There’s a very interesting article in today’s edition of the online newspaper The Detail. Here’s what’s interesting about it. It’s headed “PSNI review strongly criticises handling of Loughinisland journalists’ arrests” and it does what it says on the tin. Because of their documentary ‘No Stone Unturned’ about the Loughisland massacre and the highly dubious police investigation of that massacre, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey were arrested, their office raided, files taken from it. The report exonerates them completely, but the journalists are still very unhappy.

What looks like a thorough review and a hard rap across the PSNI knuckles isn’t really any good, Here’s Barry McCaffrey, one of the two journalists: “We still do not know how much this whole sorry debacle cost the public purse, [nor] whether or not anyone has been held to account…The culture of secrecy and silence within the PSNI has been allowed to go unchallenged.”

Have any officers involved in the dubious PSNI investigation into Loughinisland been sanctioned? We don’t know and the PSNI ain’t telling us.  Trevor Birney sums it up neatly:

“We still don’t know why the PSNI decided to go after journalists instead of the men who killed six innocent Catholics in Loughinisland.”

We apparently haven’t left the time when the RUC could intimidate, collude and cover-up at will. It is in the PSNI’s interest as well as that of the general public that the apparent cover-up over Loughinisland, as well as the treatment of investigating journalists, was investigated and made totally clear. Our society depends in great measure on confidence in the police.  Are the PSNI so thick that they can’t see this, or do they choose to look away?