Graham Schmidt

Professor Hall
WRD 103
23 September 2014
Compare and Contrast: Scottish Independence Vote This past week, Scotland approached a vote on whether or not to separate themselves from the rest of the United Kingdom. On September 18th, the votes were cast. It ended up being extremely close, with 2,001,926 voting “no”, and 1,617,989 voting “yes”. Fox News author K.T. McFarland summed up the conflict as being a matter of “head vs. heart.” She has friendly connections to Scotland, though not being Scottish herself. Her heart wishes for an independent Scotland, while her head says that it might not have been the best option. Her article tries to express the inner workings of what some of the Scots may have been thinking, through her own thoughts and ideas. CNN also talked about why the Scots care, but from a historical standpoint. They provide the history of relations between England and Scotland, including when they were joined as one kingdom and when the Scottish government began to make separate decisions for their jurisdiction. It seems Fox News chose to use a domestic opinion, despite this being an international news story. They also neglected to give much background on the history of the tension between Scotland and higher ups in London. The BBC has an article that can articulate not only a story that has the viewpoint of being geographically closer the action, but also as a participant in the conflict. Their article chose to focus on Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister. He said that Scotland will be better off after the vote to not be independent. The BBC article assumes the reader has a much stronger grasp on international relationships and history, specifically those within the United Kingdom. Because all of the U.K. was allowed to vote on the issue, it talks about it’s citizens being involved in the divide between the “yes” and “no” parties. There are some major differences between the three news sources. Fox’s article was an opinion piece, while BBC and CNN used statistics and facts to represent the story. The same article is also the only one to state whether one way is better than the other. This opens the article up to accusations of bias. The author tries her best to dispel ideas of her bias in the beginning by listing her associations and passion for Scottish culture. CNN’s report was more or less a history report. The way they presented the story was purely factual, and did not delve into anyone’s personal experience with the vote. For example, CNN cites statistics for GDP percentages, population counts, and general comparisons between Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole. They don’t mention the number of “yes” or “no” votes, like BBC did. BBC is also the only one to cover the angle of what just the