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We have a problem with fake history, folks. And it isn’t just internet idiots pushing false narratives. Sometimes it’s opinion columnists too. Beyond remedial training for overconfident partisan journalists, I’ve no idea how we fix this. https://twitter.com/glasgow_sugar/status/1344519827852034049
It’s amazing how many historic (& other) myths arise from usually innocent mistakes by mainstream media. Take the myth that tanks in George Square put down workers in 1919. That owes a lot to some poor picture editor pencilling the wrong year on a photo. So easily done.
And if you are a partisan wanting to use history for rhetorical purposes, it’s really easy to retreat to comforting myths, especially those propping up your national or class or religious identity or some other visceral belief.
TBF to the columnist in question, lots of people think Scotland went bust after Darien. We journalists are always, I think, poised to check new facts but we’re all less good at interrogating things we have always assumed to be true. That might be why we can get history so wrong.
And this is where it gets really interesting. There are those who want to check facts, scotch myths, and that really is good fun. But what is really interesting is WHY people cling to untruths. Why would a pro-U.K. columnist, eg, want to believe the Scottish state was bust?
Why do some people want there to have been a revolution in Glasgow put down by Churchill with troops & tanks? Why do some want Neolithic Orkney to have been the capital of ancient Britain? Why do others want to downplay the role of Scots - or the working class - in slavery?
That’s why fake history is so interesting. It isn’t about history, it is about now, about us, and about the past we want to believe in rather than the one we actually have. Fake history is just more fake news and, sorry, journalists should be fighting it, not creating it.
