Wee Ginger Dug: Media bias means Yes must get a head start in indyref2 campaign

Anti-independence arguments dominated in both the print and broadcast media, with pro-independence arguments and opinions often struggling to be heard, and all too often ignored entirely.

The Scottish print media are overwhelmingly Unionist and successfully sought to portray the Yes campaign as being between “nationalists”, whereas on the other hand the British nationalism of Unionists was characterised as being non-nationalist.

With one honourable exception – the Sunday Herald under the editorship of Richard Walker (below), who later went on to found The National – the Scottish media landscape was overwhelmingly hostile terrain for supporters of independence. Anti-independence talking points were given front-page treatment, sometimes extending over several days, and were rarely if ever examined critically or sceptically.

Meanwhile, pro-independence arguments were either ignored entirely or subjected to unremittingly hostile and critical treatment.

This created an anti-independence media agenda which the broadcast media, and in particular BBC Scotland, were only too willing to follow despite the Corporation’s legal and ethical duty to be impartial. The sentiments which dominated in the print media pandered to the pro-Union and anti-independence prejudices of BBC management. Far from acting as a corrective to the anti-independence bias of the print media, the BBC was all too eager to run with it and propagate it even further.

READ MORE: Ruth Davidson, Gordon Brown, and media bias during the 2014 indyref

At the weekend, The Sunday National published some findings from a new academic study of media coverage of the Scottish referendum, which confirm the extent of the Scottish media’s British nationalist bias. The study, carried out by David Patrick, a senior researcher in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, examined around 7000 newspaper articles written during the 2014 campaign and afterwards for a new book.

Patrick’s research will be published by Routledge at the end of this month as a book titled Front-Page Scotland Newspapers And The Scottish Independence Referendum.

The South African academic originally set out to ascertain if there was any evidence of bias in the coverage towards either campaign. What he found was a “clear weighting” to the pro-Union side.

One interesting aspect of the study is that there was relatively little interest in the referendum campaign from the London-based media, aside, of course, from the Scottish editions of UK titles, until the last week of the campaign. This is no doubt because for the greater part of the 18-month-long campaign the London media shared the same lazy assumptions evident in the Better Together team when their anti-independence campaign was officially launched.

The belief among British nationalists was that there was no real threat to the Union. Some Better Together figures confidently said they expected to win 70% or more of the vote in the referendum and in the process destroy the SNP as a political force for a generation or more.

For the London-based media, the referendum campaign was for much of its duration, a trivial non-event which was of interest to Scots but no-one else.

They certainly didn’t expect it to have any longer term significance, far less did they believe it had the potential to change the Scottish and UK political landscapes for good. The London media were confirmed in their arrogant complacency by opinion polling throughout the campaign, all of which gave a lead, albeit a narrowing one, to opposition to independence.

That changed in the final week of the campaign with the publication of a YouGov poll which gave the independence campaign the narrowest of leads. Shaken by the realisation Scotland might very well vote for independence after all, and that the people of Scotland didn’t share London-centric British nationalism’s conceit of itself, the UK media began to channel their inner Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army and melted down in a full-scale panic.

Scotland was bombarded with scare stories and threats about the supposed ruin and penury which awaited if the country had the temerity to vote Yes.

That same media which had hitherto slated Gordon Brown as the worst prime minister ever, (back in the days when the prospect of Boris Johnson in Number 10 was dismissed as a Scottish nationalist scare story), suddenly began hailing him as a political titan who would persuade Scotland a No vote would be rewarded with more powers for Holyrood and the closest thing possible to federalism within the next three years.

Nowhere in that London-based media – and certainly not in a BBC which fawned over Brown as Scotland’s very own global statesman – was there any critical examination of how exactly the Westminster parties could be compelled to keep the promises they were so hurriedly making in a last-ditch effort to stave off the Scottish independence they so dreaded.

There are important lessons here for the independence referendum campaign which Scotland is facing in the months to come. With support for independence often being in the lead in opinion polling or the gap between the sides falling within the 3% margin of error commonly used, the London-based media will not approach the next independence referendum with the same lazy assumption of a defeat for independence which characterised their reporting in 2014. They will enter the next campaign knowing that it is quite possible that British nationalism will lose.

As soon as the starting gun for the next independence referendum campaign is fired, it will be like that torrid last week of the 2014 campaign all over again. The British state and its allies in the media are not going to make this easy for us. In the meantime, it is vital that the independence movement prepares itself for the campaign of our lives.

We urgently need clear and straightforward answers to the attack lines that opponents of independence are certain to deploy – currency, the deficit, and the border. Much of that work has already been started by organisations like Believe in Scotland, but it falls on all of us who believe in independence to develop it further.

We do not need to wait for a campaign to be officially launched. The work of persuasion starts now.