Marketing column by Terry van Rhyn
One of my favourite topics to write about is the British national press, and the reason for that is I get to make observations like the following.
On September 11 this year, writing on the stance of SNP leader Alex Salmond in the Scottish independence referendum, The Telegraph compared him to Robert Mugabe. Yes, that’s Robert Mugabe.
Here’s a little more – on September 9, The Times’ Melanie Reid wrote on the same subject: ‘What spoilt, selfish, childlike fools those Scots are ... They simply don’t have a clue how lucky they are’.
On September 7, Dominic Lawson for The Daily Mail, obviously, compared the Scottish Independence’s threat to the existence of the United Kingdom to the marches of Hitler and Napoleon, helpfully accompanied by pictures of the two.
It gets better. On June 7 2014, The Spectator’s Simon Heffer helpfully generalised a generation of Scots as being ‘addicted to welfare’, people who ‘embraced the something for nothing society’. And finally, contributing to what eventually became significant demonstrations outside the corporation’s offices; the BBC’s Nick Robinson subjected Alex Salmond to a barrage of accusations, including one which completely misunderstood the basics of corporation tax, and another which unwittingly prompted Mr Salmond to press for an official enquiry in to the provision of insider information.
I’ll leave those to provide a little context for what I intend to discuss; accusations of media bias on the part of British institutions in their coverage of the Scottish independence vote.
Not, of course, to demonstrate actual bias, but to demonstrate the absurdity and slipperiness of what it is we’re tackling here.
Could it really be that the national media is at the beck and call of London’s financial elite?
Could they be rallying behind the bankers?
Perhaps they’re doing it for Queen, country and empire, engaging in an unprecedented programme of censorship and skewerage for the protection of the realm.
Or, more realistically, perhaps they’re trying to remain profitable by creating the most convoluted and inflammatory narratives possible in a bid to confound and thus retain readers.
We should not forget that ‘our’ media, the BBC included, is a business, and in this society that means free reign to generate profits by any means. It’s the same as a toothpaste company inventing halitosis, or Guy Beringer inventing brunch – create the problem, then sell the solution.
If I was to write the advert it would read something like: ‘Are you bewildered yet? Buy our newspaper to find out even more.’
danger
What it all comes down to is the actual danger of engaging with the media on any front, and that is the temptation to underestimate. We should not, for a second, presume in all seriousness that a writer capable of working for one of the country’s oldest and most established newspapers won’t have anticipated the backlash of calling Scottish people ‘spoilt, selfish and childlike’.
Nor should we expect that The Daily Mail’s editor Paul Dacre would be blind to the potential ramifications of printing photos of Hitler in an article about Alex Salmond. For all its subtleties and raised palms, I also think it would be decidedly unwise to think that the BBC might not have noticed a certain imbalance in its referendum coverage.
Don’t misunderstand me, at its best the British media is one of the great bastions of anything resembling institutionalised free speech and objective, investigatory journalism and is the envy of many countries worldwide.
But for the most part, it’s also populated by the offline equivalent of click-bait and forms part of an enormous enterprise run not by benevolent guardians of free speech and impartiality, but by big business that wants to stay big.
As such, ultimately, any outrage at the possibility that the national media did provide blinkered coverage of the independence movement speaks of a degree of willful naivety on the part of the indignants.
Granted, the BBC could be accused of media bias and as a quasi-public institution there is an argument to be had surrounding the BBC’s journalistic impartiality as defined in the terms of its licensing agreement, as always.
But at the crux of the argument lies the following: of all the media institutions, English and Scottish, regional and national – perhaps just a handful provided what could be described as balanced coverage of the independence movement.
Most picked a side and stuck to it without reservation.
But we all knew they would do that. They’ve been doing it for decades.
And yet, without representation, and against the tide of the national press, the independence campaign cannot be considered anything other than a success.
In its first iteration, a 45 per cent minority is not to be sniffed at.
Its campaigners manufactured one of the most exciting periods in recent Scottish history and did so by taking an approach to the media defined by pragmatism, understanding and realistic expectations.
They balanced the institutional with the independent, and the rarified with the social. There’s a David and Goliath metaphor in here that’s perhaps a little more apt and a lot less patronising, but which escapes me now.
Either way, it’s a cause for celebration and a lesson to be learned.
Terry Van Rhyn is managing director, Ashgrove Marketing