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.
Alert readers will remember that last month we debunked a front-page story from the Scottish Daily Mail about SNP MPs’ expenses, which made the spectacularly untrue claim that they were more expensive than their Unionist predecessors, when in fact they cost significantly less and did far more work.
A couple of days ago the Mail finally ran a “clarification”. And we thought you might like to know exactly how much more the Mail values lies than truth.
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We’ll be honest, there are some bits of this that make us wince, and unfortunately most of them come in the first two minutes where they’ll do the most damage in terms of getting a persuadeable voter to watch the rest of it. But it’s an important piece of work, containing stuff even we didn’t know about, and it should be seen.
I wasn’t going to mention this on the site because it’s basically a personal matter, but as most readers don’t use Twitter or Facebook it probably ought to be briefly filed for the record, given the amount of media coverage there’s been.
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.
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.
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.
There are three separate articles in today’s Sunday Times on the same subject, all containing the same information, of which the below is the most concise.
Geri on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Bilbo It was shown to be a nonsense by the tragic case of David Reimer decades ago. Accidentally castrated by…” Apr 23, 00:08
Captain Caveman on The Pit Of Vipers: “Ah, the cringeworthy late night meltdowns are in progress once again I see; another day, another dollar eh. Most amusing.…” Apr 22, 22:40
Bilbo on How To Get Away With Crimes: “With AI translation, people from non-English speaking countries can now access English western social media content and from the below…” Apr 22, 22:30
Bilbo on How To Get Away With Crimes: “There was a YouTube video that had come into my feed about Norah Vincent, a female journalist who had lived…” Apr 22, 22:22
Geri on The Pit Of Vipers: “You’ve proven no one wrong AI Dan. UK elections & referendums don’t have open franchises. They forbid it for the…” Apr 22, 22:02
Geri on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Jeez! All that harassment would’ve driven me round the bend! I guess that’s the intention tho. Sucked into their crazy…” Apr 22, 21:14
Confused on How To Get Away With Crimes: “you can’t do much with crazy; you need to give it a wide berth, which is hard on twitter, if…” Apr 22, 21:13
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “A lonely AI Dun holding the fort for the probity of all things concerning “THE UNION”.. 🙂” Apr 22, 21:08
Lorncal on How To Get Away With Crimes: “The chaos these barstewards have caused is beyond calculation. Two huge mistakes were made early on: 1) in thinking that…” Apr 22, 20:48
Effijy on How To Get Away With Crimes: “The Police have long become a complete and utter farce. In recent times they have been found to be institutionally…” Apr 22, 20:26
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “@James the reason why you aren’t able to defend any of the absurd statements you make is because you are…” Apr 22, 20:08
sarah on How To Get Away With Crimes: “When did the police cease to be competent? And is it only the police or is it every public authority?…” Apr 22, 20:06
SilentMajority on How To Get Away With Crimes: “…that is very grim reading…you have my utmost sympathy for having to put up with this abuse… Why on earth…” Apr 22, 19:58
robertkknight on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Don’t seriously mentally ill people get sectioned any more? Asking for a friend…” Apr 22, 19:15
David on How To Get Away With Crimes: “That is absolutely shocking. No wonder the public no longer have faith in the police.” Apr 22, 19:15
James on The Pit Of Vipers: “UN/New Caledonia independence referendum; Eligible voters; only those who were already residents of New Caledonia by 1998 and their descendants.…” Apr 22, 18:54
Dan on The Pit Of Vipers: “@ Colin Alexander The legal advice you site may have been technically correct when it said no to Scotland remaining…” Apr 22, 18:52
James on The Pit Of Vipers: “Surprise surprise, the unionist lickspittle Adrian says everything was hunky dory. But he/she/it also says Scotland in the ‘union’ is…” Apr 22, 18:48
Alison on How To Get Away With Crimes: “Watson is so dangerous. One of his daft followers will act in his name & someone he has singled out…” Apr 22, 18:34
TURABDIN on The Pit Of Vipers: “INDEPENDENCE? See you all in hell first. https://archive.is/6xCXm” Apr 22, 18:01
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Please tell us about this UN standard to which you refer about “media interference” being prohibited, by which you mean…” Apr 22, 18:00
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Yes but it’s nonsense isn’t it, the “report” is predicated on some pretty unlikely claims, like nearly 2% of those…” Apr 22, 17:44
James on The Pit Of Vipers: “The whole thing was rigged, even the dogs in the street know it. The result and process fell foul of…” Apr 22, 17:12
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Pit Of Vipers: “‘DUNOON UNIT REPORT: THE POSTAL BALLOT AT THE SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM’ (2015): “We are now convinced that the Postal Ballot…” Apr 22, 16:04
Aidan on The Pit Of Vipers: “Okay – but I think the crux of your post is that votes were counted that should not have been…” Apr 22, 15:26
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “Lorncal To make ordered reading of the thread I think your post should have been a reply to my 13.38…” Apr 22, 14:32
Lorncal on The Pit Of Vipers: “YL; personally, I think that the so-called feminization of society is a load off old b******s. It is the usual…” Apr 22, 14:10
Colin Alexander on The Pit Of Vipers: “how do you know those things? “second-home owners were getting votes” anecdotal evidence. “temporary residents, foreign students” franchise was officially…” Apr 22, 13:52
Young Lochinvar on The Pit Of Vipers: “Lorncal Disagree with you on this one. Ok, Just for a moment; imagine Sturgeon was an instigator or ringleader. What…” Apr 22, 13:38
