Here’s the doom-and-gloom front-page headline of the Herald today:

It refers to a new report from the Nuffield Trust called “Learning From NHS Scotland”. Its 61 pages contain precisely one mention of independence. Let’s see what it said.

In other words, the NHS in Scotland is being harmed because the Scottish press is so desperate to do it down that it’s become politically difficult to address its challenges for fear of the storm of media criticism that will result, regardless of the merits of the actual measures.

(Such as headlines blaming the health service’s problems on your party’s pursuit of its legitimate political goal, as mandated by the electorate in a decade-long stream of election victories, for example. Inexplicably, the Herald’s story and the editorial leader column inside both fail to mention the report’s reference to a “hostile press” being a key component of the issue.)

Congratulations to the Herald for reporting the situation that it and its media colleagues have created. But it’s a pretty drastic way to solve the summer-season news shortage.