Ask Angry: Media bias isn’t just a mainstream problem

–@Tonester_7 There’s no denying that contemporary media oceans are rough seas to navigate. Up until recently, it wouldn’t have been unusual for individuals to get their information from a single news source and regard it as “truth”. However, balderdash stories have been exposed in almost every major publication. Even honest accounts are distorted or manipulated in such a way that they cease to have any truth in them. Consequently, it is now common for people to read the same news story on multiple platforms in an attempt to find the facts, or at least eliminate falsehoods. For example, individuals might read coverage of the same event on the BBC, RT, Al Jazeera and Sky, as well as blogs, to gain a cross section of views. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

Personally, I pull from a whole range of sources, going so far as to delve into the murky waters of conspiratorial websites – so much as to better understand the tactics of distortion. The view that it is simply the mainstream media who are guilty of bias is completely false. Everybody, to some extent, is pushing an agenda. Where this gets dangerous is when people start to buy into a single publication or website’s take on the world. The fashion at the moment is to present your “alternative to the mainstream” as total fact, and everybody else as a liar. We must remain vigilant to how quickly we can become brainwashed by this concept – even within the Yes movement.

I have tremendous respect for The National, because aside from our unifying belief that Scotland should be independent, the range of views presented is much wider than in most papers. I alone have drawn attention to organisations as radically different as RISE and the Scottish Libertarians. Yes, The National’s agenda is Scottish independence, but it has diversity of opinion in spades. My advice would be to keep your eyes and ears open, but to take The National along for the journey. The truth, as they say, is out there.

What do you make of the controversy over the BBC Weather Map? – Fraser, Glasgow

The issue in question is the BBC’s decision to display the UK at an angle, rather than top down, during weather forecasts. This satellite-style imagery results in a perspective that makes Scotland look smaller than it is. While the majority of us have never even noticed, nationalists on social media are kicking up a storm about it. They claim that the decision to tilt the map is a conspiratorial effort to make Scotland look insignificant. Essentially, what some would see has a harmless attempt to make a meteorological report appear more dynamic, others view as another weapon in the BBC’s apparently endless arsenal of anti-Scottish ordnance.

Now, as much as the BBC’s coverage of the independence movement is questionable, I do think this particular theory is reaching beyond the boundaries of logical criticism. It is understandable that the British Broadcasting Corporation would take a – gasp! – British perspective on things, but the notion that they’ve turned the weathermen against us seems unlikely. Moreover, the observable size of a country is unlikely to have any effect on its voters. As you may recall, Europe is significantly bigger than the UK in most atlases, and yet Britain still voted for Brexit.

Scottish weather man Ian McCaskill recently passed away, and it was disappointing to see nationalists wrangle this conspiracy into notes of his passing. Furthermore, the way in which the theory is presented frequently makes it appear like Yes supporters do not understand the curvature of the Earth. To criticise a state broadcaster is one thing, but to come across like you think the planet is flat is quite another. In the end, this aesthetic choice by the BBC may irritate some, but tinfoil hat Twitter posts about it do more to hurt Yes voters than the Beeb.

Is there a god? @Chitterinlicht

WHEN I was a boy, I asked my father if Santa was real, and he told me that he wasn’t.

I was disappointed, but not shocked. However, my dad went on to say that I wasn’t to tell the other kids that Santa didn’t exist, and to keep pretending so as not to “spoil the fun”. The problem was that I applied his Santa philosophy to all supernatural concepts – including religion.

I therefore attended church under the false impression that Christianity was some sort of game that adults had invented, a bit like Santa, and I wasn’t to “spoil the fun” by mentioning that Jesus wasn’t real. This all came crashing down one morning in Sunday school when I politely said “but we’re just pretending, right?” and was promptly ordered to “face the wall” for five minutes as punishment.

Subsequently, I’ve developed my own weird theory that the meaning of life is actually that we don’t know the meaning of life. Effectively, the reason for our existence is to constantly peruse the purpose of it without ever finding out what it is. I came to this conclusion when I was watching a beehive as a child.

I kept wondering if bees knew they were bees. I know that sounds daft, but can you imagine how much being a bumblebee would suck if you knew for sure that your purpose was to gather nectar?

You’d hate waking up in the morning. At least if you thought gathering the nectar was just your day job, you could muse about the enigmatic world you lived in. But if an actual Bumblebee God came down and said: “This is why you are here – to gather nectar,” that’d be game over, wouldn’t it? There’d be no point going on.

To me, it’s pretty much the same thing being human. Our ability to wonder about why we’re here and never having a clear answer is actually a reason to stick around. If a god ever showed up and literally explained the purpose of everything, it likely wouldn’t live up to our expectations and generally ruin the clandestine nature of the whole thing.