The Rise Of The Alt-Left British Media
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/the-rise-of-the-alt-left?utm_term=.ydpgQ3VeA8#.cewOoEPedRThere’s nothing particularly new about such outlets. It’s well over a decade since political blogging established itself in the UK and Clark himself has been quietly running his site for seven years, with little initial success: Clark says he “used to punch the air” when a post reached 10,000 views. But until around 2015 most of these blogs remained aimed at an insider audience or local activists – featuring titbits widely read by those in the Westminster bubble or people who work at mainstream news organisations, or appealing only to the rare members of the public who waste their lives discussing political news. It usually took an established outlet to pick up a story in order to make it go mainstream.
What's changed is that, according to analysis conducted by BuzzFeed News during the first two weeks of the election campaign, articles by Another Angry Voice and other similar alt-left media publications such as The Canary, Evolve Politics, and Skwawkbox are consistently and repeatedly going more viral than mainstream UK political journalism.
Essentially, if you’re tired of biased right-wing reporting dominating the agenda, why not fight fire with fire? If millions of people, desperately willing the Conservatives to defeat, are looking for hope, why would you expect them to read and share reports about Labour’s failings? And so, even as Labour is struggling in the polls and local elections, these sites are surging among a growing band of true believers. “People know they’re being misled but they work hard making ends meet and don’t have the time to think it all through,” said Clark, who considers himself to be a writer rather than a journalist. “So they really like having a guy out there who can cut through the propaganda and put the counter-arguments into articles and infographics they can share."
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The Herald article manages to make it all sound very sinister, but the "harassment" involved only Twitter posts, which have not been deleted. Campbell can be inflammatory online (his Wings Over Scotland posts, on the other hand, are much more measured, though no less devastating for media and political figures who get in the firing line), but he generally doesn't have time for sustained campaigns against nonentities, tending to block them instead, and encouraging others to do the same.
It's not likely to be Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, who Campbell is currently suing for defamation (she accused him of homophobia, in print and under privilege from the floor of the Scottish Parliament), but one obvious candidate is a London-based freelancer, Siobhan McFadyen, who wrote a string of articles about Scottish independence and the SNP, in the usual measured tone and with the usual flair for fairness and accuracy, for the Express over the last year or so, and was pilloried by many, including Campbell, for doing so.
She's a candidate not least because during Twitter spats in the aftermath of her articles, she repeatedly resorted to threats of reporting people to the police for the most innocuous exchanges (her Twitter feed is pretty quiet nowadays, and she doesn't seem to have had many articles published recently, so perhaps she needs the attention).
Here's a roundup of the situation late last year from CommonSpace's Michael Gray:
Siobhan McFadyen criticised for “absolute tosh” in journalism row
A WRITER accused of malicious reporting on Scottish politics has continued to threaten criminal action over the response she received online.
Siobhan McFadyen, who has submitted various controversial articles to the Daily Express, was criticised by pro-independence website Wings Over Scotland for misrepresenting the 2014 referendum as containing “widespread outbreaks of violence”.
McFadyen was then mocked online in a wave of messages - at which point she began reporting critics to the police.
... [Twitter] user ‘Commonly Neil’ added: “Siobhan, with respect and putting all enmity aside, I strongly advise you to consider backing away for a while. I think perhaps we all should, out of respect for the enormous hole that is being dug here. Meant kindly.”
“Why are you threatening me? Or are you about to? You're tell[ing] me to do what exactly? I am reporting both these accounts to police. And I mean it this time,” McFadyen replied.
https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/9326/daily-express-writer-continues-war-words-wings-over-scotland
To be clear, the claim of "widespread outbreaks of violence" during the indyref is the height of inflammatory irresponsibility and a demonstrable lie. Amid a wave of allegations from Better Together of misbehaviour by those on the Yes side, Police Scotland had to step in towards the end of the indyref campaign to make a public statement clarifying that in fact there'd been very few reports of anything untoward, and condemning the scaremongering. The situation changed a little on the day after the referendum result, when there was rioting by drunken Unionists in and around George Square in Glasgow, but that's all disappeared conveniently down the memory hole.
The exchange with "Commonly Neil" quoted above is typical of McFadyen's highly strung sensitivity to the merest hint of criticism online at the time (she can dish it out, but ...). Click through below to see the Twitter thread where it happened:
Link to tweet
If the complainant isn't McFadyen, I'm at a loss to who it might be, and if it doesn't get thrown out in September when the case against Campbell is reviewed, I'll be surprised.
Maybe not coincidentally, another (less controversial) Scottish pro-independence blog, Bella Caledonia, posted this on Twitter earlier in the week:
Link to tweet
So somebody's trying to sue Bella for defamation. Can anyone recommend a lawyer, or better is anyone a lawyer?
The more conspiracy-minded have perceived a trend, if not a concerted campaign ...