#5. The Sun pulled an article about the Health Secretary’s complacency…during a pandemic
Despite being months into the Coronavirus pandemic crisis, when frontline workers are still not being routinely tested and PPE shortages are still troubling, the Scottish Health Secretary, Jeane Freeman, had time in her schedule to tweet she would chase up ASDA for Nationalist journalist Angela Haggerty’s groceries.
This, rightly, attracted much scorn and derision. The Sun ran a perfectly legitimate article, which they then deleted, leaving little trace that this story ever existed - an airbrush job the Ministry of Truth would be proud of.
The only traces this ever happened are a blog post and some badly Photoshopped memes of Jeane standing in front of a podium with ASDA branding on it.
If that wasn’t enough, The Herald was ‘encouraged’ to change a headline the SNP took objection to, altering ‘Care home staff blamed for Scotland’s deadly wave of infections’ to ‘Staff are primary route for deadly virus into Scotland’s care homes’ – because they didn’t like how the paper reported the news.
For Jeane Freeman, her PPE is ‘a Poison Pen Epistle’ drafted to a newspaper editor, then ‘Whoops!’ is slapped on the story - just like a supermarket yellow-label - discounting something that’s deemed past its best.
#4. Sarah Smith dogpiled for saying Nicola Sturgeon 'Enjoyed' powers over lockdown
BBC journalist, Sarah Smith, received a nippy response from the First Minister because she objected to the line “It has been obvious that Nicola Sturgeon has enjoyed the opportunity to set her own lockdown rules and not have to follow what is happening in England and other parts of the UK.”
Always quick to take offence, Nicola said she never “enjoyed” anything less, after which Smith apologised.
Then she apologised again. Then again, even more grovelling than apology #1 and apology #2. Still not enough to pacify bullying Cybernats, of course, having smelled blood like a famished piranha.
Ian Murray MP pointed towards “a cultish mob of silencers” that “paralyse criticisms of Sturgeon”.
A fair comment, but I’ll simply point to the Google Dictionary:
Enjoy - /ɪnˈdʒɔɪ,ɛnˈdʒɔɪ/ - 2. possess and benefit from eg: The Nationalists enjoy powers of veto over any news article which portrays them in a negative light
#3. Here’s to you Mr Robinson
‘The BBC’s political editor during the Indyref era, Nick Robinson, compared protests against his fair and balanced coverage of the independence referendum to the treatment of media in Vladimir Putin’s Russia’, reported The Guardian.
The crime Mr Robinson committed? -- raising the Royal Bank of Scotland’s contingency plans to relocate its HQ to London in the event of a vote for separation and questioning Alex Salmond on what impact this would have on the economy if Scotland voted Yes. In a classic move, Salmond didn’t answer the question and turned focus onto Robinson’s reporting. Result, a mob of flag-wavers outside the BBC’s offices in Pacific Quay.
Robinson himself hit out at “intimidation and bullying” (there’s that word again – bullying).
Is there any other country in the liberal, democratic, Western world where a journalist can be hounded by a baying mob outside their place of work because they don’t like you doing your job properly. Welcome to Nationalist Scotland.
#2. Made the Beeb launch a new channel which has (almost) ZERO viewers
Here at The Majority, after two weeks of existence, our readership is already double the number of viewers of the BBC’s new Scotland channel, with their prime output The Nine. Named after the time it goes out at, not the number of people who tune in – that’s actually a little more at 5,000 (lost) souls.
Nicola Sturgeon herself called for a radical reform of the BBC back in 2015, and the creation of a new, dedicated Scotland-only channel, which, ostensibly, nobody wanted, except those with a political agenda.
The channel cost £32m to set up, which could have been easily ploughed into good quality, homegrown content and, of course, BBC 1 Scotland’s current Reporting Scotland news output, but that would not be on-message enough for the Nationalists (I refer you to the previous point).
Journalism professor and former BBC editor, Tim Luckhurst, told the Scottish Daily Mail:
The figures are deplorable, but they simply confirm the central flaw in the entire project; there was never a shred of audience demand for it. It was launched in a forlorn attempt to please the SNP, a classic example of why the BBC should never bow to political bullying.
Indeed.
#1. When STV said 'No' to top journalist and commentator Stephen Daisley
Nobody knows fully what Pete Wishart & John Nicolson said to STV executives (Nicolson was a member of Westminster’s Culture, Media & Sport Committee at the time), but not long after, Stephen Daisley – one of Scotland’s foremost political commentators, a man for whom a pen is not merely mightier than the sword but Excalibur itself – was demoted as editor-at-large of their digital output; told he could only editing the page, or write for it, but not both. He resigned shortly after.
Think on that for a minute. The government of the day influenced a national broadcaster to take an internal decision on one of their rising stars because they didn’t like how he reported news.
Whatever happened to the Freedom of Press in this country? Presumably, the field in Scotland is so small, journalists and execs will do whatever it takes for a quiet life, because there aren’t many other employment prospects in Scottish broadcasting.
Nobody can say it better than the man himself:
SNP tried to silence me. And their freedom to bully, vilify and malign is a chilling glimpse of one-party Scotland.
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