Unity

From Unity, 23 May 2009

Common sense and press freedom

by W. Owl

For all the mouthwatering revelations printed by the Daily Telegraph, no-one seems to have asked where the information is coming from and from whom it is coming. Obviously the source responsible would be immune from any form of prosecution or discipline—on the contrary, they would be acclaimed as a national hero. I also doubt whether the newspaper itself would be pushed to reveal its sources either.
     This is not always the case, though, if we look at the situation in which Suzanne Breen, the Sunday Tribune’s Northern editor, finds herself.
     As reported in a previous edition of Unity, she has been threatened with legal action if she doesn’t hand over notes and records of her interviews with members of the Real IRA.
     Fionnuala O’Connor, writing in the Irish News (12 May), believes that the action brought by the PSNI “threatens press freedom.” She makes the point that “police everywhere ask all sorts of people for information. They have asked many journalists here for information about paramilitaries—some may have been forthcoming.” As regards those who weren’t “forthcoming,” like Breen, the matter ended there.
     O’Connor writes that the police must have short memories, as Breen is the second Sunday Tribune journalist in Belfast who has been threatened with the law. Ten years ago the then Northern editor, Ed Maloney, was put in a similar position, but the judge was not convinced that the material he withheld could “substantially help a prosecution,” so the police action failed.
     The material the police are demanding in the Breen case is related to two articles she wrote about the Real IRA. The first concerned their claim to have killed the two soldiers at Antrim barracks, and the next was an interview with someone who was described as a member of the Real IRA Army Council who issued threats that more soldiers and police would be killed and admitted that they had killed Denis Donaldson, the former Sinn Féin official and police informant.
     Lawyers for the police won a closed hearing held on the 8th of May, in which they pleaded that the material held by Breen is necessary for the investigation into the Antrim shooting. In what can only be described as a worrying feature, Breen, her lawyers, press and public were barred from attending the court while an unidentified police officer made the application.
     The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, has said that “the authorities must recognise the special nature of journalistic material and respect Breen’s right to maintain the confidentiality of her sources.” That is the grounds for one objection. The other is the more obvious one peculiar to Northern Ireland, that of a possible threat to Breen’s life if she hands over any information. The Real IRA are not keen on people who might relay things to the police about their organisation.
     Her lawyers have claimed that any compliance with police requests could threaten her right to life under the European Convention.
     The judge in the case has stated that on the police case “he would be minded to take a particular step” but assured Breen’s lawyer that “where I will be after I hear your argument could be in a completely different place altogether. I have a totally open mind as to where this case is going to end up.”
     It is to be hoped that common sense and this aspect of press freedom will prevail.

Let me just relate a historical snippet. The Irish News has an “On This Day” column, compiled by Eamon Phoenix, and in its 9th of April edition was a piece dated 9 April 1940, which referred to the banning of the Irish Workers’ Weekly, “a publication of the Communist Party of Ireland.” It had apparently printed an article on the 1916 Rising that upset the Minister of Home Affairs, Sir Dawson Bates. He promptly banned the paper—printed in Dublin—from Northern Ireland for the rest of 1940. Bates had obviously forgotten that we were fighting a war for freedom and democracy.

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