Alert readers will of course be aware that one of this site’s most frequently-recurring themes is “phantom news”, whereby events or unpleasant opinions that newspapers or broadcasters really want to have happened are conveniently brought to life, either by some random nobody on the internet, or an unnamed “source” or “insider”.
So when Nicola Sturgeon did something today that nearly everyone in the Northern Hemisphere knew she was going to do sometime soon, but wasn’t expecting just yet, there wasn’t time to prepare actual real people with the required quotes.
In the modern media world, though, that isn’t a problem.
Our attention was drawn today to hardcore shrieky Loyalist nutter collective Scotland In Union releasing “new research” on an independent Scotland’s finances, which in fact came out last year but which for unknown reasons they’re touting again now.
Commissioned by the loongroup from a London-based thinktank that we’d never heard of by the name of “Europe Economics”, it predictably produces a doom-and-gloom conclusion that independence would have cost over £10bn in the first year.
There are so many gaping chasms in the logic we could hardly stop laughing for long enough to type, but one in particular was worth wiping the tears from our eyes for.
We were very pleased to hear Gary Robertson challenge Kezia Dugdale on the curious matter of Scottish Labour’s membership and income figures on today’s Good Morning Scotland. Dugdale flapped and dodged and waffled for as long as she could before diverting the topic onto federalism, and eventually managed to wriggle away from the subject without any sort of proper answer (through no fault of Robertson’s).
Almost a year ago we ran a short piece mocking a Scotsman headline which claimed that “THOUSANDS” of people had signed a Tory anti-referendum petition, when the actual number was a strictly-accurate-but-pathetic TWO thousand.
We didn’t think that could ever be beaten for technically-true hyperbolic exaggeration, but we’d reckoned without the bold boundary-pushing ingenuity of the Daily Express.
Hundreds of thousands? How many hundreds, exactly?
There’s a truly abominable piece of hatemongering in today’s Times. A grotesequely dishonest Nat-bashing smear job based on stupendously misrepresented fragments of quotes, it’s penned by Patrick Harkness, someone who the paper identifies as “a past co-chairman of the RSE [Royal Society of Edinburgh] Young Academy of Scotland”.
For some reason it’s chosen to leave a few lines off his CV.
It’s a well-known fact, of course, that 87% of all statistics are made up. But as this site regularly observes, if you’re the Scottish opposition and media there’s no need to invent fake ones when you can twist the real ones to present an image completely at odds with the reality.
The Sunday Times today has some fine examples of the craft of massaging figures for the purposes of deception. It carries two separate scare stories on the NHS, both of them using figures which aren’t based on any sort of news, but on opposition spin on existing stats. One comes from the Tories, under a dramatic headline:
The banner is pulling a classic trick – the £685m figure is actually the total sum spent in a decade, not the single year that most people would assume (since there’s no good reason to measure spending in decades, so headlines usually don’t do it). But remarkably it’s just about the most honest thing in the paper’s health coverage today.
Figures released yesterday indicated that the number of full-time teachers employed in Scotland had risen by 253 over the past year, despite budget cuts imposed by the UK government’s austerity programme. This obviously presented the Scottish media with a dilemma: how could such statistics be presented as an “SNP BAD” story?
Luckily, we’re dealing with experienced professionals here.
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.
Iain More on The Valley Of The Dolls: “It is a toxic world for any white heterosexual males and females.” Dec 9, 18:04
Vronsky on The Valley Of The Dolls: “It’s too easy to point out the madness, we need to understand that to your average politician this apparent silliness…” Dec 9, 17:57
panda paws on The Valley Of The Dolls: “Indeed it isn’t. It is illegal for someone who in an official capacity knows another person has a GRC to…” Dec 9, 17:44
Colin Dawson on The Valley Of The Dolls: “Given the avalanche of litigation that is likely to result from the Scottish Government’s allegedly unlawful gender self-ID policies over…” Dec 9, 17:40
Jill on The Valley Of The Dolls: “English women here who follows you for your reporting on this issue. A huge thank you again for your time…” Dec 9, 17:25
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Valley Of The Dolls: “Remain in your home. Officers will be with you shortly.” Dec 9, 17:24
agentx on The Long Walk To Freedom: ““A salutary lesson for us all when sidling up to strange men in a working man’s public house…” ————————————- That’s…” Dec 9, 17:24
duncanio on The Valley Of The Dolls: “In most areas of employment where judgments so overwhelmingly incompetent and negligent as were made by this tribunal the person…” Dec 9, 17:20
Morgatron on The Valley Of The Dolls: “I started reading the bollocks last night and my head was whirling. If that is the judiciary now , there…” Dec 9, 17:07
Frank Gillougley on The Valley Of The Dolls: “A three hundred page tome that collapses under its own weight, and this is seriously held up to shed light…” Dec 9, 16:59
Kenny on The Valley Of The Dolls: “It is NOT unlawful to ask someone if they have a GRC. I don’t know why the Supreme Court made…” Dec 9, 16:33
SilentMajority on The Valley Of The Dolls: “…outstanding work! I really hope that someone shows that Employment Tribunal judge this post…now that so much of his chaotic…” Dec 9, 16:17
Anne on The Valley Of The Dolls: “There was a young man in the ladies loo at Edinburgh Botanical gardens yesterday .He hadn’t even bothered to put…” Dec 9, 16:12
Effijy on The Valley Of The Dolls: “The ruling shows a complete contradiction to the high court ruling. If this trans doctor has male genitalia then he…” Dec 9, 16:02
Paul Garbett on The Valley Of The Dolls: “I don’t say this often enough Stu but a big thank you for this forensic analysis of what is a…” Dec 9, 16:01
Northcode on The Long Walk To Freedom: “I had a similar experience when reading my hard(cover) version of “Fashionable Frocks for Clydeside Welders” in Tennents a few…” Dec 9, 15:51
Northcode on The Long Walk To Freedom: “It might not be true, but I heard somewhere, somewhen, that Salmond pissed pure alcohol… so he might very well…” Dec 9, 15:03
Mark Beggan on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Funny you should say that. I nearly caused a riot when I started reading my copy of, ‘Homosexually in modern…” Dec 9, 15:01
Northcode on The Long Walk To Freedom: “(please note: Any text capitalized and italicized and spelled in American-English and surrounded by single quotation marks in any of…” Dec 9, 15:00
Mark Beggan on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Typical pleb with hands out begging for your tax back.” Dec 9, 14:49
Northcode on The Long Walk To Freedom: ““…while my modified version would work in the real world…” It might well work in some other ‘real’ world… just…” Dec 9, 14:39
James on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Alex wouldnae piss on the likes of you if you were on fire.” Dec 9, 14:23
sarah on Off-topic: “Hi Marie and Tinto, I’m sitting in the car after 2 teeth extractions whilst MOH has one done so I…” Dec 9, 14:20
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Long Walk To Freedom: “Written by Anonymous: ———————- Much ado about Alex: I was standing at the bar of the Kilcreggan Hotel, alone, on…” Dec 9, 13:49
Alf Baird on The Long Walk To Freedom: “The important point in liberating any colonized people is that elected national representatives no longer hold allegiance or take an…” Dec 9, 13:45
Hatey McHateface on The Long Walk To Freedom: ““The Scottish people can, if they so wish at any Scottish election, vote for a party or parties who wish…” Dec 9, 13:05
Tinto Chiel on Off-topic: “Amen to all that, Marie. We live in difficult times, which Globalist Milliband would probably make even worse. Glad you…” Dec 9, 13:03
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Long Walk To Freedom: “EL RETRATO EN LA ROCA by Pablo Neruda (extract). Miré y allí estaba mi amigo: de piedra era su rostro,…” Dec 9, 13:01
