September 16, 2014

HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk | The Guardian | The Colbert Report | Reddit

Glasgow, Scotland’s Sunday Herald is the only Scottish newspaper encouraging its readers to vote for independence, Nick Hudson writes in Britain’s HoldtheFrontPage. (The Herald’s weekday counterpart backs Scotland remaining in the U.K.) The paper has seen a rise in sales, “with monthly rises of up to 25” percent, Hudson writes.

Some Scottish newspapers, including Edinburgh’s Scotsman, explicitly support a continued union with the rest of Britain. (The Scotsman recently ran an article floating the idea that independence serves ISIS’ interests.) Other “big titles – including the Daily Record, Aberdeen Press & Journal and Dundee Courier – have sat on the fence, pursuing a neutral stance in the interests of editorial impartiality,” Hudson writes.

George Monbiot writes in The Guardian that the media has “shafted the people of Scotland” with “fear, misinformation and hatred around the body politic.” As Monbiot notes, pro-independence Scots have complained about the BBC’s referendum coverage, and some protested at its Glasgow headquarters Monday.

The Guardian itself came out against independence, an argument Monbiot says it constructed using “the frames constructed by the rest of the press.”

Matthew Wells, the assistant editor of the Guardian’s U.S. shop, is pro-independence, a position he explained on “The Colbert Report” Monday.

Wells also did an AMA on Reddit Tuesday. He said the “high hiedyins at the BBC are in a right old tizzy about independence.” He did not answer a question from a Redditor named Murica-WeThePeople: “How do we stop the Scottish?

I’m keeping a Twitter list of journalists covering the independence referendum. If you know anyone who should be on it, email me.

Support high-integrity, independent journalism that serves democracy. Make a gift to Poynter today. The Poynter Institute is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, and your gift helps us make good journalism better.
Donate
Andrew Beaujon reported on the media for Poynter from 2012 to 2015. He was previously arts editor at TBD.com and managing editor of Washington City…
Andrew Beaujon

More News

Back to News

Comments

Comments are closed.