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Reporting the Troubles #2
Reporting The Troubles 2: More journalists tell their stories of the Northern Ireland conflict
In this follow-up to their landmark first book, Deric Henderson and Ivan Little have gathered new stories from seventy journalists who have worked in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. These contributors write powerfully about the victims they have never forgotten, the events that have never left them, and the lasting impact of working through those terrible years.
Reporting the Troubles 2, which includes contributions from a new generation of journalists, who came up in the years leading to the Good Friday Agreement, provides a compelling narrative of the last fifty years, and covers many of the key events in Northern Ireland’s troubled history, from Bloody Sunday in 1972 to the inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre in 2021.
Grounded in the passionate belief that good journalism and good journalists make a difference, Reporting the Troubles 2 is a profoundly moving act of remembrance and testimony.
Reporting the Troubles 2, which includes contributions from a new generation of journalists, who came up in the years leading to the Good Friday Agreement, provides a compelling narrative of the last fifty years, and covers many of the key events in Northern Ireland’s troubled history, from Bloody Sunday in 1972 to the inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre in 2021.
Grounded in the passionate belief that good journalism and good journalists make a difference, Reporting the Troubles 2 is a profoundly moving act of remembrance and testimony.
- GenresNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
Published March 9, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 19, 2022
I thought the first volume was very good so was glad to hear that a follow up had been released, although ironically for a book about and by journalists, it wasn't a very well publicised launch- I only found out due to a retweet of a retweet about the launch event on Twitter.
As with the first edition there is a good mixture of facts and emotions. Normally I am not a fan of the trend of what I call "emotional editorialising" in actual news reports, where the journalist rather than just relaying the facts tries to dictate the emotional response of those viewing or reading. However there is a place for that in this book, as it highlights the mental costs of covering the Troubles and the impact on the personal and professional lives of the journalists.
It is also interesting to discover whether the outlook of the contributors to this book match the biases of the particular media organisations they were working for at the time- some do, but many do not, which in itself would be an interesting study- the impact of writing for the likes of the Daily Mail or Murdoch's poisonous rags when you are actually a decent person forced to sell your ethics and soul for your chosen career, but I digress.
As with the first volume there is one piece that stands out where a hack decides to try and defend the indefensible or play a game of "some big boys came and made us do it"- in volume one it was a former member of the B-Specials turned journo trying to paint them as saints. In this one it is a sports writer, and obvious Linfield soccer fan in a piece about sectarian violence at an away match down South, where it was the Gardaí, stewards, soccer organisers and rival fans fault that the poor, innocent lambikins fans from Windsor Park ended up terrorising a town and wrecking the place, allowing them the benefit of the doubt he fails to permit anyone else. This is no big surprise since it seems par for the course in association football and the toxic fandom that goes along with it. However to proclaim the actions were due to some agents provocateurs and basically claim his team's supporters are squeaky clean throughout to then listing other games where fans turned to sectarian violence and failing to explain why his team was the common denominator in so many of the incidents apart from "it was everyone else's fault" does not seem to have troubled him. This is probably the weakest, and less well thought out piece in the whole book.
That aside, there are other areas of interest in this book. While the first looked at incidents from around the start of the Troubles, up to the first ceasefire in the 1990s, this one goes further, dealing with events the whole way through up to the present, post-GFA . A useful reminder of how things really were, and for those of us who grew up through it, it stands as a warning not to let certain people romanticise those days or encourage those who were only in nappies when the GFA was signed and seem keen to plunge us back into that darkness. Current politicians, particularly from the DUP and TUV side who are still trying to keep sectarian issues heightened in the run up to the 2022 Assembly elections to try and persuade the hard-of-thinking to vote for them probably won't want you reading this book, but it has a lot to offer, allowing us the opportunity to reflect on where we are, the sacrifice and bravery that got us to a sort-of-peace, and ask questions as to why we still allow the dinosaurs who laid the foundations for the Troubles and sabotaged previous attempts at resolution to still have access to power today.
As with the first edition there is a good mixture of facts and emotions. Normally I am not a fan of the trend of what I call "emotional editorialising" in actual news reports, where the journalist rather than just relaying the facts tries to dictate the emotional response of those viewing or reading. However there is a place for that in this book, as it highlights the mental costs of covering the Troubles and the impact on the personal and professional lives of the journalists.
It is also interesting to discover whether the outlook of the contributors to this book match the biases of the particular media organisations they were working for at the time- some do, but many do not, which in itself would be an interesting study- the impact of writing for the likes of the Daily Mail or Murdoch's poisonous rags when you are actually a decent person forced to sell your ethics and soul for your chosen career, but I digress.
As with the first volume there is one piece that stands out where a hack decides to try and defend the indefensible or play a game of "some big boys came and made us do it"- in volume one it was a former member of the B-Specials turned journo trying to paint them as saints. In this one it is a sports writer, and obvious Linfield soccer fan in a piece about sectarian violence at an away match down South, where it was the Gardaí, stewards, soccer organisers and rival fans fault that the poor, innocent lambikins fans from Windsor Park ended up terrorising a town and wrecking the place, allowing them the benefit of the doubt he fails to permit anyone else. This is no big surprise since it seems par for the course in association football and the toxic fandom that goes along with it. However to proclaim the actions were due to some agents provocateurs and basically claim his team's supporters are squeaky clean throughout to then listing other games where fans turned to sectarian violence and failing to explain why his team was the common denominator in so many of the incidents apart from "it was everyone else's fault" does not seem to have troubled him. This is probably the weakest, and less well thought out piece in the whole book.
That aside, there are other areas of interest in this book. While the first looked at incidents from around the start of the Troubles, up to the first ceasefire in the 1990s, this one goes further, dealing with events the whole way through up to the present, post-GFA . A useful reminder of how things really were, and for those of us who grew up through it, it stands as a warning not to let certain people romanticise those days or encourage those who were only in nappies when the GFA was signed and seem keen to plunge us back into that darkness. Current politicians, particularly from the DUP and TUV side who are still trying to keep sectarian issues heightened in the run up to the 2022 Assembly elections to try and persuade the hard-of-thinking to vote for them probably won't want you reading this book, but it has a lot to offer, allowing us the opportunity to reflect on where we are, the sacrifice and bravery that got us to a sort-of-peace, and ask questions as to why we still allow the dinosaurs who laid the foundations for the Troubles and sabotaged previous attempts at resolution to still have access to power today.
May 13, 2023
In this day and age, books like this one are vital, and in particular this and its predecessor should be required reading for secondary school students in the UK and Ireland and for anyone looking to get into journalism.
January 28, 2023
Very interesting short stories from well known and highly regarded journalists.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews