Tiny cracks in the silence
We had a listen to Radio Scotland this morning again. We only caught the end of Good Morning Scotland, but we were still in time to catch them cramming in a piece on today’s comedy Scotsman headline about American psephologist Nate Silver and his vague, generalised comments about polling.
With an absolutely straight face (so far as you can tell on radio, anyway), the GMS presenter asked Silver for his view on “how well the media handles statistics”, while carefully steering the discussion in such a way that neither Silver nor fellow live guest Professor John Curtice had any opportunity to refer to the Panelbase poll commissioned by this site and published last week.
(We have no idea if either of them would have had any desire to, but the presenter’s questions carefully closed off any avenues which might have offered the chance.)
But despite what’s clearly a concerted and deliberate effort by the Scottish media to keep news of the poll from their readers and listeners, little glimpses keep appearing. It’s a bit like someone’s driving around in the UK Home Office’s infamous “immigrant van” trying to block people’s view of an elephant that’s escaped from the zoo in case it terrifies them, but the huge animal keeps moving unpredictably and letting citizens catch the odd sight of a bit of trunk or tail.
We’ve already noted the analysis by the aforementioned Prof. Curtice, whose “What Scotland Thinks” website has inconveniently done its job and treated the survey the same as any other by a respectable polling organisation. And in today’s Daily Record, the paper hasn’t been able to prevent columnist and SNP MSP Joan McAlpine from making it the lead story on her weekly opinion page.
It’s a good piece, although its impact is obviously diminished by being on a comment page rather than reported as news. (Though the Record’s postage-stamp coverage yesterday is still the only such appearance of the poll in any Scottish newspaper.)
We’re hardly surprised that the press has tried to hide our poll from the Scottish people. We’re a little taken aback, though, by the extent to which it’s abandoned all pretence of impartiality or balance in the process. The Scotsman’s front-page story is mind-boggling, but the absurd over-prominence given to Nate Silver’s comments (which to his credit he appeared a little embarrassed about) enabled both Newsnight Scotland and GMS to perpetuate the story on the self-fulfilling grounds that is WAS on the front page of the struggling regional paper.
(We’re still, incidentally, trying to find out why Newsnight Scotland has been removed as of last night from the Sky EPG and absorbed into “normal” Newsnight, which prevents anyone from recording the Scottish show via a Sky+ box. We got no answer when we asked the “Sky Help Team” last night.)
To nobody’s great surprise, despite all the calls, texts and emails sent by our readers yesterday, this morning’s “Call Kaye” also studiously avoids discussing the issue. If nothing else, then, it seems our poll has flushed the media out into the open. It’s good to know, beyond any remaining sliver of doubt, exactly where we stand.
Thinking of Pravda, when will Russia Today, al Jazeera, etc – you know, the liberated press of the free world – when will they start covering this issue?
Thank you, Joan.
” … with 36 per cent No, 34 per cent Yes and 30 per cent undecided. Since people are more likely to vote Yes when they are well informed, that does not look good for the anti-independence parties.”
that, I hope, will give some people food for thought.
Discusting Shows The Media Up For What It Is, Btw Did You Notice On GMS That They Said Nate Silver Was Quoted In Scottish Newspapers, Does Anyone Know If Any Other Paper Rather Than The Scotsman Run This Story.
Never thought I’d say it but I’m warming to Joan McAlpine!I wonder if her fellow “journalists” will start ignoring her down Central Quay way now.
Thanks for putting stuff on Twitpic Rev,felt sullied having to give the Record site hits!!
It’s not as if anyone was expecting a Yes prediction.
But the No side’s reaction of just laughing at the ‘Nats’ rather than taking this as an actual endorsement of the Union is rather telling.
There’s no point in Yes campaigners getting caught up in fighting the media – leave that to this site (which is also great for countering anti-independence stories) and go out and persuade people to look at the issues for themselves.
From the same page of the Record as the clip above:
“Wnat Life Follows Breakup?
I MANAGED to get to the Scottish Youth Theatre’s Now’s The Hour last week and wasn’t disappointed.
The mainly teenage cast devised the play themselves, which looks at hopes and fears for Scotland’s future.
I bumped into former Labour MSP councillor Frank McAveety afterwards – he’s on the board of SYT – and we both thought it was fantastic.
So the kids must have done something right to get opposite sides agreeing.
My favourite line was when one of the girls compared independence to some famous pop break-ups. Will it be acrimonious like S Club 7? Or more like Westlife, who decided to pursue their own projects but continued to be the best of friends?
Didn’t I once confess to being a secret Westlife fan?”
Another good item. Thank you.
“(We’re still, incidentally, trying to find out why Newsnight Scotland has been removed as of last night from the Sky EPG and absorbed into “normal” Newsnight, which prevents anyone from recording the Scottish show via a Sky+ box. We got no answer when we asked the “Sky Help Team” last night.)”
Possibly because nobody watched a hopelessly biased program that disparages the country it is supposedly reporting on on a nightly basis?
It’s like the “No” camp and the MSM are treating the Scottish electorate with contempt. All so arrogant.
Surely trouble for this strategy is that it will be very difficult for them to switch, if they ever do, to serious information and debating mode in the second half of 2014? The percentage of people disappointed with, or simply not believing, what they are told by media and “No” campaign will be even higher!
Here is a far more researched and journalistic take on what was an embarrassing spoof headline in an ever increasing mad scotsman editorial policy when it comes to who can win votes and why, and it only uses Labour’s 201o GE loss as an example of punditry gone awry, let alone the far better example of the Scottish 2011 Elections where the previous four years had the media telling us that labour’s Scottish branch had that election in the bag!
link to newstatesman.com
During the interview on GMS this morning, Mr Silver quoted that the gap between a No vote and a Yes vote ranged from 8% and 29%. What poll has the No vote 29% in front of the Yes vote ?. I think a certain Mr Curtis has also been feeding him a load of bull during his visit to Scotland.
Nate Silver isn’t dealing with an American election – he’s dealing with a cautious bunch of Scots who are currently receiving news via the BritNat media. He is behind in the polling – Stephen Noon pointed out that the DON’T KNOWS are ‘persuadable’ – in fact the SNP’s polling is in advance of any party in the world.
No, at this time it isn’t promising on the surface but a deeper study will reveal that a YES win is doable if we get onto the door steps. Counting on the BritNat media for ‘fair play’ is of course pointless, so face-to-face is decisive (posting leaflets is a complete waste of time if you don’t use that leaflet as a cold-calling card).
Silver is also comparing an American general election to a Scottish referendum – the US electoral system is an electoral college system that aims to win marginal seats every time and this system depends a lot on presidential charisma etc. He is entirely out of his depth in the Scottish debate and is spouting thoughtless received wisdom gibberish – in fact he’s doing exactly what he claims the US media usually does, he’s listening to what other people say rather than studying the polling itself in anything at to do with a sophisticated manner.
Quebec and Scotland: Comparing apples and oranges
The Quebec YES campaign was where the current Scottish YES campaign is at this time – it is a load of nonsense that the YES campaign was in front – it was trailing significantly and only in the last month did it almost win. The Quebec YES campaign did NOT have a team of top rate political campaigners and strategists like the SNP does. Events (cuts, Atos, looming NHS privatisation) are helping us and it looks very much like a Tory overall majority – that will help our vote.
It’s all to play for but we need to speak to people on the door steps – that’s the deal – just posting leaflets is a waste of time. Knock the door, canvass opinion, make sure you know what you want to say and say it. A leaflet should contain a few clear sentences and a picture; a canvasser should be able to answer the questions. It’s always a temptation to think that posting 10k leaflets means that 10k people read them – in reality, people take the leaflet and bucket it 9 times out of 10… so there it is – speak to the voters.
An interesting article in today’s New Statesman:
Will Nate Silver be wrong about Scotland, like he was wrong about Britain?
Rev,
Regards the Sky/EPG thing, I notice that, on Virgin and Freeview, the BBC 2 HD channel shows the full UK version of Newsnight whereas the SD channel shows, and lists, Newsnight Scotland separately. Could that be the answer for Sky?
Also don’t forget, all we have to do is talk someone round who is a no or don’t know voter, just one person each, if we all do that a 60% plus yes vote is in the bag. It’s as easy as that 🙂
Slightly ot, It’s time to redo my wee video on my youtube channel now that we have the wonderful result of only 18% would create a Union today, this will be included in the wee vid…perfect. the vid title is Johann Lamont Bought and Sold.
Heh, with over confidence on display like this, who needs help? I wonder if the nay sayers will bother getting out of bed on September 18th next year? They may just be in for a nasty shock when they wake up on the morning of September 19th.
Pity Joan didn’t ask or was it get to ask the question, why are the media, BBC included, so frightened of this poll they will not mention it?
‘Kaye’ discussing homelessness – contributor said, few minutes ago, that it felt like ‘some kind of identity parade waiting to get on-air’.
They’re rattled alright.
There is another danger If the MSM or BBC were to tell the truth.By now I will not believe them. I was told of this by a Czech friend when Pravda and Czech Rude Pravo published some “real,true” news no one believed it.Perhaps by mid 2014 enough Scots will know and believe they lie all the time.Didn’t Lord Reith warn Churchill about using the BBC for propaganda in saying when the war turns in our favour who will believe us?
BBC Scotland is now available in HD as a separate channel:
Freeview HD /YouView : Channel 101
Sky HD : Channel 143
Virgin Media : Channel 108
Freesat HD : Channel 108
I also found out some time ago, and verified just now that BBC’s iplayer app on ipad finds no matches for Newsnight Scotland, but only for Newsnight. If you search for BBC One Scotland or BBC Two Scotland, only a bare handful of programmes appear, none of which are news programmes.
We’re a little taken aback, though, by the extent to which it’s abandoned all pretence of impartiality or balance in the process.
It’s hard to get solid evidence of press bias, so nice of them to provide it really.
@Webcraft
BBC Scotland is now available in HD as a separate channel:
Sky HD : Channel 143 – For me this is BBC Alba
Newsnight Scotland has returned to the Sky Epg
Glitch not conspiracy then ?
I feel a bit sorry for Nate Silver too. He’s given an opinion because he was asked and based only on historic polling and a general view of how referendums go. He hasn’t claimed to have made any deep study of the situation and was probably as surprised as anyone that he ended up on the front page of the Scotsman!
Stu
If you were to make the poll up into a double sided A4 black and white nicely designed for maximum impact we could download it and print thousands of them for wide distribution
“I feel a bit sorry for Nate Silver too”
Yes. One big question I’d have if I was Better Together is how long will well known and respected public figures – especially international ones – tolerate being used as propaganda tools and mouthpieces for a media which is becoming ever more like Pravda? The BBC has already been taken to task over misrepresenting the words of foreign ministers.
Surely there will come a point when the UK media becomes a pariah internationally because anyone with a reputation to uphold will start to fear comments being taken out of context, or blown out of proportion into this kind of thing? Perhaps the couple of years timeframe isn’t enough to do this, but I don’t know. These are high profile, international figures they’re making look bad.
It’s good to know, beyond any remaining sliver of doubt, exactly where we stand.
But there wasn’t really any remaining sliver of doubt, was there?
Pushing for Call Kaye to cover the hugely newsworthy crowd-funded poll, with its very bad news for the pro-dependency campaign, is ultimately no different from sending the BBC in Scotland complaints about its biased coverage. And we all know how effective that is.
We are in the middle of a very one-sided and very serious propaganda war, with the state broadcaster in the vanguard of a mainstream media focussed on ensuring that the UK survives the severe existential threat represented by Yes Scotland, and that Scotland’s subjugated position within the UK state is preserved. No-one who has read Seamus Milne’s ‘The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners’ and understands how closely connected MI5 was with the media campaign against the NUM will doubt that in the face of this new, far greater threat to the British Establishment, the secret services are heavily involved in shaping the propaganda attacks and the denial of publicity to unhelpful stories that we see every week. We are not going to make inroads against that by sending emails to Call Kaye (which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be sending them).
As some people have been arguing for a while (link to newsnetscotland.com) the only viable way to counter the propaganda role played by the state broadcaster – by far the biggest opinion-shaper in Scotland – is not by complaints, or by appeals to journalistic integrity (sic), or by withholding the licence fee. Instead it is by undermining the credibility of the BBC in Scotland by systematically documenting its political bias, giving Yes Scotland, the SNP government and others detailed hard evidence of the propaganda role the state broadcaster plays. The linked article sets out how this might be done and how the findings might be used.
The crowded-funded poll has emphasised the people-power that Wings Over Scotland represents and the huge amount of goodwill and ambition out there waiting to be tapped into. Three suggestions on how this might be harnessed:
Fund independent academic research into the political coverage by the state broadcaster in Scotland as laid out in the linked article.
Rent billboard space to showcase key findings from your polls: ‘What are the media not telling you about independence?’ etc.
Commission more polls. The last one was dynamite and no matter that the press, with huge predictability, suppressed it. They are becoming weaker and sites like Wings stronger with every week that passes. And the poll is there to be picked up on by the Scottish Government and Yes Scotland in the future (as indeed Joan MacAlpine has already done).
As Xaracen says at 10.48 you cannot get live Scottish opt out programmes on IPlayer which is a disgrace as many folk now follow TV on the move so no Scottish political programmes can be accessed this way including First Minister’s Questions.
Here in Aberdeen I still have Newsnight Scotland in my prog guide on my Skybox. Maybe a fault with your one Rev.
“Here in Aberdeen I still have Newsnight Scotland in my prog guide on my Skybox. Maybe a fault with your one Rev.”
It was reported to me by others before I checked it for myself. Maybe a one-day glitch, will see.
@ Cath,
It’s hard to get solid evidence of press bias, so nice of them to provide it really
Spot on.
it’s a gift to our side, make no mistake, but the benefits won’t be felt just yet.
But they will!
has Dame Lamont commented on Mr Slivers opinions ?
david says:
13 August, 2013 at 5:28 pm
has Dame Lamont commented on Mr Slivers opinions ?
Funnily enough, following Newsnight Scotland’s attempt to tempt frau Lamont out of her lair and appear live to discuss Labour’s woes. Gordon Brewer said that ‘she wasn’t available , (in fact no one was) after being invited on’ Then curiously , later when they had the piece about David McLechie, they had frau Lamont on a pre recorded piece giving her respects etc to David McLetchie. She looked quite weird actually, would say she had that bunker pallor- honest you should check it out.