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HAVING spent the past month defending the existence of Santa Claus against the sceptics, I am also prepared to believe that the Scottish parliament does exist. I have read about it in the newspapers and seen pictures on TV, so it must be real. Then you come across a book such as Dark Moon, which is about how the TV pictures of the Apollo XI moon landing were cooked up at home by NASA to mask failure. Ludicrous conspiracy theory, of course. Yet it remains true that for most of us those images are all we have to convince us that the moon landing happened. It was a media event - in the sense that all we know of it is what was reported to us via the media.

The same is increasingly true of politics. This is the age of "informational politics" in which the principal playing field is not parliament or the public meeting but the media. Henry McLeish was absolutely right to make his first appointment a spin doctor: that is the modern game. Which is why we need to devote more critical attention in this new Scotland to the news media. They are a significant part of the structure of modern governance. We have paid enough attention to the other elements in the structure over the past 18 months: the Executive, the parliament and so on. How are the media adapting to the new era?

I would say not well. But I must tread carefully. In the world of informational politics the cardinal sin is to offend the press - and that is of course a large part of the problem. So let's consider the safer subject of the media elsewhere, and see if there is anything we might learn. A recent survey of professionals involved in the news media in the US - newsroom staff, producers, journalists, executives - provides a sobering account. It was conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The research found that journalists themselves are increasingly coming to share public concern at declining standards.

"After more than a decade of refashioning the news to make it more profitable in response to broad economic, social and technological changes," the report says, "journalism professionals now see two overriding trends that worry them. They believe that the news media have blurred the lines between news and entertainment and that the culture of argument is overwhelming the culture of reporting. A large majority of news professionals sense a degradation of the culture of news - from one that was steeped in verification and a steadfast respect for the facts toward one that favours argument, opinion- mongering, haste and infotainment."

Why is this happening? At least in part because of the competitiveness of the marketplace. "Journalists in the newsroom increasingly feel - indeed a majority now does - that business pressure is 'seriously hurting the quality of news coverage'. That in turn is exacerbating the erosion of public trust, which is only causing a further decline in audience."

We could dismiss these findings as irrelevant: perhaps you feel none of this analysis strikes any chord in Scotland? Yet until we conduct a similar inquiry here, I am prepared to use them as a proxy for the state of the media in Scotland.

The findings echo the observations of one London broadsheet editor who spoke at a Scottish Council Foundation seminar last year. He described a Scottish environment of "fierce competition in a low profit market [for newspapers], bound to lead to a downward spiral in quality".

I know that downward spiral is of more concern to many journalists than they are prepared to let on in their columns. And it should be of more concern to us too. As the same editor also observed, "newspapers take a long time to die and in their death throes they can do brutal and long-term damage to the political landscape." If this is the media environment in which our precious new political institutions are seeking to gain a respected place, then we would be nave to hope for them to succeed unless and until we take a more objective look at it.

What would that mean? First, an inquiry into the state of the news media in Scotland: where do people get their information, how much of it do they trust, what do the people providing it - or selling it - think of its quality and how has this changed over time? Second, an exposure of the mechanisms by which the media help to set the agenda in Scotland - the links between individual journalists and politicians, ownership structures, editorial decisions, the use and abuse of spin. We hear enough newspaper editors calling for transparency in government. How about more in the media?

Third, and perhaps most important, is an explicit celebration of the principles of good journalism. One of the first respondents to the Pew Centre's survey in the US came from the the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a "consortium dedicated to clarifying the principles of the profession". Where is the CCJ in Scotland? We need a rallying point for those who believe in their profession and wish to see it reinvigorated.

FOR there are signs of hope in the Pew study. "When asked what distinguishes journalism from other forms of communication, executives and reporters alike overwhelmingly cite factors that relate to the public interest: informing them, being a watchdog, facilitating democracy, supporting community. They also agree on the principles that fulfill that public mission: accuracy, fairness, verification, avoiding rumours, putting people first, keeping some independence from those you cover. Even as journalism is changing, the enduring principles, purposes and values of the profession remain."

That is true in Scotland too. It is my hope that those principles, purposes and values will become more apparent and the discussions we have about the media in the months ahead will take them as their focus. If we fail in the new information environment even to recognise the distinction between journalism and entertainment, gossip and promotion, then we will go on getting the politics we deserve.

Graham Leicester is director of the Scottish Council Foundation

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