The Herald's Decree

Continuing a rather bizarre run of Comment and Editorial pieces, The Herald's Brian Currie has taken the unilateral decision this evening that it is now "time to move on" from the Nicola Sturgeon story and adds a distinctly defensive tone to his article to boot. There has been no new interpretation of the rules nor defining conclusions after an investigation so why Brian has deemed precisely now that the media should remove its boot from the neck of Sturgeon's political career is unclear.

Indeed, Nicola is due to make an emergency statement to Parliament next week. Does that mean that The Herald's columnists won't be discussing the Deputy First Minister's plight seven days hence because the matter is now closed? And if this mistake was in any way serious, why is Brian Currie not wanting to follow the crime through to a final reckoning?

The Herald is not part of the first, second or third but the fourth estate. High ranking enough that it has an important role in Scottish civic life but not so important that it gets to decide when we should or shouldn't collectively move on from an issue of the day. Nor should it have the power to decide, along with fellow publications, which issues dominate entire weeks of the year.

There is even something of the school bully to the man's merciful call to bring an end to the attacks, a 'right lads, I think she's had enough. We've had our fun' philosophy that is deeply disturbing.

When solicitors are scratching their heads at why there has been any fuss at all given Nicola Sturgeon was just doing her job and the national press are declaring unequivocally that it was a mistake, even belittling those who disagree as not sane, something is quite wrong.

A "press conspiracy", as Brian suggests the objectors like myself have it, is too strong and regrettably, even childishly, simplistic. However, the only error of judgement of late has been journalistic. The concern is that the media in Scotland lacks depth, lacks intelligence and takes any gift-wrapped story that is dropped onto its plate without fully questioning its adequacy. Most worryingly it seems to treat its readership as having a lack of intelligence while gorging on bad news which is the worst crime of all as it feeds into a Scotland that seems forever trapped in a downward spiral of negativity and inverted snobbery.

Put simply, a lack of rigour has become de rigeur and when challenged for being sloppy our newspapers decide to just get stroppy.

'Fraudgate' was never much of a story and nor was 'lunchgate' but almost since the ink was dry on the Budget Bill, a successful budget that itself could have delivered substantial, interesting talking points for months to come, we have had silly puff in the media and two big sticks to bash the SNP with much, much more than the party deserves.

The media is not slow to talk down the Scottish Parliament and talk up the lack of progress we are making as a country but if the media itself is the main barrier between the people hearing about what work is being done from all parties on job creation, on renewables, on creating apprenticeships, on higher education places, on fixing PFI, on bettering our education system, on boosting small businesses and on adequately tackling crime then hell mend them.

"It is time to move on"? I'm finding that I couldn't agree more which is why my eyes are increasingly on publications like the Scottish Left Review, Caledonian Mercury and Scots Independent.