A View North Censorship a bigger threat than violence to North reporters

By Jack Holland

One of the remarkable features of the Irish conflict is how relatively free it has been from attacks on journalists by those on whom they were reporting, including the various paramilitary organizations. As a result, most of the attention has been focused on how the state authorities — north and south of the border — have attempted to impose reporting restrictions on the media covering the conflict.

The contrast with other such civil conflicts is apparent if one reads the Committee to Protect Journalists Report for 1999, which was launched last week in Washington, D.C. Last year, the report claims, there were over 500 cases of journalists assaulted, imprisoned and killed because of their work. Thirty-four were killed in 1999, 10 more than the previous year. Some of these were caught in the crossfire, but most, the report says, were deliberately targeted for assassination. Sierra Leone, in West Africa, was the most dangerous place for a journalist to be in 1999 — 10 died there at the hands of rebels trying to stop the reporting of atrocities against civilians.

In the 30-year history of the Northern conflict, there was only one deliberate assassination attempt made on a journalist. On May 17 1984, Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen shot Jim Campbell, then the Northern editor of the Sunday World newspaper, because of a series of articles that he had written accusing the UVF of gangsterism, among other things. Fortunately, Campbell survived, and a UVF member was later sentenced to 17 years in prison for the crime.

Two other journalists have lost their lives in the North — both freelance photographers. Zbigniew Uglik was killed on the night of the so-called "Falls Curfew," imposed by the British army on July 3, 1970. A soldier shot him as he climbed over a backyard wall. On Oct. 3, 1972 Provisional IRA gunmen abducted Geoffrey Hamilton, described as a keen amateur photographer, who had been acting as a guide to the Falls Road area for three American photographers. The Provisionals questioned him, then shot him dead, believing he was a spy. Two brothers were convicted in connection with this murder. (One of them was later murdered by the UDA in January 1993 in South Belfast.)

Official censorship of one sort or another has varied in intensity over the years. Journalist Liz Curtis compiled a 35-page list of British television programs on the Northern Troubles that were dropped, banned, postponed or interfered with in some way between 1959 and 1993. But in general, state censorship has been low key — only one reporter, working for RTE, has ever been imprisoned, and that for a very brief period, because of his or her work. Restrictions tended to be aimed more at broadcast journalists, and especially in the Irish Republic were meant to muffle expression of support for the Provisional IRA.

When I began working as a journalist for Hibernia magazine, I quickly came to realize that there were sanctions other than those imposed by the state which could be brought to bear on a reporter. In March 1975, in one of the first stories I ever wrote, I reported on the feud between the Official IRA and the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which had split from the Officials the previous December. The story revealed how the Official IRA had launched a campaign against IRSP members in Belfast, and had murdered one.

The day it appeared I received a telephone call from a prominent spokesperson for the Officials who told me that my "career as a journalist in Dublin would be quickly brought to an end" if I "continued to criticize the Officials." The person later went on to become a leading pacifist.

I took the threat seriously enough, given the mood of the times, and when in Belfast stayed away from the well known haunts of the Official IRA.

Two years later, when working for the BBC Northern Ireland’s "Spotlight" program, a weekly television investigative report, a leading member of the Provisionals who is now one of Sinn Fein’s most prominent spokespersons, came to my house with another Provisional to "pass on" a message from the IRA’s Belfast brigade that some members of the brigade wanted to have me shot. Apparently, they were upset because work that I had done was creating "divisions" — for "creating" read "reporting" — within the movement, according to the Provisional leader, who added that he did not agree with the Belfast brigade but thought I should be warned.

I was a bit surprised, since we had arranged to meet so that he could present me with evidence which he claimed to have of collusion between loyalist death squads and the British army. (The "evidence" turned out to be a "confession" extracted from a man who the IRA had accused of being an informer and "executed" a short time earlier. Meanwhile, a local priest had accused the Provisionals of torturing him before shooting him.)

Two years after that, I wrote an article for The New York Times magazine in which I mentioned, in passing, that a leading UDA member had a drag queen act which he performed in a hotel in Larne. A year later, I received a letter from the UDA’s "PRO" which declared: "Whichever way it goes, you have just . . . in your own nest. Your career (?) has been watched with some interest. We are not as daft as you would assume. You have shown remarkable pro-IRA tendencies, and have never given us any decent coverage. Your green-tinted ambitions far outweigh any literary talent which you may claim to have, and that’s it!"

He ended the letter by saying he was coming to the U.S.

"I will look you up, for old times sake," he wrote.

The PRO was actually a known member of a UDA assassination squad. The letter was dated June 23, 1980. Three days later, the UDA murdered Miriam Daly, a Queen’s University lecturer and prominent member of the H-Block committee, who happened to be a close friend of mine.

The last serious threat came from the Irish National Liberation Army, who tried to stop the writing of a history of the organization that I was working on with Belfast journalist Henry McDonald. The book appeared in 1994 and became a best-seller.

The three who issued the threat, Hugh "Cueball" Torney, Gino Gallagher and John Fennell, all died at each other’s hands or those of their supporters in an INLA feud in 1996. Clearly, they had more pressing things to do than intimidate journalists.