An open letter to the "mainstream" Scottish media

Murray Ritchie, the former Political Editor of the Herald newspaper has, since his retirement from front line journalism, spoken several times of the imbalance in the coverage of Scottish Politics. This lack of balanced reporting is almost unheard of in other parts of Europe or the wider World. In other, normal, independent countries the second largest political party almost invariably has one of the major newspapers on it's side. In Scotland not one newspaper provides fair coverage, nevermind shows bias towards the SNP, Scotland's second largest political party.

The reason for this is a simple one. Money. It has not been uncommon for the Labour Party to threaten to withdraw advertising revenue from newspapers who don't toe the "party line". The fact that money can be used to influence the ability of so-called independent publications to take a balanced and impartial line is extremely worrying. It says that we in Scotland we do not truly have freedom of the press.

Murray Ritchie referred to the advertising issue in the following terms:

"When I was Scottish political editor of The Herald and covering the 1999 Holyrood elections my paper was denied hundreds of thousands of pounds of advertising from Labour-supporting businesses because, in the words of a senior Labour figure who picked favoured media outlets, we were 'not sufficiently supportive'. This sort of political sectarianism is nothing new. For generations Scottish journalism has been littered with examples of independence-friendly writers finding life unusually complicated."

You can read the article in full on the Saltire Society website.

Another reason is careerism or party loyalty. It is well known that a number of prominent journalists and broadcasters in the political arena in Scotland are somewhat less than neutral in terms of their political preferences. The ability of some of the journalists to perform impartially is not called into question as often as it should be. A major reason for this is that at the end of the day the journalists write the news and to complain about them would only worsen the situation for the complainants.

Individual journalists can find themselves being pressurised by Labour spin doctors to carry the line they wish to see. It is said that they are threatened with being denied stories in the future if they fail to co-operate. I would say the following to these journalists: You have made the spin doctors what they are. They have no power but that which you grant them. If you tell them where they can shove their stories you may have to work that bit harder to discover your own scoops but that is no bad thing. Scotland no longer has a single decent investigative journalist. There is so much sleaze to uncover and yet nobody in the Scottish Press Corps has the ability or the drive to go out and find it. They just rely on being spoon fed by the Labour Party. It is lazy journalism at best and a deriliction of duty at worst.