Reporting the Troubles (2018) is a remarkable collection of articles featuring the experiences of no fewer than 70 journalists who covered the day-to-day tragedies of Northern Ireland. They bore witness at the time and their current reflections on the often terrible things they saw add up to an informal history of the turbulent years.
Equally remarkable, editors Deric Henderson and Ivan Little have assembled another 70-strong cohort of different journalists, some of whom went on to become household names, for Reporting the Troubles 2. They include Sir Trevor McDonald, who used to play scratch cricket against local TV reporters on the rooftop of UTV’s headquarters , games which gave a good view of any bombs going off; and Maggie O’Kane recalling a “chilling” trip round Belfast driven by ultra loyalist Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair. She was advised not to return to Belfast after her article on Adair for the Guardian.
Gavin Esler was there when Michael Stone shot at mourners at an IRA funeral, killing three, followed by the murder of two soldiers at the funeral of one of Stone’s victims. As Esler notes: “In Northern Ireland the past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
Fergal Keane tells of the 1988 murder in rural Co Fermanagh of Jillian Johnston, a young woman soon to be married. The IRA said it was a “mistake”. Keane remembersquietness of the churchyard on the day of her funeral. For him, the stories the of the Troubles are told in silence, not least in the kitchens and bedrooms where the bereaved stare into the distance.
But as former Irish Times editor Conor Brady explains, there is no one outstanding story of the Troubles or a single all-important day. The story was published over years by teams of reporters, photographers, feature writers and editors, who went down the country roads to bomb sites and who listened to the countless stories of men, women and children in distress. It was a story told day by day, hour by hour. “It would be difficult to imagine that there could ever have been a peace process without that,” concludes Brady.
This alone justifies a “sequel” which adds to the achievement of the original.
Raymond Snoddy is a news media journalist, television presenter, author and media commentator
