Journalists probing British army shooting incidents after Bloody Sunday were nearly always told that gunmen had targeted soldiers first, it was claimed today.
Mr Simon Hoggart, a reporter with the Guardiannewspaper based in Northern Ireland at the time of the atrocity, told the Saville Inquiry military bosses weren't prepared to have their version challenged.
He said: "After Bloody Sunday, the press office would almost always give the same explanation after every shooting incident, i.e. that the soldiers involved had been shot at or had seen a gunman.
"When this explanation was questioned by journalists and not always published as accepted truth, they frequently objected."
Mr Hoggart told the tribunal he had not been in Derry on the day soldiers shot dead 13 unarmed civilians in January 1972.
But in the wake of a civil rights demonstration at Magilligan internment camp the weekend before Bloody Sunday where marchers were batoned by Paratroopers, an article written by him and containing scathing criticisms of the unit was printed.
Headlined ‘The Brutal Soldiery', Mr Hoggart's piece claimed other soldiers had urged brigade headquarters to keep the Parachute Regiment out of their areas.
He quoted one captain saying: "They are frankly disliked by many officers here who regard some of their men as little better than thugs in uniform."
Mr Hoggart, now a top columnist with the Guardian, claimed his story had been dismissed by colleagues at the time.
"Before Bloody Sunday, fellow journalists had been sceptical of the views expressed in my `Brutal Soldiery' article," he said. "Bloody Sunday removed that scepticism."
Mr Hoggart also hit out at an internal Army memo which accused him of "fishing for" information from the press office for his article on the Paratroopers.
"Fished for makes it imply I was in some way deviously trying to get information behind that press officer's back, which is absurd," he said.
Military chiefs were deeply suspicious of some reporters' motives, he added. "My understanding at that time was that the Army believed that British journalists were in some way against them."
PA