The Scottish media this week has started to rather resemble Argentina under General Galtieri’s military junta – everywhere you look are the ghosts of the disappeared.

We’ve already documented at length the sudden non-existence of the Herald’s madly inaccurate front-page lead story from Monday (along with the corresponding piece in the Evening Times). And today two more things joined the missing list.

First up was a deeply snide column from Kenny Farquharson in the Times, making the seemingly implausible claim that Alex Salmond had never read a book before 2015 – and, indeed, that he’d lied about doing so.

Sure enough, evidence to the contrary soon started to arrive.

And then the man himself waded in.

With predictable results.

(And before we move on, let’s just take a short moment to reflect on the mindset of supposedly experienced professional political journalists – one of them Salmond’s self-appointed “biographer” – willing and eager to actually believe that Alex Salmond had never read a book. Ponder that for a minute, and consider what it might tell you.)

Next up was BBC Scotland, in an echo of the Herald’s classic “attempts to increase tourism backfire by increasing tourism” story from exactly one year ago tomorrow.

But not for long, after those replies.

We’re well-used, of course, to the press telling lies about the Scottish Government, ourselves and Yes voters, but printing flat-out falsehoods about ScotRail, the former First Minister and the police in half a week was probably pushing its luck a little.

We’re still awaiting any responses, incidentally, from the Daily Record and the Courier about the ScotRail story – the Daily Mail published its tiny correction today.

[EDIT 8.43pm: in fact the Courier did too, on page 16.]

[EDIT 11 AUGUST: the Record’s finally showed up four days after the original story.]

But increasingly, the Scottish media’s sins are finding it out in public.