10:37
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “There’s something about Fanon makes my hair curl.” Feb 20, 10:28
willie on The Future Is Yesterday: “Rejected by the electorate in the constituency but then perchance a seat at the top of the regional list. Why…” Feb 20, 10:23
Andy Wiltshire on When the law breaks the law: “I’m cheering them on, but no doubt someone will explain that it’s all just something straight out of post-colonial theory…” Feb 20, 10:05
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: ““Movie”, YL? You’re colonised and you don’t even know it.” Feb 20, 08:46
Young Lochinvar on When the law breaks the law: “Anyone else reckon Bain’s heid has a similar(ish) profile to a movie Predator? Just without the odd breathy way of…” Feb 19, 22:36
robertkknight on When the law breaks the law: “Pay day next week…standby! The alphabets and their party connections are no secret. Nor indeed their motivations. They still enjoy…” Feb 19, 22:01
agentx on When the law breaks the law: “O/T – but the Mens’s curling team are through to the final – guaranteed at least a silver medal and…” Feb 19, 22:01
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “You were on fire, Willie, until your second last para. Then you crashed and burned. The case we’re discussing here…” Feb 19, 18:40
Hatey McHateface on When the law breaks the law: “We’re only a few weeks out from choosing Scotland’s government for the next 5 years. Surely it’s not too much…” Feb 19, 18:31
Willie on When the law breaks the law: “As is now clear to see the rule of law is a hoodlum’s charter. When the state can maliciously try…” Feb 19, 18:18
Effijy on When the law breaks the law: “I’ve donated as we must when faced yet again by corrupt and immoral practices from government. Your courage is remarkable…” Feb 19, 18:12
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on When the law breaks the law: “Not sure whether or not a video link to Fergus Ewing’s Holyrood intervention is embedded in the above article, but…” Feb 19, 17:51
