Ex-Irish Times ed replies to FitzGerald's comments on paramilitary coverage

Former Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, as part of one of his weekly Irish Times columns ('Interaction between print and electronic media seems limited') wrote about the courage of journalists covering paramilitary activities in Ireland not being backed at editorial level:

OVER THE past three decades I was constantly struck by the extraordinary courage that so many journalists, Irish, British and foreign, showed in covering paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland. Yet this courage does not seem to me to have been always matched at editorial level.

A response from former Irish Times editor Conor Brady was published in the letters section today (orange colour added to text by Blurred Keys):

Madam, - Garret FitzGerald (Opinion & Analysis, April 12th) writes of the courage of the many journalists who covered paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland over the past three decades. Yet this courage, he adds, did not always seem to him to have been matched at editorial level.

He cites Gerry Adams's denial (in an RTÉ interview with Brian Farrell) that he was a member of the IRA. "Thereafter, all the rest of the media seemed to feel it necessary to accept Adams's denial". Did editors really need to worry "quite so much about being sued for libel by paramilitaries"?, he asks.

Garret was a weekly columnist at The Irish Timesfor 16 years under my editorship. I cannot remember the newspaper's failure to pin down Gerry Adams's alleged membership of the IRA as a recurring theme in our conversations or, indeed, in his own copy.

What I do remember over my years as editor (and while working under my predecessor editors, Douglas Gageby and Fergus Pyle) are innumerable editorials in which The Irish Timesmade it clear that it recognised no distinction between Sinn Féin and the IRA, that it understood Sinn Féin to be subservient to the IRA's "Army Council" and that it believed the leadership of both organisations to be interchangeable.

Newspaper editors can have an irritating habit of asking for some corroborative evidence before allowing serious claims to be published in their news columns, as distinct from opinion sections.

I worked with a succession of excellent (and, as Garret says, courageous) Northern editors and reporters on the ground in Belfast. Had any of them been able to furnish such evidence to me they would have, rightly, expected the newspaper to publish it and it would have done so.

But perhaps more tellingly than any of the foregoing, I cannot remember any charges of membership of the IRA being laid against Mr Adams - much less his conviction - during the years when Garret was in government as Taoiseach, with the full resources of the State's security and intelligence services at his hand.

It is extraordinary that he would expect the newspapers to have asserted (without evidence) what the State, of which he was Taoiseach, would not. - Yours, etc,

CONOR BRADY, (Editor, The Irish Times, 1986-2002), Monkstown, Co Dublin.

FitzGerald also wrote:

A quite separate, but also relevant, issue is what seems to me to be a curious lack of interaction between the print and electronic media when investigative stories break in one or other of these two types of media outlet.

As someone who from an early age has followed news stories closely, I have frequently been struck by the way in which the electronic media often seem reluctant to publicise stories that break in the print media - and equally by what seems in many cases to be a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the print media to follow up major stories that break on radio or, more commonly, on TV.

I don't think I am imagining that this kind of stand-off sometimes arises between the two arms of our media, and an example of this seems to me to have arisen a week ago.

Two weeks ago TV3 concluded its excellent series of programmes on the work of the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) with a powerful documentary on the hundreds of millions of pounds or euro raised by three decades of IRA criminal activities.

Much of that huge amount of illegal money was used to finance the IRA's extensive murder campaign of violence, but Cab clearly believes that a significant proportion, skilfully laundered, was held back to be invested in property and other business activities to the benefit of Sinn Féin.

As a result, that party now seems to have a major financial advantage vis-a-vis the constitutional parties in both parts of the island - although it is only in Northern Ireland that it has been able to translate this advantage into a significant share of the popular vote.

This TV series had the kind of assistance from Cab and from former police leaders both here and in the North that enabled its authors to produce an authoritative account of what has been a huge criminal conspiracy.

I was glad to note that there were clear indications in this programme that Cab is confident that years of painstaking investigations on its part are likely to enable it to mount a successful prosecution against those who currently control the assets into which the profits of decades of IRA criminal activity have been converted.

Some observers had come to believe that, either because of inadequate evidence or because of political pressure not to rock the boat of the Northern Ireland settlement, this IRA funds scandal had been or was being allowed to become a dead issue - a belief that I had not shared.

I was particularly struck by several features of this particular programme.

One was the extent of the interaction between the IRA and non-political criminal gangs in our State.

It is clear that many proceeds of non-political crime were laundered at a foreign exchange bureau that was operated at the Border on behalf of the IRA. These gangs and non-political Border smugglers had been required to pay a share of their loot to the IRA.

Although word of a police raid on that bureau seems to have leaked, enabling its organisers to remove relevant documentation, these records were happily found in a nearby car, and have since revealed that this tiny office had been handling something like £100 million a year.

However, because Cab feared that the manager of this bureau would be murdered by the IRA if he disclosed information on those who had used him to launder money, they did not press him on this issue - and he settled for a four-year sentence for his financial activities.

What I find surprising, then, is that the issues raised by this remarkable programme do not seem to have evoked reactions from our print media.

Is this perhaps a reflection of some kind of jealousy between the two arms of the media?

Whether or not that is the explanation, such a stand-off does not serve the public interest.

The answer simply is that the TV3 programme, Paul Williams' Dirty Money: The Story of the Criminal Assets Bureau, was a largely a rehash of old stories or unused content from William's work in the Sunday World.

Strangely - or maybe not - FitzGerald fails to mention Williams or his newspaper. Is he a closet fan of the Sunday World?

Comments

[Cian]

Mick Fealty expands on this over at Slugger O'Toole...

http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/journalism-and-the-peace-process/