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The corkscrew 106

Posted on June 06, 2016 by

Alert readers may have noticed that we tend to slack off a bit at the weekend these days. There’s no point burning ourselves out with busywork at a time when there’s not very much going on in Scottish politics (certainly not in terms of independence, at any rate), and weekend traffic is always lower anyway.

So we’ve only just now got round to taking a proper look at something the online Yoon community and punditariat was getting itself very excited about on Saturday.

heraldfracking

And it’s a fascinating piece of work.

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Tags:
Category analysis, debunks, media, scottish politics

The taxonomy of lies 246

Posted on May 18, 2016 by

For much of its life, this site has been warning readers that, as their default position, they should always assume newspaper headlines are a lie until proven otherwise.

headlie

Today, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper admitted it in public.

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Tags:
Category comment, media, scottish politics

Call The Midwife 124

Posted on April 10, 2016 by

The Scottish press and opposition’s incandescent and somewhat vague fury at the Scottish Government working to bring billions of pounds in investment to Scotland has continued undiminished in this weekend’s newspapers. Scottish Labour in particular are getting themselves very worked up about today’s Sunday Times.

mcchina

“Incredible”? Sounds exciting. Let’s find out more.

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Tags:
Category comment, debunks, media, scottish politics

The murder of words 140

Posted on March 16, 2016 by

This headline appears in The Times today:

timesctr

It’s an absolute lie. But that’s not the interesting thing.

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Tags:
Category debunks, media, scottish politics, wtf

The trick is to keep reading 74

Posted on December 13, 2015 by

We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve drawn people’s attention to the necessity of sticking with newspaper articles right to the end if you don’t want to be horribly misled by eye-catching headlines. But it never hurts to have another example.

scomailfrb

If you only read the start of today’s Scottish Mail On Sunday “bombshell” on the Forth Road Bridge (the left side of the picture above), you might come to a very alarming conclusion. But if you get all the way through it, to the paragraphs we’ve highlighted in red and enlarged on the right-hand side of the image, you’ll discover the truth.

Tags:
Category comment, media, scottish politics

Your half and their half 85

Posted on September 15, 2015 by

There’s been a veritable flurry of polls commissioned to mark the impending one-year anniversary of the independence referendum. In the last 48 hours alone we’ve seen ones from Survation, YouGov and Panelbase, making a variety of interesting findings. As ever, though, the trick is in the interpretation.

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Tags:
Category debunks, scottish politics, stats

Threats and menaces 145

Posted on August 13, 2014 by

With the referendum now just five weeks away and most of the polls still uncomfortably close, there’s an increasing sense of urgency and lack of subtlety about the No camp and media’s scaremongering.

Yesterday the Scottish media covered the award of a Royal Navy shipbuilding contract to BAE Systems in unequivocally political terms. “Promise of £348m shipyard contract for No vote”, blared the Scotsman, while the Scottish Sun’s front page went with “3 ships deal ‘if No vote’”. (The English edition was the rather more loquacious “Scots will land £348m Royal Navy contract – if they stay in the UK”.)

Yet the text of the articles told a radically different story.

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Tags:
Category comment, media, scottish politics

As casual as you like 307

Posted on July 04, 2014 by

Today’s Scottish Daily Express:

express500m

We’ve added the red lines.

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Tags:
Category media, scottish politics

Voting No will give you cancer 141

Posted on July 03, 2014 by

Voting No WON’T give you cancer at all, of course. (Although with the English NHS now privatising cancer care, with the likely knock-on effects on Scottish NHS funding, you’d better hope even harder that you don’t get it.)

The title on this article is in fact completely unrelated to the text you’re about to read, much like Torcuil Crichton’s column in today’s Daily Record.

rosyth

Let’s take a look.

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Tags:
Category comment, media, scottish politics

Good faith and bad practice 160

Posted on June 20, 2014 by

The other day we highlighted a really good piece in the Scottish Sun, which while not perfect was a pretty decent stab at the sort of evidence-based journalism Scotland’s media should have been doing throughout the referendum campaign.

sunpound

Today, not so much.

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Tags:
Category comment, media, scottish politics

The inadequate tide 69

Posted on June 07, 2014 by

This is a story in today’s Scottish Daily Express:

sdemigrants

Now that’s what we call some rapid inflation.

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Tags:
Category comment, media, scottish politics

A joke and a lie 127

Posted on May 22, 2014 by

Last night, in our 10pm “And finally” comedy slot, we ran a picture of a Labour election leaflet we’d slightly altered in order to make a joke about the party’s well-documented historic predilection for postal-vote electoral fraud. Readers can form their own view about whether the gag was funny or not, but it was at least clearly flagged as an “And finally” and we also pointed out that the pic was a fake in the comments.

taxlie

We’ve been searching this morning’s Scotsman for a similar disclaimer regarding its front-page headline, but as yet we’re not having a lot of luck locating it.

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Tags:
Category analysis, media, scottish politics

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  • Recent Comments

    • agentx on Yelling at the tide: “Happy Burns Night.” Jan 25, 17:58
    • Northcode on Yelling at the tide: ““However, i do agree the ethnolinguistic archeology stage is over… ” Thank fuck… I was a bit concerned that you…” Jan 25, 17:26
    • TURABDIN on Yelling at the tide: “….their true language….what a can of worms you open there, more than a can of worms a veritable chasm. However,…” Jan 25, 17:02
    • Northcode on Yelling at the tide: “The Scots language is not, by any reckoning, a dead language – nearly half of Scots living in Scotland still…” Jan 25, 16:28
    • Marie on Yelling at the tide: “James @1.10pm. Indeed James. McHatee has “form” when it comes to celebrating extra judicial killings.” Jan 25, 16:25
    • agentx on Yelling at the tide: “Not for me I have done it many times. (Maybe add a few spaces after your paste)” Jan 25, 16:02
    • Alf Baird on Yelling at the tide: ““the few who think like you?” As we know, “colonialism is based on psychology” (Memmi). At least half of Scots…” Jan 25, 15:44
    • TURABDIN on Yelling at the tide: “AI is neutral, it is sophisticated technology, but like the simple pencil it may be used to produce the sublime…” Jan 25, 14:30
    • Sven on Yelling at the tide: “Sorry “James”, please bear with an old duffer, I’m still not clear on if you feel being curious enough to…” Jan 25, 14:25
    • Aidan on Yelling at the tide: “@Alf – do you not feel that you are perpetuating the subjugation of Scotland by continuing to converse in the…” Jan 25, 14:23
    • TURABDIN on Yelling at the tide: “mair regairdand dhe quaestioun o langage restorans. https://lingodigest.com/when-a-language-wont-awaken-the-hard-truths-of-linguistic-revitalization/#google_vignette given the right tools, imagination, invention, the appropriate «can do»mindset and now…” Jan 25, 14:17
    • agentx on Yelling at the tide: “Sven says: 25 January, 2026 at 11:27 am Can’t really say it’s much of a surprise that in the US…” Jan 25, 14:17
    • James Cheyne on Yelling at the tide: “TURABDIN, AI as a assist tool in language is interesting, rather than attaining a higher intellectual grade than humans themselves…” Jan 25, 14:02
    • James Cheyne on Yelling at the tide: “Sven, That very question you asked of the messenger rather than of the message is exactly how modern psyops works,…” Jan 25, 13:34
    • Insider on Yelling at the tide: ““Get a grip, Alf. Why don’t you demand that the citizens of Venezuela, say, stop speaking Spanish? Brazil now. Shouldn’t…” Jan 25, 13:15
    • sam on Yelling at the tide: “And none of what you write in the first two lines happened.” Jan 25, 13:13
    • James on Yelling at the tide: ““Prick”.” Jan 25, 13:10
    • Northcode on Yelling at the tide: ““Who in Scotland really gives a shit about speaking Scots, apart from the few who think like you?” Oor name…” Jan 25, 12:27
    • Sven on Yelling at the tide: ““The mind that is curious enough to apply questions to serious events is seldom a useful tool.” I’m maybe misunderstanding…” Jan 25, 12:26
    • TURABDIN on Yelling at the tide: “Cherish the gifts of the past, but do not overlay those gifts with personal additions. Give the gifts room to…” Jan 25, 11:58
    • TURABDIN on Yelling at the tide: “As an enthusiast for the potential of so called Artificial Intelligence i link to the following article on an aspect…” Jan 25, 11:39
    • Sven on Yelling at the tide: “Can’t really say it’s much of a surprise that in the US if you aim a car or a handgun…” Jan 25, 11:27
    • Hatey McHateface on Yelling at the tide: “Get a grip, Alf. Why don’t you demand that the citizens of Venezuela, say, stop speaking Spanish? Brazil now. Shouldn’t…” Jan 25, 11:07
    • James Cheyne on Yelling at the tide: “Should we just accept all the turmoil and chaos happening simultaniosly around the world or should we question why? The…” Jan 25, 11:02
    • Hatey McHateface on Yelling at the tide: “@Marie Calm down dear. It’s a white guy got killed. No boxes ticked. Nothing to see here. Even the previous…” Jan 25, 10:57
    • James Cheyne on Yelling at the tide: “And now we can add AI imaging into the mix for confusing the narrative and directional purpose of goal.” Jan 25, 10:51
    • Hatey McHateface on Yelling at the tide: “Sure, Willie. When you encounter an opinion you disagree with, then that’s abuse. I don’t mind so much that this…” Jan 25, 10:48
    • David Holden on Yelling at the tide: “I think You tube needs to work on its targeted ads as while watching a quite impressive often foul mouthed…” Jan 25, 10:46
    • James Cheyne on Yelling at the tide: “How many people are fallen prey to these multiple provided situations of psychological conditioning..” Jan 25, 10:45
    • James Cheyne on Yelling at the tide: “The question is who is funding all the disruptions, From just stop oil, Black lives matter, Antifa, Gender ideology Climate…” Jan 25, 10:39

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