The Scottish media’s personality disorder

If the Labour government wanted to know why so many people are claiming sickness and disability benefits for anxiety and depression, all they need to do is to cast an eye over the handiwork of their pals in the anti-independence Scottish media – which is to say almost all of it. The Scottish media devotes itself to telling its viewers how terrible everything in Scotland is, and how it’s all the fault of the Scottish Government. Every day with the Scottish press is an exercise in misery. If you were in a good mood, you won’t be after looking at the website of the Herald, where all the world’s ills are the fault of the Scottish Government and UK Government scandals are hurriedly glossed over.

I’m being flippant about the media in Scotland, but I don’t wish to minimise the very real issues of mental health and depression. I have myself suffered from depression in the past. It’s much more than just feeling a bit sad or pissed off. It’s serious and it’s debilitating. There’s an epidemic of mental health issues these days, the causes of which are multiple and complex.

However today I want to talk about the media in Scotland. There is something profoundly wrong with it. The Scottish media incessantly dwells at length on any perceived fault or failing of the Scottish Government. The anti-independence Scottish media dwells in some strange parallel universe in which Scotland is already independent and is completely insulated from the tax and spending decisions made in the Westminster Parliament which in the real universe in which we actually live, keeps a tight rein on the Scottish budget.

A case in point is BBC Scotland, which for the past decade has obsessively focused on the performance of NHS Scotland while at best giving only passing mention to the fact that the NHS is in crisis across the entire UK and rarely bothers to point out that NHS Scotland often performs better than the NHS elsewhere in the UK. NHS Scotland consistently does better than NHS Wales, which is controlled by a Labour government in Cardiff, not that you’d know that from Pacific Quay.

The relentless focus on negativity is one thing, but when it becomes especially galling is when the same media which is quick to criticise ignores, sidelines, or downplays good news. You can explain the criticism as holding power to account, but when you contrast it with the Scottiah media’s relative lack of criticism directed at the even more powerful Westminster, and the way in which Scottish successes are ignored or downplayed, you see it in a very different light.

I was prompted to write this piece after seeing the headline on ferry obsessed BBC Scotland about the new £150 million Tay crossing just north of Perth, which was opened on time and on budget. You might have thought that after its compulsive years long focus on the ferry saga that BBC Scotland might have been happy to announce that a new piece of major Scottish transport infrastructure was delivered on time and on budget. Of course you’d be wrong. What we got instead was a frankly bizarre story on the BBC Scotland website entitled: “New £150m Tay crossing opens after years of planning.” The story then opened as follows: “A £150m road crossing over the River Tay has officially opened after years of planning and construction.” Nowhere in the report was any mention, not even in passing, that the project was completed on time and on budget.

The headline and framing of this story were deliberately framed to spin a positive story into a negative. “Opened after years of planning” is a framing constructed to give the impression that the bridge took longer to open than it ought to have, even though the project came in on time and on budget. Of course the bridge was years in the planning and construction. That’s how all bridges everywhere are built, even bridges which are not in Scotland, information which may come as a shock to the news editors of Pacific Quay. There is no bridge building fairy who waves her magic sparkly bridge building wand to open an operational road bridge over a major river within minutes of someone thinking, “Hey, it would be a good idea to have a bridge here,” not even in England. BBC Scotland just thinks that there ought to be, and if there was such a fairy, BBC Scotland would be quick to let us know that the wand wouldn’t work in an independent Scotland.

However, had this bridge and road project been delayed, or its costs had overrun the budget set for it, you can be quite certain that BBC Scotland would be dining out on the story for months, platforming Jackie Baillie to demand the resignation of the Scottish Transport Minister for their failure to master speedier concrete pouring. Glenn Campbell or James Cook would be breathlessly chasing after John Swinney down corridors in Holyrood, demanding that he apologise for the “fiasco” and asking if he thought the transport secretary should be suspended by their ankles off the Auld Brig in Perth with their head submerged in the River Tay.

This kind of thing is not at all unusual for the anti-independence media in Scotland. If this was an isolated incident it would scarcely be worthy of comment, but it’s not a one-off. It’s part of an established pattern of constant attacks on the Scottish Government while ignoring its successes.

Just a couple of weeks ago BBC Scotland told us that the Scottish Government was set to miss its target for reducing child poverty. What it didn’t tell us was that Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is declining, or that this achievement is due to the Scottish Government’s Child Payment scheme. In fact the remarkable success of the Scottish Child Payment has been almost ignored by the Scottish media. Had it been a failure, they’d have told us all about it.

In much the same way, BBC Scotland glossed over the news in 2023 that Scotland was the only part of the UK to avoid strikes by NHS staff in under 20 seconds. This was despite the fact that the channel had been gearing itself up for an orgy of negative reporting on the Scottish Government in expectation that doctors in Scotland were going to go on strike. The news that negotiations led by then Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf had successfully avoided strike action was given in a few seconds with palpable disappointment.

In a very real sense Anglo-British nationalism in Scotland is a personality disorder. Criticism without due praise is merely worthless carping which tells us far more about the criticiser than it does about the criticised. It tells us that the habitual critic is insecure and is projecting their own issues with self-esteem onto the object of their constant attacks. They seek to compensate for their own toxic self-doubt by undermining any notion that anyone else could do any better. I have the misfortune to have a close relative like this. I have long since learned to ignore them. Unfortunately it’s far harder trying to open the eyes and ears of the Scottish public to the bias of the Scottish media.

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