Saltire and Slander

Are the 'neck and neck' polls in Scotland on independence wrong? We saw something like that happen in the Eric Cantor race here, so it certainly does come up once in a while. In addition to the other potential errors the newspaper identifies the samples I've seen have been very small, so it could be we don't really know what people are thinking.

There is another problem, reports The Guardian: journalists are committed to rooting against independence.

Perhaps the most arresting fact about the Scottish referendum is this: that there is no newspaper – local, regional or national, English or Scottish – that supports independence except the Sunday Herald. The Scots who will vote yes have been almost without representation in the media.

There is nothing unusual about this. Change in any direction... requires the defiance of almost the entire battery of salaried opinion.

There's a lot of that here at home, too. The TEA Party did so badly in the press in part because, in its early days when it was a genuinely popular movement, it really wanted to make some major changes -- and the press' bills are paid by relationships with existing powers. The huge defense of then-Senator Obama, which is similar to the huge defense being put on for the 'Better Together' campaign in the UK, was motivated not by a desire for "Change!" but out of a sense that he was a committed member of their own class. The movement represented change for the rest of us, but for the elite press it was the most soothing and constant of opinions that he forwarded.

Well, that all-hands-on-deck approach worked here in 2008. Maybe they'll carry the fight for their friends in the United Kingdom, too.

We'll see soon enough.