By Not-My-Real-Name

I remember once I was in a supermarket during the time when the former FM, prior to NS , as in AS who is now the Alba party leader, was all over the media during his trial.

I was standing looking at the papers next to an old guy who said ” There’s no smoke without fire”…..when he was looking at a picture of AS and a front page headline about him in the Daily Express.

I asked him “What has he actually been accused of “? (knowing full well what the charges were but wanted to hear what he, the old guy said that he knew, based on his comment to me).

He responded “Well I don’t really know all of the details but it’s all over the news so he must be guilty of something”.

So his assumed judgement was that if the media are reporting it and thus passing their judgement upon it…. then that was what he believed must then be true and factual even though he himself did not know the details……I didn’t want to chastise him too much, as he was old, but I did say to him

” Oh well you better hope that if you or yours are ever accused of doing something that you or them then don’t get in the papers because then other people will think the same thing as you have today”…….he didn’t say anything in response to that but I did hope that it might have given him a wee ‘food for thought’ that ‘trial by media’ might not always be the best and most reliable source to base your opinion upon ,especially if that source was ever to be one that was ‘closer to home’, plus I added that “of course the Daily Express is not a reliable source as they are always biased against anyone who has had any connection to the SNP”…….I then wished him a good day.

Alas that , via SOME people, is what we we are faced with and the media know it only too well hence why they do what they continue to do……but if you are ever confronted with this same ignorance, then in highlighting a “there but for the grace of God ” comment , as in ‘well I hope that does not happen to me if I were in their place’….as in being judged and assumed guilty on the front page of Newspapers…..it might just (but in some cases probably will not LOL) make them think differently about the media’s role in what they produce as supposed ‘truths and facts’ that can really NOT be relied upon….always TWO sides to a story and the side the media report is not always the accurate or full version of what’s (REALLY) what in some stories !

My above story may not , as a example, seem comparable to what has happened to NS but the point I make in telling it is that it was ONE experience as an example I was confronted with which is, I am sure, is what some other people ,like that old guy, have as a SAME reaction and opinion of, on what happened to both her, NS, and too upon the current SNP police investigation….as well as other #SNPBAD (over) promoted stories in the media.