Spooks, spies and spin doctors

Have you read the one about the senior IRA activist – apparently a good friend of mine – who is now into picking up prostitutes at the back of Belfast City Hall? Or what about my relative who has allegedly turned his back on republicanism over the recent initiatives by the IRA? Or what about the republican women who used to undress in front of their bed room windows to distract British soldiers on foot patrol who were then easily shot by IRA snipers? Or how about the alleged relationship during the Good Friday Agreement negotiations between Gerry Kelly and George Mitchell's colleague Martha Pope?

New or old, what have all of these and countless other similar stories over the past 30 years got in common? Well to begin with they're not true, more importantly, they have been published or broadcast at one time or another as fact.

The recent story briefed by the Assets Recovery Agency in the north, aided by the Criminal Assets Bureau in the south, is a case in point. A Sunday newspaper – obviously tipped off in advance – produces a story about IRA assets in property in Manchester. A statement is then released following a number of raids in Manchester in connection with property worth approximately £30 million. No one is named. No finger is pointed at any organisation. But then there is the 'off-the-record, unattributable briefing' which names Tom Murphy from South Armagh as the man in control of 250 premises worth £30 million in Manchester. This story is then carried as fact. No sourcing of the allegation. No independent verification. No balance.

The story was spread across the front pages of most newspapers and carried by the broadcast media as fact. Grainy photos of Tom Murphy -–who we were constantly told is nicknamed 'Slab' – were used, along with a photograph of a farm which it was claimed is at the centre of a smuggling empire run by 'Slab' Murphy.

The Manchester business people got themselves some decent legal representation and fought back. And then the briefings started to come unstuck. Tom Murphy owned no property in Manchester. There were no 250 premises. There was no £30 million. His brother Frank has an interest in seven pieces of property worth two or three hundred thousand and according, to the business people involved, all transactions were carried out through banks and lawyers, with the last transaction going back two years.

Tom Murphy denied any involvement in any of this. His statement points out that the photograph of the farm reproduced everywhere isn't even his.

So, what can we deduce from all of this? Firstly, there have been spooks and spies and spin doctors and securocrats telling lies about republicans and nationalists for decades. Most in the north but some in the south also. These lies have been designed to cover up torture, beatings, murder, shoot-to-kill operations and the deaths of hundreds of civilians through collusion between British security agencies and unionist paramilitary death squads. They lied about the Dublin Monaghan bombings, about Bloody Sunday, about the killing of Pat Finucane, about the killing of Eddie Fullerton. And these people are still telling lies. And sections of the media continue to reproduce these lies as fact.

None of these people would be able to ply their trade if sections of the media were not eager to follow this agenda. If there weren't some journalists, editors, managers and owners who share some of the same political goals as the securocrats or who simply will do anything to sell papers or up the ratings.

Naked bodies and celebrity scandals sell papers. So do lurid and fictitious stories about republicans. So as the IRA exits stage left, a stream of increasingly hysterical stories about Irish republicans is now the name of the game, even if there isn't a shred of evidence to back any of it up.

So why don't republicans sue? That is a course of action I have considered many times. It still remains an option for me and I look forward to the possibility, some day, of taking on those who vilify me on a regular basis. I look forward to making them pay for their slurs. But it takes a lot of money to go up against the media giants. Remember Albert Reynold's famous case in which he won the court action, was awarded one penny, but ended up with a huge bill? The appeal which he won was a costly affair. And then think of a republican ex-prisoner or well known republican activist and ask yourself what chance have they to pay for taking such a case, never mind the possibilities of winning it.

So, effectively, sections of the media treat republicans like dead people - they cannot be libelled. Republicans have limited options open to fight back. With that knowledge, unscrupulous people will invent stories, exaggerate stories and link named republicans to all sorts of outrageous behaviour.

Of course, the media have a difficult job. There is a duty to inform the public on all these issues. If there is wrong doing by republicans, government or anyone else, this should be exposed. But trial by media is no substitute for good old hard-nosed factual reporting.