THE National has been a tremendous addition to the media spectrum in Scotland and for me personally reading the newspaper directly, or online, has become an essential part of my start to the day. Wednesday’s front page and story debunking the coronavirus testing report by Gordon Brown’s think-tank Our Scottish Future appropriately highlighted this misleading document, but opportunities to emphasise Scottish successes were apparently missed.
As members of the “mainstream media pack” attempted to undermine Scotland’s vaccination performance to date, Jason Leitch, also during Tuesday’s coronavirus briefing, pointed out that Scotland was second only to Israel in its roll-out performance.
READ MORE: 'It is actually false': Jason Leitch debunks Gordon Brown's Scots virus test claim
Furthermore, Scotland had vaccinated more than 80% of care home residents, the highest priority Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation grouping but probably the most difficult to reach, which from what I can gather from the meagre statistics published by Public Health England is more than double what has been achieved “down south”.
It is fully understood The National has very limited resources in comparison with the combined pro-Unionist press and is essentially forced to rely on reports constructed by others for much of its “news”.
However, with the BBC persistently highlighting “bad news” stories (while unsurprisingly not mentioning the relative achievements of the Scottish Government such as those mentioned above) and now providing a daily platform for Douglas Ross to repeat more Tory party political propaganda under the guise of a “coronavirus response” (which also unsurprisingly is used by the BBC to further bias its news coverage), perhaps there needs to be a refocussing of The National’s resources.
READ MORE: FACT CHECK: Gordon Brown's Covid testing claims crumble under scrutiny
While quite rightly different perspectives relating to the performance of the First Minister, the SNP and the Scottish Government are regularly argued in its pages, there appears to be – as we approach a critical election in our progress towards independence – too much emphasis on comment and opinion that is counter-productive to that pivotal aim.
This is not a plea to turn The National into a propaganda machine for the SNP but to encourage The National to be more creative in finding ways to publicise the very many good news stories emanating from the actions of the Scottish Government. If columnists constantly indulge themselves in pursuing personal agendas, rather than seeking to present professionally critical “good news” stories, then opportunities will continue to be lost to positively contribute to gaining a little more overall balance in the predominantly independence-hostile mainstream media forum of the UK.
Stan Grodynski
East Lothian
OUR Scottish Future’s own data shows that Scotland has a shorter test turnaround time than England, traces and isolates almost twice as many contacts as England, in fact Scotland outperforms almost all UK countries by every measure they use.
Perhaps the most significant figures at the moment are hospital admission and occupancy rates which are several times higher for the UK as a whole than Scotland.
The only area where Scotland performs worse than the others is in comparison with the Office for National Statistics estimated number of positive tests based on their statistical modelling.
The logical conclusion would be that the ONS model is wrong.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
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