Monday, March 31, 2008
Speaking truth unto power gets awkward…
A free press is not exactly a prerequisite for a free society, but it’s absence is (or should be) extremely worrying. In all of the comment in the MSN last week, this aspect of the climbdown of the Andersonstown News after pressure was applied over an article the paper published from its erstwhile columnist/humourist, Squinter seemed largely to be missed. It’s all the more puzzling since Gerry Adams is sitting on the fourth safest majority in the House of Commons with a whopping 68.6 per cent of the popular vote. On Thursday Alex Maskey expressed the hope that the paper’s response to his party’s concerns should be an end to the matter. Over at the Guardian, I’ve argued that there that both reflects badly on his paper and raises questions about just how ready Sinn Fein is to live with the vigorous scrutiny of a courageous and free press.
Mick Fealty @ 09:17 AM
“A free press is not exactly a prerequisite for a free society”
It most certainly is.Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 01:44 PMabout just how ready Sinn Fein is to live with the vigorous scrutiny of a courageous and free press.
Mick
Broadcasting Ban, ‘Edge of the Union’, editorial policies of Murdoch and O’Reilly-owned newspapers, etc? Yet, one (extremely) ill-judged move from Sinn Fein and you’re asking ‘how ready Sinn Fein is to live with the vigorous scrutiny of a courageous and free press?’
April 1st is tomorrow.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 02:08 PMYes, I just about swallowed my own tongue when I read that, too, KieranJ. Other than that, excellent column, Mick. Thank you for writing it.
I was feeling sick at heart early this morning thinking the whole issue of the censorship of the Squinter article was apt to be a non-issue before long. As I said on Rusty Nail’s threads, Gerry Adams has every right to protest and argue any and every aspect of the column he disagrees with. But for the column to be exorcised from memory? Whether or not the momentum for the censorship came from Adams, it isn’t right. It isn’t respectable. It isn’t good enough for the readers of ATN.
And yes, I am aware how much else in the wreck of a past or the present imperfect is neither right nor responsible, but this is a small battle that can and should be won.
There are plenty out there who call themselves republican that understand perfectly well that a free press allowing for strong and unfiltered criticism and comment of elected representatives is not an attack on republicanism, it is republicanism, in the classical definition of the term. I hope more of them are prepared to speak out and be awkward about this, because as it stands now it is a disgrace and an embarassment to all.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 02:22 PM“Murdoch and O’Reilly-owned newspapers”
Surely we can set the bar higher than that? Dec, you are right it is an “extremely ill-judged move,” but fortunately it one that can easily be corrected.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 02:26 PMHave to agree with Dec.
I cant recall seeing any rants in southern papers blaming the local TD (and not the minister for justice) for the situation in Limerick. The problem was that Adams was the target of a rant rather than a review and suddenly became solely responsible any crime in his area. Where would that type of silly insinuation be published elsewhere. As you point out at 68.6% Adams clearly has the backing of the people of WBelfast. What do you expect them to do other than demand an apology when the basis of the article was so preposterous. Ignore the SF response and focus on the merits of the article. Then the SF response is reasonable.Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 02:27 PMIt would be interesting to see Roy Gleenslade’s opinion on this, given that he is the Guardian’s media commentator, a supporter of Sinn Fein and a friend of the Belfast Media Group.
However, his previous response to awkward contradictions between all these interests has been to refuse to discuss them at all.Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 03:25 PMthe problem was that Adams was the target of a rant rather than a review and suddenly became solely responsible for any crime in his area.”—Jer
Jer, that isn’t at all what Squinters article stated about responsibility. This is what it stated about responsibility:
“First thing to be said is that there are many people and many agencies to blame for the state of the lower Falls, to take that as an example: the Chief Constable, the Housing Executive, the courts, the Prison Service, the Probation Board, Social Services, certain local parents – the list goes on. But while Adams can and does point the finger at some or even all of the above, Squinter has to say that he has never heard Adams accepting any responsibility for the fact that large parts of his constituency are no-go areas, but without the bellbottoms, the parkas and the armalites, of course.
It definitely wasn’t Adlai Stevenson who said: “You don’t drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there.” Whoever said it had a point. Like every one of us, Bap McGreevy fell into the water when Harry Holland was slaughtered. It was hoped back then that the wave of community disgust and horror might be fashioned into a life raft which would carry us all on a tide of community solidarity and determination to a safer shore. Didn’t happen. What happened was that Bap McGreevy was left to drown – in his own blood – while the rest of us continue to flail around hoping that we won’t go under too.
Who’s to blame for the failure to press home the Harry Holland momentum? Gerry Adams is to blame, that’s who. He’s not the only one to blame, of course. Squinter refers you back to the list above, and every one of us who complains and then pulls the curtains and turns up the TV when the sun sets is to blame in our own collective way. But Gerry Adams is the MP, has been for 20 years. He’s supposed to know how to marshal and direct; he’s supposed to give us the ideas and the leadership; he’s supposed to make things better. “It’s perfectly valid for Adams (and any one else) to point out that it was not credible to state or to imply that one politician can make his constituency a safe (or unsafe) place to live and raise a family. Adams had every right to state so, and to provide and publish whatever examples he’s got of using his “clout” and his “contacts” to improve the lives of those who’ve elected him time after time. But for the ATN to erase all record of the debate and the discussion….I think the poster LURIG was the first to make the comparison to Pravda and as things stand it is an apt comparison.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 04:22 PMYeah and anything Gerry might have done would have been thrown back as IRA bully boys taking up arms again or having not gone away or…. ad infinitum.
The police and their inability to do the job for which they are paid for are solely responsible for this.
it was promissed if the PIRA stepped down the PiSNIps would step up
well the PIRA stood down when are the supposed world class police force going to stand up?
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 05:03 PMSurely we can set the bar higher than that?
Well yes. I winced at Gerry Adams’ cackhanded attempt to treat a newspaper column like internal Belfast Brigade dissent (like almost everyone else) and his bewildering naivety that everything would be hunky-dory if he did so. But Mick’s piece was seriously lop-sided, without any reference to the struggles SF has had with the ‘free press’.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 05:19 PMDec
But Mick’s piece was seriously lop-sided, without any reference to the struggles SF has had with the ‘free press’.
We have got very far from mainstream views, haven’t we? This is MOPE territory.
The fact is that if you create a little empire, using all the brutality and violence that every other empire has used, someone will come along sooner or later and bring it down. Squinter put the dagger in the heart of Sinn Fein in west Belfast and Adams’ demise is imminent.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 05:50 PMDec, you are right of course that Mick F.‘s piece makes no reference to SF’s decades long history of protesting broadcasting bans and censorship, but I’m not sure familiarity with that history makes the ATN controversy any easier to fathom?
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 06:17 PMNor did it make any reference to PSF’s decade long habits of repressing dissent in areas they wish to dominate so what’s the point? The point is new situation, so act like it.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 06:51 PMsinn fein has had a long history of exercising censorship and suppressing dissent under the adams’ leadership and the truth of the matter is that their opposition to official censorship, pre-peace process, was always fraudulent - they have no principled opposition to censoring the media and we now know from their behaviour since official censorship was scrapped that when they were campaigning against section 31 or the broadcasting ban it was really only because the targets of those laws were the provos - once they were removed from the target list, sinn fein embraced censorship and employed the same tactics once used against them by the british and irish governments, in their case to silence journalists who asked too many awkward questions about where and why sinn fein & the ira were going - pre-peace process, the governments encouraged self-censorship by accusing journalists of being sympathetic to the ira; post-peace process the provos silenced journalists by accusing them of being against the peace - in short sinn fein’s behaviour towards ‘squinter’is fully consistent with their track record - the only satisfying aspect of this squalid affair is that ‘squinter’ is getting a taste of the same medicine he used to dole out to others.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 07:05 PM‘sinn fein embraced censorship and employed the same tactics once used against them by the british and irish governments, in their case to silence journalists who asked too many awkward questions about where and why sinn fein & the ira were going ‘
jake
any specific examples to cite on which journalists were silenced and how? in the absence of specific examples one can neither dispute nor endorse your assertion, just curious really… and probably ill-informed.
Susan, dead on.
Keep setting the bar high, or at least set it so it is necessary for some to reach beyond their grasp.Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 07:22 PMSinn Fein and the various ‘safety groups’ have a paranoid view of what constitutes crime or at least of which issues need to be publicised and highlighted. A prime example was the arrest of a man in Crossmaglen on Friday. He has been charged with G.B.H. with intent, threatning to kill and arms offences yet we haven’t heard one word from those usually so vocal when, for instance, a window is broken. Would it be because the man in question is a well known shinner? Surely not!! This is another example of S.F. censorship, when the facts hurt say nothing!!
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 07:33 PMbut I’m not sure familiarity with that history makes the ATN controversy any easier to fathom?
Susan
Perhaps so, but I’m baulking at the sepia-tinted line of vigorous scrutiny of a courageous and free press in relation to Republicanism.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 08:15 PMwild turkey: yes, the same journalists who were intimidated by british/irish government accusations of pro-ira symapthies before the peace process, that is virtually all of them - unless you’re going to try to say that the governments didn’t intimidate the media?! one major difference exists between now and then - pre-peace process, the governments used public, up-front censorship laws not just to ban SF from the airwaves but to encourage the more insiduous practice of self-censorship while nowadays the provos move in the dark, whispering behind peoples’ backs, accusing this one or that one of dissident sympathies or anti-peace process sentiments - they acted in deifferent ways but their intent is the same and they are erqually repulsive and repellant. the sooner mugabe-adams goes, the better!
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 08:23 PM‘yes, the same journalists who were intimidated by british/irish government accusations of pro-ira symapthies before the peace process, that is virtually all of them - unless you’re going to try to say that the governments didn’t intimidate the media?!’
jake, i have no doubt that before and during the peace process, journalists were manipulated and fucked around by governments…and all the other key players. However, there were also many journalists, and their editors, who were zipper lickers gleefully queuing up to spout the ‘party’ line. And I think we can agree, there were many parties to the conflict.
Agreed. There was indeed gov’t intimidation of SOME journalists which, by one remove, I have personal experience of. It was not pleasant. Let us leave at that.
However, again back to my question at point 14. Specificity please on journalist, articles, books etc. etc.?
in the meantime, am i correct in summarising your point 17 as
‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss’? now Who said that?
Rumination. OK?
How much of the ‘conflict’, ‘war’, ‘terrorism’, ‘troubles’( however one choses to characterise the tragedy here) was, in essence, a grotesque PR exercise in political handjobbery? I wonder. But then it would be of little surpise if journalists were compelled to keep their gloves on,‘the sooner mugabe-adams goes, the better! ’
well by their own admission, they are both democrats willing to respond to and abide by the will of the people.
Let’s see if in its next edition ATN reports a Mugabe election victory in Zimbawe?
Celah
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 09:39 PMHi, thought I’d share with you most of a letter I wrote and which the Andersonstown News carried prominently in the same issue as the apology to Adams, although no commentators in these forums have chosen to note it.
“...let me take a few of your main assertions, leaving aside the bar-room wisecracks about the republican movement:
“…it’s time for Gerry Adams to shoulder his share of the blame for the mess we’re in”, ie. “the slow, steady decline into chaos…”. Strangely, your paper has only chosen to chart this “slow, steady decline into chaos” in very recent times, having spent most of the last two decades – throughout which you say Gerry Adams’ abject failure took place – eagerly promoting all of the many positive aspects of life in West Belfast, during times that were easily equally as challenging as ours, if not moreso.
Regarding the perennial lack of investment and Adams’ apparent responsibility for this, I refer you again to your own paper’s archive, which has documented well both Gerry’s and other SF representatives’ concerted and ongoing attempts (with a good amount of success) to bring investment in to our community.
To be honest, this one got me angry: “It was hoped [when Harry Holland was slaughtered] that the wave of disgust and horror might be fashioned in to a life raft which would carry us all on a tide of community solidarity and determination to a safer shore. Didn’t happen… Who’s to blame for the failure to press home the Harry Holland momentum? Gerry Adams is to blame, that’s who”. Here, I believe, you are in danger of losing any credibility your paper has enjoyed as ‘the voice of this community’. And again, I don’t think I’ll be the only person in this community to express their disappointment and objection to your assertions.
In fact, ‘Squinter’, how dare you? Were you party to the emergency meetings (Sinn Féin and community meetings that is, not editorial brainstormers) that took place as Harry Holland’s life ebbed away? Did you cancel all your appointments, as we did, to ensure that all available information on the PSNI’s actions at that time would be collated and that local activists could assist the family at the time of the funeral in any way possible? Did you, as the local Sinn Féin cumann and Upper Falls Sinn Féin MLA Paul Maskey did, move decisively at that time to facilitate the setting up of residents’ groups in the lower Glen Road area to build community infrastructure and provide better means of holding the authorities to account? Did you, as Gerry Adams did, call a public meeting in the area soon after the event to seek opinions on community safety from residents and begin to formulate a plan? Did you, ‘Squinter’, apply to become a member of the West Belfast District Policing Partnership, as I and many other republicans did, so that we grassroots activists can get in there and challenge the PSNI on their pitiful response to crime in our community?
No-one is as aware as us at the coalface just how slow and unsatisfactory progress with the PSNI has been, but you know well, ‘Squinter’, that hard, hard work is being done to tackle all of these problems. As one of the many republicans who have given up spending evenings with our families in order to promote community safety since Sinn Féin took the brave decision to try and make policing work – again, something which you, YOU called for us to do – I want to ask you to expand upon and justify your scurrilous remarks.
Pól Deeds,
Chairperson, Andersonstown Sinn Féin.
* The Andersonstown News was embarrassed in to making that apology, not coerced. The community here was rightly disgusted at a ‘rant’ - as it has accurately and widely been described - against the very people who have done so much to bolster societal and economic progress in this city. Write what you want. The people know the truth. They may not all be part of your e-chattering masses, but they use their vote, and THEY will decide our future.Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 10:04 PMwild turkey: “jake, i have no doubt that before and during the peace process, journalists were manipulated and fucked around by governments…and all the other key players. However, there were also many journalists, and their editors, who were zipper lickers gleefully queuing up to spout the ‘party’ line. And I think we can agree, there were many parties to the conflict.”
yes, there were such journalists back then and their equivalents now are playing the same role on behalf of sinn fein as was done for the governments back then;
you ask for names and the fact that you ask that question shows that you don’t really understand how such censorship works nor, i suggest, does it show much awareness on your part of events here in the last decade or so - in the same way that section 31 or the broadcasting ban set a paradigm for the media and worked with astonishing subtlety to encourage self-censorship through fear of being labelled as a pro-ira synpathiser/fellow traveller, so the current sinn fein strategy of proclaiming criticism or questioning of the adams strategy as anti-peace or pro-dissident works to achieve the same result - there are individual examples, such as the smearing of writers like suzanne breen, ed moloney, richard o’rawe and anthony mcintyre, but it is not necessary to dwell on their individual experiences since the real point about how this censorship works is that it doesn’t need to be specific in order to work - all it needs to be successful is to create an atmosphere in which journalists know that to pursue a certain line or investigation carries a risk of being labelled as subversive. most of them wish to avoid such a fate and so we get tame journalism. the irony is that where once sinn fein were the victims now they are the perpetrators. okay now?
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 10:18 PMPól Deeds: Thank you for your post. Sincerely. Presenting your own opinion and sharing your own experiences and asking “Squinter” to
expand upon and justify” is a sane and democratic response.The response from ATN - Deleting all evidence that the column ever existed, as well as the comments from West Belfast residents who agreed with and/or dissented with Squinter’s op-ed was neither sane nor democratic.
If the administration of Slugger O’Toole deleted all record of your post of 11:04 PM sharing your honest opinion and your relevant experiences, would it be censorship? Beyond all doubt. Emotional references to coalfaces and evenings away from the family—good on you, by the way, again sincerely—do not change the fact that the deletion of Squinter’s column and residents’ on-line discussion of it, both pro and con, was blatant censorship. It is a sign of weakness. It is an insult.
Put the article back and let the residents of West Belfast have their say. Quite right their votes are their own; they don’t need protection from dissenting voices for their own good.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 10:43 PMVery well articulated, Pól Deeds, Chairperson, Andersonstown Sinn Féin.
But where does the ongoing community-based Restorative Justice project fit in to the new SF project?
No criticism of that scheme there.
In fact, it’s noticeable by its absence in the current Sinn Féin response, as compared to its previous prominence in the civic policing strategy.
Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 11:00 PMJake
‘the irony is that where once sinn fein were the victims now they are the perpetrators. okay now? ‘A-OK. agreed and that was my allusion to the Who FFS.
‘you ask for names and the fact that you ask that question shows that you don’t really understand how such censorship works nor, i suggest, does it show much awareness on your part of events here in the last decade or so -’
ouch! but thanks you for your insight. although i may not understand the minutae of how such censorship works… i have an idea.
‘but it is not necessary to dwell on their individual experiences since the real point about how this censorship works is that it doesn’t need to be specific in order to work’
fair enough, create the atmospherics and everything else follows. that said i am AWARE of the names you have mentioned, and, in some instances, the impact of censorship, from whatever quarter, on their professional and personal lives.
Where I do differ with you is this. Individuals do matter. In my naivety, I do believe they can make a difference. If you did not share this belief, why do you post here?
Who else can confront and combat the scenario you clearly, and rightly, describe? Movements, political parties ?Posted by on Mar 31, 2008 @ 11:21 PMSusan
You keep talking about journalistic moral absolutes
Why can’t you just understand that part of an editors job is to look at the balance sheet add up the positives, subtract the negatives and end up with more money than you started with. and sometimes that matters more than some imagined journalistic moral purity.
I will allow that as some one here said that Mairtin O is a gazillionaire but if hes like the rest of the gazillionaires I know they got that way by holding on to every thin dime. at the very least this was partially a business decision, profit is a very strong motive among gazillionaires
If Mairtin O was a benevolent publisher more concerned with doing the right thing regardless of cost or consequence he would have funded La Nua out of his own pocket.
He’s a hoorible capatalist who is driven by profit over moral relevance. I can understand that and so can my banker
Posted by on Apr 01, 2008 @ 12:59 AM“I cant recall seeing any rants in southern papers blaming the local TD (and not the minister for justice) for the situation in Limerick.”
Well when Jerome Brennan came up to Belfast from Limerick with his filthy repertoire, it was left to the Unionists to sort it out.
The Reverend Martin Symth MP took responsibility for that ‘Limerick’ influx. He didn’t just say it was an NIO, police, UKIS, or WP-UK problem.
Gerry Adams at Harry Holland’s vigil, stated that West Belfast was not out of control, one can’t complain at these things,
but I thought at the time it is all well and good for those with bodyguards to tell us how not out of control the place we live in had become.
G.
Posted by on Apr 01, 2008 @ 01:53 AM
