"May the 7th be with you: why it's time to vote SNP"
The Scottish Sun, front page, 30 April 2015. The Sun in England, same morning: "IT'S A TORY!"
The papers that tell Scotland about itself are owned elsewhere, and one of them ran opposite editorials north and south of the border on the same morning.
The receipts
The source list for this chapter, as the publisher maintains it. Archive links are given wherever a cited page could move or die.
- DC Thomson of Dundee, family-owned publisher of the Courier, the Press and Journal and the Sunday Post: the sole Scottish-owned national group.
- Daily Record and Sunday Mail owned by Reach plc, based at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London.
- The Herald and The National owned by Newsquest, owned by Gannett, an American company (Delaware-incorporated, formerly headquartered in Virginia, now New York).
- The Herald's 2014 referendum position (supporting "unionist-leaning"): "Herald View", The Herald, 16 September 2014, p.14, backing continued UK membership conditional on "far-reaching further devolution" (archived web.archive.org/web/20140916220428/); and Brian McNair (Professor of Journalism, QUT), The Conversation, 17 February 2015: the Sunday Herald backed Yes while "its daily sister title, the Herald, remained in the Unionist camp".
- The Scotsman: ownership changed May 2025 to Media Concierge, a London and Dublin based private group; owned outside Scotland before and after.
- The Scottish Sun and the Scottish editions of the Times and Sunday Times: News UK, owned by News Corp, American (Delaware-incorporated), Murdoch-family-controlled.
- The Economist, cover dated 14 April 2012, "Skintland": map of Scotland with place names replaced by poverty puns (Edinborrow, Glasgone, Loanlands, Highinterestlands among those corroborated by at least two sources); underlying article a conventional economic-risk argument ("one of Europe's vulnerable, marginal economies"; if Scots wanted independence "for political or cultural reasons, they should go for it"). Alex Salmond's on-record response as First Minister ("This is how they really regard Scotland. This is unionism boiled down to its essence and stuck on a front page for every community in Scotland to see their sneering condescensions"; "They shall rue the day they thought they'd have a joke at Scotland's expense") reported consistently by The Scotsman and The Drum, April 2012.
- Scotland on Sunday, 7 April 2013: Saltire with the cross of St Andrew replaced by a Nazi swastika, headline "Klan Alba", illustrating a feature by Gavin Bowd, author of Fascist Scotland: Caledonia and the Far Right (Birlinn, 2013). Eddi Reader complained to the Press Complaints Commission; the paper removed the image from its Facebook page; the PCC did not uphold the complaint (no breach of the editors' code; image held to reflect the article's content and not to suggest all Scots or all independence supporters held such views). The PCC was wound up in September 2014 and replaced by IPSO.
- "Project Fear": by Rob Shorthouse's own account, the phrase began in the Better Together office in 2013 as a self-mocking name for what the Yes side could call the No campaign, before it passed into public use; his own words, "I am the proud owner of one of the most celebrated phrases in modern British political history" (BuzzFeed News, Jamie Ross, "The Man Who Created The Phrase 'Project Fear' Says He Has No Regrets", 24 May 2016, archived web.archive.org/web/20231203085158/https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamieross/fear-we-go-again).
- The Vow: signed pledge by David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, published as an exclusive Daily Record front page, 16 September 2014, two days before the referendum; strapline "This is solemn. You can trust us." is the Record's editorial line, not part of the signed text (see, section 3). The broadsheets ran their own separately-worded No editorials rather than the Vow's text: the Scotsman (own editorial of roughly 2,000 words), the Times ("vote No with great national pride"), the Telegraph ("together we have been stronger, more prosperous and more secure"), per Press Gazette, "Scottish daily papers all say 'no' or stay neutral on independence as readers go to the polls". Daily Record: Glasgow tabloid, Labour-supporting since 1964, mass-market readership.
- The Sun (English edition), eve of the 7 May 2015 general election: "Save Our Bacon" front page (Ed Miliband, bacon sandwich, tiny Nicola Sturgeon on his shoulder), urging readers to keep Labour and the SNP out. The Scottish Sun's "Stur Wars" page (Sturgeon as Princess Leia with a lightsaber, "May the 7th be with you: why it's time to vote SNP") ran a week earlier, on 30 April 2015. Same proprietor: News UK, owned by News Corp. Front pages: "Stur Wars" and "It's a Tory!" (both 30 April 2015): BBC News, "Election 2015: The Sun and the Scottish Sun endorse rival parties", 30 April 2015, archived web.archive.org/web/20261009110640/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32523804; "Save Our Bacon" (The Sun, 6 May 2015): HuffPost UK, Jack Sommers, 6 May 2015, archived web.archive.org/web/20261009110406. Corrected in the publication review, 9 October 2026: the "Stur Wars" page ran on 30 April 2015, the day of the Scottish Sun's SNP endorsement, beside the English Sun's "It's a Tory" (David Cameron as the royal baby) and its Conservative endorsement: Press Gazette, "Sun backs Tories to avoid 'Labour/SNP nightmare'... Scottish Sun backs SNP to 'fight harder for Scotland's interests at Westminster'", 30 April 2015, archived https://web.archive.org/web/20261009064525/https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/sun-backs-tories-avoid-laboursnp-nightmare-scottish-sun-backs-snp-fight-harder-scotlands-interests/. "Save Our Bacon" ran on 6 May 2015.
- Publication review additions, 9 October 2026 (the advocate merge; each tag is the edit it sources): - (10-A04#1) Scotland Act 1998 (c.46), Schedule 5, Part II, Head K (Media and Culture), Section K1, 'Broadcasting', as currently in force on legislation.gov.uk: 'The subject-matter of the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the Broadcasting Act 1996. The British Broadcasting Corporation.' https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/schedule/5 (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20261009092625/https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/schedule/5)
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