11 November 1999 Edition
Vincent McKenna
Vincent McKenna, formerly of the discredited FAIT group and now running his own one-man show, the self-styled `Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau', was this week the subject of a long overdue investigation by BBC's Spotlight programme.
Tuesday night's documentary showed McKenna to be a Walter Mitty character as well as a willing political tool for anti-Agreement unionists, right-wing Tories and possibly elements of British Intelligence.
Claim after claim by McKenna, carried without question by newspapers and television stations in Britain and Ireland, were found to be uncorroborated.
McKenna is a former member of FAIT, which was bankrolled by John Major's government. The organisation and its leading lights have now been discredited, whether through the latest exposure of McKenna, Nancy Gracey's misuse of funds, or the membership of FAIT of one Pastor Clifford Peebles, recently arrested on charges relating to the campaign of pipe-bomb attacks against nationalists.
As always, the first casualty of war is truth. The fact that unrepresentative organisations such as FAIT and unreliable individuals like Vincent McKenna were given free reign in the media is a result of the distorted political situation from which the North is hopefully escaping.
Elements of the media must now stand back and ask how it was that they were so willing to print and broadcast the assertions of this man, without attempting to verify stories for themselves.
The media, like the legal system, policing, economy and political system in the North, has been a victim of the conflict, during which all aspects of public life were subjected to a state counter-insurgency strategy.
Certain elements of the media, however, were more than willing to print unsubstantiated stories from McKenna, just as long as the target of those stories was republicans.
Tuesday night's documentary showed McKenna to be a Walter Mitty character as well as a willing political tool for anti-Agreement unionists, right-wing Tories and possibly elements of British Intelligence.
Claim after claim by McKenna, carried without question by newspapers and television stations in Britain and Ireland, were found to be uncorroborated.
McKenna is a former member of FAIT, which was bankrolled by John Major's government. The organisation and its leading lights have now been discredited, whether through the latest exposure of McKenna, Nancy Gracey's misuse of funds, or the membership of FAIT of one Pastor Clifford Peebles, recently arrested on charges relating to the campaign of pipe-bomb attacks against nationalists.
As always, the first casualty of war is truth. The fact that unrepresentative organisations such as FAIT and unreliable individuals like Vincent McKenna were given free reign in the media is a result of the distorted political situation from which the North is hopefully escaping.
Elements of the media must now stand back and ask how it was that they were so willing to print and broadcast the assertions of this man, without attempting to verify stories for themselves.
The media, like the legal system, policing, economy and political system in the North, has been a victim of the conflict, during which all aspects of public life were subjected to a state counter-insurgency strategy.
Certain elements of the media, however, were more than willing to print unsubstantiated stories from McKenna, just as long as the target of those stories was republicans.