The Fourth Estate’s function is any society to hold power to account.
In many ways, along with writers and intellectuals, journalists are the canary down the mine.
A dozen years ago, when Downfall was published, a colleague remarked that such a work could not have been created by a staffer at a mainstream newspaper.
I asked why that was the case, and he said simply that my book on the death of the original Rangers represented “thousands of hours of investigative work”.
For the avoidance of doubt, his estimation was reasonably accurate.
I worked on the Ranger’s financial story from the beginning of 2009 until the book was published in September 2012.
His contention was that no newspaper editor in Scotland would allow someone on the payroll that amount of time to follow leads and acquire sources.
I was reminded of this conversation when an NUJ colleague sent me this piece from the Hold The Front Page.
Their scoop was then taken up by the Press Gazette, and they put it out on X.
This will turn the journalists at those titles into clickbait worker bees.
I thought this was a thoughtful reply from someone who has been at the digital coalface.
The featured image indicates the number of titles Reach owns. It includes the iconic Daily Radar, the ridiculous blatt that breathlessly told the world in 2010 about a young billionaire, Craig Whyte.
That unforgettable moment was down to one simple thing: they didn’t check.
They didn’t investigate whether Craigie Boy was up there with Dermot Desmond in the net worth stratosphere.
I addressed this absence of genuine investigative journalism in the mainstream in this piece in 2018 after seeing The Post with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.
Any viable democracy needs a functioning Fourth Estate that’s non-negotiable.
It’s undeniable that the story of the Pentagon Papers, or indeed any other historically significant scoop, was the product of months, sometimes years, of digging.
The Ibrox saga has proven that the local media in Glasgow decided long ago that journalism wasn’t for them.
Sadly, their employers appear to agree.
You could raise a reasonable argument that the current trend (including yourself Phil) of Journalists taking up the fight for transparency and dare I say it fact based journalism is perhaps a better route than the traditional one sided heavily influenced media most of us have grown up with here in the U.K.
Whilst I understand a Journalist just like any other profession needs a steady guaranteed income to pay the bills etc etc I do think that media on the whole is fast moving away from print editions to a more flexible up to the minute reporting we see among blogs and news outlets around d the globe.
I think if you stick to the principles of giving straightforward facts without click baiting or over dramatically pushing your angle people will read it and inevitably come back for more.
Some like yourself have been ahead of that particular curve and are already established online whereas the likes of Radar Jackson and Union Jack are now playing catch-up by playing to the gallery.
This may be a stepping stone into Chat GPT and LLM driven article fabrication. Will it be a co-pilot approach or further cull of a traditionally human based workforce?
I’ve been reading the Shortest History series of books. I recommend the Shortest History of Democracy, by John Keane. We are supposedly in the period of monitory democracy, or if no one is actually watching, perhaps we’re sliding out of that into something new.
Unless I were sleeping, no journalist or Scottish paper has explained if Sevco are the same club past and present then what happened to their 5 stars above their crest denoting 50 titles won in their history.
In the past, the BBC enjoyed, rightly or wrongly, a reputation for journalistic integrity. That seems no longer to be the case. People like Emily Maitlis have, to all intents and purposes, been pushed out.
Peter Geoghan still does outstanding work for ‘Democracy for Sale’ but the publication is run on a shoe-string and it won’t attract ny corporzte funding.
Peter’s book on the dark money in the Brexit campaign is excellent.
If you follow the lies told by the media in the USA v Trump, the realism soon becomes clear in how churnalists operate and for whom they wish to support.
The 5 stars conundrum has always puzzled me. Considering they only did it as a petty one up n Celtic and their real single star then where have they gone? In my mind there are only 2 options.
1. They chose to remove them because they realised how petty it was.
2. They were told to remove them.
Now, option 1 just does not sound plausible. If they had decided, of their own accord, to remove them and the Bears found out there would be hell to pay. So that only leaves option 2 unless anyone else can come up with an alternative scenario.
JS
3. They see the writing on the wall… Celtic about to claim 55 titles – and counting.
They are can no longer claim to be “the most successful klub in ra wuurld – ever!” and the 5 stars have been let go gently to pave the way.
The idea of journalism holding power to account has always been laughable to some extent. Whenever anyone powerful is attacked in the press, you can be certain that it’s because they have crossed someone even more powerful and are being put in their place. There’s never been a properly functioning fourth estate or a viable democracy in human history. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend we do and sometimes (like now) it’s harder. The farce of football reporting in Scotland is a microcosm of a far bigger and vastly more damaging global phenomenon.
It wasn’t that they didn’t look for the truth it was that they chose to deliberately lie and if they choose (or are instructed) to lie over a small issue like a football club’s liquidation then you can guarantee they will lie over the important issues. like wars , terrorist attacks and Govt corruption . For every John Pilger there are dozens of Keith Jacksons.
One would think that any editor would want a story that would get lots of clicks, people talking about it, and lots of follow up content
Yet, strangely the true events of 2012, are still off limits for an industry dying on it’s backside.
Apologies. Punished.
It should read, real journalism is published.
The sad truth is that real journalism is published. Julian Assange bring a case in point.
Sadly literally true – https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/25/grey-zone-how-hamas-linked-journalists-legitimate-targets
Too many reporters and not enough journalists trained to dig, research, verify and then publish. Stick your head above the MSM parapets and you’ll get it blown off.
As long as the press is owned by Millionaires only certain stories will reach the public
Fair comment Phil. It is sad that people go into journalism with high hopes and too many end up writing what they are told to by the guys who hold the purse strings.