WHAT are we, as journalists, to make of the coverage of the Scottish referendum campaign?
Even casual observers in Scotland will have noticed that the campaign has been running for the last 18 months.
Only the occasional article – The Economist’s infamous ‘Skintland’ front cover from last year comes to mind – seemed to have sunk through the metropolitan mindset of what we used to call ‘Fleet Street’.
Suddenly, less than two weeks ago, a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times put Yes in the lead. And Scotland became the dominant story of UK politics.
Scottish journalists will have been bemused and frustrated by the assumptions made, and clichés uttered, by some London colleagues as they shuttled north, apparently oblivious to the fact that the campaign had been running at all.
I cannot predict the result – my allmediascotland.com deadline means I am writing this as the polls open – but one thing is for sure, and that is that the media has been through a bruising but exhilarating period.
Like it or not, the Scottish media may never be the same again as a result of this referendum. Here has been Scotland’s biggest-ever political battle, a story on our doorstep.
If Yes wins, it will have been with the support of just one Scottish newspaper. This tells us something about the industry today and something of a failure to connect with its readers.
If No wins, the polls still suggest that newspapers have been out of step with anything up to half of their market.
Changed days indeed from the devolution campaigns, when newspapers just about marched in step with readers’ voting intentions.
Those once easily derided as the ‘nutters’ who battled in the comments’ section of The Herald or Scotsman websites have been joined during this campaign by thousands more on social media, or on openly partisan websites such as NewsnetScotland, Bella Caledonia or Wings Over Scotland.
‘Wings’, as its supporters know it, raised more than £100,000 in crowdfunding, boasts by far the largest number of online hits, and produced a pro-Yes ‘fact book’ (The Wee Blue Book) in its hundreds of thousands of copies. If nothing else, that demonstrates a significant appetite that the media has not fed. The media has struggled to cope with this new digital environment.
Now, I know it might seem to be stretching it to suggest that the referendum campaign has its parallels with the recent paroxysms of Scottish football, but bear with me!
In football, and particularly the Rangers’ financial situation of recent years, significant stories have broken online rather than in print or conventional broadcast. Bloggers, ‘citizen journalists’ and the like, have uncovered news that someone – somewhere – wanted kept quiet.
While the online world can be more fleet of foot than conventional journalism, and is undeniably powerful, it is also much more partisan. Most of the Rangers’ stories that broke online came via supporters’ websites (even Celtic-leaning, rival ones). Rightly or wrongly, the sports media found itself accused of bias, incompetence or an inability to uncover stories that didn’t come from conventional sources.
So we have witnessed the same with the referendum.
In the case of Rangers, and now with the referendum, the NUJ has felt obliged to issue a statement condemning the harassment of journalists as they go about their business.
Scotland Organiser, Paul Holleran, is quoted saying that reporters have been intimidated and put under pressure by people on both sides.
There are some fundamentals at work here. We have witnessed high-profile coverage of two major news stories (Rangers and the referendum) about which passions run high. In both cases, they have dominated the headlines and fanned feverish speculation, one way or another.
When a group feels disenfranchised from media coverage, it seeks a channel for its frustration. The internet provides that channel, where previously there was virtually nothing. The response time can be instant, sometimes too instant as several Twitter users have discovered when the police came knocking at their door.
Although they come from very different viewpoints, it is perhaops no coincidence that Rangers supporters and Yes campaigners are the two main groups to have staged protests at BBC Scotland headquarters in Glasgow. They have seen themselves as being at the centre of a storm, victims of bias, angry at… something.
In their passions, some forget that journalists are citizens too. Anyone who has worked in a newsroom will know that politics and football tend to stir up passionate debate, just like anywhere else.
The BBC is a very ‘broad church’, with more than 20,000 employees. Groups may have legitimate and fiercely-held opinions about the broadcaster, its management or the opinions of some high-profile presenters.
But sweeping allegations of bias help no-one.
Many Scottland-based journalists will have been pained to witness the metropolitan nonsense that has been spouted in London-based newspapers or on the airwaves, particularly during the last fortnight of the campaign.
It is safe to assume that some Sunday Herald journalists will not agree with the paper’s strong pro-Yes line. Similarly, some Daily Record journalists won’t have liked their paper when it has appeared to support Better Together. Kevin McKenna, pro-Yes Observer columnist, worked previously for the Daily Mail, and I doubt that he agrees with that paper’s editorial line.
I hope we have a serious, positive debate about the future of the Scottish media, post-referendum. Newspapers have had a very hard time in recent years, as proprietors struggle to cope with the web, declining advertising income and an uncertain future.
This has resulted undeniably in a decline. It is not that today’s journalists lack talent. I’ve read some great pieces in Scottish papers recently. But newsrooms are expected to cover more with fewer staff, on smaller budgets. That has an impact on their ability to properly investigate stories or spend more time working in greater depth. It has also allowed the ‘spin doctors’ to wield a disproportionate influence, and not only in politics.
Bloggers have done a fine job too. A few of them have arrived online from conventional journalism. Some of arrived from a frustration with the much-derided ‘mainstream media’.
But many blogs are partisan. You love them or hate them, depending on your own opinion. Post-referendum, it will be interesting to see how a few adapt to the changed environment, post-Yes or post-No.
To me a good, opinionated blog should complement a healthy news media. Good bloggers are like good newspaper columnists, the people who add light and shade, sometimes with trenchant comment.
They should not be seen as a direct replacement for impartial, well-written and professional news reporting that helps to hold the powerful to account. We need to work out ways of ensuring the latter, as it is the foundation of modern democracy.
Maurice Smith is a journalist, producer and consultant. He spent more than 20 years in newspapers and at the BBC before setting up TVI Vision.
