Journalists in Northern Ireland are facing a sustained campaign of violent threats from paramilitaries, making it the most dangerous place in the UK to be a reporter, according to Amnesty International.
Death threats – including under-car booby trap bombs – issued to crime journalists have increased in recent years, with repeated home visits by police warning they are at risk.
Others have been told they will be shot or stabbed and given 48-hour ultimatums to leave the country.
Interviews carried out by Amnesty with 22 journalists uncovered more than 70 incidents of intimidation or attacks in the North since the start of 2019.
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Loyalist and dissident republican paramilitaries as well as organised crime groups are behind most of the incidents.
Journalists most at risk have their homes protected by bulletproof windows and doors with alarms linked to police stations.
One reporter was visited by police nine times in just under a year to inform her that her life was at risk. A pipe bomb was placed close to her home after a threat.
“Several journalists report that they are receiving more threats in recent years than ever before. It goes beyond threats: they are physically attacked,” according to the Amnesty report entitled Occupational Hazard? Threats and Violence against Journalists in Northern Ireland.
The report, published on Tuesday, says frustration with the police response means some journalists have stopped reporting the crimes to the authorities, citing “time-consuming processes and lack of action or positive outcome”.
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To date, two journalists have been murdered in Northern Ireland. Investigative reporter Martin O’Hagan of the Sunday World was killed close to his Lurgan home by loyalist paramilitaries in 2001 and Lyra McKee died after being struck by a bullet fired at police during rioting in Derry in 2019. Dissident republican group, the New IRA, admitted responsibility.
A photographer was shot in the thigh covering a riot in Belfast in 2011.
Concerns are raised in the report about a lack of prosecutions. Amnesty is calling on the State to create a “safe environment where journalists can work freely and report without fear of reprisals”.
“It is currently failing to do so,” said Amnesty International UK’s Northern Ireland director, Patrick Corrigan.
“Journalists are being threatened, attacked and even killed for shining a light on paramilitary groups and others who seek to exert control through violence. This creates a climate of fear that many assumed was consigned to history when the Good Friday Agreement was signed,” he said.
Yet, he said, there has not been a single prosecution for threats against journalists from paramilitary groups.
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“This sense of impunity only emboldens those behind the threats. When journalists are under attack, press freedom is under attack.”
Among the report’s recommendations is the establishment of a new media safety group, with representatives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Public Prosecution Service, media organisations and the National Union of Journalists to deliver a new journalist safety strategy.
The PSNI should also review its procedural response to threats and attacks against journalists and “conduct investigations capable of leading to successful prosecutions”, the report advises.
A Police Ombudsman’s report examining the original police investigation into O’Hagan’s murder is expected to be published this year. Amnesty recommends the UK government should order a public inquiry into the killing if “serious failings or wrongdoing by the police” is found by the watchdog.
