He described the politics of the Alliance Party, for example, as almost identical to those of Sinn Fein/the Workers Party. Given that the Unionist Party was then the largest political grouping in Northern Ireland, it could be argued that it had actually been under-represented on Today Tonight.īut, for Browne, it seems, any approach to Northern Ireland that did not coincide with his own was evidence of a conspiracy. In fact, all it revealed was Brownes own bias. For Browne, this contrasted suspiciously with the sixteen appearances of the SDLP leaders, John Hume and Seamus Mallon. He noted that John Cushnahan, the leader of the Alliance Party whom he dismissed as an unknown had appeared on nine programmes, and that Harold McCusker, the Deputy Leader of the Unionist Party, had appeared ten times. He proceeded to lay the foundations for a conspiracy theory that has persisted till this day, by claiming that the film was evidence that Today Tonight was being run by members of what was then known as Sinn Fein/the Workers Party.īrowne claimed to have examined 55 broadcasts of Today Tonight, which had dealt with Northern Ireland, and to have discovered in them tangible evidence of biased coverage on the national question. He argued that, in telling the story of Joanna and her fellow victims, the film had been slanted against the Provisional IRA. Vincent Browne, who was then Editor of Magill, claimed that the film had been commissioned by Joe Mulholland, as Editor of Today Tonight, with the specific purpose of working as an antidote to H-Block propaganda. The following year, the programme was singled out for a disparaging attack in the pages of this magazine.
#Rug stickies tv
It generated a huge public reaction, went on to win a Torc at the Celtic Film Festival and became one of the very few Irish TV programmes ever to be nominated for a prestigious Emmy Award the TV equivalent of the Oscars.īut not everyone appreciated the value of the programme. Victims of Violence gave parity of esteem to all those who had suffered from terror, and was a landmark in the establishment of Today Tonight as one of RTEs flagship programmes. In fact, the film was evenly divided between IRA victims and those of loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces. Not all of these had been killed or maimed by the IRA. Tish Barry and Joe Little filmed a documentary for the current affairs programme Today Tonight, with Joannas family and the relatives of other forgotten casualties of terrorism. Later that year, the story of Joanna Mathers was told on RTE television. But that emerged only after Bobby Sands had been elected to Westminster. It emerged later that the weapon used to murder Joanne Mathers could be forensically linked to two punishment shootings that had been acknowledged by the Derry IRA. The IRA statement made no mention of securocrats the term had not yet been invented but otherwise, the strategy of initially disclaiming certain acts of violence has become all too familiar. Sands was bidding to become the Westminster MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, in a by-election that would, in time, radically transform the politics of Ireland. Its Derry brigade led, at that time, by Martin McGuinness claimed that Joannas murder was an attempt to discredit the (electoral) campaign of Bobby Sands. The Provisional IRA at first denied any involvement. He wrenched the clipboard from her hands, put a gun to her head and fired. One evening, she was helping a family in Andersons Crescent with their return when a masked man dashed up to the doorway. She was a first class honours graduate from Queens University, married to a farmer, when she decided to earn some extra money by collecting census forms in Derry city. Joanna Mathers was just 25 years old in the spring of 1981. And he goess on to accuse the national broadcaster of declining standards. He fields the widely made criticism of RTE at that time that it was dominated by key members of the Workers Party. Gerry Gregg, a producer on RTE’s Today Tonight current affairs programme during the turblent years of the early 80s reflects on his own difficult time there.
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