Tuesday, May 05, 2009
I looked out my kitchen window to see a man carrying a machinegun…
IN the wake of the PSNI’s threat to use legal action to force Suzanne Breen to reveal her Real IRA sources, journalist Kathryn Johnston (pictured) recalls for Slugger the day her home was raided by the police - and calls for support for the Sunday Tribune’s northern editor.
I had a shiver of recognition when I read Suzanne Breen’s disclosure in the Tribune that the PSNI had visited her Belfast home to demand that she hand over her computer, disks, notes, phone and any material relating to stories she had written about the Real IRA.
At the end of April 2003, I looked out of my kitchen window to see a man in a navy boiler suit carrying an MP5 machinegun walking round to the back of our house. Within minutes our drive was blocked by police vehicles and two detectives were serving us with a warrant under the Official Secrets Act 1911.
The ‘reason’ for the raid? My husband, Liam Clarke, and I had published transcripts of four politically embarrassing telephone calls as an appendix to the paperback edition of our book, From Guns to Government, a biography of Martin McGuinness.
Continues below the fold.
Three officers from the Technical Support Unit of the PSNI ransacked our house for the next five and a half hours on suspicion that we had committed an offence under Section 1 of the Act. By the end of the night they had seized four computer hard drives, mobile phones, files, kids’ computer games, personal financial information, contact books, and a laptop computer.
By 2am on May Day we had both been cautioned and arrested by a CID officer under the Official Secrets Act, despite our concerns for the welfare of our 8 year old daughter who was sleeping over at a neighbour’s house and was due to be left back at 8.30 that morning for school.
We complained to the Police Ombudsman about our arrests. Her subsequent report recommended disciplinary action against eight individual officers on over thirty counts for what she described as “a poorly led and unprofessional operation”. Sir Hugh Orde told the Ombudsman that he unequivocally accepted the recommendations in her report and would implement them. So why have the PSNI again demanded that a journalist breach her duty of confidentiality to her source by producing her phone, computer, notes and any material relating to the story she wrote about the Real IRA?
The job of a journalist is to bring information into the public domain and to expose wrongdoing to scrutiny. It is right to extend confidentiality when people take risks to help us, but that is not an end in itself. The underlying motive behind confidentiality should always be to bring about disclosure.
There is no doubt that Suzanne’s story added to our knowledge of the Real IRA. She carried their claim that they murdered Denis Donaldson, that they intended to strike again, and that they considered Martin McGuinness a traitor. She published the statement they intended to make the following day at their Easter commemoration in Derry, giving the police plenty of time to mount an operation to arrest and question the Real IRA spokespersons that day. So what action did the PSNI take? Well, none really, save bullying Breen to disclose her sources, an action which would surely put the lives of her and her family at risk.
What happened to us and what Suzanne Breen is facing is just another example of a growing trend by the state to harass investigative journalists. If legitimate journalistic investigation is curtailed, it will be devastating for press freedom and democracy. The same government which boasts of its commitment to Freedom of Information uses archaic and clumsy legislation, coupled with strong arm tactics, to stifle legitimate disclosure in the public interest. Prosecutions seldom succeed - the collapse of the cases against Nigel Wylde, Tony Geraghty, Katharine Gun, Ed Moloney and others attests to this fact.
The attempt to prosecute entails disruption, expense and stress which is enough to discourage others from tangling with the authorities. For every public servant, or potential source, or journalist who is charged with revealing secrets, there are many others who read in the press and watch on television the disruption to their lives, the lengthy and dispiriting court battles they are forced to engage in, their public naming and shaming, and decide they do not want to take that risk.
Handing over your sources to the police brands journalists as untrustworthy and means that people reluctant to speak to the police won’t speak to the press either. The result is that less information comes into the public domain. A chill factor which militates against disclosure, the main business of journalism, is created.
There are a few journalists who have broken confidentiality to their source. One is Nick Martin-Clark, who did co-operate with police. The loyalist paramilitary Clifford McKeown was sentenced on Martin-Clark’s evidence after boasting in a prison interview that he had murdered Michael McGoldrick, a young Catholic taxi driver, as a “birthday present” for Billy “King Rat” Wright, founder of the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It was obvious that McKeown would have no compunction about killing again. Martin-Clark agonised over the promise of confidentiality McKeown had demanded before making his disclosure. “In the end”, he said, “my duty as a citizen was more important.? He still lives under a witness protection scheme and can never again visit Northern Ireland, his main interest of journalistic work.
Most journalists do not agree with Martin Clark’s decision, in fact he was expelled from the NUJ. However, there is no denying that life is messy and, as he says, there can be a tension between our duties as citizens and our duties as journalists.
There is no such dilemma in Suzanne Breen’s case. Her interviewee was not the killer of the soldiers and her testimony would not lead to conviction or the prevention of future crime.
The clear balance of public interest lies in preserving confidentiality, and she deserves all our support. If the courts do not uphold this position it is they, and not she, who will lose credibility.
Belfast Gonzo @ 05:33 PM
Eloquent account by Ms. Johnston, and very persuasive.
Apart from which, any “evidence” that Ms.Breen could offer would be simply hearsay which would never be admissible in Court, I believe.Posted by on May 05, 2009 @ 07:20 PMOf course Joe. Great piece. It’s amazing that journalists can get bullied here for hiding their sources like this. Look at the state of Fleet Street and their continued usage of the “Dark Arts”. Severe illegality is everyday business in the English press, but it’s very rare that the police do anything about that.
Posted by on May 05, 2009 @ 08:56 PM-
DRD don’t appear to have the same moral dilemma.
I understand that the “whistle blower” in this case made valid and proper disclosures as the relevant legislation would uphold.
These disclosures were made to relevant government departments and not to a journalist.
Let’s hope there is no “independent investigation”....
Posted by on May 05, 2009 @ 09:01 PM I’m sorry I cant support this nonsense.
Breen failed to publish anything of worth, she acted as the collector of information, just because she played little part in the production of terror, or if you like in the meting out and distribution of it, she still ‘collected’ the info. Which in the end was distributed.
The times now are different, the people are the water in which the revolutionary fish flow. This water has since turned into a tiny little trickle and only a few big fish left in that and they are almost in full view: ready to be scooped out; yet the definition and the ability to pin point isn’t honed in enough yet. Breen could help.
This isn’t the murky 70s where the Provos spoke to the papers so as to pass message back to the British who couldn’t figure out what was happening in terms of the IRA on the ground. The British state could neither protect key parts of the state well: the army and indeed civilians were killed. Then it would respect the right of journalists to keep their sources silent to keep themselves alive and the *useful* sources.
TODAY, it is different the state can pretty much protect itself against this group given the changes to the political landscape, the police can help Breen in terms of protection.
What Breen wrote about was nothing new, it was banal, it’s like if you give Peter Mandelson a blank page he’ll write about New Labour, same with these guys except it’s about murder, now there is close to 1.7 million people here against it. If murder to them is an end in itself, why collect this nonsense and pass it off as something we already know? It just seems like bragging on the part of the RIRA. Besides, most importantly of all, what’s more important: the potential to protect lives by helping the police to hone in better on these thoughtless idiots, or to help protect them?
Suzanne (I know she reads Slugger) NI is a small place and any info could help, think of Omagh, I have no doubt that if it were me, better to fuck journalism and do something to effect positive change in NI, do something better than any little article ever could. Reveal your sources and pick up another career elsewhere, manager of news office etc, or whatever? For example, 85% of those with degrees as archeologists retrain and do something different with their lives; life long learning and retraining is the thing, is it not?
Or maybe Suzanne is deep down frightened that if she reveals her sources she will be targeted and meted out the sort of treatment as per Omagh and Massereene if she tells. Yet not telling only serves to increase this terror on unsuspecting others who will suffer something similar to Omagh/Massereene, something that she doesn’t want to suffer herself by telling.
Question: What’s journalism anyway today? Fuck it, give it up and do something worth your while with your life by probably saving other lives, for goodness sake. Give over the info.
[Libellous material removed. Material like this puts the future of the open ended nature of the site in jeopardy. Red Card!. Continuance will result in publication of real world ID - ]
With the Real IRA, murder is an end in itself, nothing worth reporting there: it’s just nihilism. And that’s banal, a story with no useful or positive purpose.
Posted by on May 05, 2009 @ 10:11 PMWhat the “great and good” of Slugger tend to forget is that its the “wee people” who get “fucked over”.
It is not the journalists, the government , but the person with the “audacity” to speak out who trembles for their kneecaps, at the very least.
Suzanne, is protected by lawyers and her union, I hope.
Posted by on May 05, 2009 @ 11:10 PMDC
Recent FOI requests would further indicate that enough material has been handed over to journalists, but that none have “balls enough” to prevent potential loss of life.
“Pot/kettle?”Posted by on May 05, 2009 @ 11:36 PMIt is essentially a calculated act of bullying by the PSNI that is designed to “put manners” on uppity journalists.
As Kathryn Johnston points out, even if the PSNI get no direct result from harassing Suzanne Breen, they get an indirect pay-off by creating a climate of fear and harrassment that will serve to deter other journalists from similar acts in future. And it surely is an embarrassment to the PSNI that Ms Breen was able to inform the public which group(supposedly) killed Donaldson when the PSNI was not or did not.
It is also an extremely dangerous form of police harassment since it directly exposes the journalist to the threat of loss of both career and life on one side of the choice and to considerable unpleasantness from the State on the other.
Perhaps the rules need to be codified so that a request for information is made by the PSNI to the journalist’s editor or union in future, thereby removing the ‘terror’ tactics that the PSNI use to harass these journalists. At any rate, just as the PSNI makes a calculation that other journalists will cower, then the journalists should make a calculation that the PSNI will cower if those journalists give the PSNI one hell of a bad press every time they pull a stunt like this. Deterrence by dread of consequences is a game that two can play.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 06:39 AMBy the way, the “game” doesn’t have to trivilise such reporting. There is plenty of legitimate questions that should be raised about the police in the media but which the police would rather were not addressed by public via the media.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 06:48 AMI think it’s outrageous that the police think they have any right to demand any information of any kind. By handing information to the PSNI she would not only be risking her own life (which she’s under no obligation to do Omagh or otherwise), she would be deterring any future source from disclosing information. Not just the RIRA either, think of any source that a newspaper uses - would someone give information about any criminal activity if they thought the highly unprofessional PSNI were to weigh down on them?
Bearing in mind that this is the police force that made us all so proud by their behaviour in the past six months, with the series of high profile cases that have been lost due to their mishandling of evidence and other misbehaviour. The same PSNI that has a clear up rate of around 20%? As I said initially, it’s completely fucking outrageous that these people think they can demand that a journalist do their jobs for them, get off your collective fat holes and do it yourselves.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 07:16 AM-
Unsurprisingly our republican co-ruler is somewhat consumed with dissidents and their doings. But even Insider ears pricked up (our ears are everywhere) on hearing the senior Sinn Fein figure had launched an attack on “dissident” journalists.
The unexpected outburst came at a private briefing for political correspondents with Mr Robinson at Stormont, and Mr McGuinness made clear he was not referring to any of the fine men around the Executive table.
The Mid Ulster MP is normally unflappable in the presence of the Press (unlike his power-sharing partner Peter) but said: “We still have dissident journalists.” indicating that everyone knew who he was talking about, Marty opined that such scribes were writing in a way which is “giving succour to these people”.
Is anyone surprised the PSNI then goes after Suzanne Breen?
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 08:06 AM “PRIVATE BRIEFING FOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENTS”
Is that where they tell ye what you are allowed to cover, (or not) as the case may be?
Surely therefore “dissident” journalists are a good thing?
Damien Mc Bride might not agree
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 08:16 AMThe job of a journalist is to bring information into the public domain and to expose wrongdoing to scrutiny
Hmm….
“Dissident” and proud
a person who disagrees with a government or a powerful organization
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 08:29 AMIt would be nice if journalists did more investigation and acted less as messengers for the good, the bad and mainly the ugly
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 08:41 AMNevin,
If you continue on that line there will be no more sponsored http://www.stratagem-ni.com/awards for you!Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 08:57 AMPT, do keep up. Why do you think he won a Slugger Award in the first place?
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 09:03 AMMick,
I can only guess that it was assisting in the game, not for the rightful value of his blog….Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 09:08 AMBelfast Gonzo, what credibility do the courts have to lose?
I can think of one recent case where one judge reversed the judgement of another judge. Let’s not and never assume that the judges are impartial.
In a small place like NI it’s quite possible that some guilty parties and some judges may dine together on a regular basis.
In another instance I noted that the full name of a company had not been given in a court judgement. I made some inquiries with the Courts Service and they were unable to determine from the judge the full name of the company. It was quite clear from the documentation that a space had been left for the detail that would clearly have identified the company and all the ‘juicy’ information that follows from that.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 09:24 AM“the police think they have any right to demand any information of any kind.”
Neil, perhaps it’s worth pointing out that the police are the servants of the state or, in the case of NI, two states; their actions are politically circumscribed. Naturally, not all police officers dance to the state’s political tune.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 09:44 AMPT, another time perhaps? It’s a bit off topic. Email me if you want to feed back further?
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 09:47 AM[Text removed -Play the ball!! - mods] it would seem to me that this in the short to medium term especially if there is a court case etc .. is one up for the dizzies and the dissenters - the PSNI Over l-Ordes in this case may have own goaled and badly self agrandised their acclaimed public support after recent events.
Im thinking thats not only a bad call for the Neo’s that might back fire on them big time but the blowback will most especially affect the Derry Deputy in the time ahead and he knows it.
[Text removed -Play the ball!! - mods]
As an aside, on the Mr Adam’s other best friend issue could it be that what may have happened there is that the actual trigger man/men may have recently hooked up their cart as it were to the Reals (Ive read there is a lot of that about these days) and during the initial ‘job interview’ submitted their full cv to perhaps gain better pay and benefits?
And again its a guessing game, might a delighted Derry Don ’ so full as a l-Orde with self agrandisement’ have jumped at the chance to make an albeit opportune yet vacuous (I mean did you READ that nonsense they spouted to Ms Breen?) years old ‘claim of responsibility’ on such a prestigiously and popular (?) hit.
If there is any merit in my morning speculation it kinda makes you ponder what else might have recently been claimed but unactioned, a la another man’s wound so to speak - Incidently a crime bitterly detested (almost as much as the despicable act of touting) in the traditional republican midset.
Ive a feeling there’s a real story or two lurking about in there somewhere Ms Breen ... Stay focused and keep your chin up ... Ps Love your work :-)
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 10:00 AMI can’t understand how a journalist can expect to keep criminal imformation private. If they had any morals at all, they would disclose criminal information to the police.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 10:32 AM“If legitimate journalistic investigation is curtailed, it will be devastating for press freedom and democracy.”
Who or what is currently curtailing journalistic investigation? Investigative journalists appear to be a bit thin on the ground and getting thinner.
Some journalists seem happy to cut and paste press releases; they achieve ‘balance’ by compiling cuttings from across the spectrum or just from the extremes.
I was intrigued by Mick’s recent comment on the radio that I lit a fire that IIRC led to the resignation of the former First Minister. Me, a blogger arsonist :)
Well, “Where was the fire brigade?,” I ask, me being an old cynic. Was it too busy putting out fires alongside the Bushmills and Giants Causeway Railway track or was it locked behind the gates of an ornate private development? Where were the journalistic beaters on those occasions? :)
The investigative journalist and the independent blogger operating in tandem can have an unnerving effect on Government ministers and the Sir Humphreys and I think that’s very healthy for the body politic.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 10:33 AMNevin,
How do you manage to kill so many
threads?
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 12:30 PMShe hasnt been arrested and if in the unlikely event she were and it was to go to court the Maloney judgement would still be relevant.
I’m sure Suzanne Breen knows that.
And its not her job to investigate murders and I’m sure the people she speaks to are under surveilance or more likely police informants anyway so I doubt there is anything she could tell the PSNI that they dont already know.
The Tribune reads like the Real IRA news these days so I suppose in some ways this isnt that unexpected but pretty poor PR move on the part of the police.Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 12:33 PMIt’s not dead; it’s just resting, PT.
Posted by on May 06, 2009 @ 01:04 PM
