The Neutral Newspaper my response to Grouse Beater

Grouse Beater has written an excellent article today called The Neutral Newspaper and it is well worth a read, I was also going to comment and decided that I probably couldn’t do it justice in just a comment so here are my thoughts on the article.

The article asks if it is possible to have an impartial press in Scotland, for me the answer is no but let me explain why I think that. Most of us, or probably all of us on the YES side of the constitutional debate, have serious problems with the press and wider media in Scotland and the UK. I saw the tweet by the Scotsman journalist Paris Gourtsoyannis regarding Broadcast Scotland being allowed to ask a question at Nicola Sturgeons daily briefing. While he had a near melt down on twitter, I actually thought it was a very small step in the right direction, a very small step indeed while summing up the print journalists in Scotland in far too many cases.

I have pretty much accepted now that the media we have within the mainstream is bias to the British State, it is owned by billionaires who will stop at nothing to reinforce their view of the world and that view is a free market, low standard, low wage, reinforcement of the British narrative, the colonial narrative. I have accepted that, as many of us did at least since 2014 where we all saw the naked assault on our democracy, our right to chose, our right to information and our possible naive expectation to honesty and fair treatment. Many of us prior to 2014 did not trust the British state but I don’t think any of us expected the extent that the media would go to be complicit in the lies and deception of the British establishment, even I was shocked, especially by the BBC.

Now there are arguments for the union, I can’t think of many, but there are arguments for the United Kingdom and I accept that as things stand around 50% of people in Scotland support that view, I don’t agree with them in any shape or form but I accept their right to hold that opinion and to vote that way if they so chose. Where my problems begins with the media is their deceit,

not the deceit of the bias narrative around independence, not their failure to be impartial and honest, not their inability to hold the union to account to the same standard they hold the independence movement or the SNP. I have accepted that as far as they are concerned Scotland is shite and Britain is good, that an independent Scotland would be a basket case and the United Kingdom a Utopia, that uniquely Scotland alone in the world cannot and must not become an independent sovereign state again in it’s own right. I get that but where I struggle with people like Paris Gourtsoyannis is their pretence at being that impartial journalist, name one proper journalist within the mainstream, I can’t. What we get are people masquerading as journalists but writing opinion pieces, openly hostile to both the independence movement and the SNP but hiding behind impartiality and entitlement. They are presstitutes in every sense of the word. They get paid to write what they are told.

Now we all have to pay our bills, they do also but at the very least they could give us the decency of just being honest in their view of either their political stance or what their employers want them to say or lose their job. The media in the UK overall are beyond saving, I am not even a fan of the National all that much and get most of my news and opinion through blogs, social media or searching multiple sources to try and find the middle ground so no, I don’t believe we will ever have that decent media in Scotland, or the UK, or even the world for that matter. Fake news is the in term but we have always been fed fake news by people like Paris, it just took us a while to see thought it. Broadcasting Scotland is a breath of fresh air because it is done by enthusiastic, intelligent, considered people who are not beholden to anyone in the media. Paris doesn’t like that not because they are not ‘proper’ journalists but because they threaten the likes of him with their honest delivery and honest opinion.

 

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