TWO of the presenters behind a Russian state-owned news operation are facing questions about their involvement in a failed TV venture funded by £37,000 in donations.
Jack Foster and Carolyn Scott, who are fronting Sputnik News in Edinburgh, helped raised the sum for a “national news programme” in 2014 but failed to deliver.
Labour MSP James Kelly has called for “detailed accounts” of how the money was spent.
Last week’s Scottish launch of Sputnik, a news agency whose motto is Telling The Untold, was met with derision by figures across the political divide. It has been described as a mouthpiece for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Read more: Herald View: Politicians should be wary of Sputnik
Sputnik is the international wing of Kremlin-owned Rossiya Segodnya, a publicly-owned company that helps promote Putin’s world view across the globe.
The state-sponsored agency has previously fuelled conspiracy theories about the independence referendum and the death of Labour MP Jo Cox.
It has hired figures on the fringes on the independence movement to work as reporters: Foster, who describes himself as a film-maker, “broadcast journalist” Scott and “executive producer” Johanna Ross.
However, Foster and Scott are under the spotlight about how money raised for a previous media project after the 2014 referendum was spent.
Against a backdrop of claims that the media has been biased against independence, they came up with the idea of a nightly TV broadcast to rival existing stations. It was to be called the Scottish Evening News and the Indiegogo fundraiser, which had Foster’s name on it, stated: “If the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum has taught us nothing else, it's that something is very wrong with Scotland's media.
Read more: Putin's Sputnik says Kremlin will not dictate its news agenda as it arrives in Edinburgh
“What we want to create is a daily, fully-staffed national news programme for Scotland, backed up by a professional team of full-time journalists, correspondents, production and technical staff - no half measures, a genuine challenger to your News at Ten, ITN etc.
“Our initial plan, based on gaining £10,000 by November 24th, was to allow ourselves a 3 month 'discovery' period in which to investigate the feasibility of the project and put the business structure in place. Because of the support given we were able to start that immediately and are now moving into phase 2 of the project.”
The pitch added: “We hope to launch Scottish Evening News, our 30-minute daily news broadcast, in Spring 2015. ”
Picture: the initial fundraiser
In the end, the fundraiser was over-subscribed. They had wanted to raise £10,000, but pulled in £37,700 from 1312 people.
However, although pilot shows were produced, the Scottish Evening News never made it on to the screen.
Foster and Scott embarked another media project, NewsShaft, which raised £10,400 after a separate fundraising drive. This produced some content but also failed.
The community interest company behind the Scottish Evening News – News Scotland – was dissolved in April and never filed any accounts.
Speaking to the Sunday Herald, Foster said of the project: “It never happened in the end.”
Read more: The women who head up the new Edinburgh base of a Russia state-funded news agency
He explained: “The crowdfunder was to pay for the time of three people to spend two months trying to raise the money to launch a nightly news programme for Scotland.”
Asked about those who had donated, he said: “We certainly never had any complaints from people who paid into it.”
Foster, who said he believed around £9,000 was spent on salaries, also released a statement to this newspaper that was sent to donors after the project folded.
It stated: “We proceeded to spend a total of 4 months attempting to raise funds for the Scottish Evening News, sadly unsuccessfully. There are many reasons as to why we failed to raise the money, but the bottom line is that it was always extremely ambitious (we estimate that startup costs alone would have exceeded £2 million).
“£37,700 may sound like a lot, but once you take into account Indiegogo fees, 4 months' office rent and wages for 3 people (over and above filming a series of pilots), it’s actually not very much.”
Scott said of News Scotland being dissolved: “We, technically, had a fairly disastrous financial time. It was very difficult to run.”
Kelly called for full transparency: "This is important. Journalists who are scrutinsing the workings of government need to be transparent in their own affairs as well, particularly when they have taken tens of thousands of pounds of cash in individual donations. The individuals behind this venture should publish detailed accounts of what this money was spent on."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel