The journalist who made the first news broadcast on BBC national television about the Bloody Sunday shootings conceded yesterday that his report was inaccurate and had been based on emotion rather than fact.
Mr Peter Stewart, who was with one of two BBC TV crews in Derry on the day, said his report on the 6.05 p.m. news that the paratroopers were met "with a fusillade of terrorist fire" described what he had believed at the time, but was wrong.
Mr Stewart told the inquiry in a statement that Gen Robert Ford, the most senior army officer in Derry on the day, had been the main source of his information. However, when Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, asked him: "Had you even been told by the army by the time you filed this report that they had been met by a fusillade of terrorist fire?", the witness replied: "I don't remember".
Mr Stewart said in his statement that he was a "very experienced war correspondent" and had covered 11 wars during his career as a BBC foreign correspondent and reporter.
He said he wished to make it clear that he never had any kind of brief for the army, "and although I had contacts within the army, I always attempted to report events from Northern Ireland and elsewhere in an entirely impartial manner."
Concerning the broadcast on the BBC's early evening news on Bloody Sunday, he said: "During that broadcast I referred to the paratroopers being met with a `fusillade of terrorist fire'.
"This was my own view at the time and was perhaps influenced by the fact that I had just come from a very tumultuous and possibly murderous situation.
"I used the word `terrorists' because in my view people who try to overthrow the civil power by violence are terrorists in a democracy. In retrospect, I believe it would be fair to say that the term `fusillade' was an emotive rather than a factual one.
"I still believe, however, that the tragic events that occurred on Bloody Sunday were the result of a response by the army to a deliberate attempt to overthrow the authority of the civil power."
Elsewhere in his statement, Mr Stewart said he had never been to Derry before Bloody Sunday.
He had been sent by the BBC to cover "a civil rights march which I understood had been authorised by the civil power after negotiations with representatives of the demonstrators".
He did not have a political view himself and was "simply there to cover events dispassionately and do my job to report the facts."
He continued: "I was told there was to be an attempt to challenge or overturn the civil power. This is what I understood from my fact-gathering as a reporter, part of my `antennae'. There was clearly an intention to overturn the civil power because the marchers breached the barricade put there by the police."
He also said that during the rioting, as he understood it, the aim of the protesters "was to break through the barricade and burn the centre of Londonderry . . . This perception came from my routine inquiries as a reporter and was my own deduction from what I was told and from the circumstances . . . though no particular individual told me so."
Mr Stewart was questioned by several counsel about a draft statement he prepared for the Widgery inquiry in 1972, but which was designated only as the statement of "Observer A" (He did not testify at the Widgery inquiry).
In that statement he described being near Gen Ford and his aide on the army side of the barrier in William Street. They were chatting and warned him of a sniper "who they said had been in a dormer window overlooking the barricade."
He continued: "Ford said `Watch out when the stoning stops. That's when the snipers will open up' . . . I saw no sniper."
During the rioting at the barrier he was again near Gen Ford, who said: "You know, at this stage I'd be quite within my rights to open fire".
The witness said in his 1972 statement: "I said: `Have you read the Riot Act?' He said that a warning had been given.
"About 4.15 (though I had no clear idea of the exact time) Ford said to me words to the effect `Now you're going to see something'. I said `What do you mean?' He said words to the effect that they were going to `put the Paras in'. I asked what he was going to do with them. He said jokingly `Don't ask me, I'm only an onlooker here, but the local commander has a plan'."
After the Paras had moved in towards the Bogside, he said, Col Derek Wilford, whom he recognised as CO of the Para battalion, "came running up to give his situation report".
"He said to Gen Ford something like `We have found two bodies, sir, and neither of them had a weapon. I'm sorry'. Gen Ford said something like `Well done, Derek' and patted him on the shoulder".
This statement also comments: "At no time did I hear anything like the volley of 200 shots alleged by the army to have been fired by machine gun at them".
Replying to Mr John Coyle, for the family of one of the deceased, he said he heard no machinegun fire on the day and did not see any civilian snipers.