The Robinson and Adams revelations were rarities in an era when most journalists think their duty is to promote peace
CONGRATULATIONS TO Chris Moore and Darragh MacIntyre for their investigative television programmes on, respectively, allegations of sexual abuse against a brother of Gerry Adams, and the financial and extra-marital affairs of Iris Robinson. Hopefully, the programmes will have reminded the bulk of their colleagues in the North of the role a journalist is meant to play.
For a long time now the mainstream media in Northern Ireland has been acting as though its primary responsibility is to the survival of the peace process – and by extension the professional lives of its major players – rather than to reporting without fear or favour. At first glance, this may seem like a laudable position to adopt. However, in practice it has meant that large sections of journalism have all but abdicated their responsibilities to the public they are meant to be serving.
That nowadays it is often well nigh impossible to tell the difference between supposed news reporting and opinion or commentary is an indication of how bad things have become. Progressively, the latter has come to represent the former.
Frankly, when decisions on what should or should not be reported upon are driven mainly by concerns about possible political or social implications and not by an objective assessment of newsworthiness, then the media simply cannot be trusted. It has become an actor, rather than an observer and reporter of facts. It begins, unconsciously for the most part, to see the world around it in terms of friends and enemies – in this case, those supportive of the peace process and those who would question elements of it – and treats each accordingly. Objective journalism, or even any attempt at it, goes by the wayside. This, for the most part, is how it has been in Northern Ireland.
Nor have the real actors been slow to catch on to the situation and take full advantage. It has long been understood by politicians and paramilitary leaders in the North that you need only make the right pro-peace process noises, and act occasionally as if you mean it, and a media fearful of disrupting “progress” will ignore rumours of dodgy dealings, dark secrets or, in the case of the latter category, the subjugation of entire communities. A powerful player need only utter a few Ghandi-like banalities and they become a protected species.
Doubtless some journalists would argue that by behaving in this way – supporting the peace process, as they would have it – they are in fact acting in the public interest. Again, this has a certain superficial appeal. Except it is not for journalists to presume what is in the best political interests of a society, and then start filtering or spinning news to that end. Where would that eventually lead us?
The media’s duty starts and finishes with the objective reporting of facts, as it understands them, and the raising of legitimate issues of public concern. It is for the public to decide whether it should react.
No one expects journalists not to hold their own political views, but we have a right to demand that they do not allow personal prejudices to interfere with their job.
I am sure Chris Moore and Darragh MacIntyre want the peace process to succeed, and are well aware that, as a result of their investigations and the issues they raised, ultimately Gerry Adams and/or Peter Robinson may fall, with profound implications for politics in Northern Ireland. Yet as professional journalists they did not allow any of that to interfere with their work. Just as, in the making of their programmes, they could not allow natural sympathy for the wider Adams and Robinson families to interfere either. Once journalists start tweaking and tailoring because of concerns for the possible ramifications of what they are reporting upon, they are on a slippery slope.
For me, the biggest surprise of all lay not in what the programmes exposed, but that BBC Northern Ireland and – less so – Ulster Television agreed to broadcast them.
So maybe I am being a bit too hard on individual journalists, most of whom are probably only playing by the unspoken rules of the organisations that employ them. After all, what hope of promotion, or even of keeping your job, if you refuse to conform? Still, how long do you dutifully play by unspoken rules before they unconsciously become your own professional standards?
I know some senior reporters who take great personal pride in the part they have played in moving Northern Ireland from conflict to peace. They are in the wrong job.
If within a liberal democracy a journalist imagines his primary duty is to bolstering political institutions and/or social change of whatever nature then he is sailing close to the polar opposite of what his profession is meant to be about.
If someone wants to be a player in the peace process then they should become a politician, or maybe even a media adviser to one of the political parties, but certainly not a journalist.