This is an extract from ‘The Press we deserve – Unionism and the mainstream media’, chapter four of ‘Disunited kingdom: how Westminster won a referendum but lost Scotland’, by Iain Macwhirter, published by Cargo Books on December 8 2014.
THERE is now a very large body of people in Scotland who are deeply disillusioned with the Press, to such an extent that they simply no longer believe what is written there.
Look at any of the internet sites related to the Yes [to Scots independence] campaign – We Are The 45%, Hope over Fear, Yes Alliance – and you will now find, not just criticism of mainstream media but a complete rejection of it, as if it were the propaganda arm of a foreign power.
For example, Alastair McIntosh, a professional journalist and Quaker, who has written for The Guardian and many other publications, says Scotland “requires a free media. One that is rooted in the Scottish people, in our democratic intellect – democratically accountable – and not subaltern to the forces of our internal and inner colonisation where money and fear trump justice and hope”.
This degree of alienation from the Press, shared by hundreds of thousands of Scottish voters, is unprecedented and should be causing alarm, not just in editorial offices, but in the political parties which are also losing their ability to communicate.
The alienated are finding their own ways of exchanging political intelligence through Facebook, Twitter and blogs. They are looking to websites like Wings Over Scotland, Newsnet Scotland, Bella Caledonia, National Collective and a host of other aggregators and websites for their news. Now, as a newspaper journalist, I find this, on the one hand, inspiring but, on the other, deeply disturbing.
The trouble with social media is that it tends to be an echo chamber, reflecting the views of the committed back to the committed.
The newspapers – like them or loathe them – remain important institutions of civil society which have journalistic resources and professional standards of objectivity and accuracy, though I have some difficulty persuading myself that these qualities were much in evidence during the referendum.
This lack of balance in the conventional Press has created a journalism of grievance based on the internet which has compounded the problem by aping some of the worst characteristics of the mainstream media.
There is little attempt to balance comment with factual reportage. At its best, the internet material is very good, and some of the best political writing in Scotland is now to be found on websites like Bella Caledonia from journalists like James Maxwell. But at its worst, it is poorly-researched, self-indulgent, opinionated drivel. There is too much of the fanzine about some of the new internet ventures and a lack of editorial discretion and balance.
It seems that, finally, people really are fulfilling the mission of the original digital evangelists and taking the media into their own hands in Scotland, much to the alarm of the conventional Press.
However, social media can be a platform for abuse, bullying, misinformation, malicious propaganda and political narcissism.
There has been a lack of restraint and objectivity and a casual use of extreme language. Some frankly appalling things have been said, for example urging older No voters to ‘hurry up and die’. Suggesting the BBC should be boycotted and everyone who appears on it denounced as a ‘scab’, is hugely counter-productive, as is the denigration of Labour supporters as ‘Red Tory scum’.
The task for the independence movement, if it is to succeed, must be to move beyond its own core constituency and address the anxieties of the middle-class, female and elderly voters who rejected independence. Dismissing them as naïve fools too old or dumb to understand is not going to win them to the cause.
There is a tendency in the alternative media to narrowness and sectionalism which needs to be curbed.
Newspaper editors scoff at what these organs provide and believe they cannot be matched by random individuals pontificating onto their laptops. However, I think the editors may soon be in for a shock, because this is no longer a matter of socially-challenged and isolated loners ejaculating onto Twitter.
Many of the New Media organisations are upping their game dramatically having discovered, not only that they now have audiences of hundreds of thousands, but that through crowd sourcing via websites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, they can also raise hundreds of thousands in hard cash from them.
… In a country where hundreds of thousands of people have simply given up on the conventional Press and media, these notably partisan and aggressive websites are becoming highly influential in shaping public opinion.
The New Media are not going away just because the referendum result was No.
Common Weal has recently hired four journalists to run an alternative news agency. The editor of Bella Caledonia, Mike Small, announced a hiring fair in which he has brought in professional broadcasters like ex-BBC presenter, Lesley Riddoch, environmental journalist Alastair McIntosh, and Mairi McFadden, one of the key figures behind the culture and arts organisation, National Collective.
Bella Caledonia also claims to have people covering arts, ecology, social justice and international politics. However, it’s not entirely clear how many of them will actually be paid. Other organisations, like Bateman Broadcasting, run by the former BBC presenter, Derek Bateman, have been challenging the broadcasters’ monopoly of TV and radio, and are also branching out into print.
There has been an explosion of initiatives on the internet which has altered the media landscape of Scotland forever.
