As Lionel Bart put it, back in 1959,
Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. In
Hamish Mackay's excellent press digest in last week's
Scottish Review, there were lengthy quotations from various editors and managing editors about their jobs and plans. George Orwell would have smiled, sadly.
These journalists paid tribute to 'our dynamic management team', they planned to 'help shape the future of some of the best known and most trusted brands in UK regional journalism' and were determined to 'continue to champion the local voices and communities that make Edinburgh the best city in the world and a great place to live, work and visit'.
To a journalist from a different era, these did not sound like words from the new breed of iconoclasts. Instead, they reminded one of a marketing handbook. Or worse still, a publicity brochure. Now, old time journalism was often naïve, and over-respectful of authority and establishments, but it did stick to crucial rules. Carefully checked facts were the base of all reporting and unsubstantiated hyperbole was beyond the pale.
In recent years, we have seen the ghastly decline of politicians abandoning truth as the golden norm. Trump and Johnson are serial proven liars who gained power and clung on to it by denying the truth, rewarding those who lied with them, and vilifying those who opposed. Great journalism has exposed their lies but market-driven newspapers and broadcasting outlets continue to aid and abet their obfuscations.
One great saying is that the first casualty of war is truth and usually it is attributed to the US Republican Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918. Unfortunately, some more old-style fact checking reveals that Aeschylus coined the words. He lived from 525BC to 456BC so it's not exactly a new idea.
Let us hope that the new style editors and managers keep that in mind as they drive and champion their brands and platforms. 'Facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed,' as a certain well-known Scot put it.
David Donald
Gerry Hassan usefully reminds us that the Thatcher 'economic miracle' on which Tories love to dwell was largely illusory. One aspect not often remembered was that, in spite of her 'war on inflation', the RPI was higher on the day she left Downing Street than on the day she entered it.
Tom Lynch
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