Northern Ireland, the BBC, and Censorship in Thatcher's Britain PDF Download

Author: Robert J. Savage
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191944871
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This is a study of how Thatcher's government tried to control the narrative of the Northern Ireland conflict in an effort to shape how 'the Troubles' were understood by regional, national, and international audiences, and exploring how Britain's status as a leading global democracy was tarnished by the imposition of censorship in the 1988 Broadcasting Ban.

Author: Robert J. Savage
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192849743
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This is a study of how the Northern Ireland conflict was presented to an increasingly global audience during the premiership of Britain's 'Iron Lady', Margaret Thatcher. It addresses the tensions that characterized the relationship between the broadcast media and the Thatcher Government throughout the 1980s. Robert J. Savage explores how that tension worked its way into decisions made by managers, editors, and reporters addressing a conflict that seemed insoluble. Margaret Thatcher mistrusted the broadcast media, especially the BBC, believing it had a left-wing bias that was hostile to her interests and policies. This was especially true of the broadcast media's reporting about Northern Ireland. She regarded investigative reporting that explored the roots of republican violence in the region or coverage critical of her government's initiatives as undermining the rule of law, and thereby providing terrorists with what she termed the 'oxygen of publicity'. She followed in the footsteps of the Labour Government that proceeded her by threatening and bullying both the BBC and IBA, promising that the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act would be deployed to punish journalists that came into contact with the IRA. Although both networks continued to offer compelling news and current affairs programming, the tactics of her government produced considerable success. Wary of direct government intervention, both networks encouraged a remarkable degree of self-censorship when addressing 'the Troubles'. Regardless, by 1988, the Thatcher Government, unhappy with criticism of its policies, took the extraordinary step of imposing formal censorship on the British broadcast media. The infamous 'broadcasting ban' lasted six years, successfully silencing the voices of Irish republicans while tarnishing the reputation of the United Kingdom as a leading global democracy.

Author: Bill Rolston
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349112771
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
An exploration of the relationship between the broadcast media and political events in Northern Ireland. Contributors examine a range of issues, including the broadcasting ban, Ulster Unionism and British journalism, the Gibraltar killings and coverage of the conflict by Dublin journalists.

Author: Robert J. Savage
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781526116888
Category : Broadcast journalism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book explores how news and information about the conflict in Northern Ireland was disseminated through the most accessible, powerful and popular form of media: television. It focuses on the BBC and considers how its broadcasts complicated the 'Troubles' by challenging decisions, policies and tactics developed by governments trying to defeat a stubborn insurgency that threatened national security. The book uses highly original sources to consider how the BBC upset the efforts of a number of governments to control the narrative of a conflict that claimed over 3,500 lives and caused deep emotional scarring to thousands of people. Using recently released archival material from the BBC and a variety of government archives, the book addresses the contentious relationship between broadcasting officials, politicians, the army, police and civil service from the outbreak of violence throughout the 1980s.

Author: David Butler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This text investigates the troubled relationship between British broadcasting and Northern Ireland. The work combines historical, sociological and cultural studies approaches to the study of Northern Ireland with critically informed analysis of nonfictional coverage of the conflict. It considers the peculiar institutional development of local radio and television in the context of a long-term view of consensus broadcasting in the state in Britain, demonstrating how in the years since 1968 the reporting of Northern Ireland has adversely affected the traditionally independent position of British broadcasting.

Author: Liz Curtis
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Current Events
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Accusing the British media of misinformation in its coverage of Ireland during the present troubles, this book attempts to set the record straight about particular incidents and to show how legitimate political demands have been ignored.

Author: Martin Dillon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136680535
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In this astonishing and at times terrifying book, acclaimed writer and political commentator Martin Dillon examines for the first time the true role of religion in the conflict in Northern Ireland. He interviewed those directly involved--terrorists like Kenny McClinton and Billy Wright and churchmen like Father Pat Buckley--finding that the terrorists were more forthcoming than the priests and ministers. Dillon charts the history of the paramilitary forces on both sides and exposes the shocking covert role of British intelligence. He finds that, ultimately, both the church and government have failed their communities, allowing men and women of violence to fill a vacuum with bigotry and violence.

Author: Gladys Ganiel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198868693
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
This volume offers a range of sociological, political, and historical perspectives on religion in Ireland from 1800 to the present. Going beyond the usual Catholicism-Protestantism dichotomy and adopting an all-island approach, the book's contributors address religion's interaction with several contemporary themes and debates in modern Ireland.

Author: Jean Seaton
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847659160
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 766

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Book Description
This compelling account of a turbulent period in the history of the BBC opens at a time of national decline under the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and ends during Margaret Thatcher's iconoclastic Conservative premiership. The intervening years saw mass unemployment, trade union strikes and war in Northern Ireland and the Falklands - as well as legendary BBC programmes such as Live Aid, Fawlty Towers and Dad's Army, The Singing Detective and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and David Attenborough's Life on Earth. Comprehensively revised and expanded for this new edition, Jean Seaton's perceptive study presents an absorbing analysis of an institution that both reflects Britain and has helped to define it.

Author: Margaret Kelleher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009192450
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
Technology in Irish Literature and Culture shows how such significant technologies—typewriters, gramophones, print, radio, television, computers—have influenced Irish literary practices and cultural production, while also examining how technology has been embraced as a theme in Irish writing. Once a largely rural and agrarian society, contemporary Ireland has embraced the communicative, performative and consumptive habits of a culture utterly reliant on the digital. This text plumbs the origins of the present moment, examining the longer history of literature's interactions with the technological and exploring how the transformative capacity of modern technology has been mediated throughout a diverse national canon. Comprising essays from some of the major figures of Irish literary and cultural studies, this volume offers a wide-ranging, comprehensive account of how Irish literature and culture have interacted with technology.