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Journalists and Their Sources
Brian Rowan is the nom de guerre of Barney Rowan (the BBC insists on proper first names – it adds gravitas to the reporting!) and is familiar as BBC Northern Ireland’s security correspondent. He started out in journalism as a sports writer with the ‘Sunday News’ but in the late 1980s had moved on and established a reputation for breaking news stories, particularly for exclusives on IRA GHQ claims of responsibility for major operations and, later, during the peace process, IRA leadership policy statements.
Over the years he established good inside contacts with all the major protagonists who undoubtedly sought in return a certain spin or favour. When he followed the weight of facts or his instincts he often fell out with these representatives. But such is the symbiotic nature between journalists and their sources – both needing each other – that if the journalist was half honest (which is asking a lot) they would often kiss and make up and relations would more than likely be restored.
For a spectrum of reporting, journalists in the North depend on their contacts (and compete for favouritism) with British ministers, in the NIO, in the security establishment, the unionist parties and the unionist paramilitaries - and not just on IRA, Sinn Fein or SDLP spokespersons.
Given this dependency on ‘the majority’, given the conservative policies of most newspapers and broadcasters, and the personal prejudices of many journalists, the overwhelming tendency in reporting is to reflect the status quo, which is anti-republican. That is the default position. All journalists, despite assertions of independence and personal integrity, are subject to that particular pull and it takes a certain type to rise above the orthodoxy.
On the other hand, such a powerful story is the IRA, such a unique, unconventional political party is Sinn Fein that the cost to journalists of regular access and insight - the requisites for professional reporting - is that within their limitations they report with some balance and fairness. Despite regular outbursts from unionists about anti-unionist, pro-republican bias in the media, there is no IRA apologists or propagandists within mainstream journalism. They would be cold-shouldered and simply not survive.
Thus, journalists can be broken down into several categories. Some include: those representing the tabloids and Tory broadsheets that have heard of the Falls Road and some may have even been there once or twice; those who visit merely to snipe, through hypocrisy, moral cowardice or simply to please bosses, or because they are little sectarians or racists; and those with an open intelligent mind who approach politics informed by history, realpolitik and human nature.
The one person from the BBC whom I thought reported and analysed in a fair, non-prejudicial way the electoral rise of Sinn Fein was the late Billy Flackes (and although sometimes referred to as W. D., never went on the air as William!). Often, however, I have screamed at Barney Rowan. He was in the studio; I was on the sofa at home in my slippers. I think I might have mistaken his lines as being written by Austin Hunter, the former BBC journalist who is now the PSNI’s director of media and public relations. Or mistaken him for Ronnie Flanagan (good move, dropping Ronald) or Sir Hughie Orde. I hadn’t liked what he said, or the assertions that he made about, or the construction that he had put on, a particular incident or event.
Having said that, Barney Rowan in the general picture, though like the rest subject to the tail wind of the establishment and status quo, has been required viewing, sometimes made compelling viewing, throughout the Byzantine twists and turns of the peace process. His craft has been one of chemistry: measuring, deducing, and discovering the effects or residual traces of armed conflict on politics in the crucible of the six counties and the various catalysts for change and progress.
At the launch of his book, ‘The Armed Peace’, in Broadcasting House last Wednesday was a wide range of opinion including representatives of Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the DUP, PUP and UUP, ex-prisoners, BBC heads, Archbishop Robin Eames, the Very Reverend Dr John Dunlop, John Steele (former director of security policy at the NIO and currently preparing a report – let’s hope a solution - on the situation in Maghaberry Prison), Ronnie Flanagan and scores of journalists from all fields. “Provos, Prods and Peelers,” was how Mervyn Jess of the BBC described the gathering.
Michael McGimpsey formally, and humorously, launched the book. He was excellent. That choice, however, is to me symbolic – though to others it might appear as a mere quibble. I asked Barney why Ulster Unionist Michael McGimpsey. He said he was the former minister of culture, arts and leisure. Barney’s book is not about literature, painting or five-aside football. Nor is it about health and social services - which should equally have qualified the former minister Bairbre de Brun for the launch. Veteran journalists such as David McKittrick or Peter Taylor would have been a more appropriate choice, but there you go.
I began the book expecting it to be another scissors-and-paste job but read it in three gulps and pleasantly discovered that it was focussed, insightful and pacy, and a successor and companion to McKittrick and Mallie’s 1996 book, ‘The Fight For Peace’. So, having said that, watch out for Thursday’s edition when I will give it a considered review.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison