There is "a hierarchy of death" in media coverage of violence in Northern Ireland with the killing of British people getting most attention and attacks by loyalist paramilitaries attracting the least, a former editor of the Mirror said in Belfast last night.
Mr Roy Greenslade, a media commentator for the Guardian newspaper, was giving the Damien Walsh Memorial Lecture in west Belfast. Damien Walsh was 17 when he was shot dead by the UFF in Belfast in March 1993. A group has been set up in his memory to help promote dialogue and understanding.
"The British media have not only failed to cover Northern Ireland properly. They have been operating - albeit unconsciously - a policy of selective coverage," Mr Greenslade said. His views were based on a close study of coverage over many years.
He said there were five ranks of victims in terms of media coverage. In the first, receiving most coverage, were British people killed in Britain, and the second included members of the security forces, whose killing was usually reported on the front pages of newspapers.
The civilian victims of republican violence were in the third rank, while members of Sinn Fein or the IRA killed by the security forces were in the fourth. In the fifth, getting least coverage, were victims of loyalist violence, whether they were Catholics, Protestants, IRA members or passers-by.
Mr Greenslade said he had examined newspaper coverage "to try to find examples when these `fifth-rank murders' have been elevated to the first rank, with front-page splashes and two-page spreads, and concerned quotes from politicians, and leading articles". "It proved impossible to find a single example," he added.
Mr Greenslade used many examples of such coverage, including the killing of Damien Walsh and four other Catholic men shot the same day. Their murders were "virtually ignored" by the British media, compared to the huge coverage given to the Warrington bombing five days earlier.
The hierarchy of death had more to do with the way in which the conflict has been seen by the British media and the British establishment than a media conspiracy. The conflict, he said, was seen firstly as a war between the British government and republicans, "and secondly and more pertinently as a conflict between two warring tribes in which poor, benighted Britain is the reluctant piggy in the middle.
"I believe that by damning both sides, we not only skip the central argument but are in danger of running into a political dead end." The result was that British people had come to accept there was no solution. He described this approach as "a false neutrality syndrome", which hampered understanding of the situation.
In covering Drumcree, the British media had ignored much loyalist intimidation and violence. "British papers hardly ever report the horrors perpetrated by men who roam the streets waving Union flags and unleashing savagery in the name of the British queen," he said.