It’s begun already. In today’s Irish Times, Kathy Sheridan questions why Gerry Adams took his defamation case to Dublin’s High Court, while at the same time she concedes he was perfectly entitled to do so. And yet she goes on for several paragraphs about the late transmission hour in the South of the Spotlight programme and the (relatively) small number of viewers. It’s a bit baffling – has she a point to make, other than that Gerry A chose the South?
She also cites Donaldson’s daughter and her refusal to accept that the Real IRA, as they claimed, had killed her father. It’s impossible not to feel for Jane Donaldson over the lonely violent death of her father, but it’s hard, maybe impossible to say what this has to do with the Adams case.
Sheridan disputes the fact that the judge told the jury and to focus on Gerry Adams’s reputation “as of 2016 and now”. The IT journalist begs to differ: “ It implies that, with time, even the most savage deeds of historical figures cease to be an integral part of their reputations and inevitably become romanticised as context and nuance fade out.”
Maybe one of her colleagues would ask her if she has Gerry Adams in mind, when she talks about ‘savage deeds’, or is she thinking of Cromwell or maybe Bloody Sunday?
Because Adams is highly critical of the B(ritish) BC she believes he could therefore have been “more civic-minded” if he’d taken his case in Belfast.
What’s more, she notes that the South has “unusually plaintiff-friendly libel laws”..The less-friendly North, she appears to imply, might have come to a different conclusion from the plaintiff-friendly South. In addition, Ms Sheridan is quite critical also about the fact that the jury in the South couldn’t explain the reasoning behind their verdict, whereas a Northern judge could.
Finally, Kathy is critical of Adams’s criticism of the BBC. She insists that both the BBC and ITN investigated the SAS killing in Gibraltar of three unarmed IRA volunteers in 1988, in the teeth of British government resistance. I can remember back then too, Kathy. Both the BBC and ITN did report the killings, but it was ITV’s This Week that did the unforgettable ‘Death on the Rock’ programme, which dug deeper to establish the brutal assassination of the IRA unit. Not the B(ritish)BC
Well done Jude. I need your insight to make sense of some things. Sorting out the ‘assassins from the men in white hats.
Much thanks, Mike…
Very good Jude free Palestine
Thank you, James…Ditto.
“It implies that, with time, even the most savage deeds of historical figures cease to be an integral part of their reputations and inevitably become romanticised as context and nuance fade out.”
I wonder how many times she typed and retyped those words to ensure they were not going to land her her in Court for defamation?
The BBC and their Irish reporter chose to traduce the good name of Gerry Adams and blatantly accused him of procuring a murder. The fact that Adams probably knew virtually all the relations of Donaldson made the accusations all the more serious. all this was done without a shred of evidence, and solely on the opinions of faceless people. BBC deserved to lose, and they duly did!
Fair play Jude..just put manners on her.