After a week of very good news from Northern Ireland, Conor Bradyreflects on bleaker times and the role the media played
On October 5th, 1968, a march by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was confronted on Craigavon Bridge in Derry by a cordon of Royal Ulster Constabulary officers with drawn batons.
The march had been declared illegal by the Stormont government. The RUC set about enforcing the law in the manner that was then customary. As the marchers approached the police line, a county inspector felled Nationalist MP Gerry Fitt with a blow of his blackthorn stick. As Fitt fell back, bleeding from the head, his arms outstretched in a vain plea for restraint, the police launched a baton charge, flailing and beating marchers mercilessly wherever they fell.
In the political tradition of Northern Ireland there was nothing particularly unusual about this. But what made October 5th, 1968 in Derry different was the presence of an RTÉ news camera team that recorded the thuggery in bloody detail. Within hours, cameraman Gay O'Brien's and soundman Eamon Hayes's dramatic footage was running on every TV news programme in these islands and was being picked up across Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
The public and political reaction was dramatic. The reputation of the RUC and the Stormont government was seriously undermined. Insofar as the news media - and the wider public - were concerned, the events on Craigavon Bridge marked the true beginning of the Troubles.
It was also one of the first instances in public life on this island in which the news media played the role of catalytic influence - as distinct from being passive recorders. It was a phenomenon that was to be repeated many times as the tragedy of the Troubles unfolded.
As Northern Ireland society began to destabilise, the Irish news media found themselves confronted with a challenge well beyond their professional experience hitherto. This was a world-scale story. Foreign media filled the Belfast hotels - and many of the Dublin hotels too. For the first time since the Civil War, Irish journalists and media personnel found themselves working alongside colleagues from the great international newspapers and broadcast news organisations. It was a steep learning curve.
The outsiders used our local knowledge. We learned from their greater experience of reporting conflict situations. We learned how better to challenge official versions of events; how to handle potentially violent people who might be primary news sources; how to stay safe in difficult situations.
Slowly, Irish journalists and news organisations raised their game. The newspapers and RTÉ went on a big recruitment drive, bringing in platoons of young men and women to cope with new challenges. New ethical issues had to be addressed. For example, how were false bomb threats to be reported? How far could journalists go in publicising those involved in acts of violence? How do journalists report violence and terror while respecting the sensitivities of victims and next-of-kin?
Irish news media practitioners at all levels came to a realisation that their craft was causing them sometimes to become players in events. The contending parties to the strife, from the two governments to the paramilitaries, from the British army to the street-rioters, quickly appreciated that their aims could be advanced or thwarted by skilful use of the news media. The story was probably not apocryphal of the kid on the Falls Road, screaming curses and throwing bricks at the troops, who realises that a TV crew has arrived on site. Still hurling chunks of masonry, he turns to the cameraman and calls, "Do ye want a voice-level, Misther?"
A painful regime of self-examination was visited upon broadcast journalists in particular. They had to balance their obligation to report events against the restrictions imposed upon them under the Broadcasting Act, prohibiting interviews with paramilitaries and their political associates.
The peace process was pushed onward by Gordon Wilson's extraordinary radio interview in which he described the dying moments of his daughter, Marie, in the rubble at the Enniskillen Cenotaph. The process also took impetus from the TV footage of Michael Stone attacking republican mourners at Andersonstown and with the publication of the stark photographs of the two corporals, subsequently murdered by the IRA.
There were times when some sections of the news media called the peace process into question and challenged the bona fides of those involved. It could, perhaps, be argued that some of those stances may actually have helped the champions of the process.
Conor Brady was editor of The Irish Times from 1986 to 2002