Facing the truth, pain and reconciliation

Abstract

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the normalization of broadcasting practices in the UK has all but consigned to history the governmental policing of airwaves formerly in operation there. By contrast, during the protracted period of political conflict known as ‘the troubles’, programme-makers’ freedom of expression was enormously limited. In a great many respects, a broadcaster-government consensus which existed in the Republic of Ireland during this same time mirrored the situation in the UK: here, too, factual and even entertainment programming that deviated from an establishment consensus on the North invariably generated political controversy and/or attracted state interference.1 For many journalists, the likelihood of their investigative endeavours being misconstrued as support for paramilitary campaigns of violence made them reluctant to contextualize the conflict outside of the state’s terms of reference. Betty Purcell’s aptly phrased expression ‘the silence in Irish broadcasting’ (Purcell, 1996, p. 253) was regularly invoked to refer to this media phenomenon, one whereby although ’ “facts” were in abundance’ (Rolston, 2007, p. 347), analysis and explanation of the conflict were conspicuously absent.