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A
healthy cynicism that avoids lapsing into nihilism
is one safeguard to be employed against falling victim
to any media take on events. The disparities in media
accounts pertaining to the Stakeknife controversy
suggest less a conspiracy by so called securocrats
and instead point to the existence of a media rather
than a medium. While frustrating for the ‘orderly’
mind and the control-obsessed ideologue, a range of
varying accounts helps act as a warning system which
alerts the reader or viewer to the prudence of performing
a rain check for themselves rather than simply go
out without an umbrella as a result of listening to
a managed line which assures us the day will be dry.
Although, for the feeders of the line, if it turns
out not to be dry, it will have been as a result of
sabotage by the rainocrats.
Of
course, it is only reasonable to view the media with
extreme caution. After all if they would try to persuade
a gullible audience that the peace campaigner Gerry
Adams was a member of the IRA and would then insist
that Freddie Scappaticci was a British agent they
must be working to a securocrat agenda!
In
relation to the handling of the Stakeknife affair,
there is little - outside the feverish imaginations
of the controlocrats - that would suggest the existence
of a carefully coordinated British plot in which the
media followed suit. Elements within the British establishment
certainly did mix it, spooks were spinning and dissembling,
and media agencies did battle with each other to head
the pack when it came to reporting British Intelligence
briefing guff. Consequently, much of the journalism
was not up to the mark. But the inconsistencies in
reporting were far too widespread to support the view
that there was a complex centralised plan which a
desenitised public fell victim to. If a plan did exist
it was the type we would expect to find put together
in the HQ of the Anarchist Party. In fact the real
coordination rather than coming from the originators
of the story, appeared to be the exclusive property
of those who sought, not too successfully, to challenge
the veracity of the allegations. What Professor Kathleen
Lynch once termed ‘a language of sameness’
seemed to prevail in these accounts. The public was
assured of the existence of securocrats, nameless
and faceless sources, malcontents, wreckers and rejectionists
- all out to sabotage the peace process. All the language
we have come to associate with the totalitarian mindset
and expressed nowhere better than in Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty Four. As is evident from the An Phoblacht/Republican
News coverage, it is the type of mediocre construct
that trainee writers can safely handle - a case of
just keep to the line and repeat after me …
Perhaps
it is indicative of the limp nature of the An Phoblacht/Republican
News (and its allies) defence against the Stakeknife
allegations, that three weeks on, the media find that
they don’t have to expend a lot of effort on
the story to keep the Sinn Fein version of events
effectively sidelined. As reported in one local paper
in recent days, few in the republican community now
believe Freddie Scappaticci is innocent of the allegations
made against him. And Conor Murphy’s less than
spirited defence of Scappaticci on BBC Spotlight on
Tuesday evening has left the Riverdale man with even
fewer sympathisers. One member of the Republican Movement
said after listening to Murphy he is now in no
doubt that Scappaticci is guilty.
In
a sense this demonstrates that the media do not have
to labour very hard to harm Scappaticci - they merely
have to let republicans defend him in order to have
him convicted in the court of public opinion. It is
not a very satisfactory situation when the incompetence
of the defence rather than the efficiency of the prosecution
persuades the jury that the defendant is guilty.
Because
in truth, Spotlight’s coverage of the Scappaticci/Stakeknife
saga was not the hard hitting expose many anticipated
that it would be. Most people I have spoken to since
have expressed disappointment, claiming that there
was nothing new contained in it. Perhaps, it is the
type of presentation that would be better suited to
day one of the story rather than week three. In a
seeming paradox, the two republicans chosen to comment
on the affair, failed to land the punches that they
presumably sought to throw. Conor Murphy of Sinn Fein
inadvertently stood on Scappaticci’s fingers
as they clung to the ledge of deniability. And Mickey
Donnelly, a republican critic of Murphy’s party,
while offering an interesting and witty insight into
Scappaticci's earlier years, especially those spent
during internment, undermined his own position by
wrongly claming that Scappaticci’s name had been
in the hat as a Stakeknife suspect since having been
named on a republican bulletin board three years ago
- and which caused the Sinn Fein leadership to initiate
a process of intimidation against the moderator of
the board in a bid to curb enquiries into Scappaticci.
While Sinn Fein did seek to intimidate, it was certainly
not in relation to Freddie Scappaticci, whose name
did not appear in any public forum.
One
of the stronger contributions on Spotlight came from Liam
Clarke of the Sunday Times, recently arrested for
making public the business of the public. And while
he did say that he was of the opinion that Scappaticci
was aware almost two years ago that the press had
identified him as the agent Stakeknife, he maintained
that this was his own belief based on instinct and deduction
rather than positing it as a fact.
Ultimately,
Spotlight created more heat than light. Unfortunately
for Scappaticci, heat is all that it takes to make
life very uncomfortable.
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