The B(ritish)BC: the paragon of responsible journalism?

“How have they found themselves in a situation where allegations were insufficiently evidenced with the consequence that license payers’ money will be now be spent on both damages and reputed legal costs running into many millions?”

I’m guessing that the tortured syntax of the statement above will reveal the speaker to be a politician. This one happens to be the leader of the DUP, Gavin Robinson, and while you might need a machete to hack your way to the full meaning of what he’s saying, it  amounts to “Why the hell did the BBC make claims about Gerry Adams that they couldn’t make stand up in court, and now we the public will have to dig deep to pay for their rash actions?”.

For once I find myself in full agreement with the DUP leader. The B(ritish)BC  have been doing what they’ve been doing for the last couple of decades and longer: presenting a picture of events from the Troubles as being entirely the fault of republicans, aka Sinn Féin.

And it wasn’t just the BBC. Martin McGuinness was asked by RTÉ when he last went to confession.

Loyalists took their cue from the  sustained media onslaught and killed Sinn Féin members when they could. John Taylor famously reminded unionists  that the next time they were talking to three Catholics, they could assume that one of them was in the iRA or an IRA supporter.

There’s something slightly insane when a supposedly balanced media source  can effectively accuse someone of a killing on the grounds that five shadowy figures (no, Virginia, those are other shadowy figures) say he did. And when they’re found to have insufficient evidence to support such a claim,  they complain about how it would have been a different matter if there’d just been a judge and not a jury, and emotion affects juries whereas judges are drained of all emotion before being appointed, and that this jury, ranging in age from their 20s to their 30s, were far too young, and overall this Gerry Adams verdict is going to damage other journalists dealing with the past.

Well yes, we would hope so. All talk about a future ‘chill factor’ in reporting on Sinn Féin actions really means that reporters will be expected to have evidence if they make a claim or claims about someone.  

Me, I’m so simple-minded, I always thought a cornerstone of justice was that you don’t accuse people of stuff when you’ve no evidence to back it up.