There are eight million stories in the naked city tonight?
News reporting is actually far more news selecting as editors make quick decisions about what and how to report.
From 6:00am this morning BBC UK makes credible choices.
First, they report a massive data breach by the Northern Ireland police which will have put many at risk of terrorist attack.
Then, we hear that six water companies in England have been accused of under-reporting sewage leaks and over-charging customers.
Third, it’s a railway gas leak and fourth a railway strike.
Finally, the NHS Federation claim the true impact of the strikes [in England] is being masked.
Objectively important, in the public interest, dramatic and, in none of the above reports is the UK Government even mentioned, far less connected with or accused in any way for these major problems.
Around 6:27am and BBC Scotland leads with:
There has been further criticism of Scottish Government spending.
We hear of £32 000 spent on ‘away days.’ There are 7 000 Scottish Government civil servants. That’s £4.57 each on ‘away days.’
The Labour Party in Scotland is then platformed, to link this tiny amount to the cost-of-living crisis, against the backdrop of filmed campaigning in Rutherglen and Hamilton West.
Then we hear of delays in the dualling of the A9, a Conservative MSP is platformed and the Scottish Government is reported ‘admitting’ that it will not reach the target.
Neither of these reports cover new and dramatic events. Nothing new has happened in these stories. Even using their own website, they could have chosen instead employment and earnings hit by North Sea decline or post anti-depressant suicide. Of course, neither of these can be even linked to the Scottish Government or used to platform the opposition parties.
Or from the Guardian last night at 20:52:
Man and woman injured after concrete slab thrown from flyover hits taxi. Police seek witnesses after pair injured by object launched from pedestrian walkway above Fife road
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/08/man-woman-hospitalised-after-concrete-slab-hit-taxi-glenrothes-fife-scotland
This is blatant politicising of news reporting and in the run-up to a by-election.
BBC UK reports the news then BBC Scotland serves the interests of the opposition parties.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
They are getting even more blatant with their constant anti-SNP bias, if that is even possible.
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Groundhog Day on this colonial propaganda “news management” outlet.
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On the data breach impacting the Northern Irish police, the Radio 4 commentator mentioned MI5 forces embedded in the N.I. police service.
How many MI5 personnel are embedded in Police Scotland, BBC Scotland and the Scottish civil service?
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They hope that most people are too ignorant or busy to look into the facts on well, anything important in Scotland. The Brit state has form in
manipulation, divide and rule tactics in the countries they occupied and they are using those tactics in Scotland via the so called media. Notice how ‘social media’ is called toxic, dangerous, manipulative etc. Always fascinating to hear that given how toxic, dangerous and manipulative the so called ‘main media’ is, and in fact is more dangerous because it mostly goes unchallenged,
and is believed to be honouring the truth.
Independence is essential to ditching the far right English government, that is becoming more extreme, and that Scotland did not vote for, the BBC and others are employed to undermine and deby democracy in Scotland.
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*Deny.
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Aye, and plastered in 1st place on the BBC/Scotland web-page is Andrew Pickens’s follow up piece, “Yousaf orders review of civil service bank card spending” https://archive.ph/MquUC
Note the not so subtle difference between the opening paragraph “First Minister Humza Yousaf has ordered a review of Scottish government bank card spending by civil servants” and the 3rd “Mr Yousaf said it was “fair to ask the questions” about the spending and has asked his officials to review procedures”.
So essentially Labour spads sent a FOI request for ALL sums spent over 3 years, in order to concoct a story over already published sums (over 500 pounds) but dragging in the small stuff like heel supports and nail varnish to portray absurdity, then got the BBC in Scotland to amplify it.
Disappointed to find only the Daily Record asked a question about this non-story, a quick call to ‘Slim’ Pickens ensures a refresh of the story is made with a quote from the ‘magic roundabout’ herself Baillie about it all being “deeply concerning”…
It perfectly illustrates how the political media bubbleverse works, and fails, the concocted ‘scandal’ only exercises the media and politicians, and the public recognise it as claptrap and completely ignore it.
The public are not so stupid as Labour and the BBC like to think they are, the “blatant politicising of news reporting and in the run-up to a by-election” is something they became accustomed to by the BBC in Scotland from Sarah Smith’s time in charge of this outfit.
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‘So essentially Labour spads sent a FOI request for ALL sums spent over 3 years, in order to concoct a story ..’
You have to acknowledge that Labour’s FOI wheeze on this occasion is ‘brilliant’ as well as being so disingenuous as to be despicable! The Party would anticipate confidently that amongst such a large volume of transaction data there would be items that could be ‘spun’ to the Scottish Government’s discomfort. Similar data for any large public sector organisation would no doubt have comparable results but it’s hard to refute each and every ‘spun’ claim even if there were mainstream media organisations interested in covering refutations.
But critically, Labour would also be supremely confident in a mainstream media and the BBC in Scotland being only too eager to amplify its FOI findings – and to do so without regard to context or perspective or to examining relevant background that may justify many of the transactions being reported. The attractiveness of the wheeze is enhanced by the opportunities presented to drip feed anecdotes over days and to do so during a by-election campaign.
(Are civil servants – uniquely in Scotland – unable to undertake staff development and team building outside their workplace without Labour and media ‘outrage’?
Is a private office unable to take sensible steps to ensure efficient/effective passage for a government minister through an airport when on official business – enabling greater certainty over the scheduling of prior meetings, over travel to the airport and being on time for departure; providing a suitable work place for the minister in a departure lounge whilst waiting for a flight?)
Candidly, the BBC is once again failing to adhere to its own editorial guidelines with regard to reports founded on data: it is choosing not to provide ‘context’.
Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidance/reporting-statistics/
‘When explaining statistics, we should put them into context; a number used on its own is rarely meaningful.’
‘We should weigh and interpret statistics helping audiences to judge their magnitude and importance. ‘
‘Press releases can alert us to good stories, but they can also contain exaggerations or use statistics selectively. So we shouldn’t always rely on them or take them at face value.’
And finally, on the importance of ‘contextualising statistics’: ‘We should report statistics in context to make them meaningful and ensure our audiences understand their significance, taking care to avoid giving figures more weight than can stand scrutiny. BEWARE OF USING STATISTICS IN HEADLINES WHERE FIGURES ARE RARELY MEANINGFUL WITHOUT CONTEXT.’ (my emphasis).
From the BBC News website’s Scotland section on 8 July, there was this headline: ‘Civil servants in Scotland made 58,000 bank card transactions’. – meaningful?
Holding governments and public bodies to account over their expenditure is a legitimate activity. However, when a (legitimately) politically partisan organisation – in this case the Labour Party – is behind the communication and promotion of research findings, the aggregation and amplification of its contentions – without scrutiny, without context, without perspective, without background on the various reported transactions – the whole thing loses merit in terms of ‘holding to account’ and descends to smear, effectively the original partisan intention.
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The enigma of WHY the SNP keep getting elected as the largest party in Scotland, and thus they, as a party, have been elected as the Scottish government for many years…..against a constant hostility and a stream of negativity via the media (and t’others) …is something that all of those who oppose and criticise the SNP just cannot answer……but really the truth stares them in the face……that perhaps what they say is THE reality is not a reality that we the voters can identify with as our lived experience as those who actually LIVE in an SNP governed Scotland…….
Perhaps then tis more if a conundrum for the critics….and too a #Fail that their constants attempts to diss the SNP do not work….with us the voters that is…that must make them so mad…at us.
As against all of this supposed bad governance via the SNP surely then they, those critics, must think that we, the Scottish voters, are thick…..because if things were as bad as they all said they were …why then do we continue to punish ourselves by electing those who do the job so badly….. now there is a REAL enigma…..but not one that the many critics of the SNP seek to explore in way of an argument that they want to present…… or pursue…..as blaming the public is a Tory tactic surely..
Meanwhile the Tories, as the UK government , can be responsible for and indeed orchestrate constant chaos via a succession of scandals and too what is clearly incompetence and bad governance by them….. but what is distinctly different for them is that they , many a time, are not linked to , by the media, as those who are the real culprits or rather the real cause of many issues that negatively impacts the public in their day to day lives …..instead the media will focus upon red herring stories to divert the attention of voters upon non issues while the real issues are ignored…..I mean how long has the so called ‘illegal immigrant’ story been around where a constant stream of (non) solutions has been announced while the real problem is ignored ….the real problem being that the Tories seem incapable of overseeing the processing of , in a timely fashion, asylum seekers and those who wish to live here thus a backlog exists of people not being processed quick enough which is a #Fail for the UK TORY Home Secretary…..but BOATS and WHO is in them seems to be the preferred focus and angle taken, by the Tory friendly media , on what is a tragic story that is linked to those, from other (only certain) countries, who want to live here .
Meanwhile the supposed official opposition party under Starmer fails to capitalise on the many times when he could have called for certain Tory ministers to resign but then we all know he has a Tory loving English electorate to win over so he cannot be TOO forceful in his condemnation of the Tories…..though surprise surprise it does not stop him from doing this with the SNP….which shows the contempt and disregard he has for us, the Scottish voting SNP voters, does it not.
Tories, New New Labour, Lib Dems , political pundits and political commentators and their media (more so the BBC in Scotland) are not those who seek the BEST for us here in Scotland but instead their sole purpose and role is to ensure that we, Scotland, stay within their UK so that their UK government can be the main beneficiary to our BEST and most financially rewarding resources…….and that is pretty much why they all rally AGAINST the SNP……simples…..or maybe not as simples as they think….cause we , those pesky voters in Scotland, keep voting FOR the SNP …..
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