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85 pages

English

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On Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, British paratroopers killed thirteen innocent men in Derry. It was one of the most controversial events in the history of the Northern Ireland conflict and also one of the most mediated. The horror was recorded in newspapers and photographs, on TV news and current affairs and in film and TV drama. In a cross media analysis that spans a period of almost forty years up to the publication of the Saville Report in 2010, The British Media and Bloody Sunday identifies two countervailing impulses in media coverage of Bloody Sunday and its legacy: an urge in the press to rescue the image and reputation of the British Army versus a troubled conscience in TV current affairs and drama about what was done in Britain’s name. In so doing, it suggests a much more complex set of representations than a straightforward propaganda analysis might allow for – one that says less about the conflict in Ireland than it does about Britain, with its loss of empire and its crisis of national identity.

Chapter 1: The British Media and Bloody Sunday: An introduction

Chapter 2: The British press, Bloody Sunday and the Widgery Report

Chapter 3: The British press and the Saville Report

Chapter 4: Inside stories and secret histories: British television investigates Bloody Sunday

Chapter 5: Sunday and Bloody Sunday: Very British tragedies?

Chapter 6: The British Media and Bloody Sunday: Lest they forget

Sujets

Technology Policy

Public Policy

Political Science

Cultural studies

Television

Politics

Media studies

Journalism

Science

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Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	01 février 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783202669
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,3800€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The British Media and Bloody Sunday
The British Media and Bloody Sunday
Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker
Foreword by Eamonn McCann

Intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2015 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2015 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2015 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production Manager: Tim Elameer
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-78320-182-2
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-265-2
ePub ISBN 978-1-78320-266-9
Printed and bound by Print on Demand, UK
To the two Maureens
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter 1: The British Media and Bloody Sunday: An introduction
Chapter 2: The British press, Bloody Sunday and the Widgery Report
Chapter 3: The British press and the Saville Report
Chapter 4: Inside stories and secret histories: British television investigates Bloody Sunday
Chapter 5: Sunday and Bloody Sunday: Very British tragedies?
Chapter 6: The British Media and Bloody Sunday: Lest they forget
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to the following good people for their help and support in the writing of this book: Melanie Marshall, Thomas Newman and Tim Elameer at Intellect, for their patience and their faith in the project; Eamonn McCann, for his excellent foreword; John Kelly and Adrian Kerr at the Museum of Free Derry, for their help, advice and support - especially for allowing us access to valuable archive material; Margo Harkin at Besom Productions, for her valuable advice and helpful correspondence; Marie Paton, Director of the Research Office at the University of Ulster (UU), for supporting the project with a generous publishing subvention; the staff at the UU Library Coleraine and the Newspaper Library at Central Library Belfast, for their help with our archive research; Jeremy Shields at BBC NI, for his archive leads; our colleagues in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at UU Coleraine - especially, Martin McLoone, Robert Porter and Anne Crilly - for their intellectual and research support; Mervyn McKay, for his expert technical assistance; and Sally Quinn for her patient and always good-humoured admin support. We also appreciated the support and comradeship of Cahal McLaughlin at Queen s University Belfast and Paddy Hoey at Edge Hill University. Thanks above all to our parents and siblings for not rolling their eyes at the news we were writing another book, at least not to our faces; and, of course, to our nearest and dearest - Sue, Kitty, Nye and Ewie - for their love, faith and forbearance.
Warm thanks to one and all.
Foreword
That will have to be changed! the senior Government official seethed, face thrust forward, 18 inches from mine.
W e were in the corridor of Derry Guildhall at around half past four on the afternoon of 10 June 2010. The Saville Report into Bloody Sunday had been released an hour previously. The families of the victims were making their way out of the building onto a platform to be greeted by expectant thousands of their Derry neighbours. Tony Doherty, whose father, Paddy, had been shot in the back as he crawled for shelter in the lee of the Rossville Flats, was to read a statement agreed by the families.
I had just read out the text to the families to make sure all were content. This was what the Northern Ireland Office chief wanted changed.
The victims of Bloody Sunday have been vindicated, the statement began. The Parachute Regiment has been disgraced. The truth has been brought home at last It can now be proclaimed to the world that the dead and the wounded of Bloody Sunday were innocent one and all, gunned down in their own streets by soldiers who had been given to believe they could kill with perfect impunity.
The statement concluded that, the repression that came upon us was the same as is suffered by ordinary people everywhere who dare stand up against injustice - Sharpville, Grozny, Tiananmen Square, Dafur, Fallujah, Gaza. Let our truth stand as their truth too.
The tone was not to the liking of the official. Everybody agreed that this was to be a day of reconciliation, she expostulated, but too late. The families were already trooping out. Tony declaimed the statement as drafted, to rolling waves of approval.
Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, it was hours before her words sank in and I wondered: Who was the everybody who had agreed in advance that a report on the soldiers shooting of 28 unarmed people in broad daylight would make a suitable case for reconciliation ? And who was it envisaged would be reconciled with whom? In the North, the word refers almost invariably to mending of relations between the two communities - a resolution which every British government since the beginning of the Troubles has pleaded and pledged to work for, all the while lamenting the long history of hatred blighting the incorrigible and largely ungrateful Irish.
But Northern Protestants had played no part in the Derry killings. Bloody Sunday had been a very British atrocity. It thus contradicted the preferred British account of their own role, not just on the day but in relation to Ireland generally. An imperative to promote this depiction of the relationship, more than any other factor, dictated the way the British media had covered Bloody Sunday in 1972 and the context in which the Saville Report was now being presented. Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker in this wide-ranging, meticulous analysis peel away the layers of prejudice and presumption to lay bare the politics at the core of British reportage.
The negative portrayal of the anti-internment marchers on Bloody Sunday and the suggestion of significant IRA activity on the day contrasted with an air-brushed and inaccurate account of the paratroopers actions. It had the effect of confirming for British readers and viewers that the soldiers had entered the Bogside with decent intentions and that the ensuing slaughter had essentially been the fault of irresponsible demonstrators and murderous republican paramilitaries. The British were let off the hook.
A number of honourable journalists did their best to hold the line against the lies, but the general pattern was plainly calculated. By 2010, this version had become unsustainable. The relentless campaigning of the Bloody Sunday families and their supporters and the associated intervention of a number of journalists and writers had gone some way to rescuing the honour of the media - and had left no room for reasonable doubt that the Bloody Sunday deaths had been unjustified and unlawful.
Reflecting this changed perspective, the line of most of the British media now was that the admittedly inexcusable actions of the paratroopers, the death-storm they had inflicted on the Bogside, could and should be put in the past. Saville had exonerated the victims and prime minister Cameron had accepted his verdict. The families had been given almost everything they had asked for. Time to move on. The report should be seen as an occasion for reconciliation, thus to enhance the peace process.
I don t need anybody to reconcile me with the British people, commented Liam Wray, whose brother Jimmy had been gunned down in Glenfada Park. I have never been estranged from them. But reconciliation with the British establishment, after all it had done in the North over the last 40 years - not just on one day in Derry - that s a very different proposition.
The fact that it was the British ruling class, rather than the masses, much less the Northern Protestant community, who were expected now to be hugged in forgiveness, was made explicit in the suggestion of mainstream Westminster opinion in the days following publication of the report, faithfully reflected in the media, that conditions were now propitious for the monarch to visit the Republic and seal the deal. In the days after Saville, there was a remarkable plethora of media proposals - in the Times , the Guardian , the Mirror , the Sun etc. - for a Royal visit to be scheduled without further ado.
Thirteen days after the jubilation of Guildhall Square, on 23 June, it was reported that, The Taoiseach Brian Cowen had his first meeting with the new British PM David Cameron today, and after discussing the Saville Report and the devolution of policing and justice in Northern Ireland, they announced that a State visit by Her Majesty is on the cards for some time next year.
And so it was to come to pass. Queen Elizabeth processed through Dublin and Cork in May the following year, contentedly waving to friendly throngs. It wasn t the man on the Clapham omnibus that we were being urged to make friends with but the Queen in her gilded carriage and the section of the people who acted as her outriders.
At every stage across almost 40 years, the British media s handling of the issues arising from the Derry massacre had been in a constant state of adaption to the changing needs of the class it serves. It had now fulfilled its basic function.
Any notion that the last word on Bloody Sunday has already been spoken will not survive a reading of Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker s book. This is the first major work to focus on the media s role in shaping perceptions of the Paras killing spree. The authors speak necessary truths not just about Bloody Sunday but about the political role of the supposedly objective media.
Many journalists might find reading the book painful. Others will gain a deeper and more detailed understanding of what happened in Derry and why it took so long