FOR years, generations, the Scottish media has been the howling gale of Hurricane Nawbag, dedicated to the proposition that Scotland was too wee and poor to be a proper country. We have been regaled with a diet of murrdurrs and cute wee kittens and lots and lots of fitba.
It’s och aye the news for branch office politics in the branch office where we are, up at the wee end of the weather map, in the land where the perspective ends. Any attempt to change things was decried as grievance hunting by the invigilators of nawness, the media which was licenced to tell us what to think. Unlicenced thinking was definitely not to be encouraged, it might lead to dangerous heresies like the belief that Scotland could be a normal country like any other. Nae wonder we defined ourselves by the size of our cringe, with a media of ProudScotsBut.
That all changed with the referendum. Wild Scottish digital bluebells sprung up unbidden on the carefully tended lawn of the Scottish media monoculture, unwanted by the gardeners in head office, and try as they might they couldn’t uproot them.
The new Scottish digital media showed that there was an appetite in Scotland for news and commentary that takes Scotland seriously, that provides a place for mocking the pretensions of Unionist politicians who give us so much worth mocking.
The new digital media proved that Scotland was thirsty for news and comment that doesn’t start from the default position of the SNPbaaaaad flock.
But the digital media doesn’t have the range, reach, or clout of the traditional media. Fairly or unfairly “I read it on the Internet” is a synonym for untrustworthiness, even though the old fashioned Unionist press and broadcasters have proven themselves to be as trustworthy as a 1970s radio DJ at a Girl Guides’ jamboree, as accurate as a drunk man peeing in a plane toilet during a gale, and as ethical as a Tory MP looking for a positive headline in the Daily Mail. In fact, the only way in which the traditional Scottish media can be fairly said to display any sort of reliability is their unerring ability to spin any story into bad news for the Scottish Government.
One by one all the promises made to the people of Scotland by the Unionist parties and the media which backs them are being broken. We were told to vote no so that jobs would be safe, but the jobs are going anyway. Vote No so that Royal Navy ships will still be built on the Clyde, but the ships are being built abroad anyway.
Vote No so that the steel industry will be safe, but it’s being closed down anyway. The media isn’t holding the government with the real power to account because they’re complicit in ensuring that the UK Government keeps all the power.
There’s something wrong with a country where a constitutional position supported by almost half the population is not supported by a single daily newspaper or broadcaster. Throughout the independence campaign the Yes movement was sustained by the online media and the stalwart efforts of the Sunday Herald. The rest of the media was uniformly opposed to the Yes cause and didn’t give the case for independence a fair hearing.
You might even say that kind of imbalance is the sort of thing that you find in a one-party state, but then according to the nawmenklatura Scotland is a one-party state by virtue of the fact that the Unionist parties are so rubbish that no one wants to vote for them, and the media which supports them en masse is so discredited that no one wants to listen to it.
The problem isn’t that the Unionist parties are hopeless and the media which supports them is clueless, it’s the fault of the populace for not listening. It’s even the fault of the SNP that the Labour party is unfit for purpose. The answer given in the traditional Unionist media to this state of affairs is to rail against the populace.
The traditional Unionist media doesn’t see any need to change itself, they want to change their audience. Berthold Brecht wrote in a real one-party state about the ungratefulness of a people who resented being told what was good for them and how the problem could be solved by the election of a new people, but his words would be too subtle for the flapping windsocks of Hurricane Nawbag. He also said that because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. Scotland is no one-party state, but the way that Scotland was was also the reason that Scotland could not stay the way it was.
Then change happened. Scotland’s summer of 2014 saw a flowering of hope in a million conversations, in chapping doors, in gatherings in city streets and village halls, in meetings in community centres and barters of banter in pubs. And through it all Scotland learned that change would only happen if Scottish people made things change because change would not be delivered to us by those who have a vested interest in keeping things the same. So we changed ourselves, we changed our world, we changed Scotland.
Then The National came along, a daily beacon of light in the darkness of the Scottish media, an oasis of yes in the desert of no, a sign of change. For the past year The National has told Scotland that we can be a normal country, that we don’t need to be a branch office at the end of perspective.
The National keeps the light alive, a signal that things will never be the same as they were, that the changes wrought during the independence referendum campaign are permanent, are deep, are meaningful.
The National says that Scotland only started its journey in the summer of 2014, and it will be with us to light the way in the years ahead – the paper that says Yes as Scotland travels the road to normalcy. Happy first birthday National, it will be the first of many.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here