Last year Russia Today launched a poster campaign with a fanciful strapline: ‘This is what happens when there is no second opinion’. The extraordinary implication is that the conflict could have been avoided, if only we had listened to Putin.
This is such an obvious fallacy that it’s hardly worth dwelling on. But RT (as it now likes to be known, as if people don’t know what the ‘R’ stands for) is producing lightly disguised state propaganda. The viewers know it and so do the mercenaries that make it. In contrast, Scotland’s new pro-independence daily newspaper – ‘The National’– is written with earnest conviction. Its contributors are devout believers, and that’s what makes it so hilarious.
The paper’s response to the budget was typical. In a desperate search for opinions which fit the separatist narrative, The National sought ‘expert advice’ on economics from the project manager of an equal pay organisation and the director of a child poverty charity.
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