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.
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.
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.
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.
…we shall say zees only wance.
That clip (from just past midnight on the BBC News channel) isn’t a bad starting-point summary of last night’s extraordinary story, except by our count the Telegraph’s piece was fourth-hand rather than third-hand.
(First-hand would have been Nicola Sturgeon. Second-hand would have been the ambassador. Third-hand would have been the consul-general. The civil servant – who doubted the story him/herself – is fourth-hand.)
This is also a pretty good primer. Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
Sheesh. We pop out for a couple of hours to feed the Wings Emergency Kitten and we get back to find that it’s the UK press that’s barfed up hairballs all over its front pages.
And the contradictory cross-vortex coverlines aren’t even the mad bit.
We’re still not tired of these.
Although we can’t help thinking that maybe internal email is the more appropriate medium for resolving this particular workplace dispute.
Here’s Ed Miliband, giving a speech this morning to literally at least 20 Labour MPs, Labour MSPs, journalists and possibly a stray member of the public who accidentally walked through the wrong door in Clydebank, a place where Labour leaders used to address gatherings of thousands.
Unusually, Miliband took a few questions from the hacks, all of whom promptly wasted the opportunity by lobbing completely pointless softballs about coalitions and deals, all of which (a) have been asked a hundred times already, (b) were rendered moot by Alex Salmond on the Marr show yesterday, and (c) were only ever going to be batted away non-committally.
So here’s an actually worthwhile one they can ask instead next time.
The Daily Record, still smarting from the humiliation of being forced to very quietly admit it told its readers a £20 billion lie about the Smith Commission late last year, has been in a demented overdrive trying to provoke Yes/SNP supporters this week.
It started on Tuesday with an echo of the paper’s infamous “Vow” cover, clearly aimed at winding up its detractors but which passed without much comment as social media users merely raised a brief weary eyebrow and got on with their day. But then the Record started turning up the volume.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
