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Shortly
after the Thursday edition of the Andersonstown
News hit the streets proclaiming that the Stakeknife
story had died in the water, the Belfast Telegraph
ran the banner headline ‘I will meet Scappaticci’.
The offer came from the mother of the late John Dignam,
one of three Portadown men shot dead by the IRA in
1992 for allegedly informing. The same evening the
issue featured on BBC’s Let’s Talk where
Catriona Ruane seemed to have difficulties parrying
questions on the matter. At one point, with no obvious
sign of irony, she urged the audience to read An
Phoblacht/Republican News’ sister paper,
the Andersonstown News. The following day saw
even more coverage in the News Letter. And
today’s Sundays are pursuing the issue yet again.
Despite wish being father to the thought in the Andersonstown
News, the old knife remains a stake firmly embedded
in the consciousness of Provisional republicanism.
In
last Monday’s edition of the West Belfast tabloid,
its editor scooped what the paper assured us was a
world exclusive: an interview with the man widely
alleged to be the British agent Stakeknife. In effect
the interview was a poop scoop - crap. It was pursued
with the type of investigative rigour that could easily
have proved that David Beckham never played for Manchester
United.
Andersonstown
News: David Beckham do you play for Manchester
United?
Beckham: No
Andersonstown News: We asked him the hard
question - he gave us the straight answer.
Indeed.
Already jokes are doing the rounds amongst republicans
that Marty McGartland is seeking an interview with
the paper so he too can clear his name. The interview
was similar to the gentle questioning a witness would
receive from his own defence attorney in a court of
law. It was not the grueling cross examination that
the one would expect in these circumstances.
This
ultimately proved to the detriment of Scappaticci
who in fact needed to undergo the test of fire in
public if he was to stand any chance of persuading
his sceptics of his innocence. The interview demonstrated
not that Scappaticci was blameless, but that the Andersonstown
News, because of its complicity in a bid to sink
the story, effectively denied Scappaticci the opportunity
to make a persuasive case on his own behalf. Given
that the paper alone had access to the accused man
it had a public duty to ask the serious questions.
Arguably, the paper was not concerned with defending
Scappaticci but with protecting a republican leadership
fearful of the consequences of full disclosure. And
in this case where no republican leader was prepared
to be seen within photo distance of Scappaticci, the
ever faithful Robin Livingstone was sent in to mount
a damage limitation exercise and act as a sandbag,
absorbing flak that might otherwise have struck the
leadership. With a genuine commitment to securing
the truth coupled with some strategic foresight, the
interview could have been vastly different. This would
have more seriously firmed up the case that Freddie
Scappaticci seeks to make - that he was never an agent
of the British. But through employing a political
rather than a journalistic agenda, the paper in fact
did Scappaticci a disservice. If he is innocent the
interview has brought us no closer to knowing it.
Not
that the media in general has been exemplary in its
handling of this issue. Journalists readily admit
that there was much in the way of 'spin and black
propaganda.' The Daily Telegraph has reported
that ‘the media has been fed a lot of misinformation.’
True, but this does not excuse it for running with
what it has been fed. In this regard Vincent Browne
has raised some intelligent reservations about inconsistencies
in press coverage which should be shared by those
genuinely concerned with enhancing public understanding
of the matter. However, his gripe about unnamed sources
is difficult to comprehend given that many journalists
have been dragged before the courts here and elsewhere
as a consequence of protecting the anonymity of their
sources. Undisclosed sources are essential to public
understanding. This has already been proven in the
corruption scandals in Dublin. However, the practice
of allowing one person to hide in a coward’s
corner and throw serious charges at a named person
is dubious in the extreme. The public have a right
to expect that any journalist bringing into public
discourse the allegations of such sources should have
tried and tested the source on many previous occasions
and found them to be impeccable and their information
beyond reproach.
In
this case the Andersonstown News has helped
matters. Its previous endorsement of Martin Ingram
- the FRU operative who has persistently raised concerns
about the existence of Stakeknife and who last week
expressed his alarm at the identity of Stakeknife
becoming public knowledge - has added enormous credibility
to those journalists who now rely on the evidence
of Ingram and other unidentified sources (Ingram afterall
is only a pseudonym and therefore a nameless source).
So
devastating is the information he possesses that
the British Government has served gagging orders
on the Sunday People and Sunday Times to prevent
them reporting on his disclosures … According
to Ingram, Nelson was 'run' by FRU Commander Col
Gordon Kerr - now British military attaché
to Beijing - and Captain Margaret Walshaw, now believed
to be based at the British Embassy in Athens …
Every newspaper in the North of Ireland and Britain,
with the exception of the North Belfast News and
Andersonstown News, have refused to name Captain
Walshaw at the request of British Intelligence.
(Andersonstown News 1/3/2001).
So
reliable was he presumed to have been that the paper
even let him write his own comment piece. And when
he said ‘as long as I have a breath in my body,
I will take up the cudgel for the truth’ the
paper did not call him a faceless securocrat hiding
behind a pseudonym.
There
is a real fear of publicly accusing someone in the
wrong. But the Andersonstown News boasted of
naming Captain Margaret Walshaw - and it was right
to name her - rather than jump to her defence on the
very grounds it employed for Scappaticci. And its
chivalry on the matter of not wishing to expose people
to risk is only newly found. It was in its own letters
page - via a contribution from a non-existent writer
at a bogus address - that a named Belfast journalist
was maliciously and falsely accused of being a gatherer
of information for loyalist terrorists.
Despite
all the criticism - much of it justified - leveled
at journalists over their handling of the Scappaticci
story, would the people of West Belfast be better
informed if the Andersonstown News was the
only source of our news? Would they be less well informed
if the paper did not come out at all? Since making
the journey from community paper to the organ of the
West Belfast business class has it ever done anything
but conform to W. H. Auden's notion that 'the most
important truths are likely to be those which...society
at that time least wants to hear.'? Ken Livingstone
once wrote that 'spontaneous laughter is often more
politically revealing than any number of sanctimonious
newspaper columns and political debates'. And this
week’s laughter at Robin Livingstone's world
exclusive reveals that few have been conned.
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