Robin Downie
Thoughts about rhetoric
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Islay McLeod
The Lady of the Isles
BBC News
By Kirk O’Shotts
If the media coverage of the Sheridan trial isn’t exactly a model of consistency (see opposite), consider the BBC’s recent reporting of Gamu Nhengu, the young Zimbabwean threatened with deportation.
One day last week, on its 9am news bulletin, Radio Scotland carried the following item:
The local MP of former X Factor contestant Gamu Nhengu says emotion will not influence the decision over whether her family should leave Britain.
The MP was not named and there was no elaboration of this apparently cold-hearted statement.
Meanwhile, over on Radio 2, the same news was being reported at the same time in a completely different way:
The MP of the former X Factor contestant Gamu Nhengu says he’s backing her campaign to remain in Britain. Gordon Banks says he’s hopeful she can stay in this country.
How can two branches of the same organisation report the same news and yet reach opposite conclusions?
Interviewed for the Radio 2 bulletin, the MP, Gordon Banks, said that the UK Border Agency would not be influenced by emotion in its decision over whether the family should leave Britain but that he proposed to find out whether the agency had arrived at its decision in the correct way.
Radio Scotland simply took part of Mr Banks’s statement and published it out of context. A grave-burling moment for the ever-restive Lord Reith.
Aberdeenshire
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Kenneth Roy
In a case based on what was said or not said, done or not done years ago, which is the true version of what happened for a few moments as recently as last Friday?
As long as the reporting of the ‘trial of the decade’ remains as excitable as it is at the moment, there is always a risk that two trials will be taking place in Glasgow this autumn.
It is at this point that the parallel issue of fairness arises.
Here, the tabloids aren’t always the worst offenders. The tone of the coverage was set early by the Scotsman, of all papers, when it reported the first day’s proceedings in colourful terms, including a statement by its correspondent that the jury had heard a series of damning allegations against Mr Sheridan.
Damning indeed. Well – in whose opinion? The jury is the master of the facts in this as in every criminal case and the jury won’t be discussing a single scrap of evidence for many weeks. So I guess – there can be no other reasonable explanation – that this is the paper’s own opinion of these allegations. As I stared disbelievingly at the Scotsman’s use of the word I could sense the shade of one of my old editors – perhaps the kindly John Ritchie, Murray’s dad – hovering over me with a pencil and an admonition. ‘We don’t comment on the evidence,’ he was saying as he struck out the offending adjective. ‘Our job is to report the facts.’
My shorthand note has disintegrated, and such fastidious journalists as John Ritchie are long dead. Yet, the more I read of the Sheridan trial, the more I long for a return to the more passive court reporting of old, when readers were allowed to draw their own conclusions about the evidence. As long as the reporting of the ‘trial of the decade’ remains as excitable as it is at the moment, there is always a risk that two trials will be taking place in Glasgow this autumn – one arranged by the Crown Office, the other by the Greek chorus of the Scottish media.
