Scottish Media is a Democratic Failure
As Jamie McIntyre has put it: “The Sarwar-Offord stushie is certainly revealing which of our journalists are reporters of politics, and which are participants.”
For the avoidance of doubt, there are a lot of ‘participants’.
If the Offord-Sarwar deal tells us everything we need to know about the landscape and ecosystem of Scottish Unionist politics, the response to it tells us everything we need to know about the Scottish media itself.
What Lord Offord said about Labour’s attempt to make a deal with Reform isn’t even a new story. Sarwar’s own team was briefing the press about it weeks ago. It’s not worth going over and over again, we’ve laid it out HERE and HERE and HERE.
But let’s look instead at the extraordinary institutional bias in the Scottish media that makes this sort of framing even possible.
As we enter an election campaign, the strange situation we find ourselves in comes more sharply into focus. With roughly 50% of the people in favour of independence and with pro-independence parties heading for a huge Holyrood majority, according to multiple polls, the state of Scottish Media is something to behold.
Aside from Neil Mackay at the Herald, and the National, and Bella, and a handful of great blogs and independent media sites, there is virtually no Scottish media that is pro-independence.
We live in a media culture of a bland, suffocating consensus.
Yes there are great journalists in Scotland, Colin Mackay of STV News is consistently good, and yes there are excellent female journaliists, among whom I’d include: Kathryn Samson Channel 4 News’ Scotland Correspondent; Joyce McMillan, occasional Scotsman writer (though greatly reduced); Dani Garavelli; and others, but apart from Laura Webster at the National it’s an overwhelmingly white male space. Here’s some of them.
Here’s Michael Blackley, Political Editor of the Scottish Daily Mail:
“SNP ministers have the financial prudence of “a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave” and have pedalled the “economics of the madhouse”, says former Scottish Enterprise boss.
Here’s Andrew Marr, Political Editor New Statesman:
Labour messaging suddenly reaching a new level… Very impressive https://t.co/A6GujfEiQi
— Andrew Marr (@AndrewMarr9) April 9, 2026
Here’s the Herald’s chief political columnist, Kevin McKenna: “‘No other political leader in the UK can touch him as a public speaker”
Here’s the Scottish Daily Express editor Ben Borland:
Here’s Ben Borland and John Ferguson, Editor of the Sunday Mail on Paul Hutcheon’s Daily Record podcast ‘Planet Holyrood’ sharing their mutual incomprehension of just about everything:
Here’s Chris Deerin ‘Scotland Editor’ of the New Statesman:
I could go on.
This surround-sound of white middle-aged men who agree about everything isn’t exclusive, I’ve not really included the podcasters and bloggers that complete the picture, like the smug-fest that is the The Ponsonby & Massie Podcast. I’ve not really dipped into the public broadcaster. I’ve not really included the ex-pro indy bloggers that have, in classic Horse-Shoe Theory, joined absolutely in their former opponents’ mindset. I can’t be bothered. These people are completely irrelevant.
It’s not sustainable, it’s not democratic, it’s not even interesting. This is not to say that the media shouldn’t be there to challenge the Scottish Government about their record, and their multiple policy failings, they absolutely should, but the one-dimensional nature of the Scottish media is off the scale. It’s embarrassing.
We are now in a position where the gap between the Scottish electorate and the Scottish commentariat is a chasm, and it’s mind-defying that it’s even possible that we challenge the orthodoxy of the political message we are bombarded with from every side every single day.
The problem is not just a desultory output that huddles around a few central bitter ideas, but it shapes the entire Scottish political narrative around: a hatred of constitutional change; an embittered social conservatism;, a commitment to regressive culture wars; an obsession with fossil fuels; and a determination to growth economics. This tiny group completely dominates our public life, and it’s why we’ll be launching an appeal to redress this imbalance and ask for support to continue Bella’s attempts to represent change and plurality in Scottish media.
We are supported only by our readers. We don't have corporate backers and we don't take advertising, so we rely entirely on your support.
Help to support independent Scottish journalism
I managed half of Planet Holyrood. Three men in a pub, baffled, banal, zero insight or scope, everything within the tiny frame they punt out daily. Where do they find these tubes ?
They get these people from the other tabloids. Its a discussion among three men who edit the newspapers, and entirely unconscious that this might be weird
Great writing.
Thank you.
I will spread the Word…. ugly pro- state, pro laissez- faire, journalism is everywhere, with very old views still predominant.
We need progressive thought and real progressive change, as you so rightly point out. Thank you again.
Thanks Roddy
See how the Anas Sarwar party political broadcast sentimentalizes Scotland?
That’s absolutely the cornerstone of 300 years of cultural Unionism…
The idea that we can be, and in some respects of course, already are a small, dynamic, European country with our own arts, with our own aesthetic, with our intellectual traditions, this is all just reduced by cultural unionism to a sentimental notion of Scotland, “a place you call home”…
They’re not aware of it of course, it’s just second nature to them, but this undoubtedly is the way we have been cast culturally by Unionism, as this pawky wee, loyal hard-working country which can be called on in times of crisis to stand up for what’s right etc in a harsh world… Burns, or parts of Burns, has been handy there for them…
The idea that we might our own intellectual traditions, our own languages – totally absent in that piece of Labour propaganda – our own culture, this is all just hijacked by a truly atrocious piece of sentimental pish…
I want to live in a country that’s got a state-of-art 21st century art gallery like they have all over Europe.
I want to live in a country with an auditorium like Santiago Calatrava designed for Santa Cruz de Tenerife (a city of 300,000 people).
I want to live in a country where there is a national filmtech which young- and old – Scottish people can go and learn about the history of film…
I want to live in a country which is thinking about life in the right way…
You don’t live to work… you work to live, that’s the way it should be…
Reading the Scottish media reminds me of going on a night out only to discover that the majority of attendees all went to the same school.
It appears that as the polls indicate that the SNP are going to win again the political media are struggling to hide their disappointment. They have now resorted to talking down the turnout where in any democracy it is normal practice for all involved, including media, to at the very least encourage voters to exercise their democratic right and vote. This is a cynical attempt to discourage voting and devalue the election process which will no doubt be followed by a widespread questioning of validity of the result.
Ah! Jack Perry, wasn’t he the guy who axed Scottish Enterprise’s capacity for spatial analysis and understanding the economics of place! Clearly an ‘expert’ we should hold in great awe.
The Scottish tabloids have been in decline for so long that their political attacks only have reach nowadays thanks to the BBC’s “here’s how the commentariat want you to vote” section. You can always tell which headlines are going to be pushed by BBC Scotland and which ones will be omitted. Recently it feels like the BBC have been running Sarwar’s campaign, so they’ll certainly want to distract from this latest stushie asap. Normally, when they don’t have anything solid, they deploy a “SNP accused of” or “Swinney denies” story, which I presume will be the case here. I expect some Unionist to accuse John Swinney or the SNP of doing something underhand, most likely today or tomorrow, and the BBC will use that to steer the narrative away from this. This tactic is used so regularly, that I’d be genuinely suprised if I don’t see a “Swinney accused of/denies” headline on the BBC website by the end of the week – unless something with actual legs happens in the meantime.
As expected, the “Swinnet denies” headline appeared today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8ej8yk7dlxo
I posted about this issue from a slightly different perspective in my blog last week https://afewkindwords.me/2026/04/10/a-sair-fecht/
Paul Hutcheon posted this on 14 April:
“The SNP are relying on Malcolm Offord’s word over Anas Sarwar’s. This is despite John Swinney saying Offord has no place at Holyrood”
Well that’s some ‘hot’ take is it not, in what seems like yet another desperate attempt by Paul H to try to deflect this situation away from Sarwar and then make it into another #SNPBAD situation.
I think we , the public, could be justified in questioning Anas Sarwar’s “word” , purely based upon past examples, like for example when he pledged , as in when he gave his word in the 2024 UK GE, that a UK Labour government would “step in to save the jobs at the Grangemouth Oil refinery” and “put hundreds of millions of pounds behind it to make it a reality, then after the election the opposite happened.
Indeed when Sarwar was challenged on this by Colin Mackay of STV News after the 2024 UK GE , all Sarwar kept saying was that the Grangemouth Oil Refinery was owned by a “Private company”, the same “private company” that he, Sarwar, never mentioned as being a potential issue/problem when he was first making all of his (false) promises to the workers at Grangemouth .
Labour MSP Paul Kane went further in him attempting to stretch credibility , in that he said on last night’s Debate Night that this was a case of the “SNP defending Malcolm Offord”.
Is that really what is happening in this situation though ?
I think that many people would beg to differ on that ‘way off the mark’ (clearly biased) opinion that Paul Kane was attempting to make , in what was surely him just trying to attempt to defect this Offord situation away from Sarwar and then, like Paul H, try to turn it into yet another #SNPBAD situation.
We , I assume, are also expected to believe that had this been John Swinney and Malcolm Offord then Labour , Sarwar and their client media would not have tried to attempt to gain any political advantage for Labour during what is an important election campaign .
That as a situation is something that also stretches credibility , as Labour do so love to play politics do they not.
Nature (life) abhors a monoculture.
Sarwar’s video makes me want to vote SNP. I love the country he depicts so much, that I want to see it flourish in independence.
PS: That’s The Laurieston scored off the list of pubs I’d like to visit. Is Sarwar in there often?
Some good writers in there like Chris Deerin and Kevin McKenna you just think they must be doing it to keep being employed. I do feel a bit sorry for them. Less so for the chap who used to write for STV online then found his natural home at the Daily Mail, or the ex-News of the World guy who seems to thrill to the unionist cause. But around 50% of the electorate regularly saying in the polls they want to change the country so much would have papers/channels falling over themselves to provide balanced reporting in any other country, even if just to maximize sales. The fact that it hasn’t happened here is troubling for our democracy.
And what about property prices?
What’s going to happen there?
Every single year they go up way beyond wages and inflation, and people need to devote more of their income to either renting or buying a home… 30%, 40% 50% of their salary…
So, they have less money for the same thing their parents had much cheaper, and they can’t go out for a meal at the weekend, or on holiday, or to the cinema or the theatre…
Much less take a year off work to try and explore other versions of their selves..
.
And then you end up with a brain dead culture, which is where we’re going..
A totally brain dead culture obsessed, yes, with property…
And so people sit at home watching reactionary BBC Jane Austen adaptations and don’t go and see bands or go hillwalking in Skye…
The property scandal is the big issue of our time along with climate change, and we have these fascist Scottish newspapers who talk about everything except those two things…
As for Kevin McKenna, he is a deeply reactionary and ignorant man – he believes in ignorance as a principle – who would have been on the same side as Francisco Franco, el Generalismo, in the Spanish Civil War as would quite probably half of the Green Brigade..
Every time property prices go up behind inflation, they’re taking money out the local community, the guy with a pub or a restaurant or a small shop, and the arts of course…
We’re still waiting for a government in capitalist western Europe to stand up to landlordism and the power of the banks with their investment in the dead economy… You know, a building hundreds of years old is like death itself…and that’s where all the nation’s wealth is, as opposed to people…
It can only be a vote winner, yet they still refuse to look at how other housing crisis were tackled by progressive UK governments in the past…
In Castlemilk, they don’t even have a supermarket…this is how much the Anglo Scottish bourgeoisie despise working class Scotland…
They build these housing schemes with no facilities at all, it’s just a disgrace… Then they wrong their hands about alcoholism And drug deaths…
And then you have blue shirts like McKenna, blaming trans people and stuff like that…
Regurgitating it all on here will not break the cycle , in fact adds fuel to the fire!
If we stand for what we are against nothing will change.
Need this commentariat to publish , discuss what we are for.
To publish / discuss positive initiatives and alternatives from Kenmure Street to Portobello to Prestion to Mexico City!
To publish / discuss successful Scottish government initiatives and policies and suggest incremental or radical further development.
It starts with ourselves….
When we are inspired by what we say and do we will inspire others…
I kind of agree with you, watch this space…
I will!
Sounds exciting…. no time like the present!!!
Shout out to BBC Radio nan Gaidheal news & current affairs, where there’s been remarkably little ‘SNP/Greens bad’ (so far, anyway).
This is all the more remarkable as their West Asian coverage has, like the greater BBC, been appallingly biased towards the murderous settler-colonial project.
I’ve looked hard at the screenshot of the item by Michael Blackley but I can’t see where he used the phrase “pedalled” the economics of the madhouse. Pedlars peddle. Pedalling is done by people who travel by bicycle.
Relieved to see somebody else going gammon over that. It’s everywhere I tell you.
Let’s hear it for Peter Smith ITV Scotland correspondent declaring that the proposed SNP price cap on a range of essential foods was communism.
Do these wankers ever listen to themselves?
Reading this litany of justified woe really does bring home the appalling condition of the Scottish media. There is a lack of public discourse and a very widespread sense of apathy and disenchantment. One thing – with this crowd of conservative, besuited older men who dominate what passes for the conversation, what space for young people? Personally, at the age of forty, I and ever increasingly jaded, I could hardly be called young myself. But it does seem that almost the entire legacy media is directed by and reflects the ossified priorities of older generations. Where is any attempt to reach and speak to a younger readership?