Your Noon Briefing: The media and independence, STV and Freeview, etc

BEGINS David Torrance, in a column in today’s Herald: “‘The media,’ mused Tom Stoppard in his play, Night and Day. ‘It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.’

“It’s a good line, although today it’s an uncomfortable truth that, for many, ‘the media’ has about as much credibility as those who claim to commune with the dead.

“To some extent, it was ever thus. When I started out 15 years ago journalists were certainly unloved, but now hatred of the ‘mainstream media’ unites certain Scottish Nationalists, Corbynistas and supporters of Donald Trump.”

Read more, here.

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BEGAN Scotland on Sunday, yesterday: “STV could see its local television stations given a more prominent position on Freeview under plans put out for consultation.

“The broadcaster operates STV Edinburgh and STV Glasgow, which can currently be found on channel 23.”

Read more, here.

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CONTINUING from his front page story on Friday (as noted, here, on allmediascotland), The Herald’s David Leask began, on Saturday: “MSPs are demanding a slew of new information on Police Scotland’s ‘spying’ row as they prepare for a constitutional stand-off with the force.

“Holyrood’s justice committee has already called four operational officers to appear before it in what police chiefs fear is an assault on their operational independence.

“However, they also want a detailed chronology of how Police Scotland came to breach new data guidelines on accessing the data of potential journalist sources.”

Read more, here.

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AND the Sunday Mail editor, Jim Wilson, is dismayed by the quality of MSPs’ questions during a Holyrood justice committee last week, to hear a senior Police Scotland officer – deputy chief constable Neil Richardson – give evidence on the data breaches.

Read him, here.

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REPORTS the Sunday Herald: “Ministers have welcomed a planned shake-up of the BBC’s news coverage across the UK as a response to political devolution.

“Director General, Lord Hall, has written to the Scottish Government, regional assemblies and UK ministers inviting them to submit evidence for an internal review of the BBC’s news coverage.

“He said: ‘As devolution continues, we believe that the BBC may need to adapt our services to ensure that they fully reflect and report the increasing divergent policies of the UK, with more aspects of public policy devolved.'”

Read more, here.

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AS previously intimated, tomorrow: the last Your Noon Briefing. Two years ago, allmediascotland.com began to curate media news already ‘out there’, having previously sourced stories itself.

And now the site format is to change yet again.

Remaining: media jobs, media releases and the media shop. Upcoming: a hopefully much more effective media directory.

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SEEN anything you think readers of www.allmediascotland.com should be made aware of? Then just send the weblink to here and we’ll do the rest. All suggestions gratefully received. We’re back at noon on tomorrow.