Official: Scotsman now a joke paper
Sweet mercy. We’ve been pretty scathing about the Scottish media over the last few days, but we had no idea that our jibes about the Scotsman in particular now being a spoof site were so literally true.
The image above comes from the Scotsman’s editorial leader accompanying its ridiculous Nate Silver decoy story this morning. We’ve highlighted a line for you.
Silver’s “coin-flip” suggestion comes from a story on a website called The Porridge, which particularly alert readers might think doesn’t sound much like a proper news site. We tweeted the story early last night, along with the warning that it was a spoof. The Scotsman doesn’t seem to have read it quite so closely.
Of course, sometimes really well-written satire can be almost indistinguishable from reality, as a particular Alistair Darling parody account on Twitter is currently proving on a regular basis, with gleeful Unionists and angry cybernats alike retweeting and reacting to it as if its satirical pronouncements were real.
Because we’re moderately competent journalists, when we’re not 100% sure if a site is joking or not we like to check first, usually by having a look at its home page.
If you’re a bit short-sighted and can’t be bothered to click on that image to enlarge it, here are a few of The Porridge’s current lead stories:
“Scotland to put Saltire on the Moon by 2018”
“Salmond kidnaps newborn as part of SNP’s ‘keep the royals’ pledge”
“Pawnshop expands to selling whole chess set”
We can’t even bring ourselves to finish this post. It’d be like kicking a drunk cripple with his head stuck in a litter bin. Poor, poor old Scotsman. Scotland’s “quality” press.
I tried to post this on the Scotsman leader at 11:03 this morning (using the name “Joke Paper” funnily enough).
“He has evidently being doing that since April, when he declared in his New York Times blog that the outcome of Scotland’s referendum was a 50-50 coin flip and could not be called”
He didn’t. Google ‘Nate Silver: Scottish independence referendum outcome a “coin flip”’ and you’ll find that the Scotsman leader writer has been getting their information from “The Porridge” – a satirical news web site full of spoof articles.
“The Porridge – Scotland’s only news source”
“The Scotsman – written by gullible idiots”
It hasn’t got past moderation yet.
I will happily kick it as it lies twitching in its death throes.
Rag.
Hi Rev Stu
On that bit about Silver blogging since April in the New York Times, outcome…50/50 flip of coin etc’ I had a look last night at all of Nate Silvers blogs on the New York Times and couldn’t actually find anything remotely like it. Even querying search, only found an article in 2011
Mind you I was tired, it was late , I could have easily have missed it. Then again perhaps the Scotsman just made it up…………..
“On that bit about Silver blogging since April in the New York Times, outcome…50/50 flip of coin etc’ I had a look last night at all of Nate Silvers blogs on the New York Times and couldn’t actually find anything remotely like it. Even querying search, only found an article in 2011”
You didn’t actually read the post, then?
<speechless>
G. Campbell – see my comment. That confirms I wasn’t ‘tired’ and didn’t miss anything during my search through Silvers blogs on the New York Times
So the Scotsman made it up…
“Pawnshop expands to selling whole chess set”
Now that, is class. On a par with “What is it about hedgehogs? Why can’t they share the hedge?”
Time to add The Scotsman to the “Zany comedy relief” section, I think.
Can we have a spread on how long that bit of tittishness lasts? It’ll be a good indicator of how intensively they monitor WoS.
I’ll say 25 mins.
This is the kind of thing that happens when a paper spends more money on gobby columnists and less on trained journalists.
I’d bet an intern drafted this editorial leader, and didn’t even do this, a search for ‘scottish’ on Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog. The good news for us is that they are such a financial pickle there will be more of these basic errors in the year to come, and will probably always be the weakest link in the BT/Boothman propaganda chain.
It’s a Hoot richt enough:
link to cartoonsnap.com
Hilarious. The “Porridge” site does look so real especially if you are a researcher for the Scotsman gathering factual information.
Guys let us remember The Scotsman has a massive 30,000 approx readership and around 1/3 of that is freebies.
This Referendum as our poll showed will not be won by MSM or Broadcasters but by foot sodliers and the ground campaign
“Can we have a spread on how long that bit of tittishness lasts? It’ll be a good indicator of how intensively they monitor WoS.
I’ll say 25 mins.”
It’s still there at the moment…
Speaking of Nate Silver, did anyone hear about Nate’s earlier comments on #indyref? He used to think the outcome of the referendum was on a knife edge. 50-50 he said.
“Guys let us remember The Scotsman has a massive 30,000 approx readership and around 1/3 of that is freebies.”
And the more ridicule it’s subject to, the faster that’ll fall.
Alan Rodent and Euan McColm chat Panelbase poll:
link to twitter.com
Hi Stu, Do you mean this post?
Forgive me I’m just catching up, so be gentle
I had read the leader on the Scotsman last night, so then checked through the New York Times for the blogs of Nate Silver, couldn’t find the 50/50 remark. Wasn’t aware of the Porridge. So now thanks to your (very good, trying not to gush) work, finding all the bits in this jigsaw falling into place
I thought all Scotsmen knew that porridge had to be taken with a pinch of salt?
“I thought all Scotsmen knew that porridge had to be taken with a pinch of salt?”
Totally stealing that
Oh DANG.
ROFLMAO.
Ronnie says: I thought all Scotsmen knew that porridge had to be taken with a pinch of salt?
Yet more class!
Thank goodness toilet paper is now quite inexpensive when bought in bulk from supermarkets. This saves having to use the old WW2 and immediate post-war alternative of using torn up newspapers, like the Scotsman, for backside wiping. Mind you, the lost opportunity of wiping one’s backside with a picture of the likes of Darling, Moore, Davidson (male or female version), etc., does have a certain appeal …
Alex Massie getting in on the act (and a sour, wee reference to the WoS poll).
link to tinyurl.com
LOL@ Ronnie very good!
More woe to come; regional ABCs out at the end of this month. My guess -9% but hope its worse.
Note to self-When reading WoS keep tablet away from tea mug.
@Yesitis
I notice that Rodent doesn’t see any irony in conspiring publicly with batshit crazy Unionist ultras a few short hours after tweeting that Wings was a conspiracy theorist.
#ratlikecunning
BM: “Hello, this is Blair McDougall. I’ve got some facts for you.”
Scotsman Phone Parrot: “Facts, you say.”
BM: “Yes, lots of facts.”
SPP: “Hmm. I’m not sure we can handle facts. The fact checker left when Johnston Press took over.”
BM: “Some of them are already on the Internet.”
SPP: “On the Internet? Oh, that is excellent. I’ll inform Editor Parrot right away.”
So wait a minute, Silver never actually made those claims at all, it was all a spoof story, as drawn from a spoof website…?
HONESTLY??? Have I got this right?
Is this what happens to a newspaper on its last legs still chasing a cause? Gawd this is dire, truly dire.
To top it off Nate Silver doesn’t even work for NY Times anymore! He predicts baseball scores, which is what he did before he started political predictions. He was dead on in 2010 predicting an Obama victory, but the stats change all the time & if he hasn’t even worked there for a while, the numbers that were being used were old>even if it wasn’t on a spoof site.
Never follow polls, it is a big waste of time. They take people’s mind off important issues, & can make a campaign get left in the dust by focusing on grasping bubbles out of the air. Polls are manipulated, misworded, could be polling small variety of people, could be paid for by corporations looking for a particular outcome hoping to sway a particular group.
Stick with the facts. Things suck as they are for Scotland. Scotland is going in the wrong direction for its people. This is a dirty fight, but ah well, gets yourself dirty if you have to. How bad do you really want your country back? Just keep asking yourself that. My ancestors were told to leave their land in Scotland 300 years ago, on a great ship they were famous for building.
The Scots invented the rudder & sailed circles around their enemies in the Isles, dominating them for centuries. They believed something different from what England was telling them. Nows your chance Scotland, & they’re hoping the living will suceed this time~
So wait a minute, Silver never actually made those claims at all, it was all a spoof story, as drawn from a spoof website…?
HONESTLY??? Have I got this right?
I think yesterday’s story was genuine, though based on nothing more than a half-hour interview which was madly spun. The bit about the referendum being 50/50 was indeed a spoof story from a spoof web site, which they have reported as factual in their background piece.
Yesterday several people here were referring to it as if it was real, and Stu repeatedly put them right that it was a spoof. But the “journalists” at the Hootsmon couldn’t get that far.
LOL, thanks Morag.
“Facepalm” doesn’t even begin to cover it – incredible stuff!!
Reform Scotland’s daily news round-up has referenced the Wings poll, via Joan McAlpine’s article in the Record. Their brief summary says ‘The poll found that the gap between Yes and No voters is narrower than previously thought, with 36% No, 34% Yes, and 30% undecided.’
This means that The Scotsman journalists/ leader writers aren’t even checking source material. They’re picking up snippets from the internet and taking it as gospel.
Can we start sending them Daily Mash & Onion stories to see if they print any of them?
Seriously, I’m cynical about the media anyway, but this has pretty much stunned me with the level of utter incompetence it’s showing.
That’s brightened up the old day by quite a margin.
Wonder if the offending journo/reporter/parrot will be getting their arse kicked round the office about now? What a balloon.
My coffee’s gone cold. Didn’t dare drink it when laughing.
Its hard to believe how low the Scotsman has fallen… well… its not really but you know what I mean!
I actually remember Nate Silver saying on BBC TV that when the vote for a cause reaches 50% it is pretty much unstoppable. The cause he was referring to was Scottish independence when a poll in the Sun had published a poll showing 50% support for independence.
He has therefore made a “50 per cent” comment… but not as the Scotsman knows it!
“quality press” surely thats a slander and the rev can expect a chap on the door fae the “quality polis”
Poe Hootsman.
The Huffington post is also giving some credence to Nate’s spun soundbite, also running a poll on Scottish Independence, See what you think –
link to huffingtonpost.co.uk?
Was this chap Silver on the radio this morning and if so what did he say? Did the BBC Scotland journalist ask sensible questions (he asks more in hope than expectation)?
“Was this chap Silver on the radio this morning and if so what did he say?”
He was, and not very much. The piece was squeezed into the last three or four minutes of GMS. It may be on iPlayer already.
Sorry to keep bringing up Murray Ritchie’s book, but I’m reading it with mounting amazement. One of the things that is quite clear is that he is very very concerned as a journalist to get things right.
During the 1999 election there was an incident where “by a farcical series of events we have a ridiculous error in the Herald today.” A particular individual was quoted as saying he could no longer justify supporting Labour, and that’s what the Herald article originally said. However the Sun published that the man had in fact resigned from the Labour party.
Ritchie wasn’t aware whether the man had ever been a Labour member, because he didn’t ask him. However, the piece in the Sun was written by “a dependable pro”, so Ritchie agreed to incorporate that information into the Herald article. Except, the man had never been a Labour member. “Some idiotic sub” had changed the journalist’s copy and introduced the error. “The rest of the press corps fall about laughing.”
How times change. I don’t think they’re even blushing about this – they probably don’t care enough to find out.
Quite extraordinary! You would think Buster Gonad was their new political editor,cos lets face it,it takes some balls to put into print some the unadulterated pish that’s gushed forth from the Scotsman of late.
That’s a very interesting headline on the huffinton post.
“Scotland will lose independence poll”
That’s not actually possible. Since the referendum will be voted on by the people of Scotland, and the majority will win, most of Scotland is destined, no matter the actual result, to WIN the referendum. That’s how it works. It’s not really about winning or losing, it’s about deciding.
If Scotland could and did lose the referendum, by which they seem to mean vote to stay in the union, then clearly this is wrong and any decent person would try to stop it from happening.
And if Scotland loses, who is the other side? England? Britain? Whichever it is, how can they win a referendum they don’t have a vote in?
O/T – There is an interesting article on labourhame by Eric Joyce posted on 29th July titled Tom Harris is a genius – don’t let the title put you off. There is also a link to a piece written by Harris back in 1993.
So now that we’ve been told we’re going to lose by a comic, does anyone not feel like turning up on the day? I mean, fuck it, I’m not doing anything better on the 18th September next year, so I’m going to put my X in the box anyway. The fresh air will do me good.
AS a former Labour Provost of Clackmannanshire once said. ‘We will go through this with a fine toothbrush”!!
Obviously the subs at the Scotsman did not heed this valuable advice
So the Wings over Scotland poll has had three mentions in the Mail in as many days. What does that say about the Scotsman and Herald?
My comment on the Spectator has flushed out Ruddy. Feel free to go on there and recommend his contribution.
I see that the Scotsman has now as its anti independence leader a piece by the Rev Iain Campbell of Back Free Church on the Isle of Lewis who seems to be besotted by the arrival of the new prince and ends with a less than christian jibe about overweight politicians. The Free Church is a Union supporter by virtue of its links with hardline Presbyterian denominations in other parts of the UK not to mention its love of Rangers FC – the royal family fit in very nicely until they are seen to break the Sabbath!
i’m sure Paul Hutcheon and Tom Englush of the Herald will be all over this tomorrow
This has to be sent to Private Eye. And the foreign press.
i think the loyalists (as i will call them from now on) are forgetting the white paper is yet to be released and could herald a relatively large shift in the public opinion as the majority of scots do not know enough about the blueprint for independence right now,seems to me there is a reason the SNP have been more or less quiet the last wee while like they are taking note of the fear and smear campaign being run at BT and working on disproving them….the way i see it the pro indy side has a few gears to go up and BT are putting everything into the negative ludicrous shite they spew day after day after day,id reckon YES will crank it up from jan/feb meanwhile BT will be drowning in their own regurgitated shite!
Dosn’t matter though what’s true as long as you can use the headline, acredit the facts elsewhere, again it’s mud sticking they care about.
In Nate Silver’s defence he has probably had everything he said completely warped out of context to fit the Hootsmon’s narrative.
@proudscot 11.42
To quote Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It
“I’m off to wipe my arse with pictures of Nick Robinson. I’m getting good at giving him a quiff!”
Would actually be interested in Nate Silvers take on polling in Scotland. Just done a quick check of the polls from the last Scottish Parliamentary elections and they were scarily wrong. Overall the polling average underestimated the SNP share of the vote by 11.9%, and overestimated the Labour share by 6.8%. Even narrowing it down to the last month of polling the figures were still underestimating the SNP vote by around 6.5% and overestimating the Labour vote by 5.3%. In his methodology Nate Silver always ranks polls by their previous accuracy. In a Scottish context they are all terrible going by their performance in the last SP election…
OT
I see that an Ian R Taylor has donated £50,850 to the Tory party in the second quarter of this year.
Those comments of Rev Dr Iain Campbell are grim. How embarassing. Be interesting to see what other prominent Free churchmen like David Robertson make of it. David Robertson is an SNP supporter.
link to scotsman.com
John Lyons
Interesting perspective by Huffington. If we vote No Scotland loses….you know I think they may be onto something. Surprised Unionists haven’t moaned about that headline.
This picture pretty much sums up the entire day the Scotsman has had
link to flickr.com
James Westfield,is the reverend doctor refering to the debate Blair MacDougal has categorically refused to enter?seems a little bit um…f*ckwitted i suppose is the term.
G. Campbell – wonder if that has anything to do with the Rev’s tweet about a smear dossier distributed to all the newspapers, he has a copy – more to come but Euan McColm springs to mind I wonder why.
The Lewis connection might be the key here: think Darling, Ian Taylor and Brian Wilson!
“. The Free Church is a Union supporter by virtue of its links with hardline Presbyterian denominations in other parts of the UK not to mention its love of Rangers FC ”
The very “peepul” I alluded to in a post last week but was strongly rebuffed(completely ignoring the fact I didn’t even mention Rangers in the first post or had any idea the poster I was replying to was a fan,again apologies) for the heinous crime of daring to suggest such people exist.I await a strong rebuttal of your statement for even alluding to such whimsical nonsense.
Absolutely hilarious!!
I sometimes joke when watching TV and the captions are all over the shop or the continuity is incredibly lumpy, that it looks like the teaboy is on duty again!! Well, did you eva’, the teaboy is now editor of ‘The Scotsman’
I’ll be back in a few hours after I’ve rolled on the floor laughing – should be OK, got my incontinence knickers on!
They shoot horses, don’t they?
link to 1.bp.blogspot.com
@restless native – explain please – not entirely with you
If anything the real prediction by Nate Silver re the independence vote is actually worse than the 50/50 spoof:
link to blogs.spectator.co.uk
And if you want another laugh try this:
link to bbc.co.uk
“It said the Treaty of Union secured the Protestant religion and Presbyterian church and any change “would be a provocation of God”.
Eek!
I hope that the Saltire on the moon will be big enough to be seen from my house on a clear night.
Its just a pity that they wont be able to get it up there for September 2014.
Spoke to Nate Silver today. He knows he has been spun and generally prefers to keep a lower profile. His Referendum analysis is based on averaging the polls. He says the lowest No margin he has seen is 7% in favour of No. He was unaware of the WoS weekend poll. He has visited Scotland before, socially, and now gets most of his info from the Guardian. He was complimentary about blogs from those disputing his reported comments.
“@restless native – explain please – not entirely with you”
http://wingsoverscotland.com/in-out-and-shaking-it-all-about/
In there somewhere!!
Apols if repeating whats been said elsewhere but while Scotsmans an utterjoke, was great to see Mark Millar being asked to justofy his YES vote reasons on Scotland Tonight last night….”Its an empty page…a once in a few hundred years chance to define the country we want”…excellent stuff and hopefully a few youngsters who might have been watching for Kick-Ass 2 discussion would have had a few moments of reflection.
Back in the day when The Scotsman was a real newspaper with real journalists they used to have an advert that said “More on Andropov than Andrew”. What a silly rag it has become. The Sun used to pay its writers well to compensate for the lack of journalistic credibility. God knows how much they are offering people at Muppet Central.
@ian
If The Scotsman was a racehorse, they would be erecting the screens around it while they waited for the vet!
Ha, Hootsmon has now removed its clown-shoes editorial from the leader comment page, though historical link still works.
I’d have done my nuts if there had been a spread on how long it would take them. I forgot the first two rules of Unionist churnalism, postpone admitting you’ve made a mistake for as long as possible, then shuffle quietly from the scene hoping no one has noticed.
Restlessnative says:
13 August, 2013 at 1:34 pm
“. The Free Church is a Union supporter by virtue of its links with hardline Presbyterian denominations in other parts of the UK not to mention its love of Rangers FC
==============================================================
Here comes my rebuttal there were 48,000+ Rangers fans at ibrox on Saturday are you suggesting all 48,000+myself included are die hard true blue British unionists?.
are you suggesting that everyone that goes to Parkhead of a Saturday are all Irish and Scottish Nationalists.
One idiotic Wee Free Reverend is all the evidence you need to smear all Presebeteryans and all Rangers fans?
You are as bad as the narrow minded blinkered unionist trolls.
@Rod Mac
For what it’s worth I hope you don’t go shouting about the fact that there isn’t homogenity about indepdendence amongst the inhabitants of Ibrox… My intro for persuading Hibbies to vote yes has always been “look at who it will annoy the most” with your clubs support being top of the list
@Rod Mac
Here Here !!!!!!!!
“You are as bad as the narrow minded blinkered unionist trolls.”
A. The Free church quote wasn’t mine
B. Not once did I call ALL Rangers fans or”wee free’s” unionists,not once.
C. The only trolling I do is for Ferox Trout.
Can’t you see the folk I’m on about are the “fleg” waving Brits,the bigots,the OO,the”lets glory in another useless war”mob,the Union Bears etc,not the decent right thinking fans like yourself and MANY others.It astounds me that fans of any team or indeed any person would want to hang on to what this union offers us.
Please stop comparing me to a unionist troll,trust me,as I have strong recollections of my developing nationalist fervour harking back to my time in the womb!
SAOR ALBA
Nice piece in the New Statesman.
“So maybe the Yes campaign can breath a sigh of relief. It’s not over just because the baseball nerd sang.”
I think this is the beginning of the death rattle for print journalism, not just with the Scottish papers, but also in the States, with The New York Times selling the Boston Globe to the Red Soxs’ owner for a mere pittance, or Amazon’s owner buying of all papers, The Washington Post for a fraction of what it was worth even a few years ago. I’m beginning to think that now practically anyone with a few extra quid could start their own pro-Yes Scottish newspaper just by crowdfunding – start the website first, to get the reporters and editorial staff ready, then crowdfund for subscriptions to get the print side going.
@ Desimond “was great to see Mark Millar being asked to justofy his YES vote reasons on Scotland Tonight last night….”Its an empty page…a once in a few hundred years chance to define the country we want”…excellent stuff and hopefully a few youngsters who might have been watching for Kick-Ass 2 discussion would have had a few moments of reflection”
Think we were the only 2 to see it; totally agree he should be snapped up to get message out to the kids (totally on their wavelength). Pretty cool response to John MacKay ’cause I dont think he was expecting it at the end but very relaxed and great asspirational answers.
MARK MILLAR will be a big help with kids vote / honsetly watch last nights clip.
link to tinyurl.com
Who is propping up the North Britsman? Who is propping up the Johnstone Press?
Ian More
Somebody with a budget which is big and not open to examination by the public?
Allegedly
Just posted this in the Herald under the story about Scotland getting a new consumer ombudsman in the event of independence.
” Well, the first thing out new ombudsman should look at, is the Scotsman Newspaper calling itself a ‘newspaper.
todays FRONT PAGE HEADLINE, has a story about an American polling guru.
The problem for ‘Scotlands Quality Newspaper’ it then goes on to quote ‘The Porridge’ which is a Scottish spoof site that was doing a spoof on this polling guru.
The quote they used was one where this polling guru mentions that the referendum poll was to close to call, so you ‘needed to flip a coin’
Yes folks, our very own ‘quality newspaper’ actually quoted a world renowned polling expert, saying he thought we should flip a coin to get the result!!!
says it all about how badly we are being let down by some of our newspapers. “
@G.Campbell
Just checked and your Joke Paper’s comment on the Hootsman’s website has been published! Hilarious.
Patrick, I would guess that the Herald will not lose sleep over the Scotsman making a fool of itself and that will be one comment that is guaranteed to stay in the annals.
The Huffington post is also giving some credence to Nate’s spun soundbite, also running a poll on Scottish Independence, See what you think –
link to huffingtonpost.co.uk?
I cannot read the HuffPost comments without tearing my hair out. This is usually true, but particularly when they talk a pile of garbage about things they have no clue about. It’s as bad as the Telegraph.
“To predict an event with two outcomes before it takes place, to higher than 50% accuracy is “scientifically impossible”, joking that he would need a time machine to answer that question. Silver then proceeded to flip a coin for the next 5 hours to illustrate his point.”
Pure satire. Just shows how desperate the NO side is for good news. Onwards and upwards to 2014. Hopefully the Scotsman will re-incarnate itself into something decent post-independence, but I see it unlikely that the printed press is going to survive, especially if they are on the wrong side of the vote, taking desperate measures to “influence” the debate
Live and in real time on wings!
The journey from ‘Definite No’ to Don’t Know, in one face palming moment.
Staring Captain Caveman as the unionist face palmer who turned.
I hope the Yes mole at the Hootsmon doesn’t get sacked.
Be fair. The Hootsmon is trying to break new ground. The first regional newspaper to be edited by a donkey, allegedly.
I have sent an issue of the Dandy to the Scotsman editor to inform them of the plight of Dan, who eats cow pie. He is desperate. I hope they do an exclusive on it.
All these people saying they wouldn’t wipe their arse with this or that newspaper, have you ever tried to using newsprint as a toilet paper replacement? I have, and it’s not pleasant.
Craig P – yes, when I was drunk at a mate’s flat this time, they’d run out of bog roll and the Evening Express was the only paper-substance nearby.
Didn’t flush though, and I got shoved outside to put it in the bin…
You’re quite right though, there are sound practical reasons not to use newspapers as lavatory hygiene alternatives.
DD
Don’t want to get into the details too much but it is not a good idea to use newsprint as bog paper, beyond blocking the sewer.
`The ink will rub of in an area of your anatomy which can absorb it. Think suppositories.
It is known that some inks are tumour forming. Ok not a big problem if you did it once only but etc
Sometimes I think I need to get out more
@BTP & DD-
Some toilet roll wrappers have Helpline numbers on them – imagine that gig? Waiting for it to ring?
‘Hello. You’ve reached the A****x Helpline, my name’s Nigel. How can I help you today?’
‘Well, it’s a long story. My name’s Blair, and…’
CE Marshall,
There already is a dedicated Scots independence newspaper. It’s the monthly Scots Independent Newspaper. Can be downloaded at ‘Scots Independent Newspaper The Flag in the Wind’. It’s a damn good read too.
I hope BBC Scotlandshire are on the case.
The Scotsman is currently running a full page advert in the weekly Berwickshire News (Johnston Publishing) for their 2013 calendar, must be really hard up, they are running out of months to sell it.
link to telegraph.co.uk
a few papers are joining in with this now.