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Living in a fortress and never having your back to the door
Death threats and attacks put pressure on journalists in Northern Ireland. The perpetrators are rarely brought to justice.
Sam McBride is the Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Independent. He has worked for the BBC, The Economist and is a regular presence on radio and television, giving analysis of events which impact on Northern Irish politics.
I can’t remember whether it was 7am or 8am when my bedside radio alarm awakened me on 19 April 2019, but I remember what followed: “A journalist has been shot dead in Derry”.
I didn’t know Lyra McKee, but immediately recognised her name. Northern Ireland is a small society, and the world of journalism is even smaller within it. Even amid the horror of the Troubles which saw 3,500 people killed over 30 years, a journalist’s slaying was exceedingly rare.
Lyra had been eight when the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the Troubles; she was meant to live out her life in peace, but was killed doing her job as a journalist.
A year earlier, we’d both been on a panel discussing the future of the media – all the usual things familiar to journalists: How to make journalism pay, whether paywalls were the future, what the media does badly. She was bright and passionate and full of energy. And now she was dead at the age of 29.
The bullet which killed Lyra had been fired at police; dissident republicans were almost certainly hoping to kill a police officer rather than a journalist when the gunman used the cover of a riot to fire towards police lines.
The fact this had not happened before was largely due to luck. Journalists have been covering serious rioting virtually every year in Northern Ireland for more than half a century. In June 2011, award-winning Press Association photographer Niall Carson was shot in the leg during riots in Belfast.
The more chilling threat to journalists is not those who get caught in cross-fire when doing their jobs, but those told they will be killed
My Belfast Telegraph colleague Allison Morris has not only been present at countless riots but has the scars to prove it. In 2009, a roof slate hurled by rioters in Belfast’s Ardoyne area slashed open her lip, requiring facial surgery.
But, as deadly as such situations can be, the more chilling threat to journalists is not those who get caught in cross-fire when doing their jobs, but those told they will be killed.
Allison moved house 16 months ago; the police have already been to her door three times to warn her of death threats. “At times I dismiss this, and other times I feel really unsafe. Belfast is such a small city and Northern Ireland is such a small place,” she said.
“I’ve had incidents where I’m court reporting and had to be given a security escort out of court because people were threatening to kill me, saying they knew where I lived.
“There are two types of death threat. There are those phoned in anonymously, which I don’t take too seriously because they could be anybody. But the last few times they have been intelligence-led, which means that an informer has passed on information and that’s a lot more concerning.”
Ciaran Barnes, chief reporter at the Sunday Life newspaper, has been threatened multiple times by paramilitaries and criminals.
In 14 years at Sunday Life, he has received five separate TM1 notices – the police bureaucracy which conveys death threats. They have been issued by both republican and loyalist paramilitaries and criminal gangs about whom he has written.
The law has been used by some powerful figures to attempt to suppress public interest journalism
He said: “Because of this I live in a heavily-fortified home with bullet proof windows and doors, security cameras, motion-activated sensors, and alarms linked to the nearest PSNI and fire station.
“Constant threats also limit your movements. I rarely venture into the centre of Belfast at night and like to sit with sight of the door in coffee shops or pubs so I can see who is coming in and out. That sounds extreme, and probably is, but it's better to be cautious.
“Despite that, I wouldn't change what I do and take solace from the many victims of criminality I have helped over the years, and our investigations which have led to drug dealers being jailed, prison units being closed down, and paramilitary rackets being busted by the PSNI.”
He said that victims of the criminals about whom he writes are often voiceless, coming to journalists as a last resort after being failed by the authorities: “We've a duty to help them, even if it's only in a small way and to shine a light on the criminals making their lives a misery.”
When the police deliver death threats, they generally give no information on who the threat is from, something he said should be changed because knowing the group would make it easier to avoid certain areas where those criminals are in control.
Sunday Life editor Martin Breen endorsed that concern, saying that the absence of detail on the threat makes it hard to judge the level of precautions which should be taken.
However, he said that the Police Service of Northern Ireland has got much better in how they handle threats to journalists.
He said that a pattern has emerged in recent years where threats will be made after articles exposing loyalist crime gangs’ criminality.
“We have identified and photographed major gangland figures who have remained largely anonymous until then. As they have taken great care to stay below the radar, they direct their anger towards us.
“None of the threats have stopped us from reporting on their activities and we will continue to do so. The best way for these threats to be reduced is by police bringing some of those responsible before the courts but to date there has been little success on this front.”
Martin O’Hagan, a reporter at the Sunday World, another Mediahuis newspaper, was murdered in 2001. His loyalist paramilitary killers, who targeted him because of his exposure of their crimes, have never been brought to justice.
The Sunday World’s offices were firebombed in 1999 and a decade later, its then editor, Jim McDowell, was brutally beaten in daylight in Belfast city centre.
As elsewhere, Northern Ireland’s journalists do not only face physical threats. Social media abuse is constant – especially, but not only, for female reporters. For young journalists in particular, who had no experience of journalism prior to social media, the lynch mob mentality is brutal.
Those of us who have had time to develop thicker skins need to be mindful of the impact on a young journalist of facing hundreds of abusive messages simply for doing their job – and perhaps for doing it very well.
Similarly, the law has been used by some powerful figures in Northern Ireland to attempt to suppress public interest journalism. I could paper my walls with legal threats, many of them spurious, but designed to discourage further investigation of individuals with something to hide.
Northern Ireland’s libel laws were belatedly reformed this year, bringing them closer to those of England. But Northern Ireland’s two dominant parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, united in rare agreement about diluting the law. It just so happens that the DUP and Sinn Féin are notorious for their libel threats.
Northern Ireland’s unusual system of government involves no opposition in the devolved parliament. Now it has no government at all, making media scrutiny indispensable.
My colleagues at Mediahuis, and elsewhere in Northern Ireland’s media, will continue to not only do our jobs, but to press the authorities to adequately protect journalists.
