“journalists were sometimes told to hold back on a story in case they might do damage to the delicate administration”
Here’s a snippet from an Irish Times report on this year’s Parnell Summer School at Avondale House, Rathdrum, County Wicklow.
The media had not just a right but a duty to make things awkward for politicians, especially those in government, according to David Gordon, political editor of the Belfast Telegraph.
In the North journalists were sometimes told to hold back on a story in case they might do damage to the delicate administration, he said. While this was not a point to ignore, you couldn’t make exceptions, he said. [added emphasis]
If the doomsayers were correct about the demise of newspapers then society would miss journalism when it was gone, he said.
Already in an attempt to gain readers there was a danger of newspapers becoming hysterical and damaging good journalism. If things are overhyped and everything is a scandal, then nothing is a scandal, he added.
Told by whom, David? I know it’s “a fragile flower which requires careful tending…” But still.
I’ve no doubt of the contribution, but the “well-behaved witness” now needs to start asking “stupid” questions. Otherwise false, or partial, narratives will go unchallenged as those witnesses continue to ignore “the bits that do not suit particular prejudices”. And when “agreed truth becomes accepted, the real truth becomes a lie”.
Topic: Government, Politics, Society and Culture
Region: Northern Ireland
I appreciate that journalists do not deserve much of the venting being expressed here –though from various areas throughout NI much of what has been hyped and over played is now splitting at the seems. I do not support or condone any violent opposition to the GFA but obvious neglect of real grievances are manifesting in some people seeing the resort to violence as the only option. Maybe if things were being ventilated more openly those frustrations might be relieved.
Brian, have you any thoughts as to why the shortfall in PSNI numbers and the withholding of some PSNI statistics are not being reported in the MSM? Such information is readily available.
‘Can anybody actually quote a diamond-hard specific example of “censorship” in recent years in our field “- ie banned from reporting a story ( how?) or even “self censorship” ie voluntary restraint? The latter happens all the time, sometimes for good reasons.Stories have to peak.’
The problem is with that ‘recent years’ comment. Sometimes we don’t actually hear what was censored until some time afterwards. The 30 year (now 20 year) rule.
‘Self censorship’ simply demonstrates that the media move, phalanx-like, on the instructions of….someone. No one breaks ranks. So much for independence of the media. They’re taking orders from someone in order to produce such a singular course of action.
Examples of censorship? Didn’t a former SF member, Larry O’toole, get censored from RTE under Section 31 of the Republic’s Broadcasting Act?
As I recall it was because his voice couldn’t be heard for the offence of being a member of a party whose voices couldn’t be heard, despite the fact that he was speaking as a trade union official in the capacity of negotiator in some industrial dispute in a Dublin biscuit factory. I hope these details are fundamentally correct, it’s a bit of a blur in the dustier recesses of memory. I’m sure google will provide the essential notes related to state censorship being abused and meekly followed by a national broadcaster.
RTE didn’t challenge the silliness of the situation, they censored O’toole’s contributions. So some self-censorship there. And I suspect the BBC, in SF ‘actors voices’ examples of Gerry or Marty or whoever, probably didn’t broadcast any of them talking about GAA, the West belfast Festival or whatever. They just went along for the ride and played the government’s game.
So there’s plenty of examples of ‘voluntary restraint’ without any attempt to challenge that moronic little Thatcher law. (which itself too its cue from the RoI’s censoring.
While not the fault of journalists, media’s easy acceptance of Sammy Wilson’s ‘climate change advert ban’ (if one squints hard enough) is an obvious example of censorship being meekly accepted by, I would imagine, UTV, and no attempt to broadcast the advert as part of the coverage. Ditto Marie Stopes abortion adverts. It’s wholly evident that journalists accept the censoring status quo in these relatively minor matters (‘relatively minor’ being a subjective phrase).
Not exactly the diamond hard fault of journalists, but a pretty obvious example of journos playing whatever agenda Sammy Wilson, or anyone else, pursues.
Earlier this year, the Sun censored a yougov poll which showed support for the Lib Dems. In journalism, it’s happening all the time.
Eileen Flynn. Unmarried mother-to-be in Dublin, whose unfair dismissal was censored by RTE.
‘At the edge of the Union’ a Panorama(?) programme censored by Leon Brittain, temporarily, but at least journalists had the balls to strike in support of its broadcast.
Censorship? Or distortion? Eamonn McCann wrote a book about it in the early 1970s which examined the distortion of reporting by different GB newspapers to suit their own individual agendas/ Effectively ‘censoring’ the truth, in other words.
This blog’s very own Eamonn Mallie, once wrote (of the ‘Broadcasting Ban’)
\Because of the ban, we will now have to advise ourselves, like the Diplock judges, of the law. The spin-off effect, because we’re not allowed to carry these people on the air, is that what will creep in will be self-censorship and I think broadcasters will be more reluctant to carry the (second hand) statements of these people (Sunday Tribune, 23 October 1988).’
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/media/docs/freespeech.htm
is worthy of a look at the extent of being censored and self-censorship.
Oh Mr Walker you under-estimate your expertise. You were/are (?) a BBC employee of many years standing and the MI5 man in that office in the BBC has prolly seen your file and put the Christmas tree stamp of approval on it.
No harm in that of course.
But surely …..aww come on you probably know better than me…..that the BBC bureau in the Middle East or Moscow or Tehran might have contained/still contain a few spooky types.
Unless of course Im completely wrong that the BBC has been used by the Intelligence community and the BBC has facilitated it.
And yes youre right again.
“There is a trading relationship….up to a point”.
A point chosen by the consumer of the news.
No.
A point chosen by the Press Office/ contact and the journalist. A form of collusion to withold as much as fearlessly expose.
It is of course a “long game”. And no doubt journos are happy enough when they are released from these bonds. Those highly expensive parties organised by Jeffrey Archer for example had many journos on the guest list.
And the same journos happily kicked poor Jeffrey when he was carted off to prison.
I dont suppose its much better in the Grand Hall of Stormont. (Actually is it just me or does the Grand Hall seem to be getting smaller).
All those Press Conferences there…..the journos seem too pally with “Martin”, “Gerry”, “Peter” etc. And the politicians seem to pally with the Press Corps.
Not to mention that notice on the “Lobby Door” at Westminster. The “rules” of the Lobby. Are/were you a member of that Lobby?
How exactly does witholding information facilitate the Truth.
‘is it just me or does the Grand Hall seem to be getting smaller).’
I think it just looks smaller due to the calibre of the people in it who drag down its grandeur.
Although I’m not sure if it qualifies as a Grand-let Hall or a Grand Hall-let.
Anyway, it’s full of intellect-let.
http://sluggerotoole.com/2008/04/25/journalism-and-the-peace-process/
references Ed Moloney’s remarks on journalist self-censorship.
‘If the reportage of the peace process can be characterised by any particular quality, it was the willingness of too many journalists not to ask the hard questions that ought to have been asked. The peace process heralded an extraordinary, but deeply puzzling and confusing transition in Northern Ireland’s troubled history and it was vital that journalists should have attempted to explain all this as best as they could. Never was there a time in Northern Ireland’s painful and bloody history when information was more necessary or potentially socially useful. But in practice many reporters shrank from doing their jobs, and were – and still are – content to be mere stenographers of the peace process for fear that they could be accused, at the very least, of being ‘unhelpful’ to the process, and at worst, of being actively opposed to it.’
Journalists failed to ask the hard questions and shrank from their jobs, is a summary of Moloney’s paragraph.
Up to a point, Lord Brian Walker @ 11:15 am.
(Sorry to come late to the party. A tough, tough day. Will need to open that second bottle, I fear.)
It isn’t just the imposed D-notice (or whatever the weapon of choice is these days). It’s the threatened withdrawal of conjugal privileges, or as Lord Walker puts it: There is a trading relationship up to a certain point … and Stories have to peak.
What that may mean is a certain narrative emerges as the massed ranks of Lobb Luds and Lunchtime O’Boozes determine what will be the story, and therefore how it must develop. In which case I can think of numerous examples. The huntings of Cherie Blair or Ken Livingstone (any untruth and slime will do)? The Ozymandias phenomenon experienced by every PM and England manager: build ‘em up … Oh, look! feet of clay! … knock ‘em down: like buses, there’ll be another along in a while. Justification: it sells papers, doesn’t it?
Control of reporting in the ‘Irish’ media is a little bit more organised and top-down than can be blamed on a few cowering or careerist hacks:
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/apr2004/irtimesmcdowell.gif
Well yes Mr Redfellow.
But have the Bloggers have undermined that cosy relationship (as they may claim) or strengthened it.
No doubt in the past, lobby types would have known which politician was living a lie (constituency wife/westminster mistress etc) but the widening of politics to include news journos as well as bloggers has put some pressure on that.
No doubt news journos hang around Blackpool and Brighton hotels to expose conference leg over activity.
But this was considered out of bounds by political hacks who were no doubt themselves engaged in Conference hanky panky……on expenses.
Rather like football journos knew what happened on away trips to Stockholm or Vienna in a bleak January night and kept their notebooks firmly in their pockets…..until the cosy relationship was broken up by news reporters with a different agenda.
Journalists did not hold back covering the high news value violence as propaganda generated by the provos, maybe they feel they now owe us a period of piece and quiet.
… not much so far…
Journalists really need to address the fact that they are not trusted to tell the truth.
The Veracity(sic) Index for 2008 reveals some interesting facts.
Most trusted professions
Doctors 92%…Teachers 87%…Professors 79%….Judges 78% and Clergymen 74%
Most untrusted.
Govt Ministers 24%….Politicians 21%….Journalists 19% (lowest ranked and most reviled profession).
Makes ya think
But more than the idea that journos are paragons of truth and hoesty.
youve convinced me Mr Walker
……but can you convince the 81% of respondents who think journos are not trustworthy.
I know youre a big supporter of polls in the Belfast Telegraph.
So presumably you agree with the one I posted on.
You Never Can Bribe or Twist,
The Trusty British Journalist,
But When You See What,
Unbribed He’ll Do,
In Truth There’s No Requirement To
fitz.. well done, less cynical than usual.. Journos like politician are least trusted- well. easy to say and in the case of journos, a form of venting I’d say. People love to scold as we know – part of their frustrations with remote rulers and perhaps with life. Everyone thinks they can do better – indeed some can, it’s not rocket science of brain surgery. The achievement of the professionals is to do it every day in public. Some feat, I tell you.. Overall they deserve better, so there. I’d like to add that despite all the criticims hurled at it, the BBC is still far more trusted than politicians ( retired staff, no fee).
Malcolm stretches the theme further to set.’em up, knock,’em down.. I would only say that political corrs offered a fairly pale imitation of the reality of Blair/Brown. Likewise the story of Charles Haughey until late in the day. Politics is an intense business, producing lots of emotional detritus. 24/7 News increases the pressure. It creates a vortex. Brown, himself a hands-on briefer for decades, got sucked in out of control Pols and other leaders must learn to ride it better and dare to resist it sometimes. Big subject.
One person’s resistance to the news vortex is another’s suppression
nevin, on PSNI figures, I haven’t a clue. Are you arguing from the particular to the general?
Flagging energy just now makes me avoid the complete span of the Troubles where there were of course legal and voluntary suppression and delay in various forms.
The fundamental problems especially for broadcasters were : The difficulty of dealing with the oxygen of publicity argument. How to include as a matter of course paramilitaries in the political debate when they were trying to advance their cause by blatantly undemocratic means and were in fact, illegal. How to validate “facts” when fierce secret ( dirty) and propaganda wars were being waged
Free debate by definition should of course extend beyond the confines set by the state but those confines cannot be completely ignored. And so persistent struggle was waged between thre state and the broadcasters – with much of the public in both islands on the side of the State.
I can only come up with the unsatisfactory conclusion on a subject I know pretty well- we didn’t do badly, pity we didn’t do better.
No Mr Walker…Journalists are even less trusted than politicians…….the very people that Journalists monitor.
The mystique of journalism has been exposed by the Citizen Journalist.
The Expenses.
The nice little earners of the motoring journos…….like to test drive the latest sports car.in an exotic location…….bring your wife.
Or the rock journos…….reviewing the latest album in…….oh the West Indies……bring your girlfriend.
lets read the latest tearful confession in The Sun…..(sympathetic because we showed him the videotape and paid him £100k). Ah wait the Sun isnt journalism…..not like the Beeb.
But remind me…..who were the BBC couple (with a line in consumer programmes) that Private Eye exposed as negotiating a discount with a car manufacturer.
The rather odd fact is that while Sluggers Blogging “team” represent disparate shades of political opinion, they are united in believing the trustworthiness of the journalistic profession. On the other hand, the commenters while representing disparate views on many issues hold a different view about Journalism.
Its not exactly rocket science as you say.
And many of the commenters are not journalists.
But I suspect many commenters here missed their vocation.
Mr Walker….you appear now to be agreeing with the basic premise of the headline above. And further inviting us to believe that the back stairs deals (hmmmmm maybe arrangements) between source and journalist are in the better interests of the ordinary punter outside the loop.
The ordinary punter is after all the person that both politician and journalist claim to be serving. Or do they?
No doubt this arrangement is well understood within the wider freemasonry of journalism but leaves ordinary people feeling ill served.
Fisk first became aware of the way in which centres of power control
debate by influencing the terms of the discourse as a correspondent
for The Times in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, when the trust in
authority instilled by his public school education quickly leached
away. “We Brits went to Northern Ireland not very well educated about
Ireland,” he says. “I think we had, faintly at the back of our minds,
the Punch cartoon images of the drunken Irish with cudgels, wanting to
kill for no reason, and we grafted that onto the way we reported. It
was only when you saw what the Brits were doing on the streets that
you realised there was a different story there.
“The British army had a set of words that it used and that we used as
well, and which defined the war in the north. The cliche we were
expected to use about the paratroop regiment, for example, was that
they were tough, whereas in fact they were brutal and a rabble. In
addition to that, the army lied. When I went to the north first, I
didn’t regard the British army as being people who would lie, but I
realised very quickly that they did lie, because I went to incidents
and found that their version of events had no bearing on what I saw.
Of course, the IRA lied, the UVF lied, the UDA lied; but it was upon
finding that ‘we’ lied, too — the army, the RUC, the British
government.”
Though the authorities complained repeatedly to The Times about Fisk’s
reports, his desk editor, Charles Douglas-Home, who later edited the
newspaper for three years, backed him steadfastly. “They complained
bitterly about me, but Charles said to them, ‘We’re printing the truth
and you’re lying.’ From then it became very important to me that what
you wrote was what was printed under your name.” Fisk resigned from
the Times in 1989, after cuts to a report of his on the Lockerbie
bombing altered its meaning by omission. He inferred the influence of
forces more powerful than the editor who handled his copy.
From an article on Fisk in the Sunday Times
‘faithfully re-printing the PR guff, without having the gumption to question anything about the whole farcical plan.’
Exactly. A flick through this morning’s London (or Dublin) inkies will pretty much reveal this evening’s Belfast Telegraph in all its glory. Cut ‘n’ paste. Cut ‘n’ paste.
Chuck in an ‘oh dear, aren’t these dissidents awful’ editorial and some Irish League/GAA/Ulster rugby news the verbatim reprint of a Linfield/Antrim Hurling/Team Ulster press release, ghost write the views of a striker who can’t get a game at Sunderland, FFS, and you’re done.
Not much different in the Irish News or News Letter. A few columnists spouting ‘analysis’ which is sometimes laughably inept, poorly thought out and just as badly written in a big wax crayon, seems like.
Not much different on the BBC, which is merely the aural reporting of the latest PAC press release about how awful those nasty corrupt people under the witch hunt’s microscope are, without ANY attempt at balancing the view with a statement or interview with those being hounded. No attempt to EVER say ‘well the PAC (or DRD or NIW or whoever) said this, but the person who they’re saying it about says it’s a crock’.
That’s not ‘news’, it’s a daily half hour from the Stormont Ministry of Information.
And I suspect that others, living under the cosh of Dail Eireann or the Palace of Westminster would have the same to say about their local media. It’s not just an NI thing.
Even a columnist who, daily, challenges Stormont’s propaganda by airing the views of the oppressed or maligned, would be a start. Not even any real need to even ‘investigate’ the veracity of their claims. Just air them. Because that’s tjust a counter-balance to the free propaganda being aired on behalf of the nastiest, most corrupt little administration in Europe, based at Stormont, day and daily. So why not level the playing field? Why not permit the oppressed or maligned an opportunity to air their side of the propaganda? It would certainly make for more interesting reading than anything else the BT or BBCNI can offer.
Without knowing the ins and outs of Christy Walsh’s story (although his blog makes interesting reading), I suspect that this is just one of hundreds of tales wherein the system has failed an individual, a body or a business, and hitherto a brown-nosing media has scurried to meekly report the ‘findings’ of that system, as if it’s tablets handed down to Moses.
Christ knows that few of us will agree with the variety of views being presented on ‘Slugger’, but I’ll tell you one thing. The depth of knowledge, and quality of writing, often surpasses anything that is uttered by ‘professional’ journalists, and for who the word ‘profession’ only really applies on account of the cheque they pick up, without blinking, each week.
’24/7 News increases the pressure.’
Does it?
Take away the exciting news of Robbie Williams’ wedding, factor out the Daily Mail readership who have a fast dial button set to ‘Radio 5 phone ins’ where they can fume about dirty foreigners, and there is no such thing as ’24 hour news’. It’s just a phrase. It’s 24/7 crap, essentially.
I’m not convinced that ‘pressure’ exists by Sky or News 24 spending an hour or more looking at an Easyjet live at East Midlands airport because Madeleine McCann’s parents are on board. It’s not even news. It’s voyeuristic plane-spotting.
What we got, that morning, was a bunch of clueless journalists who couldn’t answer anything definitively talking shite for an hour or more. Anyone with the good sense lie in bed and scratch their nuts for that hour got the kernel of the entire story, in 30 seconds flat, at lunchtime.
The only pressure involved in 24/7 news is the trick of making what we’re seeing/hearing appear remotely interesting. Sadly, it’s pretty much a 24/7 failure, and the last event worthy of 24/7 coverage was 9/11. I don’t imagine there will be another event in the UK worthy of 24/7 coverage until the day of the Queen’s funeral. So it’s all a once-in-a-generation thing, and hardly worth the effort and cash put into it.
You have to realise that the authorities, then and now are not a news agency. While their PROs should not lie, they were bound to put the best construction on what they did often in searing circumstances, cover up sometimes included. You can hang a whole indictment on Bob Fisk’s testimony if that pleases you. For my taste, although he has much to say down the years that’s valuable and I used to know him pretty well, he is now too much the moralist , and his own feelings are too much of the story. I prefer greater astringency. But as I say, a matter of taste.
Every journalist, every policeman, even every solider who may have served in Aden, Malaya or Cyprus and I daresay even very budding paramiltary was taken far our of their experience by the Troubles.
People can argue from the particular to the general if they want. I prefer a bit more context and general understanding. Where else was it done better? Did the young Fisk read James Cameron I wonder? I’m sure he did but like us all, he had to make his own mistakes and should not now reproach himself too much for that. For in the end, much of the truth came out. Whataboutery about the media can be as arid a game about the media as about the principal actors and events.
“For in the end, much of the truth came out.”
How very reassuring…(Not)
“Journalists were sometimes told to hold back on a story in case they might do damage to the delicate administration”
Waiting on the eventual truth to come out, to come out has created victims of the “peace process”.
What kind of peace is that?