The Marie Antoinette of media management

Nicola Sturgeon believes answering reporters' questions is beneath her.

Nicola Sturgeon cares passionately about a free press.

We know that because she’s forever telling us. When Johnston Press went into administration in 2018, she said: ‘It is hugely important that we have a vibrant newspaper industry in Scotland… Every democracy needs a strong free press, and it is important that we all support that.’ When STV announced dozens of journalist layoffs later that year, Sturgeon professed herself 'very disappointed and concerned' and said it was 'more important than ever that the Scottish perspective on local, national and international news is reflected'.

Asked about Newsquest job cuts the following year, the First Minister told Holyrood that ‘having a free media is essential to the health of our democracy’, adding: ‘All politicians feel the discomfort of media scrutiny from time to time, but it is essential that journalists are there to hold us to account and ensure that that scrutiny on behalf of the public happens.’ 

How do we reconcile these bold statements of principle with the decision to tell newspaper journalists they were not welcome at the launch of the SNP’s local election campaign? Has she had a change of heart? Did journalism get replaced with some other mechanism for holding power to account? Can a democracy now function fine without all those bothersome hacks and their infernal questions? 

No, it’s just that, like all Sturgeon’s other statements of principle, this one is written in disappearing ink. Intellectually, the First Minister understands why politicians must thole the Press, however unflattering their reporting: the alternative is power unchecked, unregulated, unconfined. She used to be all for the Press running the rule over those in office. During her time on the opposition benches, Sturgeon routinely cited newspaper reporting to question the Scottish Executive. 

Scroll through Holyrood’s Official Report and you’ll find Sturgeon quoting newspapers to grill ministers on education funding, elderly care, the McCrone report, vaccine safety, waiting times, the Scottish Executive Health Department, intergovernmental relations, NHS 24, the Common Fisheries Policy, a cryptosporidium outbreak and — gloriously — the difficulty in journalists getting information out of the government. Sturgeon believed in Press scrutiny until she was the one being scrutinised.

Probably every politician who goes from opposition to government undertakes the journey from seeing the Press as a useful tool to seeing it as an encumbrance. With Sturgeon, there seems to be something else at work. The First Minister appears to regard the Press, like every other mechanism for scrutiny, as an irrelevance. Fielding questions from cynical hacks is for other political leaders; Sturgeon is someone you either believe in or you don’t. An icon, not a technocrat. She is the Marie Antoinette of media management: let them eat soundbites. 

The Sturgeon years have always had a faint whiff of monarchy-cum-celebrity. When you see her stride through the Scottish Parliament, her courtiers scurrying along in her wake, you’re never quite sure whether to curtsey or ask for her autograph. The imperious sneer has become more pronounced in recent years. More than once during a media conference she has met polite, reasonable queries with a haughty air and snide, dismissive barbs about journalists and their employer. 

All politicians have personality traits that, unless coached or concealed, could hurt their public image, which is why they surround themselves with media advisers who can spot potential pitfalls and avert crises before they erupt. Nicola Sturgeon is entitled to expect her advisers to do the same. In fact, given the sheer scale of the Sturgeon spin operation, she’s more entitled than most.

The Scottish Government employs 176 full-time equivalent communications staff, a further 15 special advisers, and hires in the services of external public relations firms. This is all in addition to the fleet of spinners and strategists retained by the SNP itself. Government press officers aren’t allowed to be involved in party matters and so the blame for the campaign launch debacle falls on those SNP staffers, whether they advised this particular course of action or reluctantly went along with the orders of a higher-up. 

In doing so, they let their boss look arrogant and allergic to accountability. They allowed her to come across as contemptuous not only of reporters but of their readers, many of whom will have voted SNP and admired Nicola Sturgeon as a ‘different’ sort of politician. They failed to foresee or to grasp the significance of the decision by a number of newspapers to write about Sturgeon’s exclusion of the Press rather than the campaign launch itself. At the very moment when she is asking voters to trust the Nationalists at the ballot box once again, they left Sturgeon looking sneaky and shifty.

The SNP leader is not gifted with the common touch and the aides who surround her are just as remote from the average punter. Perhaps they regard the Press as inky dinosaurs who ply their trade in words rather than the more viral currency of TikTok videos. Sturgeonland is its own self-contained ecosystem and it makes those who inhabit it impatient of outsiders who demand such things as transparency and accountability. In slamming the door in the face of the Press, they slammed it in the face of those who rely on the Press to ask questions, secure answers and explain what it all means for their lives, jobs, businesses and public services.  

The difficulties faced by the newspaper industry are well-documented but they alone do not explain the state of civic affairs in Scotland today. The BBC employs a number of talented journalists north of the border but they cannot match the small army of SNP spin doctors. Even then, BBC Scotland operates in a very different political context to the Corporation in England. 

When Tory MPs or ministers attack the Beeb, it can be assured of swift and widespread defence from the intelligentsia, the arts world, celebrities, journalists and media insiders, and a smattering of other Tory parliamentarians. When Pacific Quay comes under fire from the nationalist attack machine, the intelligentsia and the rest are either silent or helping to lead the assault. 

The conspiracy theory that BBC Scotland is out to do down the SNP and independence is absurd and lacking in evidence but a steady stream of accusations, assertions, pedantry and paranoia has gravely undermined the Corporation’s place in public life. 

It is not the only institution the SNP has chipped away at. The Scottish Parliament cannot properly scrutinise the executive because the executive enjoys an effective veto on scrutiny in the form of the SNP parliamentary group. Nationalist MSPs seldom ask difficult questions of ministers and vote the way the First Minister wants on every bill, motion and committee matter almost without exception. 

Civil society organisations have become too reliant on St Andrew’s House for funding and noticeably less likely to criticise ministerial decisions or policies than comparable organisations down south. Then there are those problems inherent in any small polity: cliquishness, political commitment and ideological groupthink. Too many people who should know better suspend their scepticism when they turn their attentions from Downing Street to Bute House. 

This is the context in which Sturgeon and those around her decided the Press wasn’t necessary at the SNP campaign launch. The message they sent was not that newspapers are irrelevant but that the public’s desire to know is immaterial to the First Minister and her party. That they regard the very notion of having to give an accounting of themselves as somehow beneath them.

Council cuts? School repairs? Bin collections? Go ask down the town hall.

Concerned about the roads or the local industrial estate or the rate of council tax? Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t have time for such trivia.

Want to know when the attainment gap will eventually close, or why you still haven’t seen a consultant, or who exactly signs off on ferry contracts? Just who do you think you are?

The First Minister is not taking questions, and Scottish democracy is all the more dysfunctional for it.

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Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on April 11, 2022.