Yes Tactical post # 4236
Just occasionally we feel moved to make a post like this.
While the Tories have just about shot most of their toes off over the Brexit crisis and both Scottish Labour and UK HQ main branch Labour are falling over themselves to help the Tories to achieve a fantasy Brexit deal we in Scotland need to develop some discipline.
There will be tough times ahead but those times are going to be fruitful because we will soon be an independent country.
However we are our own worst enemies.
Quite often we do things that hurt our own movement. Despite being passionate about achieving independence we can be inadvertently undermining our own cause.
We have seen multiple posts of articles from mainstream unionist press being shared urging us to take part in an online poll on independence usually with a picture of Nicola Sturgeon. These are designed to get folk clicking and sharing because we all know that independence doesn’t get much main stream press attention. Well here is the problem. They are taking the piss and laughing all the way to the bank.
Here is how they fool people.
They put an article up with some obvious Unionist sourced text from a ‘pro-Union’ group. Then they invite readers to take part in an on-line poll on Scottish Independence and how you would vote now.
A new poll has found 60 per cent of Scots would vote against independence if they were asked whether to leave or remain in the United Kingdom, a landmark poll has found. The Survation poll, commissioned by a pro-Union group, found that if a referendum were held now, the majority of Scottish voters aged 16 and over would choose to stay in the UK and just 40 per cent would choose to leave, once the don’t knows are removed.
The Yes troops rise to the bait and BOOM they get over 45684 clicks on their otherwise skint newspaper that in economic terms is hanging by the proverbial baw hair.
By clicking on this ‘clickbait’ , because that is what it is, you are keeping them going. Online newspapers earn by following ways
- Publishing google ads
- Publishing ads for page per impression
- Paid editorials for businesses
- Selling media services for any specific events
So every click is income for these papers.Papers that day in day out undermine Scotland (except when it makes them money). Here is what the Indy press had to say about the poll. Incidentally the offending post came out in November 2018 but was still being circulated by Yes supporters as recently as yesterday.
The Scotsman’s rabidly pro-Union stance meant there was little sympathy amongst pro-independence social media users last week when it went into administration. The newspaper was subsequently saved. However this latest front page is unlikely to lead to an increase in readership amongst the independence movement.
Comment from Indyref2 blog at the time.
Based on figures on newspaper circulation for 2018 most unionist press outlets are in terminal decline. Press circulation figures are released every year. If you want to look at it in detail you have to pay.We are not about to do that so that is why we will use 2018 figures
The ABC figures for 2018 show the real reason why the Scotsman is pulling the wool over peoples eyes.
The only paper keeping a steady position is the free paper the Metro, from the Daily Mail stable and heavily reliant on adverts. The Metro’s circulation – presumably because no-one pays for it, remained steady at 1,476,169 copies for May 2018. This represented a slight decline of 0.24% on the same month in 2017. To show where the ‘UK’ newspaper readerships heads are at the Daily Mail is still the UK’s third biggest newspaper, selling 1,277,409 per day – although a chunk of these were bulk sales (airport distribution etc). This figure represents a year on year decline of 11.49%.
The Scotsman gives lots of papers away free, as do many other titles.While most of this is down to people changing the way they get their news, it also represents a significant switching off away from politics and seeking information and questioning things. The dumbing down of politics over the decades is working for the Tory press. This is why they continue to get away with murder.
Support for Indy media sources is on the rise -dont click while we are winning!
The current post reach of the Indy page we are posting from is measured in post reach on facebook and page followers. At the moment we have a post reach for the last week of 342,095. Over the last month our post reach was over 1.5 million. That’s just from a page follower base of just 32,000 and a group of volunteers.
Imagine what it would be like if those 45684 clicks went to Indy media pages instead? Some of these papers are loss making and we should not be keeping them alive.It is only prolonging our own oppression.
Support citizen journalism and think before you click.Remember they all answer to London.
London calling, yes, I was there too
Joe Strummer.
And you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!
London calling at the top of the dial
And after all this, won’t you give me a smile?
London calling…
