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Showing posts with label The Herald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Herald. Show all posts

Friday 17 June 2011

Gerry Braiden and the Herald

Gerry Braiden asks me to acknowledge his contribution to the exposure of the abuse of ALEOs by Glasgow City Council, and the regular coverage he has given to the minority SNP group on GCC.

I am happy to do both, and freely acknowledge his undoubted contribution to revealing the full extent of this patronage system, which yielded significant and in my view grossly disproportionate rewards to individuals chosen by GCC, and to the very recent ending of this pernicious practice - a blot on Scotland’s democracy.

I also accept, and am grateful for the regular platform he offered – and offers - to SNP councillors as a minority group on GCC, who otherwise might have had found difficulty in securing a media platform for their views.

If my focus on egregious abuse of the rights of the Dalmarnock families and businesses, and the appalling treatment of the disabled users and their carers over the Accord Centre closure, in the name of progress and the Commonwealth Games, have on occasion deflected me fully from recognising the above aspects of Gerry Braiden’s wider contribution as a journalist, I regret the omissions and happily take this opportunity to make amends.

In an extended private email correspondence with Gerry Braiden over the last day, a number of important issues about the relationship of the users of alternative media and professional journalists have been raised – a relationship that is increasingly significant to our democracy, and one that is increasingly blurred and misunderstood, occasionally by myself.

I intend to explore these issues in a general context later, without any breach of confidentiality: our correspondence has simply acted as a prompt to ideas and views that I have held for sometime.

A gentleman of the press - Gerry Braiden

I received an email from Gerry Braiden of the Herald yesterday. It was clearly not intended for publication, as it carried the standard warning on Herald emails at the bottom, as follows -

This document is private and confidential.
All property, copyright and other rights in it and its contents belong to Newsquest Media Group Limited.
It must not be read, copied, disclosed or otherwise used without Newsquest’s authorisation. Newsquest may exercise its legal rights and remedies in the event of any such unauthorised use.
Newsquest Media Group Limited.
Registered in England, number 3105111.
Registered office: 58 Church Street, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 8DP

I am not sure of the legal validity of such a restriction, but I will respect it anyway, as I do with any email sent to me that is not specifically intended for publication or quotation.

I would, however, say to Gerry Braiden that if he wishes to submit the email as a comment, I will be happy to publish it verbatim in my blog. I commented on Wednesday on a report of his in the Herald, and if he wishes a right of reply to this, I will readily offer him that right.

Wednesday's blog on Jaconelli case and the Accord campaign

However, one statement he makes about a third party and the police does make me think I should seek a legal opinion before I do so, and I do feel free to raise this in confidence with the legal adviser of that third party.

If Gerry Braiden or Newsquest Media Group’s legal department have any reservations or queries about this approach and intention, they should contact me immediately.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

The NUJ, the Herald and the freedom of the Press

The Herald carried a letter yesterday from Paul Holleran, NUJ Organiser calling for the press to hold the Trump organisation to account, a call one might have thought redundant, since the press and media have never let up on Trump since he first appeared on the Aberdeen scene.

Trump, in fact, is a popular target for the  press for the following reasons - he is a loud American with a bad hairdo, some risible political opinions, and not the most diplomatic of men. But more significantly, his project on the Menie Estate is a safe distance from the central belt of Scotland, where most of the media is centred, it is in Alex Salmond’s heartland, and because of the history of the project, it can usefully be laid at the First Minister’s doorstep.

But the press and media, with the honourable exception of the Scottish Sun, have carefully either avoided, underreported or misreported and misrepresented a much more egregious scandal involving a large property development in the central belt - the Glasgow East regeneration/Commonwealth Games project, especially as it affects Dalmarnock and its people.

The reasons for this neglect are fairly obvious - there is no single convenient foreign villain, there is little that can be presented sentimentally about rolling sand dunes and ecology, and most importantly, the ‘villain’  is the powerful monolith of Glasgow City Council, a Labour hegemony that up until May 2010 had intimate links with the UK Government, and still has links with a powerful Labour opposition party. The ordinary people of Dalmarnock can safely be sneered at, jeered at and ignored by the complacent Glasgow professional classes - a much safer option than offending the powerful.

This ‘villain’ can call on the Glasgow Police, the full resources of a council workforce and the draconian power of the law when necessary - and they have used all three to crush the hopes of the Dalmarnock families and businesses.

And it exercises powerful patronage through its political and commercial networks. GCC can make you rich; it has made many speculative property developers rich - or richer than they already were - through the settlements it reached with them over land purchase deals, all perfectly legal and a matter of public record, for those who take the trouble to look.

As far as my recollection serves me, the Herald has never published a letter of mine on the Jaconelli case - and I have sent many. I sent another yesterday (text below) - it has not appeared today.

The Herald, however, has no problem in using the services of Gerry Braiden today to attack the First Minister for supporting the Save the Accord campaign, a Dalmarnock disabled centre threatened with closure by GCC, obliquely accusing him of bowing to political pressure, and ‘kowtowing’ to the Save the Accord campaign. Of course, nothing the Labour-controlled GCC do is ever remotely political in the eyes of the Herald, and they fight only with the “sword of truth and trusty shield of fair play”.

A Google search, or Herald site search will give anyone interested a fair idea of how Gerry Braiden reported the Jaconelli case. It would be fair to say that neither he nor the Herald have been enthusiastic advocates of the cause of the Dalmarnock families and businesses, but have always managed to faithfully reflect the position of Glasgow City Council.

Glasgow councillors up the Eely-ALEO!

UNPUBLISHED LETTER TO The Herald - 14th June 2011

Paul Holleran, NUJ Scottish Organiser (Letters 14th June) calls for a 'healthy, functioning Scottish press' to hold powerful people to account over the behaviour of the Trump organisation in Aberdeen. I agree wholeheartedly.
  But where was the Scottish press when ordinary families and small businesses were being forced out of their homes and livelihoods in Dalmarnock by Glasgow City Council to make way for the Athletes' Village for the Commonwealth Games. Where were they when the Jaconelli family were faced by 80 police, 20 riot vans and masked council workers with sledgehammers as they mounted a last, defiant protest against eight years of derisory offers and legal intimidation. The answer is that they initially gave inadequate and often wildly inaccurate coverage, virtually a slanted re-hash of GCC leaks and press releases, and only at the final brutal end of the siege of Ardenlea Street to behaviour that would have disgraced a totalitarian regime in other parts of the world.
  One newspaper, the Scottish Sun, actually engaged with the story, with the facts, and with Margaret Jaconelli and the other families, and actually had a journalist inside the house as the combined forces of municipal power broke into the last refuge of a hard-working Glasgow grandmother and her terrified family and friends.

  Unlike the Trump homeowners, none of these Dalmarnock owner-occupiers were refusing to sell their homes or businesses - they simply wanted to negotiate a fair price for having their lives uprooted. But they were denied this and subjected to arbitrary and unrealistic valuations under compulsory purchase legislation, and because they refused to be intimidated into accepting grossly inadequate settlements, are now homeless and virtually penniless, all that they had worked for destroyed in the name of progress. All of this happened in parallel with speculative property developers being allowed to negotiate and reap astronomical profits, in some cases for doing little more than opportunistically acquiring vacant lots and re-selling them for profits that reached into millions of pounds for modest investments of a few hundreds of thousands of pounds.
  It's not too late, Paul Holleran, for the Scottish Press to start holding powerful people to account, and they can start in the City of Glasgow, where the HQ of the NUJ is situated, with a much bigger story than the Trump story, and a much more egregious injustice to get their journalistic teeth into. Or are there some people who are just too powerful to be held to account? Is it just easier to go for a cardboard villain from another country with a bad hairdo?

Tuesday 14 June 2011

The gentlemen of the Press - again …

The Scotsman backed the SNP just before the May 2011 election on the basis that they had the best team and were best equipped to lead the country, which the Scotsman, despite its title, had to reluctantly concede was called Scotland, not Great Britain or the UK.  In this, the paper was running behind the manifest thinking of the Scottish people, as revealed by the rapidly changing opinion polls. In a declining market for print journalism, it doesn’t do to back a loser, as the Scottish Daily Record and the Sunday Mail are painfully discovering.

But the Scotsman doesn’t believe in an independent Scotland, and as they awakened on May 6th to the full implications of the SNP’s historic victory, the magnitude of its majority and the implications of its renewed and strengthened mandate, the unionist panic started. It rapidly shifted gear to combat this new threat, adopting an approach to news reporting pioneered by the Herald, and already used by Scotland on Sunday, that of news bias by headline.

This involves taking a story, often a low-key report by a government body, economic think-tank or obscure, dry-as-dust professional commentator, often an academic, and selecting out of context a comment or fact and blowing it up into an anti-SNP, usually anti-independence headline and sub-header. The news report that follows in the small print then goes on to present a reasonably factual and objective account of what was actually said, thus paying lip service to objective new reporting. This approach is as old as journalism, and can be tracked all the way back to the Hearst yellow press in the United States.

Now it may be argued that this is simply the realities of headline writing, and that all newspapers play this game to sell papers in  highly competitive, challenging marketplace, and that of necessity, something punchy must be plucked from the news report to highlight content and draw readers. Indeed they do, but it is what is plucked and how it is presented that distinguishes the tabloid from the broadsheet, to use a now-outmoded term for quality newspapers. By what they pluck shall ye know them, and there appear to be a bunch of unionist pluckers in the Scotsman editorial team in these heady, referendum lead-up times.

Lest I seem unfair the the Scotsman, let me say that by giving regular space to a fine journalist, Joan McAlpine, who is also a prominent SNP supporter and who is now an MSP, they do offer a trenchant nationalist voice from a respected Scottish commentator to their readers. On the other side, they offer a platform to Michael Kelly, a man of whom prudence demands that I personally say little, for fear of attracting m’learned friends, except to comment that Joan McAlpine is miles better than the former Lord Provost of Glasgow.

Is there a model for me of what the Scottish Press should be, what it could be? Is there a model for me of what a Scottish political editor could be, of what political editors should be?

Yes, there is - the Scottish edition of The Times and Angus Macleod. I confess to having neglected and overlooked this fine newspaper in the past, associating The Times vaguely with its reputation as the Thunderer, with thoughts of Holmes and Watson perusing it over tea and muffins in Baker Street. From typography and layout to content, both news and features, this is an admirable example of what a newspaper should be, what a Scottish newspaper should be, and what the true values of news and political journalism could and should be.

Something’s gotta give, however, as the old song says -

I can’t afford the luxury of three daily newspapers. I’ve abandoned the i, the Independent’s inspired new entrant, after an initial infatuation with it, because of the almost total absence of any acknowledgement of the existence of Scotland and Scottish affairs, in which it mirrors The Independent’s editorial policy. And now, either The Scotsman or the Herald must be relegated to online reading.

Since my wife likes the Herald, and since it still has the finest Letters page of any newspaper, I fear The Scotsman must be the one to enter cyberspace. In these straightened times, £300 a year, or thereabouts, ain’t to be sneezed at …


Monday 11 April 2011

The Herald hits a new low in political reporting - the Politics Show Leader’s debate

As I begin to write this, I ask myself two questions -

Why do I still buy the Herald?

Does anything the Herald says about Scottish life still matter?

The answer to the first question is residual loyalty to what was once a great Scottish newspaper - one that I have read for over fifty years - and for occasional superb contributions from  Ian Bell, Harry Reid and Iain Macwhirter.

The answer to the second is almost certainly no, given its declining circulation, its almost complete abandonment of basic journalistic standards, especially in news reporting, and the exponentially growing of television and the new media.

But, with the nagging feeling that I am wasting time that could be more productively used elsewhere, I feel that I must comment on today’s page 7 report on yesterday’s Politics Show Scotland leaders debate, chaired by Isabel Fraser.

In yesterday’s blog, I offered clips from this debate and my commentary, which are opinion, from the perspective and allegiance of a committed Scottish nationalist and SNP supporter. But the televised debate itself is a matter of visual and audio record, available to anyone who wishes to view it and draw a conclusion.

The Herald offers two pieces on page 7, one by Robin Dinwoodie, which is presented as news by the Herald’s chief political correspondent, and an opinion piece - Comment by Brian Currie.

The headline for the Dinwoodie piece was typical of the Herald’s style of bias by headline - selective and unrepresentative of the debate - Salmond under attack for fighting anti-secrecy law.

In an objective news report, it might have been Holyrood Party Leader’s in vigorous debate on The Politics Show, but if I adopt the Herald’s style, it also might have been Opposition Party Leader’s under attack for their opposition to minimum pricing for alcohol, or even Iain Gray under attack for blocking minimum pricing, or perhaps Salmond and Scott attack Goldie and Gray’s proposals for minimum sentencing for knife crime.

My preferred headline, adopting the Herald’s modus operandi, might have been Holyrood Opposition Leaders fight like ferrets in a sack while First Minister remains calm and objective.

Dinwoodie devoted the first 450 words or so of a 750 word article to the freedom of information question referred to in the headline, which essentially involved the Government trying to protect the principle of civil servants offering advice in confidence to ministers, something supported and defended by every government of whatever political colour. As the FM pointed out, the actual costs of an LIT, far from being a secret, had been announced to Parliament by John Swinney. In spite of the opposition parties and the Herald’s desperate attempts to make a story out of this, we may be reasonably be certain that the voters won’t give a damn about such arcane points of government.

What they do manifestly care about is the blight of alcohol and violence in their communities and what their government is doing to protect them, the issues that were in fact central to Sunday’s debate, but which Dinwoodie and the Herald glided smoothly over, as well they might, since they showed the poverty and expediency of the opposition to the SNP’s minimum pricing proposal, and the Labour and Tory simplistic and unworkable proposals for minimum sentencing for knife crime.

And then we have Brian Currie’s little opinion piece. His general theme was that much of the debate was an unedifying squabble, and I agree wholeheartedly with that.

But in his third paragraph, he says -

Regrettably, Tavish Scott, Iain Gray and to a slightly lesser extent Alex Salmond and Annabel Goldie continually tried so hard to drown each other out during the BBC Politics show yesterday that many of their exchanges had all the merits of a bar-room rammy.

The inclusion of Alex Salmond in this bad behaviour is, quite simply, untrue, and a blatant distortion of the facts, as anyone watching this programme would testify. He was an oasis of calm and courtesy throughout, and despite being continually interrupted by the others, refrained almost entirely from joining in, although he could not resist a couple of pertinent and amused comments as Goldie and Gray fought like ferrets in a sack. Iain Gray, repeating his lamentable performance on the STV Leaders Debate, continually interrupted the First Minister.

But Currie, forced to comment on the embarrassing and at times chaotic behaviour of the three opposition leaders, - which was there for Scottish viewers to see - felt he had to tar the First Minister with the same brush, because the quiet dignity, courtesy and objectivity of Alex Salmond throughout doesn’t sit well with the caricature of him that the Herald wants to present.

What Scottish viewers saw - and can see again - was a microcosm of what has gone on in Holyrood for four years - an expedient, policy-bereft opposition, ill-informed by their masters in Westminster, engaging in blind, opportunistic opposition to almost anything the SNP government tried to do, only held together by Alex Salmond’s mastery of the politics of minority government and his statesmanlike recognition of where the real interests of the Scottish people lie.

Again, a poor, poor show by the Herald.

But this newspaper matters less and less to the people of Scotland, as demonstrated by its inexorably declining circulation, and the people have found their own channels to the truth, something rarely present in the Scottish print media today.

Saturday 19 March 2011

Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party Conference deconstructed by a separatist - me!

I have just read the transcript of Ed Miliband’s speech to the Scottish Labour Party Conference. It reveals an interesting, but entirely predictable set of priorities of the London-based - and led - Labour Party.

Reluctantly summoning up my old work study and quality control techniques, I endured the utter tedium of counting the key word references in this speech, which revealed that, as far as Miliband Minor and his shadow Cabinet are concerned, the Scottish Parliamentary election on May 5th is simply a vehicle for getting London Labour re-elected at the next general election.

(For the masochists among you, I have appended at the end of this blog the word sequence as it emerged in time terms through the speech . I will understand if your eyes glaze over …)

Today’s Herald headline summarises the recent opinion poll results as follows -

Labour narrowly ahead of SNP in election poll

Even the giant amoebic brains of Iain Gray’s campaign managers can grasp the significance of this, with the SNP rapidly narrowing the gap, just 4 points behind Labour in the constituency vote and 3 points behind on the list vote. Allied to the fact that Alex Salmond is the most popular politician in Scotland by far, and Iain Gray is almost invisible, Scottish Labour know who they have to beat on May 5th. The Scottish Tories remain an endangered species in Scotland, at 12% constituency and 13% for the list votes, and represent no threat, except in terms of alliances in a minority government or even a hung Parliament.

But Ed Miliband clearly sees them as the enemy, because he mentions them no less than 25 times in his speech. The SNP, in contrast, are mentioned just four times and the LibDems get six mentions.

Little Ed isn’t fighting the Scottish election, he is fighting the next general election for London Labour, and the Scots are just cannon fodder for that battle.

It takes Ed quite some time to get to mentioning Scotland in his opening, because he is worried that David Cameron is strutting his Britain-as-a-global-player stuff on an international stage of sorts over Libya, and has given a pretty good imitation of a statesman. It just ain’t fair - Maggie had her war, Blair had his wars, and now Ed is being denied his war, and the PR and electoral edge that violence abroad gives to UK Prime Ministers.

So after a token “It’s a pleasure to be here at the Scottish conference”, he opens with Libya, and the topic centres go as follows -

Libya, internationalist party, overseas aid,the Balkans, international community, Colonel Gadaffi, armed forces, possible combat, Libya, Libya, Middle East, Middle East, Palestine, Israel, Palestinian people, then at last - Scottish election.

The agenda is clear. The UK - and the British Prime Minister - only haves real identities through foreign policy and their capacity to intervene anywhere across the globe in the affairs of other nations: Scotland is there to slavishly feed that identity by a disproportionate blood sacrifice of its young men and women, as it has done since the Union of 1707, and the faster they contribute to defeating the Tories and letting Ed occupy the role of Commander-in-Chief, the better.

Of course, given the annoying propensity of the Scots to want to run their own affairs, including their foreign policy, and to decide how and when they put their armed forces in harm’s way, Ed Miliband has to wrench himself back to his ostensible purpose for being in Scotland - to support his puppet Scottish party, and the man they unfortunately chose to lead them, Iain Gray.

(I have no doubt whatsoever that an independent Scotland would have played its full, voluntary part in supporting the UN against Gadaffi, as a sovereign country within Europe.)

The term independence dare not be used in the Scottish context, so Miliband uses separatism, in the fond unionist belief that it is pejorative. (I am more than happy to be called a separatist!)

Miliband  is also forced summon up a concept that is all but invisible to the Scottish electorate - Iain Gray’s leadership.

Iain Gray’s leadership is a kind of dark matter in the Scottish Labour Party - it ought to be there, it is difficult to explain his selection as leader if it is not there, but no one can find it. Perhaps if Iain Gray was passed at high speed though the Large Hadron Collider by Professor Brian Cox, a particle of that hitherto invisible leadership might fleetingly become visible - even a charisma particle - Gray’s Bosun -might flicker for a moment before it too vanished into the primeval soup of Holyrood Labour.

But the first mention of the Gray leadership particle is speedily followed by the following terms in quick succession - Tory Threat, Scotland, Poll Tax, Scotland, Thatcher, The Tories, Scotland, The Tories, The Tories, The Tories …

And so it goes on - and on - for some time, alternating Scotland and Iain Gray’s leadership as if they bore any connection to reality.

Then, way down the list and well into the speech, the SNP makes its fleeting appearance - four times only, in contrast to the Tories 25 mentions, with two reference to Alex Salmond. The tired old Arc of Prosperity argument is trotted out yet again, with gratuitous insults for Ireland and a great silence on Norway.

Labour heroes of the distant and more recent past - Keir Hardie, Donald Dewar and John Smith - are given a reverential mention, all of whom are spinning rapidly in their graves at the contemptible thing their beloved Party has become under the current crop of expedient nuclear warmongers.

Read the full speech if you can. But here is the list in sequence - judge for yourselves -

ED MILIBAND

It is a pleasure to be here at the Scottish Conference.

Libya

internationalist party

overseas aid

the Balkans

international community

Colonel Gaddafi

armed forces

possible combat

Libya

Libya

Middle East

Middle East

Palestinians

Israel

Palestinian people

Scottish election

Scotland

Westminster

Tories

Holyrood

Scottish people

Tories

Tories

Scottish Labour party

Iain Gray’s leadership

Tory Threat

Scotland

Poll Tax

Scotland

Thatcher

The Tories

Scotland

The Tories

The Tories

The Tories

Labour

Tories

Scotland

Iain as First Minister

Labour

Scotland

Iain as First Minister

Iain's leadership

Scotland

Labour

Iain's leadership

Scotland

Scotland

Britain’s

Scotland

Tories

SNP

SNP

Scotland

Tory threat

Scotland

Tories

United Kingdom

Conservative-led government

London

the Tories

Scotland alone

separatism

Europe

Scotland

Iceland

Ireland

Alex Salmond’s

Arc of Prosperity

Scotland

Britain

Tories

Westminster

Holyrood

Scotland

Tories

Tories

Tory Government

England’s

England

Tory manifesto

Liberal Democrats

Nick Clegg

Britain

Liberal democrats

Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrat

UK

Tories

Scottish

Welsh Assembly

Westminster

Labour

Labour

the Tories

Labour

United Kingdom

Scotland

David Cameron

Liberal Democrats

SNP

Tories

Alex Salmond

separatism

Tories

Labour

Labour

Edinburgh

Scotland

UK

General Election

Oldham East

Barnsley Central

Paisley

SNP

Westminster

Liberal Democrats

Conservative

Scottish Labour

Keir Hardie

John Smith

Donald Dewar

Iain Gray

Scottish Labour

Wester Hailes

Scotland

Tories

Scotland

Iain Gray

GCC Jaconelli misinformation

The Herald report today by Helen McArdle was much more balanced, fair and accurate - and human - than most of the Herald’s previous coverage has been. Some misconceptions have been corrected - the GCC lie on the offer of accommodation, for instance. (They have never offered permanent rented accommodation to Margaret, and in any case such an offer was irrelevant to a house owner seeking financial compensation for having her house taken away from her.)

But Helen McArdle accepted at face value GCC’s deliberate misrepresentation, with partial information, of the facts of the mediation offer.

This ready acceptance of one side of an argument from the powerful without checking the other side from the vulnerable is dangerous, especially when the facts are readily available, and have already been reported by other news media.

The facts, Helen, are these -

1. Glasgow City Council rejected a formal written request by Margaret Jaconelli for mediation, a fact stated by her lawyer subsequently at a court hearing.

2. On Thursday evening, a representative of the Scottish Government made an offer to GCC to supply a mediator in the dispute. GCC rejected this offer out of hand.

3. On Friday, faced with a glare of publicity and media interest in the Jaconellis, and the widely publicised news of the Scottish Government offer, GCC suddenly gave the Jaconellis an time-limited ultimatum - vacate the property immediately and we will accept mediation, a bullying tactic that this vulnerable family, playing the only card they have in the face of the might of Glasgow City Council, the Labour Party, the law and law enforcement agencies, refused.

These are the facts. But perhaps it was too much to expect the Herald to report that an SNP Government had offered to help resolve this needless and damaging dispute, which is casting a dark stain over the Commonwealth Games, especially when the Labour-controlled GCC are rolling like a juggernaut over the lives, hope and dreams of an ordinary Glasgow family.

Another fact worthy of mention is that although the Jaconelli’s home is immediately adjacent to the Athlete’s Village site, in fact their land will be used to build private housing for sale by the developer Mactaggart & Mickel.

I don’t want to be grudging, Helen McArdle - this was the fairest Herald account of the Jaconelli’s long purgatory that has been given so far, and it captured some of the human reality of their plight. Just a little more fact checking and attention to detail, and you and the Herald will be almost there.

Thanks, Helen and the Herald!

Tuesday 8 March 2011

The Herald, the Court and Margaret Jaconelli

I have taken down my most recent post (a collection of today’s tweets) on the Margaret Jaconelli judgement because I now accept that the judgement, dated 3rd March (!) was available in the court, at least since yesterday. Gerry Braiden of The Herald contacted me with this information, and also sent me a copy of the judgement.

He accessed the freely-available judgement at the court, as he has a perfect right to do, and only ran the story when he realised that a freelance new agency had also accessed it. This is in accordance with good journalistic practice, and I accept completely that he acted in good faith and in accordance with professional ethics. I appreciate his information and clarification on this matter.

I still take issue with the superficial way in which the media in general have handled this case, and the inaccurate facts presented in many instances.

But the matter is now firmly in what I believe are the safe and principled hands of Mike Dailly of Govan Law Centre, and that an appeal is highly likely.

I hope it will be successful.

Tuesday 1 March 2011

Labour’s minnows in a stagnant Scots pool - Harry Reid’s devastating Herald indictment of Scottish Labour

Worth a blog just to give the link, in case you missed the newspaper - and my Tweet. You’ll have to register to read it all, but registration at The Herald online is free.

(I unaccountably missed Harry Reid as one of my journalist heroes in my piece the other day, but he is.)

 Labour's minnows ... by Harry Reid - The Herald

A quote -

Labour has taken Scotland for granted twice over. Its big hitters have pursued their careers hundreds of miles to the south, treating their own base with disdain; those left behind have become complacent, stagnating smugly and maybe not even minding too much if they are seen as inferior.

Harry Reid - The Herald 1st March 2011

Sunday 27 February 2011

Scottish journalism and press standards

PREAMBLE

I’ve been here before, but it seems I must say it all over again …  If you’re not in for a long haul dissertation, leave now! There’s almost 6,000 words ahead of you …

For the record - I am a blogger, not a journalist. And I am partisan - I have a position, and I have no duty to maintain a balance between competing viewpoints. My blog is opinion, not news reporting - it is my highly personal perspective on the news, from the baseline of being anti-nuclear weaponry and nuclear power, and committed to full Scottish independence of the United Kingdom, with no half-arsing over devolution max.

BLOGS AND BLOGGERS

The terms blog and blogger have long ceased to be limited to their original meaning of weblog and weblogger - a chronicler of personal day-to-day events, and kind of online diary. Blogs now range from that original concept through considered opinion pieces, political platforms for politicians and parties, alternative outlets for journalists to extremist rants. I exclude from the term blog those sites that are essentially online newspapers, alternative to the printed media, although some of the more notable ones seem to be in a state of confusion about exactly what they are trying to do. (I am far from immune to that confusion.)

Some, I think, entertain the dream of becoming the Scottish Huffington Post - an admirable target, providing it is not driven by the less admirable objective of being bought out and muzzled for a vast sum by one of the media groups to which they originally offered an alternative, and truer voice.

As I observed in a tweet last night, part of the problem is that some bloggers think they are journalists, and some journalists behave as if they are bloggers. The gulf between a professional journalist and a blogger is very wide indeed, roughly the difference between an enthusiastic and modestly-talented amateur musician and a professional musician - a gap of technique, interpretation and artistic sensibility. Additionally, few bloggers generate material from original sources - they venture opinion pieces on material that has been hard won and expertly produced by the professionals. The few that break this pattern are really journalists who simply use a blog as their own medium for publication, and actually break real stories, meticulously fact-checked and verified.

I am not among that elite group, although I would hope that I am comparable to at least some journalists who offer only opinion pieces, and bluntly, I feel superior to many of them - in research, supporting arguments, literacy and style. But readers of my blog have the final verdict if that judgement is deluded vanity or an accurate self assessment.

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS, PRACTICES AND THE PRESS AND MEDIA

A look back …

We know who spoke the following words -

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask rather what you can do for your country.”

The man who famously uttered them was John F. Kennedy, the charismatic 35th President of the United Stares of America, in his inaugural speech. But who wrote these words?

The same man who wrote these words -

Kennedy was the first great fraud of the post-modern era. He was the surprised, and grateful object of a mass delusion - he came from a state where electing Irish politicians by fraud was an art form.  His father was a bandit and a profiteer. JFK never won a majority in a national election; it seems likely that the election of 1960 was stolen for him by the Daley machine in Chicago.”

The author of both pieces was Ted Sorenson - speechwriter to Kennedy. The second quote, written many years later, was not the result of the discovery of Kennedy’s feet of clay - Sorenson knew all that when he wrote the immortal first words for Kennedy. He wrote them because that was his job.

Sorenson was not a journalist, he was a lawyer. But many journalists have occupied roles as speechwriters for politicians, and when they accepted that role, they ceased to become journalists, and were freed from the ethical and professional constraints that this vital and noble profession is supposed to abide by. They became ghost writers.

It might be supposed that there would be internationally accepted rules or principles under which journalists operate, but no universal rules or principles exist - opinions, theories and practices vary widely. One would expect governments to have very different views from practising journalists and media proprietors, and especially from public service broadcasters, e.g. the BBC, about what constitutes responsible reporting and comment. But even among those who are completely committed to a free press and media, there are fundamental differences.

The debate is as old as the spoken word, never mind the printed word and modern visual and electronic media, but we may trace the main divide back to America in the 1920s when modern journalism as we know it was born. and some of the conflicting ideas of that hectic decade still resonate today.

The cinema, especially from the advent of sound, was fascinated by the press and the profession of journalism. The adaptation of Ben Hecht’s The Front Page into a movie created a masterpiece of cinema, His Girl Friday(1940).



(There was an earlier verson in 1931 called The Front Page . The remake with Jack Lemmon was also closer to the original story, and was a fine film, because of the superb Lemmon in the Hildy Johnson role, but it never approached the status of the 1940 film.)

Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop in 1938, two years earlier, said just about everything there is to say to this day about being a foreign correspondent and the demands of newspapers on their journalists.

There have been many books and films since, but I would call attention to only one - All the President’s Men (1976) about the breaking of the Watergate story.



If we watch these films, and read the seminal 1920s debates between John Dewey and Walter Lippman, the main issues are all there, and their relevance remains even in the digital age.

On reflection, I will add one almost forgotten film, the 1951 film Ace in the Hole, with Kirk Douglas, as an horrific example of what a cynical journalist  can do with a human interest story involving an underground rescue.



For a modern take on the ethical basis of journalism, try The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. I recommend the book to anyone interested in expanding their understanding of this vital topic.

They initially formulated nine principles for journalism, and later added a tenth; here they are -

1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.

2. Its first loyalty is to the citizens.

3. Its essence is discipline of verification.

4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.

5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.  

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

7. It must strive to make the news significant, interesting, and relevant.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

10. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Now I can imagine some of the formidable editors of Fleet Street, who were often foul-mouthed, and legendary Scots, often Glaswegians, saying 

Fuck all that crap! The only question is - will the story sell newspapers?”

Lest you be tempted to sympathise with the sentiment, if not the mode of its expression, let me remind you that over the last couple of years we have seen a major story break - except in the newspapers owned by the main proprietors in the scandal, News International - that involved the Royal Family, the Metropolitan Police, the spin doctor and close friend of the Prime Minister, and a legion of celebrities, sportsmen and women, politicians and sundry gandy dancers and railroad men, a still -unfolding tale that threatens the very foundations of a free press, our democracy and law and order - The News of the World/Andy Coulson phone hacking story.

We have seen a widely-respected politician, Vince Cable, become the victim of entrapment by journalists posing as constituents at his constituency surgery, leading him into unguarded remarks, resulting in his being removed from the decision process over whether or not to approve a takeover that would result in an even greater extension of the reach of News International, the very press empire under criminal investigation over phone hacking.

And we must also consider the complex ethical and moral questions over journalism, in its widest sense, that yielded great benefits to UK democracy - the expenses scandal exposure by The Telegraph - and the global benefits, disputed by many, of Wikileaks, which may have been seen to pull the veil away from the cynical foreign policies and realpolitik of the US and UK governments. Some- including me - argue that Wikileaks was a key catalyst for the great freedom movements now convulsing the Middle East dictatorships, although where they will lead is an open question.

WHAT ARE THE CORE QUESTIONS FOR ME ?

I do not pretend that what I have to say here is a comprehensive analysis of every aspect of journalistic practices and ethics - it represents the things that seem important and relevant to me in the context of recent events and Scottish political journalism in particular.

Journalists are not saints - they have never claimed to be saints, they are rarely presented as being the most ethical of beings, and yet their place in our society and our democracy is a fundamental one. We must expect and demand a lot from them, but in return, we must understand the pressures they are under, in a beleagured profession that is undergoing revolutionary and often unpredictable change, and we must support them in whatever way we can to live up to the highest ideals of their profession.

I should also make it clear that I include, under the description journalist, the editors, who, if they are not journalists, have no right to exercise authority over those who actually gather the news, write the reports and venture the opinions. The managerial, legal and financial persons in the media must confine themselves to their areas of special responsibility, but if they are allowed to determine news content then journalism goes out of the window.

The best proprietors have always understood and supported this separation of powers - the worst, from the Hearst Organisation through to the Murdoch Empire have either ignored or distorted and perverted it.

This bears on journalists in two ways -

The salaried staff journalist in a contract of employment (if there are any left!) has little choice but to accept the editorial decision. It might be hoped that where editorial judgements fundamentally and repeatedly breach the principles of journalism that the principled professional would either appeal or offer his or her resignation, or perhaps more likely, quietly prepare an exit path to pastures new, but such decisions, especially for someone with a family, are very difficult to make.

The freelance can either refuse to amend the copy or accept the modification and re-submit. If they refuse to make the changes, they can try to sell their work elsewhere. Nonetheless, since many freelance have extended relationships with the media outlet, even this can be difficult.

The nature of the change required will also determine the response. Professionals generally accept that they do not have a monopoly of wisdom, or a God-given right to have all their work accepted unexpurgated. They may well accept the exclusion of a passage or topic, provided what remains has integrity. One would hope that they would never agree to an inclusion of an element, under their by-line, that they fundamentally disagree with - the “You will write this …” approach.

Let’s start with what a journalist decides - or is instructed - to write about. A freelance may have the relative luxury of deciding what to write about, but within a frame of reference, e.g. politics, Scottish politics, arts, etc. that may be determined by the journalist’s expertise and to some degree by the publication he aims at. Once a freelance might simply have made cold submissions to a various publications, operating as a totally free agent: these days, the freelance might well have a continuous relationship with one publication, and be significantly constrained by the terms of that relationship without actually being in a contract of employment. The control exerted by the publication is a commercial one rather than a contractual one. As a freelance management consultant and trainer, I had such relationship with a number of major clients.

(Since I am not part of the industry, I can only speculate about the nature of such arrangements, and I do not know the exact nature of them for any journalist I refer to in this piece.)

The salaried journalist, on the other hand must be subject to significant direction and constraints on the subject matter chosen, and  the way in which the story is treated, and by definition will have less freedom of choice, being left, as observed above, with only the resignation option on a real crisis of journalistic standards.

SOME OF THE PLAYERS IN THE GAME

Iain Macwhirter, a Scottish journalist for whom I have unqualified admiration, believing him to be one of the very few totally objective voices in the Scottish - and UK - press and media, must have a considerable degree of freedom in what he writes about, otherwise he would never be allowed to say what he does in the unionist-dominated, highly-biased media that forms the bulk of his market. (I have never met Iain Macwhirter, and have no personal connection with him of any kind.)

My belief is that he has that freedom because of the integrity of his journalism, his highly-honed professional skills, the absolute clarity of his style, and because of the access - born out of respect for his objectivity - that he has in political circles. I firmly believe that Iain Macwhirter would never allow anything to appear in print under his name that he did not firmly subscribe to, and that he would reject any attempt to shape or distort his copy.

That does not mean however that he is always able to
say all that he might want to say.
He has to make a living, and, short of retreating into the blogosphere and shouting indignantly from such a marginal position as some have done, he must accept the editorial constraints of his market.

Another example is Ian Bell, also a Herald columnist, for whom I have a slightly qualified admiration. I believe that he speaks the truth, and always the truth as he sees it, and would reject constraints on his capacity to do that. But his core philosophy could be describe as socialist/internationalist - although he may well indignantly reject such a label - and as such, fits reasonably well with the Herald’s support for the Labour Party and the Union.

Ian Bell’s style is always vigorous, with opinions strongly expressed, albeit at times slightly chaotic and not too accessible. My perception is that the Herald nevertheless manages to keep him within their frame of reference by presenting his pieces as opinion pieces in juxtaposition with the highly slanted ‘news’ pieces that increasingly comprise a depressingly large part of their reporting, thus blunting the impact of his always trenchant views and comments.

But he is undoubtedly a significant Scottish voice, and one that I would miss if it were absent. I hope it never is.

Many of the other notable Scottish journalists are firmly, to my eye, within the category of completely committed to a highly specific and usually unionist viewpoint, which happily - for them - coincides with the overt political agenda of the newspapers that give them their living. They are often described as Scottish editors, or Scottish correspondents when they work for newspapers that have a UK reach with a Scottish edition. A more accurate description would be Scottish Unionist editors or correspondents, since their reporting on Scottish political affairs is almost totally slanted to a unionist viewpoint. Much of their output is either a veiled or direct attack on the Nationalist Government, on the SNP and on nationalist aspirations and values.

Perhaps I can illustrate their approach by saying that if there existed a Scottish national newspaper (print medium) wholly committed to the nationalist cause, and I became their Scottish editor or correspondent, with my present blog output, style and agenda unchanged, I would be their equivalent. What I would not be is a journalist, in any true sense of the word, and neither are they.

Put bluntly, they have taken the shilling, and their journalistic values have flown out of the window. They are the equivalent of political spin doctors.

But there are exceptions to this - more than one - but I will name only one, Angus Macleod of The Times. In spite of being a part of News International and the Murdoch empire, I have always found him to conform to the highest standards of objective, professional journalism. Exactly how he is able to achieve this objectivity within the clammy grasp of News International I am at a loss to explain.

Which brings me to another towering media figure, also a Scot, Andrew Ferguson Neil, currently a hugely influential political commentator, host and presenter on the BBC, formerly a high-powered newspaper editor within the Murdoch Organisation (The Sunday Times, Sky, etc.) and a noted Thatcherite. He left News International after an acrimonious fall out with Murdoch, then jumping into the fire from the frying pan, with the Barclay Brothers.

Andrew Neil arouses strong opinions. I cordially detested him during the Thatcher/Sunday Times years, and many still do, as my postbag and email testify. But I have now come to a grudging respect for him in his new BBC roles, because I believe his values as a journalist now come first, whatever his personal politics views may be. He occupies a unique position in BBC and national journalism, standing head and shoulders above the likes of Paxman and Andrew Marr, with a reputation and personality that puts him on more than equal terms with Government ministers, Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition.

His critics - and they are legion - react furiously to his assertive and forensic questioning of their favoured party personalities, ignoring the fact that he is equally ferocious with all the others. And although he is inextricably a part of the incestuous London/Westminster media village, he occasionally remembers that he is a Scot, and when he chooses to do so, displays an understanding of Scottish politics that is almost totally absent in other metropolitan BBC pundits. In spite of myself, I like and respect him, and believe that he makes a vital contribution to our democracy.

JOURNALISTIC VALUES AND PRACTICES

Let me start with the principle of confidentiality of sources and the off-the-record practice in interviewing and reporting.

A journalist must get the story - get the facts. This is done against the reality that those who have the facts often have a vested interest in not releasing them, whether they are politicians, celebrities, civil servants, doctors criminals or private individuals. The British legal system is geared up to protect the powerful, not the weak. Our libel laws, and the cost of litigation and defence in relation to libel actions, are a standing disgrace, allowing the rich and powerful to intimidate, silence and financially destroy those who presume to question their actions. Even worse, this is not confined to British citizens and residents - the libel laws can be used by any criminal, despot, fraudster or powerful individual anywhere in the world against a British citizen.

But private individuals without substantial financial resources have little defence available to them. This presents the journalist in pursuit of a story with two  ethical and professional standards dilemmas, assuming they have any, or are allowed to have them by their employer, the media outlet. The same problems are faced by the editor - also a journalist - who briefs and controls the person in the field.

The main dilemma is how - without breaking the law or breaching ethical standards - to get the truth from some one who knows it, might wish to give it, but may be inhibited from giving it by professional, party, policy or contractual constraints - for example a politician, a public servant or a manager in private industry - or even by fear of the personal consequences of speaking out.  This inhibition manifests itself in a number of ways.

(The second dilemma is whether they go after easy prey - those whom they believe can’t defend themselves, for example, a Glasgow grandmother trying desperately get a fair price for her home, and the stress and upheaval caused by a compulsory purchase order. It doesn’t seem to have been a real dilemma for the Glasgow Press, however.)

Back to the prime dilemma -

Public servants - and increasingly employees of private organisations - are normally bound by some sort of embargo on making statement contrary to organisational policy, and by a requirement to protect confidential information. The constraints on doing this may range from a code of conduct, through contractual requirements, to signing the official secrets act, with criminal penalties for breaching the constraint. The ethical constraints placed on professionals such as lawyers and doctors are, of course, an important category here.

(Whether the law should always observe religious constraints in this context is highly debatable, for example the confidentiality of the confessional exercised by Roman Catholic priests when criminal behaviour is concerned.)

It is hard to see how public and commercial life could function normally without some such constraints, although the nature of them and the subject matter to which they are applied may reasonably be open to question and debate.

Freedom of information legislation has gone someway to redress the imbalance (see below on the expenses scandal) created by the powerful protecting themselves against revelation of their mistakes, hypocrisy and in some cases, negligent or criminal behaviour: the limited protection afforded to ‘whistle blowers’ is also in this category.

The accepted convention, elevated to an ethical principle by some editors and journalists, is the on or off-the- record assurance offered by the journalist to the person being interviewed or questioned. In broadcasting, this is often given practical application by the on or off- microphone action.

THE RATIONALE FOR ON AND OFF THE RECORD

In dealing with law-abiding citizens, the justification for on and off-the-record promises is that someone constrained by contract or professional standards may be willing to give information for the greater good, providing that it is not attributable. There is a public position and a private one.

The purists demand complete openness in everything, an ideal that I believe is unachievable in practice. It is not reasonable, for example, to expect an employee to risk losing their job and maybe career because they know that their employer is not operating to the highest standards. And realistically, even though there are a few highly principled individuals who are prepared to do just that, the majority are more pragmatic. To get at the truth, we must protect the open, brave whistle-blower, but we must also utilise the concerned, but cautious individual as well.

The negative aspects of the off-the-record briefing or information release are many, however. An off-the-record, unattributable comment is weaker and less convincing than an on-the-record statement, and an unscrupulous - or lazy - reporter can simply invent them to give spurious currency to gossip, or worse, to a lie.

If Iain Macwhirter or Angus Macleod report an off-the-record, anonymous quote, I believe them implicitly. Coming from some others I won’t name, I take it with a pinch of salt or dismiss it.

Off-the-record comments can also be used by spin doctors to present a completely misleading version of events to, say, parliamentary lobby correspondents, who are in fact being expertly manipulated. It would be an interesting experiment if lobby correspondents got together and refused to accept unattributable quotes for an extended period from the government. I suspect that No. 10 would be thrown into a state of utter panic.

There is also the practical problem that if there is only one spokesperson on an issue, then an off-the-record quote will instantly be attributed, and might as well be on the record.

Some politicians - sans policies, sans principles, sans values, sans cojones, sans everything - are more or less permanently off the record. Consequentially, no one gives a **** what they say …

But the off-the-record principle is nonetheless a vital tool in the reporter’s repertoire, and used judiciously and ethically, vital to good journalism and to public information.

How can the off-the-record principle be abused by journalists?

Any journalist who abuses the off-the-record or unattributable staement principle risks his or her professional credibility, and their own effectiveness. For an unscrupulous editor or proprietor, this matters little if the journalist in question is junior and expendable, and there is a constant supply of fodder for this in the shape of those desperate to gain entry to, and cut their teeth in a cut-throat industry.

In this approach, the person being interviewed is not a citizen or professional with rights and human   dignity, but the mark - a gullible target in a con game.

In a face-to-face or telephone interview, the journalist uses the equivalent of the open mike scam. In broadcast interviews from a studio or public venue - and in one notable instance in a Prime Minister’s car speeding away from a pensioner -  inadvertently leaving the microphone on can lead to the capture of unguarded remarks. Of course, the mike can also be left on deliberately.

No one, however exalted, is immune from this risk, not even US Presidents, but as someone recently observed, any grown-up politician who is not aware of the open mike danger should really find another line of work. Such people are regularly surprised when Christmas comes on December 25th …

In the face-to-face or telephone interview, this is almost always deliberate and planned, and rarely results from a misunderstanding, although that is the defence used by the unscrupulous journalist when found out. The normal strategy is to indicate that the interview will be conducted both on and off the record, then deliberately blur the line between the two, confusing the mark. Alternatively, the tacit assumption - never signalled in advance - is made that the subject is on the the record. If the interviewee queries the status at any point, the line is again blurred, or in extreme cases, the journalist simply lies.

Now it must be said, in fairness, that some interviews start out with a straightforward agenda and no Machiavellian intent, but then develop in unexpected ways. In such case, the journalist may give silent thanks to whatever God they worship for having delivered a potentially big story into their lap.

But it is exactly at this point that the ethical journalist takes rapid stock of what is, and what is not admissible.

(Again, I recommend careful viewing of key scenes in the 1976 film All the President’s Men to understand this process in the best American newspapers.)

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FACES OF PUBLIC FIGURES

There is a view that public figures, especially those who have been democratically elected, must display an absolute consistency between their private and public positions on any issues of substance. Some also argue that they must also exemplify a private integrity and morality, both sexual and ethical, consistent with their public face.

At the extremes. I agree with this. I don’t want a magistrate who sits in judgement on criminals, but in private is a professional burglar, a modern day Deacon Brodie: I don’t want a Minister of Health who believes in the efficacy of homeopathy and that blood transfusions are sinful: I don’t want a Chancellor of the Exchequer who runs a Ponzi scheme in his spare time: I don’t want a religious leader who secretly covers up the abuse of children and protects the abusers. I would welcome any journalist who, suspecting these things, used all reasonable measures to tempt the offenders into admitting as much. I might even condone some measures that run close to, but not over the ethical edge.

(A prime requirement is that a journalist doesn’t break the law - but if the law is being used the protect the powerful against the interests of the people, and there is a strong, very strong public interest requirement, then very, very reluctantly I would concede that it might be necessary.)

The investigation into the abuse of MPs’ expenses seems to me a model of a major service being rendered to our democracy by the journalist who deserves really the credit for the story, Heather Brooke. An American journalist based in the UK, Heather Brooke used the Freedom of Information Act to painstakingly, over five long, painful years, get to the truth. But if it hadn’t been for the BBC documentary On Expenses, the credit would have been given exclusively the The Telegraph newspaper and its journalists. Indeed, right at this minute, if you search for the originator of the story - and it was her story, by any standards of attribution and equity - you will find it hard to get past The Telegraph’s journalists’ roles, which although undoubtedly making a significant contribution in carrying it, and keeping it running, were essentially Johnnies-come-lately riding on the back of the real, brave and principled journalism of Heather Brooke.

An example of the worst in British journalism is the News International/News of the World scandal over phone hacking, a clear breach of the law, with no public interest involved, other than the wish to sell the Murdoch newspapers. This still-unfolding affair threatened - and still threatens - the very fabric of our democracy, reaching into the Law, the Police, the monarchy, and the government, and the shameful silence of the News International newspapers, and others with something to hide is deeply worrying for the integrity of our society.

The acknowledgement by Rebekah Brookes, one of the most senior executives of the Murdoch organisation in 2003 that the News of the World had paid members of the Metropolitan Police for information, the retirement of the Police Commissioner in charge of the initial investigation to take up a well-paid post as a columnist of News International, the resignation of the man closest to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, a former NotW editor, Andy Coulson, from his post as spin doctor to the Prime Minister (his second resignation - the first was as editor of the NotW after members of the Royal Family had had their phones hacked), his evidence under oath on the phone hacking scandal, the manifest nonsense that it had been “only one rogue reporter” - all of these things should have the British public rising up in rage and horror.

But unless they read the Guardian or the Independent, or watch certain current affairs, programmes, they will know nothing of it. The readers of the Murdoch tabloids have continued in blissful ignorance - either that or they don’t care…

SCOTTISH POLITICAL JOURNALISM

I don’t want to re-hash again all that I have already said in blogs passim, e.g. Herald and Scotsman  about the blatantly biased Scottish Press, with a recent surprising lurch towards objectivity in one of them, The Scotsman.

I have also blogged and tweeted extensively on the appalling treatment meted out to Margaret Jaconelli, a Glasgow grandmother trying to get a fair price for her home from Glasgow City Council before she is evicted. The matter is in its final stages in the legal system, and Margaret has a last found a champion in the formidable and caring person of Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre.

The consistently distorted, slanted  and factually inaccurate version of the Megrahi Affair, and the casual reproduction of the UK government’s desperate attempts to smear the Scottish Government with blatant lies to cover their own shameful hypocrisy and that of the UK Labour Party and their deeply confused Holyrood puppets have been repeatedly - and very recently - covered by me in this blog.

As for the Bill Aitken Affair, well, I have so far confined myself to Twitter on this. I don’t like Bill Aitken, I don’t like his views about rape, I think he was right to resign, and and have a distaste for knee-jerk politics on law and order. But I think the way in which the Herald got this story, the way they leaked the taped transcript to the New Statesman, and the fact that they apparently taped the telephone call without Aitken’s knowledge, the way in which they appeared to have blurred the line between on and off the record comment - all of these aspects give me cause for concern.

 Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

#BillAitken I don't like Tories or Bill Aitken and his views on law and order. But I dislike biased and unprofessional journalism even more.

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia This is the 'journalism' of the gutter, not real investigative journalism. And they will come for anyone who opposes Labour.

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia The problem is the set-up, the taping without permission, the leaking to the New Statesman, and the missing 'clarification'.

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia The media smear is Labour's stock-in-trade, through their compliant media supporters. It's bad for Scottish democracy.

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia Before May 5th, this will be done again to another opponent of Labour by the Labour media, probably to the SNP. What then?

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia I don't let my distaste for the man, his politics and his views get in the way of condemning the journalism practices.

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@bellacaledonia No one has suggested that he was misrepresented - you misrepresent me by suggesting it. The question is over how it was done

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@JonnyJobson @CalMerc There is every sign that it was a setup, with a Labour agenda, & that he thought he was on the record for part of it >

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@JonnyJobson He was taped without his knowledge. The tape was 'leaked' to the New Statesman - THE Labour mouthpiece, and published >

Peter Curran

moridura Peter Curran

@JonnyJobson @CalMerc There is no doubt of what he said, or that is was wrong. What is in question is the journalistic practices used

Friday 21 January 2011

A tale of two newspapers - The Herald and the Scottish Sun: The Margaret Jaconelli Case

Margaret Jaconelli appeared at the Sheriff Court, Glasgow yesterday in pursuit of her case for fair compensation for her wholly-owned tenement flat in Ardenlea Street, Dalmarnock.

The purpose of the hearing was to consider the eviction order Glasgow City Council is attempting to enforce against her, and to hear Margaret’s claim that GCC had not followed due process of law in previous hearings. She was unrepresented because her solicitor had withdrawn from the case, and she therefore secured a new hearing date of 16th February to permit her to find and brief a new solicitor.

In court were two newspaper reporters, Gerry Braiden of the Herald and Paul Drury, a freelance reporter acting for the Scottish Sun newspaper. Paul Drury has been in contact with Margaret by telephone and had direct contact and dialogue with her in the court. Gerry Braiden has had no contact with Margaret since the Herald’s and Evening Times’ previous hostile and pejorative coverage of her case, and made no attempt to speak to her, before or after the court proceedings or by telephone.

The Herald and the Scottish Sun today both ran significant stories about the case, but from very different perspectives - see links below

The 'story' in today's 'Herald'

The story in today's Scottish 'Sun'

The Sun focused on the massive profits made by Grantly Developments on two plots of land bought for a total of £45k in 1988/89 very close to Margaret Jaconelli’s home in Ardenlea Street, and the analysis made by a Glasgow University lecturer, published author and expert on urban regeneration and development, Dr. Libby Porter of the the two valuations made by Glasgow City Council of two plots of land under the compulsory purchase legislation.

The Sun used these calculations to run under the headline

£3.6m - THAT’LL BE JUST GRAN

Expert’s price tag on £30k pad

Exclusive by Paul Drury

The Herald, in contrast, with no recent contact with Margaret Jaconelli and no contact with Dr. Libby Porter, chose to run under the headline

 

Four-week eviction delay for woman on Games site

Grandmother secures reprieve after being dropped by solicitor

Gerry Braiden

 

The headline and sub-header are not too bad, but the story that follows is mainly pejorative in tone and content, consistent with the Herald and Gerry Braiden’s previous coverage of the MJ case.

But there are disturbing aspects in this story relating to the facts presented by Gerry Braiden. He refers to the meeting between Margaret Jaconelli and her solicitor, Mr. Carmichael with the Glasgow City Council District Valuer, Mr. Davidson. No other person was present. No offer of any kind was made to Margaret Jaconelli and her solicitor at that meeting.

But Gerry Braiden says (last para column two) in his report today -

“The Herald understands that at the meeting, Mrs. Jaconelli was offered around £90,000, which included money for the flat, upheaval and compensation. Mrs. Jaconelli is understood to have have rejected this, and although she is no longer demanding £360,000 for the two-bedroom tenement property, she is now believed to be holding out for a figure of about £250,000”

Every word of this is either untrue or a distortion of the facts, and certain very disturbing questions are raised about the Herald’s sources of information, their accuracy and their motivation.

1. No offer of any kind was made at the meeting on Tuesday 18th of January by the Glasgow City Council District Valuer.

2. A verbal offer was made at a later point in time verbally to Margaret Jaconelli’s solicitor, of £90,000, which he relayed verbally to Margaret Jaconelli by telephone, and no terms and conditions were specified in these verbal exchanges.

3. Margaret Jaconelli neither accepted nor rejected the verbal offer - her position was - and is - that she will give full consideration to any offer made to her in writing with all terms and conditions detailed in the offer.

4. Margaret Jaconelli has never ‘demanded’ £360,000 for her flat. Such a figure was quoted as an example of how various interpretations of value could be posited if the huge settlements made with various developers - The Grantly figures - were applied to MJ’s property, assuming some form of proportionality were applied to the relative sizes of the plots of land involved. (The Sun’s £3.6m illustrates the most extreme comparison.)

5. In the discussions with the District Valuer, MJ and her solicitor stated what her aspirations were - to achieve an agreed settlement that permitted her to buy a similar two-bedroomed, red sandstone flat in an area of her choice and have all her legal, conveyancing and moving costs met, plus some recognition of the excessive heating costs she has sustained over many years as as result of being forced to live in a tenement block where every other tenant or owner had left, and have some compensation for the disruption to her life caused by GCC.

Some discussion and speculation ensued as to what this figure might be, but no specific demand was made. The District Valuer made a reference to two-bedroom flat being on the market for around £63k. Since this represented the bottom of the market, MJ and her solicitor rejected such a figure.

The disturbing questions raised by Gerry Braiden and the Herald’s article are these -

From whom did Gerry Braiden and the Herald learn of an offer of £90,000 being made which was known only to MJ and her solicitor? On the face of it, it can only have been from a source within Glasgow City Council, since neither Braiden nor the Herald spoke to MJ or her solicitor?

Why was the offer misrepresented as being made at the meeting with the District Valuer, when no offer was made at that meeting?

Why did the Herald report there being highly specific terms and conditions to the offer, when no such terms and conditions have been specified, either verbally or in writing by GCC?

Why did Gerry Braiden inaccurately report that MJ had rejected such an offer, without interviewing her or her solicitor, when her clear position is that she will give full consideration to any offer properly made in writing with all terms and conditions detailed?

The $64,000 question - or perhaps the £3.5 million question is - Why has the Herald consistently presented a highly pejorative and one-sided view of Margaret Jaconelli’s case, one that at every stage has been selective in the facts presented, effectively only giving a platform to Glasgow City Council’s version of events, and leaving an impression of the vulnerable, ordinary - but extraordinary - Glasgow grandmother as a greedy, obstructive woman making unreasonable claims?

Nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone who has spoken to Margaret Jaconelli will testify. I came across Margaret’s case by accident, and have only known her since she contacted me following my first blog on the subject. We have never met, yet I will now stay with her to the end of her persecution by powerful forces in Glasgow, and until she reaches what she regards as an equitable settlement.

Why did Chris Leslie, a  Glasgow photographer and filmmaker, engage with Margaret’s case, champion her cause, and make a very moving film of her plight for YouTube?

Why did Dr. Libby Porter, a respected academic and expert on urban regenerations projects and planning law at Glasgow University’s Department of Urban Studies become interested in the facts of this strange and disturbing case?

The answer is that Margaret Jaconelli is an extraordinary woman, resilient and determined to put her life together in the face of an onslaught from powerful forces in Glasgow society. She supports the development, supports and welcomes the Commonwealth Games, and is perfectly willing to move - but only if basic principles of justice and equity prevail, and she receives a settlement that enables her and her husband to resume their lives as hard-working Scots, typical of the very best in the Glasgow and specifically the Glasgow East end character.

And during Margaret’s long fight, where the hell have the Labour Party been? Where has Anas Sarwar,MP been? Where has Frank McAveety, MSP been? The thing that used to be the People’s Party has been conspicuous by its absence and its silence, as a City council controlled by their party attempts to destroy Margaret Jaconelli.

And what of my own party, the Scottish National Party?

They have been aware of the case, they have expressed interest and concern, and Councillor Billy McAllister - that rare beast, a Glasgow Councillor with a deep concern for equity and justice, always willing to confront corruption in the city -  has been working hard behind the scenes for justice for Margaret.

But, SNP, you have not yet done enough or said enough publicly! Now is the time to show where you stand, clearly and unequivocally. A helluva lots of Glasgow voters will have your stance in mind when they go to the polls in May, in about 100 days or so.

Friday 14 January 2011

Political reporting, Herald-style …

The debate on whether to reduce the present eight police forces in Scotland, or at least reduce the number to three or four, an idea driven by the urgent need to reduce costs, raises complex issues of major significance to law and order and the relationship between Government and the police.

It demands the fullest consultation with all interested parties over what would be a very radical measure with wide reaching implications. That is exactly what the Scottish Government is doing, but that is not enough for Labour in Holyrood, ever anxious to make life difficult for the SNP government, especially when it plans to address issues fundamental to Scottish society.

Iain Gray’s attack on the First Minister at yesterday’s FMQs was therefore depressingly predictable, especially with an election looming. This exchange could have been approached in two ways by a responsible Scottish newspaper. The first would have been a quick summary, along the lines of “Labour criticises the SNP Government of delay in reaching a decision on the rationalisation of Scottish police forces. First Minister responds by emphasising the need for in-depth consultation before reaching a decision.”.

The second would have been a balanced report of Ian Gray’s criticisms and the First Minister’s rebuttal, followed by a detailed examination of the issues involved. The Herald did neither, and Brian Currie’s ‘report’, together with Ian Bell’s sketch piece, illustrate all too clearly what has become of objective political reporting in the Herald, a sad thing to contemplate as we enter the Holyrood election run-up.

The headline and the sub-header set the Herald, i.e. the Labour agenda -

Salmond accused of dodging single police force issue

Labour leader Gray asks: When are you going to make a decision?

This kind of header tries to beg the question, in the clear hope that many readers engaged in a superficial scan of topics may never get beyond it, and are left with the idea of a First Minister dodging a crucial issue and avoiding a decision.

But just in case the reader goes further, the Herald hedges its bets, by presenting a virtually verbatim report of Iain Gray’s attack. 56 lines of Gray in a kind of one-sided Hansard. followed by 17 lines of Alex Salmond’s rebuttal, a more than three-to-one skewing of the argument.

In time terms, here is how the exchange went. Iain Gray’s opening questions took 35 secs. Alex Salmond’s response lasted 49 seconds. Iain Gray follow-through lasted 1m 6 seconds. Alex Salmond’s initial response pointed up the contradictions in Gray’s posture by citing Iain Gray’s equivocation on council tax. This lasted 1m 21 seconds. Iain Gray returned to his attack, and this lasted for 53 seconds. Alex Salmond’s reply lasted for 1m 30 seconds. Gray’s response lasted for 49 seconds, and drifted into a general attack on the Government’s record, but since the FM’s response, lasting 1m 13 seconds, addressed that aspect, I’ll leave both of them in.

Totting up, I get Iain Gray’s total contribution as 3m 23 seconds and Alex Salmond’s total response time as 4m 53 seconds: the FM spoke for 59% of the time and Iain Gray for 41%, although I must say, it seemed a helluva lot longer, as verbal turgid tedium always does. Contrast this with Brian Currie’s report, which in lines of text gave Iain Gray almost 77% and the FM 23%.

Taken together with the header and sub-header, this is blatant political bias, not objective reporting. It was not justified by considerations of relevance, of condensation, or the interests of objective political reporting. It was Fox-style, Murdoch-style, Palin style tabloid journalism.

However, the Herald’s idea of balance was partially served by Ian Bell’s piece, which did provide some insight into the reality of the exchange, but in the context of a sketch piece, heavy with humour and some sarcasm, one that could safely be ignored as peripheral and lightweight by its labelling, although in fact it wasn’t, and came closer to the truth.

How many voters watch Politics Scotland and how many read the political ‘report’ in the Herald I don’t know. What I do know is that it is vital for Scottish democracy, in the lead-up to what will be a pivotal election for the future of the people of Scotland, that the political arguments are presented fully and objectively in the news reporting of the media, and that only the opinion pieces reflect the partisanship.

The Herald, and the Scottish media in general breach these fundamental principles with depressing regularity, and the Herald is a serial offender.