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Berry is Sandbagged by Sunday World
When I was a kid no one in our street bought the ‘News of the World’. No Catholic household would allow that paper – which published mainly scandal – over its door. Our paper was firstly, the Scottish ‘Sunday Post’, which had bland family stories and a good cartoon section, and latterly, the ‘Sunday Press’, published in Dublin and which had a pro-nationalist line.
In the mid-Sixties the ‘Sunday News’ was launched and effectively challenged the ‘Sunday Press’. Around 1973 the ‘Sunday World’ came out. It was brash, sensationalist and populist and has probably been involved in more libel cases than any other Irish paper I can think of.
A few years ago I took part in a television programme on BBC Choice with Fr Brian Darcy. Afterwards, I had a drink with one of the panellists. He told me a story about a friend of his who was gay and had been involved in an indiscretion in a public toilet. He told me that the incident had gone unreported until the ‘Sunday World’ heard about the story and published the details, including the name of the gay man.
Then he told me that his friend committed suicide.
A few years ago the ‘Sunday World’ published not just one photograph, which would have sufficed to illustrate its story, but several photographs of Sammy Wilson nude in a forest in France. While we all laughed at it, the coverage was egregious and was aimed at embarrassing Wilson who had done nothing wrong. Worse, it published at least one photograph of his female companion, a school teacher, also naked. It was a clear invasion of privacy. The paper claimed that the pictures were delivered anonymously to one of its journalists through a letterbox, though another version suggests that the paper paid £5,300 for the photographs. Later, the paper was forced to pay the couple substantial damages for breach of copyright over the ownership of the photographs.
Last weekend, the ‘Sunday World’ published a story about DUP Westminster candidate in Newry and Armagh, Paul Berry, and a self-confessed gay who has made serious allegations about Berry. Again, it was a clear invasion of privacy but on this occasion differs from the Wilson story in several respects.
Berry, as well as belonging to a homophobic party which has demonised gays, is, unlike Wilson, a member of the Free Presbyterian Church which some years ago organised a high profile campaign to ‘Save Ulster From Sodomy’. During the current election campaign the DUP are the chief suspects behind leaking stories to the media in relation to at least one gay Ulster Unionist and of attacking UUP leader David Trimble because his advisor, Steven King, proudly - indeed, courageously - married his gay partner while in Canada.
The real story, therefore, is the hypocrisy of the DUP.
Twenty-eight-year-old Berry was elected to Newry and Armagh in 1998 as the youngest candidate across the North. A close confidante of Ian Paisley, he is a gospel singer with two CDs to his name, an Orangeman and a staunch supporter of the Drumcree protest over which he once threatened to “take the law” into his own hands.
He was married a year ago and it is perhaps his wife whom we should feel sorry for most.
Yesterday on BBC’s Talkback the editor of the ‘Sunday World’, Jim McDowell, repeated and stoutly defended his paper’s account of the story and said that for all the talk of libel writs none had been issued against the paper and that they had copies of over one hundred text messages exchanged between Berry and a gay man in a gay chatroom and a tape recording of Mr Berry (believed to be receiving more than a massage from the gay man) in the Ramada Hotel.
Next Sunday the paper intends publishing some, if not all, of these messages, which allegedly will leave the DUP candidate with little defence.
Berry made contact with the man through the chatroom and sent the man a photograph of himself. The man then recognised Berry and contacted the ‘Sunday World’ because of his anger and disgust at the DUP’s stance on homosexuality. The paper claims that the gay man pretended to be a masseur and invited Berry to meet in a private room of the Ramada Hotel in south Belfast last Thursday afternoon, to which Berry drove from Tandragee when he should have been on the election campaign trail. Berry does not dispute that he went to the hotel to meet a complete stranger for a massage for an old leg injury but contests that any sex act was involved.
Could you imagine how the media would treat this story if it involved a Sinn Fein Westminster candidate? We have already seen how relentless the media has been in challenging Sinn Fein day and daily with every criticism around the issue of ‘criminality’, however minor, its opponents have made.
Vans with satellite dishes would be parked outside the candidate’s door, his or her party leader would be door-stepped and challenged, and it would be the Number One item on all local news programmes.
So this sad story is also one about how partisan the media is, how easily it can be bullied by the DUP which has given the impression that to repeat the allegations will result in legal action.
Basically, the DUP, which until now has had a rollercoaster of an election campaign, is trying to buy time until the close of polls on Thursday, and it has been aided in that strategy by most, if not all, of the media in Ireland. There is no doubt that had the issue been more openly pursued in the final days of this election it would have directly impacted on the electoral prospects of the DUP and forced that party to come down a peg or two from its holier-than-thou position.
It would have been a chastening for the better.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison