Wings Over Scotland

Last night’s juxtaposition of somewhat contradictory front covers on the Herald and Scottish Daily Mail was modestly amusing, but nothing new. We pointed out weeks ago that papers on both the left and the right were – often on the same days – painting the SNP as hand-in-glove allies of either Labour or the Tories according to whatever suited their own agendas, and nothing’s changed in that respect.

But it’s interesting to take a look behind the headlines of the respective stories and see the degree to which the truth can be bent, exaggerated or in some cases simply made up from thin air.

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How long do you think the papers can keep pretending that all the other papers don’t exist, or that we don’t see any of them, folks?

The Daily Record gets up high on its outrage horse this morning with a front-page story titled “Double-crossed on devo”, echoing Jim Murphy’s claim of yesterday that the Tories’ manifesto pledge on “English votes for English laws” is a “betrayal” of the “Vow” signed by the three UK party leaders before the independence referendum.

Unsurprisingly, the Record gives rather less prominence to the news that the Vow isn’t worth the fake parchment it wasn’t written on than it did to repeatedly hyping it up and then proclaiming that it had already been delivered.

But there’s a twist.

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There’s very little actual political news today, so the papers have largely been forced to either basically not have any at all (the Sunday Post and Scottish Sun On Sunday) or make up totally mad stuff for laughs to fill the space.

We’ve picked out some highlights for you below.

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We already KNOW the solution to the problem of panellists shouting all over each other. It’s used every day in the Scottish Parliament: the chair is in charge of all the microphones and only the person whose turn it is to speak gets theirs switched on.

If someone else raises a good point while someone is speaking, the chair can hear it and bring them in in a controlled manner if appropriate, rather than the self-defeating, time-wasting exercise in irony that is shouting at everyone to stop shouting.

The fact that the system is never used therefore leads us to only one possible logical conclusion – the broadcasters WANT chaotic rammies where nobody gets to make their points properly. As for why, you’d have to ask them.

NOTE: This article was published earlier today on the CommonSpace website. Since that time, according to its webhosts, the site has come “under attack” and can no longer be accessed. We reproduce the article here at CommonSpace’s request.

A Yes campaigner reported as “defecting” to the Labour party by the Daily Record in a much-hyped front page splash has said he in fact remains a member of the SNP, a supporter of independence and favourable to a Labour-SNP deal at Westminster.

On Tuesday, the Daily Record ran a front-page story (click here to read) claiming that Nicola Sturgeon had suffered a “major setback” after activist Muhammad Shoaib was said to have joined the Labour party.

Hyping the story up, the tabloid title branded Shoaib an “SNP boss”, although it is unclear why. Shoaib is a former Labour councillor and organiser of Scots Asians for Independence. He joined the SNP in 2007.

However, Shoaib has told CommonSpace that while he does want to see a Labour government ahead of the Tories – he would like to see Labour and the SNP work together in a “loose” arrangement following May’s vote. “Basically, I’ve not joined Labour and I’m still officially a member of the SNP,” said Shoaib.

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Alert readers will probably recall that a couple of days ago we explained this site’s most fundamental purpose as being to teach people “how to read between the lines [and] and spot what isn’t being said” in newspapers, so we’re grateful to today’s Daily Record for providing us with a timely example of the second phenomenon.

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In the last 24 hours the Scottish and UK media has circled the wagons around the BBC’s James Cook, a good and balanced reporter who perhaps didn’t have his best day on Saturday. Predictable condemnation has poured in on “cybernats” alleged to have rained “vicious abuse” on the journalist in a co-ordinated fascist bullying attack etc etc, though as ever, actual quoted examples are in short supply.

(We’re aware of exactly two abusive tweets – one nutter identified by the Huffington Post calling the entire BBC “the scum of the Earth”), and one we ourselves saw and chided, which was then deleted by the normally-sensible user and which we honestly don’t remember the content of, beyond that it was unpleasant and excessive. It should go without saying that we deplore and condemn such abuse, while defending the right to civil, legitimate criticism of a public servant where justified.)

There’s nothing in the papers on this, though.

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As alert readers will already know, this site’s core long-term aim is to eventually render itself redundant, by showing people how to read between the lines, spot what isn’t being said and understand the various tricks that newspapers use in order to get the public to believe things that aren’t true without ever doing anything so crass (and more to the point, legally-actionable) as directly lying.

Today’s papers provide an especially clear-cut example.

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Barely 18 months after this, here’s East Lothian Labour councillor Norman Hampshire (centre) and pals campaigning today with the aid of their new best friend.

As the story collapses and investigations begin into a cut-and-dried case of unlawful civil service interference in politics (and possibly worse), may they reap what they sow. If the current polls come true, never will a party’s fall have been more abject or more complete, nor its fate more richly deserved.

This is quite something. It took 15 hours into “MemoGate” before anyone got a Scottish Government representative on air – even though they’d found time to get quotes from Willie Rennie, who isn’t the leader of a Westminster party and whose party isn’t even involved in the story. When they did, here’s what happened.

Readers can form their own opinions about the interview. But at the very end of the piece the BBC’s James Cook says “this memo does exist”. It may do, but we’re not sure what his current grounds for that statement are.

To the best of our knowledge nobody is claiming to have seen it personally except the Telegraph. The Foreign Office have denied all knowledge of any memo, the Scotland Office apparently refuses to comment, and we have no idea who allegedly wrote it.

Cook has already made, then rowed back on, some rather questionable statements in the last 24 hours. Viewers may feel it might be better if he just stuck to the facts.

We’re going to let this speak for itself.

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