Letter to The HeraldON November 21 The Herald gave prominent coverage to an anti-Bush protest that suspended the Scottish Parliament for three minutes. Which was fair enough considering that the SSP-initiated debates on world peace and poverty had been boycotted by the Scottish Executive that day. It was only through this stunt that these debates received any media coverage at all.
However, now on December 3, The Herald completely ignored the launch of one of the SSP's flagship parliamentary bills on radical plans to tackle Scotland's horrendous problems of drug addiction. This bill aims to establish for the first time in Scotland a network of community-based day centres to provide detox, rehab, counselling, and maintenance programmes for every addict who seeks help. The bill, lodged by Rosemary Byrne, MSP, has already been signed by 15 other MSPs so will now go out to consultation after which it make it through to the next stage of Parliamentary proceedings. It needs the support of 65 MSPs to become policy. So why is it that a three-minute stunt by an SSP member in a George Bush mask merits national media attention yet a considered and important bill on drug addiction services is blanked by The Herald as well as the BBC, the Scotsman, the Record, and others? Have The Herald's news values succumbed to the shock-trivia agenda of the tabloid press? Or is doing something constructive to help get addicts and their families out of the nightmare of heroin addiction not considered as important as a three-minute stunt?
We hope that The Herald redresses this imbalance and gives an important and considered bill, already supported by 16 MSPs, the fair coverage it deserves.
Kevin Williamson, SSP drugs spokesperson; Rosemary Byrne, MSP; Frances Curran, MSP; Colin Fox, MSP; Rosie Kane, MSP; Carolyn Leckie, MSP; Tommy Sheridan, MSP, The Scottish Parliament.
