THE National’s front page yesterday morning, welcoming refugees to Scotland, was greeted enthusiastically, as people from all over the world thanked us for showing the sort of compassion missing from certain other media outlets.
It was, in the end, retweeted more than 2000 times, many of them by Americans unhappy at politicians who had just closed their state borders to keep Syrians out. Scotland is showing us how it should be done, they said.
We were, however, not so well received by a certain Breitbart.com – the right-wing California-based pro-republican website whose contributors, to our eyes, appear to be a bunch of intolerant muppets.
They are so intolerant, in fact, that when they first saw our cover they appeared to not believe we could possibly hold such crazy, compassionate convictions. “Scottish McPravda goes trolling”, they declared on their home page, next to a charming article headlined: “It works! Israel’s policy of home demolitions yields arrest of terror suspect.”
The article also took umbrage with our editorial, which welcomed those who arrived yesterday, before attacking our ties to the “ruling Scottish National Party”.
This led, they say, to us being branded McPravda by Labour’s authority on such things, Lord George Foulkes. We reject the moniker, naturally, but if by it they’re implying we speak for Scotland on this issue, we might let them away with it just this once.
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We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
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The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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