Why does it matter whether and how Northern Ireland and its perennial troubles are represented by the media both within the region itself and in mainland Britain? 

It matters because Northern Ireland is a post-conflict society.  The incomplete Good Friday process makes ragged, stumbling progress.  Northern Ireland’s is a cold peace – an absence of violence and an absence of reconciliation. There is a vacuum of leadership, governance and accountability, an overall picture made vastly more acute and complex by Brexit and the DUP-Tory pact.  The region is on the UK’s immediate back doorstep, and the Westminster government holds historic culpability and present day responsibility for it, with or without an Assembly. The notion that the British government is a neutral or external broker in Northern Ireland is palpable nonsense.  Against this backdrop, what is the role and responsibility of the “fourth estate” — print, broadcast and social media – a vital mechanism of democracy?  Are they part of the solution or part of the problem?

Having often travelled for forty and commuted for the last five years between London and the South East, the Republic and the North of Ireland, I am continually jolted by the stark differences in media coverage.  Leaving the Republic aside – I find the mainstream approach to Northern Ireland usually proportionate, intelligent and fair – the reality I encounter on my visits to Northern Ireland is distorted both there and in mainland Britain, in the North because the media is as sectarianised and rooted in conflict as the rest of society, and in Britain because Northern Irish news is almost entirely absent, and curiously selective and anachronistic when it does appear.

Northern Ireland is a very small place, with its population of 1.8 million just 2.7% of a total UK population of over 66 million, a simple fact with many ramifications.  So it sustains few local newspapers, variously shaded in orange and green.  There are no Sunday supplements or journals in which considered, in-depth, journalistic analysis can be published.  Meanwhile, any factual reporting of events is quickly overlaid by the cacophony from the impenetrable, mostly male veteran elite known as the “commentariat”, also variously shaded in orange or green. Their ritualised, peacock-performance quickly determines whether and what is seen as important and seems designed, primarily, to earn plaudits from one another.  The gaps in media coverage are filled by the knee-jerk and ephemeral Blogosphere and the Twitterverse which, alongside tabloid radio and TV, give a ready platform to those with extreme views as well as to more moderate thinkers.  One ray of light are excellent documentaries such as those made by the Spotlight team – but they and much of the news coverage are rarely shown beyond the North.

The question remains, what difference do all these words make?  Do they build peace or help make change happen?  If you want to change the system, you need to change the conversation.  Public discourse in Northern Ireland is an echo chamber, ranging from the chronically repetitive to a reinforcement of the extreme sectarianism which is at the root of Northern Ireland’s persistent problems.  If the word “sectarian” were replaced with “racist”, there might be lower levels of tolerance.  The cold peace is reiterated in the frozen, stylised nature of the discourse among the politicians themselves who are expected to engage in slanging matches and dialogues of the deaf. Just occasionally, things “go too far”, as in the Barry McElduff Kingsmill loaf incident, and Newton’s law of action and reaction kicks in.  Viewers were stunned and awed, and Twitter was full of genuine praise, at the fleeting display of authentic, civilised and reconciliatory behaviour on BBC’s The View between the DUP’s Edwin Poots and Sinn Féin’s John O’Dowd, before “normal” service was resumed and levels of disedifying behaviour returned following the latest breakdown in Stormont talks.

John Brewer has been teaching at Queens University Belfast on and off since 1981 and is since 2013 Professor of Post Conflict Studies in the Senator Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.  He is English, raised a Catholic but a convert to liberal Presbyterianism.  His professional and personal background give him a uniquely penetrating and insightful perspective on Northern Irish matters, and yet he is rarely called on for his point of view.  Northern Ireland “believes it is unique”, he says, “is wrapped up in itself”, and the default position is that it can “only be understood from the inside”. Journalism has not made the transition from conflict to peace and is generally “locked in the past”, dependent on the “sniff of cordite”.  As Graham Spencer writes (Disturbing the Peace, Ashgate 2000) “values which prioritise conflict, negativity, simplification and drama are less complementary to the promotion of peace”.

There are, everywhere, sacred cows, unmentionables, taboos, silences, and metaphorical minefields – for example, gender issues, including levels of violence against women, and the systemic and cultural impact of trauma on all levels of society including politicians and the media.  These are aspects of the legacy of the Troubles and of what Brewer calls the “brutalisation of everyday life”.  The need to protect and control the discourse is likely to blame for a certain hostility to the insights and perspectives of outsiders.

There is a great deal more can be said about this – but just to note that, drawing on Jeffrey Alexander’s work on cultural trauma, the “master narrative” of the conflict in Northern Ireland remains highly contested and polarised.  The media is one of six institutional arenas which “mediate linguistic action” in a conflicted situation (the others are the churches, the arts, academia, legal mechanisms and state bureaucracies) and contribute to the “spiral of signification” which socially constructs the impact and resolution of trauma.  This means the idea that journalism and the media are impartial or neutral is nonsense.  They are always, often unconsciously, contributing to a process by which events and themes are perceived as important, or, indeed, perceived at all.

Meanwhile, what are we to make of the failure to adequately cover Northern Ireland in the British press?  This question is occasionally raised in the media itself: Andrea Catherwood, a Belfast native, asked on the Radio 4 Media Show in January 2017 why the collapse of Stormont had not made headline news.  The response, interestingly, from Jonathan Munro, head of news gathering at the BBC, was that the resignation of Martin McGuinness had led the news, even if Stormont’s collapse had not.  Roy Greenslade, who has strong Irish, even Republican, connections has several times called out the British press in The Guardian:  “unless violence breaks out, the national press turns a blind eye to the six Northern Irish counties.”

There appear to be multiple reasons — but no conspiracy — to explain why Northern Ireland is not covered, mostly benign and yet amounting over the last 20 years but more particularly in the context of Brexit and the DUP/Tory pact to a less benign failure of journalistic responsibility.  The lack of interest in Northern Ireland among readers and viewers/listeners is not just perception, it is, I am told, the reality – and these days the beleaguered print press is driven more than ever by consumerist values, marketing departments and reader demand.

Journalists and editors divide into those old enough to remember, indeed to have covered themselves, the seemingly relentless and unending conflict and violence, and those too young to know or care anything about it.  Once the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the media sighed with relief and turned its back.  Now there is a vicious circle.  The general ignorance is reinforced by the lack of coverage, so that too much has to be tediously explained when articles are written.  When I complained once to an editor about cuts to a piece I had written, I was told that the sub-editor “had a hard time getting her head around Northern Ireland”.  She didn’t understand it, so she cut it out.

One journalist told me that failure to cover Northern Ireland can be explained by devolution; it is London-centric and ignores most regional news.  Another said that the attitude was one of benign neglect from partition until 1969, and reverted to the same neglect after 1998.  Indeed, if prior to 1969 growing discontent and inequalities in housing and unemployment had received more press attention, perhaps the conflict might have been averted.

When the DUP went into government with the Tory party, there was a wide howl of ignorance – everyone knew who Martin McGuinness and Sinn Féin were – they pass the “sniff of cordite test” — but who were the DUP?  Northern Ireland and its border was absent from the pre-referendum Brexit debate.  Except via the DUP MPs, Northern Ireland wields little political influence, and has no-one to represent its interests.  Now the border, which had faded to a faint pencil line, has been thrown into stark and uncomfortable relief, although final decisions about it are likely to be made blind to the interests of the majority of Northern Ireland itself.

To return to the original question, why does media coverage of Northern Ireland matter?  Because, as we are seeing in Trump’s America, journalism is not only there to entertain, to sell content and advertising, or even to inform.  It is the fourth estate, a key mechanism of accountability, and as such required to shine a light on the very issues that might be escaping people’s attention or appear to be of little interest – including all the ways that unresolved impacts of the Troubles are continuing to affect the social and economic lives of tens if not hundreds of thousands of the North’s population.

From that angle, the most significant recent development in Northern Ireland is High Court judge Sir Paul Girvan’s judgement that Arlene Foster’s blocking of legacy funding while she was First Minister – which he had said was likely for partisan political reasons – was wrong.  The obligation on the state to investigate deaths during the conflict remained whether or not devolved government was restored, he said.

This story – and that of the unfolding Renewable Heat Incentive scheme enquiry being chaired by Rt Hon Sir Patrick Coghlin — illustrates the role being played by legal processes and the judiciary in Northern Ireland in the absence of political leadership, a role likely to increase further as more inquests take place despite the lack of legacy funding.   Sir Paul Girvan’s judgement has received, as far as I can tell, no coverage in the British press, yet another lacuna that must suit Prime Minister Theresa May and her fragile government very well.