Your Noon Briefing: The Scotsman urges No vote, radio station bans Scots music, etc

THE Scotsman newspaper has declared its verdict on the upcoming referendum on Scots independence: it is opting for No, saying ‘we are better together’.

The newspaper’s bold front page – headed, ‘Scotland’s Decision’, and including part of The Scotsman’s masthead – is followed by a two-page leader.

In May – as reported here on allmediascotland – the Sunday Herald newspaper became the first major newspaper to declare its allegiance, this time for Yes.

Read The Scotsman’s view, here.

Meanwhile, The Scottish Sun has yet to say one way or another despite speculation – eg here in pressgazette.co.uk and here by digital strategist and well-known media commentator, Craig McGill.

It follows owner, Rupert Murdoch, yesterday tweeting that he’s ‘wrestling with Scottish vote’.

And the Financial Times also today throws its weight behind a No vote, as the Huffington Report notes, here. The paper joins – as can be read in a blog, here, by its Scots editor, Fraser Nelson – The Spectator magazine in urging No.

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ALSO reports pressgazette.co.uk: “Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, has reiterated his predecessor Maria Miller’s warning that an independent Scotland would lose the BBC.

“Speaking at the Royal Television Society conference in London, he told delegates: ‘If you decide to leave the United Kingdom then you are leaving the institutions of the United Kingdom behind, and clearly one of those… institutions is the BBC.'”

Read more, here.

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A RADIO station serving Hertfordshire and the Home Counties has declared itself a Scots music-free zone until at least after the referendum vote next week on Scots independence.

It followed programme controller and Breakfast Show host on BOB fm, Graham Mack, stopping a Proclaimers track mid-way and having a rant, as to why.

The audio clip appears on the BOB fm website, here.

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YESTERDAY, the compact-sized Scotsman newspaper carried six pages of letters, in a ‘referendum special’ – as noted, here, on allmediascotland.com. Today, the broadsheet-sized The Herald carries four.

As letters editor, Drew Allan, wrote, here on Friday: “With less than two weeks to go, the volume of mail received at The Herald, both by email and post, has almost trebled in the last month.”

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BEGINS a media release posted on allmediascotland (here): “The University of Dundee has commissioned a comprehensive search for two senior marketing professionals to preside over the most ambitious branding exercise the institution has ever undertaken.”

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THE Sun on Sunday is, this weekend, publishing a survey that will reveal that women dominate the top 25 entries of its ‘Reality TV’s Richest’ list, taking up 16 of the spots, with Scots singer, Susan Boyle, the highest-ranked ‘music reality TV star’, with an estimated wealth of £22 million.

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MIGHT topless models on Page 3 of The Sun be soon a thing of the past? The story leads page 16 of The Scotsman (here) and follows a tweet by The Sun’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, seeking opinions on whether young women might be ‘more attractive in at least some fashionable clothes’.

Read more, here (on the BBC website), here (Roy Greenslade, in The Guardian), etc.

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WHICH side is winning the #indyref social media debate? The ITV website considers the question, here.

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