Don't Panic!

I don't take any newspapers except the National but I read articles from the Guardian and the Independent most days. I keep an eye on what appears on the BBC Scotland website. I don't watch 

BBC TV or listen to BBC radio. I watch short extracts from Sky, STV and C4 News. And I sometimes watch the press conference the First Minister gives daily. So I can't tell if what I'm telling you is a general trend. I can only share with you what I've noticed in the media I'm aware of.

The National remains where it usually is: weak on policy but good at defending the Scottish government's actions on C-19 and the NHS, and promoting new ideas like Universal Basic Income. It reports from other parts of the world without ignoring that's happening in Scotland. The Guardian and the Independent discovered Scotland about 6 weeks ago and have carried decent reports on what's happening here. Both have given credit where it's due: praising the Scottish government, asking questions about what the UK government has been up to - and making a clear difference between the nations of the union. 

As far as Sky is concerned, the UK doesn't exist: there's London and occasionally England and there's a helluva lot of reporting from the USA. 

STV is a a horror show. The level of Scottish programming on this channel is the lowest it has ever been. For 8 weeks, their news programmes have carried only 2 kinds of stories: wee couthy stories about our heroic frontline staff (usually nurses or care assistants) or horror stories about what the Scottish Government is doing wrong, all too often involving an interview with Hugh Pennington (who is a bacteriologist, not a virologist, has been retired for 18 years and last worked in public health in Scotland in 1995). STV have cut their news delivery right back in recent months. For example, there is no news in Scotland at all over the weekend. There's no debate on STV, no discussion. And, interestingly, their news reports have now invented a new category of care home. Rather than mention the word 'private' they call them 'independent.' Well, they wouldn't want to besmirch the good name of a business. 

And STV's failure to report or discuss, of course, leaves most of the news reporting to the BBC. 

Channel 4 News was doing a great job reporting from Scotland till about 6 weeks ago. Then it sent Ciaran Jenkins here and since then there's been a stream of bad news stories. My heart sinks now when I hear the words: "And now over to our Scottish correspondent"..because I know we're going to get a series of half-baked opinions about what's happening here that are not backed up by data or information from Public Health Scotland or the Scottish government or even a few academics.

The  First Minister's daily press conferences have been a revelation to me. I've had just about nothing to do with the press in my life - I'm glad to say - but, given what I've seen other people put through, I don't associate newspaper people with fairness or the search for truth that some of them claim. 

At the start of the C-19 pandemic, Scotland often got a good press. Nicola Sturgeon was good at the podium. She reassured people, gave sound advice. understood her limitations and left the medical stuff to those properly qualified to deal with it. Once they'd all understood that the Four Nations hoo-ha that Boris Johnson was talking about meant nothing and his government would take decisions for the whole of the UK without consulting them, the First Minister certainly gave the heads of the devolved governments the encouragement they needed to stand their ground. I'm told a lot of the press, no doubt spurred on by Downing Street, didn't like that. They accused Nicola Sturgeon of deliberately broadcasting before Boris Johnson did to steal his thunder, though, if you watched that atrocious Sunday sermon from Johnson, you'll have noticed gey little thunder to steal. 

And then about 10 days ago, there was a widespread change of tone in reporting from and about Scotland. Where TV stations had been happy to put together factual reports about measures being taken up till then, now it turned nasty. This seemed to coincide with a panic among Scottish unionists: the SNP were getting it all their own way. Nicola Sturgeon's government's actions to combat C-19 had the support of 74% of the Scottish public, whatever their political views. People who'd never thought of Nicola Sturgeon as a leader were now looking to her for leadership - and finding it.

Almost overnight, the twitter trolls were out. They went back to calling her 'wee nippy' and accusing the Scottish government of being obsessed with independence, although only the Tories have so much as mentioned independence at this time. Just about every question from a journalist at her press conferences now has an edge to it, a suggestion that her government is getting everything wrong. She is taking questions from up to 25 journalists from different media companies every day but, amazingly, they always focus on the same issue. One day they're all asking about PPE for - well, you name it - ambulance crews, fire officers, the police - and next day they've all switched to asking about staffing levels in private care homes or the availability of testing. These aren't so much press conferences as interrogations.

Every news bulletin is about, not what the government is doing to contain C-19, but what the Scottish government is failing to do or doing wrong.The BBC Scotland web page features a different scandal every day. The other day they were telling us all about how the death toll from C-19 had risen above 3,000. While their UK website and their TV news bulletins were talking about how the death toll in Scotland is falling week by week. Someone didn't get the memo. 

But is someone coordinating all this? If it's Boris Johnson at the urging of Jackson Carlaw, this will be the first thing they've managed to do since December. And if it is them, what are they so afraid of? Why the panic? 

Let me put a suggestion to you: the Corona virus is terrible, especially for a country with a high number of vulnerable and elderly people. It has done terrible things to families. Frontline staff are under terrible pressure. Scotland is a small country. It doesn't have the large numbers of personnel England has to call on, but it has some pretty good thinkers and some pretty sharp operators - and luckily they work for us.

Sadly, it looks to me as if Scotland is 'fighting' on several fronts: Westminster, a hostile media, our homegrown anti-Scottish politicians. All of them are undermining our confidence. But Scottish people, without any appeals to our Churchill spirit or the Blitz or the Normandy Landings are doing what they need to do. And it's only a small step from realising that we are managing fine in a terrible situation to realising what we could do in normal times if we weren't dependent for funding on the shambles that's going on in Westminster.