Gosh, I wonder if Stew has ever demonstrated quite so unwittingly and vividly that he is NOT a "journalist"?

Quite a number of years ago now, I got into a mildly bizarre email debate with someone who shall remain nameless, but who is widely regarded in Scotland as bona fide journalistic royalty.  Basically the discussion centred on whether or not Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland can reasonably be classified as a "journalist", which is something he self-identifies as, and which his most ardent fans certainly regard him as (in fact they frequently gush that he's Scotland's greatest journalist).  Even though I was no longer on good terms with Stew by then, it may surprise you to learn that I was actually the one defending him - I suppose he and I are both members of the informal "New Media Union", so we still have that in common if nothing else.  The point I made was that even if you regard his political blogging as something that falls short of real journalism, he was in his past life published extremely extensively in the most traditional of formats (ie. print magazines) on the subject of video games.  So in my view you had to regard him as a journalist, even if you qualify that by saying he is a video games journalist only.  

But the person I was speaking to was adamant that "he is NOT a journalist".  She kept repeating those words, without really fleshing out what exactly it was in her view that disqualified him.  I suppose her unspoken message was that she if anyone knows what a journalist looks like, and I should just take her word for it that Stew doesn't fit the bill.

I think I would have to concede at this stage of the evening that she probably had a point.  After all, one key characteristic that distinguishes professional journalists from enthusiastic amateurs is that they do tend to at least do some basic checking on the subject at hand before shooting their mouths off about it.

Stew has boasted in the past that he does not watch my videos, including the ones he has commented on at some length and mysteriously managed to produce screenshots from, because he claims he cannot bear to listen to me "droning on".  It was previously unclear how literally that boast should be taken, but it's certainly not hard to believe it tonight, because with the tweet you see above he's walked rather deservedly into a trap of his own making.  As anyone who actually watched the video he's commenting on will know, practically the exclusive subject of my commentary on Ash Regan's failed bill on prostitution law was how demonstrably wrong and toxic it is for Stew's fellow travellers to base their angry rhetoric on the wild assumption that any male who opposes the Nordic Model must by definition be a client of sex workers who is motivated by the ugliest of self-interest.  Here is a quote of some of what I said in the video:

"There was one [comment retweeted by Stew] that said that this demonstrates that lots of MSPs must be paying to abuse women abroad or something like that, which is an absolutely despicable thing to say. And it's despicable probably because some people will take that literally and think that might be a fair point. Well, let's look at the facts.  First of all, the Scottish Parliament is relatively gender balanced. It's I think about 55% male, 45% female. And the figures show consistently probably around about 10% or 11% of men at some point in their lives have paid for sex, which is obviously a significant number, but it does mean the vast majority of men, almost 90%, have not. So, it's reasonable to assume that probably around about 6% maybe of MSPs have at some point in their lives paid for sex.  That's based on the figures also showing that only a very tiny percentage of women, maybe about 0.1% of women, have paid for sex at some point in their lives. So, you know, a parliament composed of 94% of people who don't have any sort of vested interest in this subject, there is no reason why a parliament like that wouldn't pass a bill if the case had been made. So there's no point lashing out and thinking there's some sort of dark motive when the case hasn't been made to the satisfaction of the 94% of people in that parliament who do not have that kind of vested interest."

Now, it may well be that Stew disagrees with the point I'm making there and genuinely believes that any man who opposes the Nordic Model is automatically a sexual predator and can be reasonably denounced as one.  He may also truly believe that any man who then pushes back against that notion is further giving the game away in the Mandy Rice-Davies sense of "well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"  If he does believe that, he's marking himself out as suffering from the same type of immaturity fused with mindless rage that once led a group of vigilantes to attack the home of a paediatrician, simply because of the first four letters of the job title.  And OK, if that's the way Stew wants to live his life, that's up to him and it's not our place to try to talk him down.  

But by failing to engage with my arguments and explain why he thought they were wrong, and by even failing to acknowledge that those arguments were made at all, and by instead posting a tweet that implied it hadn't yet occurred to anyone but him that men who express opposition to the Nordic Model may instantly be subject to these infantile suspicions, he might as well have just had "I haven't watched the video I am criticising or even read the transcript" (and thus by extension "I am not actually a journalist") tattooed on his forehead.

He has previous form on this, of course, because a few months ago he claimed without bothering to check (I suspect simply because his mate McEleny whispered it in his ear) that I was on the Alba NEC when support for the Nordic Model became party policy, when in fact that happened before I was elected to the NEC.  Indeed I had made no secret whatsoever of my own position on the Nordic Model while that election was taking place.

I am extremely happy with the points I made in the video, and I would encourage anyone to watch it and make their own minds up.  I'll embed the video once again below - the relevant section starts at around 6:34.  It's a low bar, admittedly, but I certainly believe that what I said was somewhat more thoughtful, measured and considered than anything Stew or his fan club have managed in their shrieking comments about the subject over the last few hours.

Incidentally, I have reported the comment from "WSMMorag" as the unacceptable personal abuse that it undoubtedly is, and I have blocked her.  Reporting pretty much anything to Twitter is a complete waste of time in the Elon Musk era, but I tend to feel in situations like these that at least going through the motions of making the report is a matter of basic self-respect.