The question that haunted Kate Adie during the Troubles
Reporting the Troubles, which brings together first-hand, unflinching accounts of what it was like to cover the blood shed in Northern Ireland, is an often harrowing read, but also an invaluable insight, says L indy McDowell
How close do you get to a story? The question comes from Kate Adie, the veteran journalist whose very name was once synonymous with the words ‘war correspondent’.
As chief news correspondent with the BBC, Ms Adie, in her trademark flak jacket, was for decades a frontline reporter from some of the world’s most notorious war zones.
But the story she was referring to in her question alluded to conflict nearer to home than the battlefields of Angola, Somalia, Afghanistan or Iraq.
She recalls working in Belfast, in the early years of the Troubles, when a tip-off about a sectarian killing led her to be one of the very first on the scene.
Shown inside the house, she discovered a small boy of about seven who was standing beside the fireplace.
“Me daddy,” he said plaintively. “Me daddy won’t get up.”
Ms Adie recalls; “A man’s body was lying awkwardly under the Christmas tree. There was a small bullet hole in the window.”
And there, in just two sparse sentences, is all the horror of just one Troubles murder.
And God knows how much grief and sorrow in the long years since for just one man’s family.
How close do you get?
For a whole generation of newsmen and women, the sectarian bloodfest that we call the Troubles provided a dark, unprecedented — and unwanted — intimacy with savagery.
Generally among the first to arrive at the scene of atrocity, journalists witnessed murder and suffering on a monumental scale as they went about the business of bringing their stories to the public.
Now, in Reporting the Troubles, a powerful and compelling collection of first-hand accounts, some of the journalists who cov- ered our 40 years of bloodshed and heartache relate the stories behind the stories.
The book’s contributors represent a broad swathe of the media world. They include both visiting newsmen and women and our own local press people. Journalists who viewed the conflict from the detached standpoint of someone on the outside looking in. And those born and brought up here. Reporters who were covering atrocities taking place in their own backyard. Among their own people.
In all, 68 contributors tell their stories in a volume compiled by two of our most respected local journalists — Deric Henderson, the former Ireland editor of the Press Association and Ivan Little, who spent 29 years reporting for UTV and ITN.
The pair have skilfully brought together a wide range of major names from print and broadcast journalism to create a comprehensive and very often heart-wrenching portrayal of an era of barbarity that almost seems unbelievable now.
True insight into history doesn’t just come via the broad brush-stroke record of seismic events, it’s also from acutely observed first-hand account, from the often seemingly inconsequential details that catch the eye and touch the heart — and sear themselves forever into memory.
To a good journalist the story is not about them. The time for boasting about that great exclusive they got or that corker of a question they asked at the press conference is among colleagues at media gatherings.
The contributions in this book are very, very far from that.
Thoughtful, honest, harrowing and haunting, these are the memories of people who witnessed the aftermath of murder, mayhem and massacre.
They saw brutalised bodies, they heard the survivors’ wail (and it is pitifully telling how often that one affecting word features in so many testimonies). And they did that time and time again.
There was no local news outlet where the coverage of bombing and killing was not routine. And there was no section of the news operation untouched by that. Even sport...
Among the book’s contributors is my old friend Eddie McIlwaine, who describes covering a local football match where a policeman was gunned down. Eddie knew the man and had spoken to him only a few minutes beforehand. His recounting of what happened, like so many others, is raw with detail. The sickening crack of gunfire that ended the man’s life, the confusion. The disbelief.
For years afterwards, Eddie couldn’t bring himself to go back to a game. As with so many accounts in the book, it’s not the reporter talking here. It’s the human being.
And that’s a recurring theme in this book — how those who covered awful events were so deeply affected by what they witnessed.
How they have never forgotten the victims. How they still carry the names with them, the memories of what bereaved relatives said to them.
And that is especially true, of course, of local journalists.
There’s an array of household names from both British and Irish media amid the contributors — Gerald Seymour, Martin Bell, Robert Fisk, Conor O’Clery, Eamonn Holmes, Nicholas Witchell, Richard Kay, Gerry Moriarty, Deaglan de Breadun, Tommie Gorman...
But the most powerful testimony comes from those who not only reported the conflict, but who also lived through it.
There were journalists whose neighbours were murdered. From former Belfast Telegraph editor Ed Curran, there’s a poignant account of the murder of Rev Robert Bradford, who lived nearby. The dead man’s little girl was a friend of Ed’s young son. On the day of her father’s funeral, the child, as she often did, had come over to play with Jonathan.
Ed recalls the “brutal irony” of the image of the little girl playing while the television news was dominated by coverage of her father’s funeral.
There were journalists whose friends were murdered — among the victims Sunday World reporter Martin O’Hagan.
There were journalists who themselves lost family members. One of the most touching accounts comes from Deric Henderson, recalling the death of his uncle, Ted.
And there were journalists who, in many different way, watched their community almost torn apart.
The great David Armstrong, for over 40 years editor of the Portadown Times, contributes a deeply affecting piece about Drumcree and its impact upon his home town.
While each account in the book stands on its own as a grim testament to those years of turmoil and terror, as a composite Reporting the Troubles is a remarkable, unique and invaluable insight into some of the darkest days of our history.
It spans the years from the late Sixties to the peace process and beyond. It references many of the bloodiest milestones of the Troubles — Bloody Sunday, Omagh, Enniskillen, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, Kingsmills.
Recalled too are individual murders. Less widely remembered stories of death and heroism. But stories never forgotten by the men and women who covered them — by the journalists who witnessed the Troubles. Up close.