I am the weatherman

I’ve written before about the stupid use of the cliche “bucking the trend” by Scottish journalists writing about the housing market here. This phrase is usually wheeled out when the Scottish market diverges in some way from the UK position.  It never seems to occur to the writers of these pieces that there is no general ”trend” – there is a market in England and a market in Scotland and they are often, well, different.

But the use of the words “the trend” is revealing – what this means is that something in Scotland is only worth reporting if it can be read in comparison with England. The housing market in Scotland on its own is not worth bothering about – only if it is better/worse or the same as south of the border.

There’s another startling example of this cringe in the Scottish media this week. The previous post referred to an item on Radio Scotland earlier this week about the weather. Since then it seems you can barely pick up a paper without hearing the phrase that we have “escaped the worse of the snow.” The Herald was at it again today.

What does this actually mean? It means in large parts of Scotland there wasn’t much snow (although where I live there was plenty). But again this is only deemed important because there was a lot in England.  Just think about this for a minute – whenever there is heavy snow in Scotland, how often do you read pieces in UK papers, saying:  ”England has escaped the worst of the weather.”  The point is as far as they are concerend “the weather” is the weather where they are (not unreasonably).  They would either report a story about heavy snow in Scotland or more likely ignore it.

But here in the North Britain world of too many Scottish journalists, once again the weather is interesting only if it is relative to England.

Where did this demeaning lack of self-confidence come from?

GMS or Today?

Such is the inferiority complex of so many journalists in Scotland that they will treat Good Morning Scotland as if it is some Alan Partridge type community radio station up against the mighty Radio 4 Today.

This says more about their self-loathing than the quality of the respective programmes: if it’s Scottish it must be crap.

That’s not to say that GMS is not without its faults. As a former producer of the programme I was probably personally responsible for quite a few of those.  Since I left, an obsession has developed with conducting pointless “lives” on stories that simply don’t merit inclusion in a national news programme. Last week, there was what seemed like an endless series of interviews  about a school whose pupils were entering a competition to make salads for M and S.   Why?

But when Radio Scotland’s news output really breaks down is when it relies on editorial lines formulated in London. Today was a classic case in point. The news bulletins were running strongly on the line that there was massive snow disruption in England but Scotland had “escaped the worst.” That must have been interesting news to those stuck on the M8 or M77 trying to cope with horrendous driving conditions.  I suspect that this was a cue essentially cut and pasted from London with a Scottish paragraph added in. It seemed a combination of journalistic laziness (not bothering to re-write the top line) and an example of the Scottish cringe – it must be more important if it’s happening in England.

On the whole though, GMS is still the only programme worth listening to if you are actually interested in what is happening in Scotland. Today will have the occasional Jock-slots but you know, and they know , this is out of duty and because they have been told to get out of the M25 by the BBC Trust.

The occasions when GMS is in a genuinely no-win situation is when there is a major UK story or a story for which a UK Cabinet minister is the best interviewee. The story has to be covered but the producers know they are going to get a second division guest. This was the case today when Today interviewed Lord Mandelson about “British jobs for British workers” and GMS wheeled out Brian Wilson. 

Incidentally both John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie are clearly high-quality journalists and broadcasters.  But there is a real element of parody to their performances now. Naughtie’s “message to the nation” style reports on President Obama’s inauguration just seemed at times like a series of lectures, albeit stylishly delivered.

Humphrys’ assaults on politicians now just seem ritualistic. Today he tried to press the Business Secretary on what it must feel like for someone on Tyneside (ie short-hand for working-class, struggling) who fears having their job “nicked” (his words) by someone from, I think, Poland. I understand that he’s only asking questions, but to use that kind of language – the idea that “our” jobs are being stolen by the foreigners is just distasteful.

Oh and by the way – both programmes are doing really well according to the latest RAJARS – so what do I know?

Sunday Times Scotland – secrets revealed

It’s been tough without her, but  Sunday Times columnist Jenny Hjul is back this week after her Christmas/New Year break.

 I imagine the conversation between between Hjul and her boss, Carlos Alba, discussing the content of her columns this year, went something like this:

Hjul: Hi Carlos, Jenny here.  It went so well last year that for 2009 I thought I’d devote every single column to the theme – why Scotland is crap and why the SNP is making it even worse.

Alba: Every column?

Hjul: Yes – every one.

Alba: Ok, but don’t you think there are other things you could write about – just every now and again?

Hjul: No. This saves time – I only have to change a few words each week.

Alba:  Don’t you think our readers might be getting a bit bored with this stuff – I mean it’s nothing more than crude propaganda that would make even Jim Murphy wince – isn’t it?

Hjul: He’s way too soft on the Nats – they’re dangerous. They’ve got to be stopped. Imagine what this country would be like if people living in Scotland were actually running it?

Alba: Can’t argue with that I suppose.

Hjul: Good.

Alba: By the way – we’re working on a feature for next week – why Scotland has the worst education system in the world: “From Kames and Kelvin to Klowns” – what do you think? After that I thought we’d go for why Scotland is the unhealthiest nation on earth and after that, why Scotland is the most violent country on earth and then maybe, why Scotland has the worst politicians in the world and then to round it off something along the lines of what has happened to this once proud nation of ours that has turned it into the worst in the world?

Hjul: Fantastic. Makes me proud to work for this paper.

England’s finest hour?

Whether a nationalist or not, one thing that irritates virtually every Scot alive is the way that England and Britain are used interchangably to mean the same country. Gordon Brown of course is the master of this - he regularly goes weepy eyed at the idea of the Magna Carta and other pre-Union examples of “British” liberty – although funnily enough the Declaration of Arbroath never seems to get a mention. 

There’s a classic example of this  from The  Times’s usually excellent comment editor and blogger Danny Finkelstein, who asks in the headline on his Comment Central blog ”The most brilliant and heroic period in British history?” This introduces a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn which goes on about “England’s” heroism in the Second World War.  Danny then asks readers if they agree that the war was indeed “England’s” greatest period.

Subsequent contributions fail to recognise of course that countries in the UK other than England were involved in the fight against the Nazis.  In fact Scots, as usual, suffered a disproportionate number of casualties in the conflict.   This is not a trivial, chip on the shoulder point. It’s indicative of the way that much of the London media portrays Scotland - something either to be ignored, with no history of it own – or as an irritant country, wheeled out only when someone is complaining about subsidy junkies.

More Sunday Herald

The Sunday Herald just isn’t big enough. Yesterday it sold for one pound- a major saving compared with the leading London titles and a clear attempt to entice new readers. But I suspect few of those readers will be back because at present it just doesn’t offer value for money.

Frustratingly it has real pockets of quality – Ian Bell is by miles the best columnist in Scotland;  Paul Hutcheon clearly has great political contacts (although for a political editor he seems too obsessed by MSP expenses and uninterested in policy and strategy); it has a proper foreign editor;  Joanna Blythman is a brilliant food critic (but a pointless general columnist) and the sports section is still good. But as a package it is light. The whole point of Sunday papers is that they should be a leisurely read – sometimes lasting until the beginning of the week. But most weeks you can get through most of the interesting things in the Sunday Herald in an hour or so.

Yesterday instead of producing a separate Edinburgh Festival supplement it turned its magazine into a festival special – ie no value added - just a lazy and easy way of filling the magazine.

What makes this particularly disappointing is that under Andrew Jaspan the paper was the best in Scotland – daily or Sunday. It was refreshingly free of anti-SNP hysteria and seemed much more in tune with the new Scotland than its rivals. If it had maintained that quality – and that means investment – it would surely now be in a position to benefit from changing Scottish attitudes and politics. More and more, however,  it seems like something you buy in addition to one of the London Sunday papers, in order to get proper Scottish coverage, instead of a single purchase in its own right.

Glasgow East – random thoughts

Before getting on to the politics, two odd things about BBC Scotland’s coverage of the Glasgow East by-election. First of all, and in a truly bizarre editorial decision, last night’s 1030pm Reporting Scotland seemed to virtually ignore this massive developing story. No insert from a reporter at the count; nothing with a political corr, just a trail to Newsnight on BBC2. It was left to the network news to suggest that something spectacular was on the cards.

Then today on Radio Scotland, there was massive excitement that David Cameron was calling for an election. This started to lead the news from about 0830 on. On a night when the story was all about the SNP/Labour you can’t blame Cameron for wanting to get into the story – but did his intervention really justify the top line?

As for the politics, once again this contest showed how out of touch the commentariat can be. Margaret Curran was an excellent candidate apparently – really? She’s a skilled politician used to dealing with the media, but her never-ending mantra that she would be fighting for the East End cleary irritated voters who knew that she and the Labour Party as a whole had taken them for granted for decades. 

The other main media misconception is that there was no demand for Independence. In fact the SNP established that a large number of Labour voters (maybe a majority) actually backed Independence even if they weren’t voting for the SNP. If there had been a mini-referendum on Independence in this seat, my guess is that there would have been a big Yes vote. That, however, is not part of the media narrative – protest vote, disaster for Gordon Brown – so it gets ingored. If journalists actually started to talk to voters their stories and comments might be rather different and more accurate.

The Herald – what’s going on?

You only have to hope that this denial by Newsquest of the claim about the merger of the newsrooms of The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times is true.  Under pressure from London titles, the only answer for the Scottish quality press is large-scale investment in their Scottish news and comment operations – not more cuts.

Let’s face it – very few people are buying The Herald for its foreign news coverage – usually a token page or two of wire copy. To be fair, hard economics mean that it is unrealistic for The Herald – and The  Scotsman, P and J and Courier – to finance expensive foreign offices. Sad to say the days of Brussels correspondents on both The Herald and Scotsman seem to be over.

But if the domestic news operation is cut back even further it becomes ever harder to justify spending 70 p a day on a Scottish paper, when the sheer number of pages and stories in the London titles is so much greater.  At present the Herald still produces high quality front pages and with Ian Bell, Alf Young (although I disagree with almost everything he says) and BBC-bound Douglas Fraser it still has writers worth reading.  The paper’s features coverage is, however, woeful. 

There doesn’t seem to be much better news on the web - The Sunday Herald for example was born at the beginning of the internet age but its web presence is ridiculously thin. 

The political situation in Scotland is the most exciting it has ever been. There is almost certainly going to be an Independence referendum in two years time. Is there going to be a decent national press left to cover it?

Bucking the trend – or why Scottish newsdesks need to get better

Apart from communities “coming to terms with” tragedy there are few more over-used journalistic cliches than the idea of “bucking the trend”. In Scotland, in particular no story on house prices (and no newspaper or programme is complete these days without one) can be written without the observation that property north of the border is bucking the UK trend of plummeting prices. Good Morning Scotland were at it again this morning. This isn’t just rubbish language, it’s also rubbish journalism which reveals the inferiority complex of far too many Scottish news producers and news editors.

First of all, notice how Scottish house prices are only a story in relation to what’s going on in England. The reality of house price rises or falls in Scotland is not deemed interesting enough unless it is better than/worse than the situation in England. 

But the real issue I have with this “bucking the trend” nonsense is that Scotland is just different. In other words, if you like this kind of thing, the Scottish market nearly always “bucks the UK trend”. We bucked the trend because prices did not rise as fast as in London, we bucked the trend because Scots tend to spend a smaller proportion of their salary than people in England and therefore we are not susceptible to quite the same huge rises and falls as exist south of the border.  It would be unusual in fact if the market in Scotland started to behave the same way as in England. All this is explained by the FT, who unfortunately still can’t resist the inevitable bucking the trend reference.

What’s really needed is for journalists in Scotland – particularly BBC Scotland news editors - to stop looking at the London prospects and putting  a kilt on each story.  Another current example of this is knife crime. Although knife crime in Scotland has been a massive problem for years, and is still disproportionately higher than in England (yes, we buck the trend on that one too – in fact I saw some statistics recently that suggest the rate of knife crime in Scotland may now be falling)  the story is getting massive licks because it is a major issue in London in particular. 

Wouldn’t it be great if news executives in Scotland started to buck the trend for once and started to think for themselves?

Sources, news scandals and embarrassing secrets

The story running strongly on Radio Scotland this morning about the Iraqi interpreter now living in Glasgow tells us a lot about  BBC journalism and even more about the Labour Party.

First of all BBC journalism. This story first ran, to the best of my knowledge on June 13, in The Times, detailing how Iraqis who risked their lives working for the British Army were now living in squalid tower blocks in Glasgow.  If it was picked up at all by BBC Scotland – which I don’t think it was – it was given minimal coverage. 

Three weeks on and guess what – the story appears  on the network ten o’clock news last night; no doubt as part of the production team’s orders for more Jock-slots to appease those moaning Scots. This morning the story is leading the Radio Scotland bulletins and the Good Morning Scotland programme.

 Why is this now deemed the number one story in Scotland when three weeks ago it got barely a mention? There are two possibilities – first of all the BBC Scotland planning desk simply missed the original story, which can happen. More likely is that this is an example of the lack of self-confidence and subservient mindset that pervades BBC Scotland – all of a sudden it’s a big story because the network has picked it up.   If London thinks it’s big – let’s go for it.  Network interest is the only thing that appears to have made the decision-makers at Pacific Quay think this issue should be propelled from non-story to huge story.

As for Labour – what an indictment of decades of Labour government in Glasgow and dominance in Scotland that housing in our largest city is deemed so bad that Iraqis fleeing terror are disgusted at the conditions they are being asked to live in. This is not some sort of camp where asylum seekers are told to go - it is an ordinary tower block. The same kind of thought struck me watching Question Time last night when Scotland Office minister David Cairns was asked about the fact that life expectancy in the east end of Glasgow was lower than in the Gaza Strip. Mr Cairns replied that such comparisons were “unhelpful”. Yes, unhelpful to Labour who have to explain why they have allowed to such a dreadful situation to arise.

It’s as if poor housing and appalling life expectancy figures are embarrassing secrets which don’t fit in with the New Labour or New Glasgow narrative and therefore shouldn’t be shared with others.  These are major stories which deserve air-time in Scotland – regardless of pending by-elections or slots on the ten o’clock news.

You cannot be serious

There’s a scene in The West Wing when a brilliant news reporter, temporarily seconded to the White House, picks up a story about who said what to who, which could prove hugely damaging to the Bartlet administration.  In the end the reporter doesn’t bother filing the story because basically he thinks verbal gaffes and gossip about Washington insiders are not worth bothering anyone about.

That scene came to mind when I was thinking about this story. Do political journalists really have nothing better to do than engage in a bout of  Kremlinology over Alan Johnson’s Wimbledon analogy? Today the Westminster Health Secretary has been forced to put out an excruciating explanation of what he really meant.  I don’t want to sound like Alastair Campbell, but it’s all so utterly pointless – a clumsy phrase from a Cabinet minister trying to allude to a current sporting event.  So what?

When I worked for John Swinney when he was leader of the SNP, particularly towards the end of his leadership, some of the interpretation put on totally innocent remarks, was just ludicrous. Almost anything anyone said was implied to be an attack – which meant it was impossible to make any sort of a serious political argument. If political journalists got out more - spoke to more people outside the Westminster/Holyrood circuit – their sense of news values would surely change for the better.