The British government’s effort to censor broadcast media coverage of the Northern Irish conflict from 1988 to 1994 raised serious political and social issues, according to 电子游戏软件 historian and Irish Studies faculty member 罗伯特·萨维奇, 但也有荒谬的时候.
Forbidden to broadcast direct statements by representatives of political parties that supported violence, the BBC employed actors to provide voiceovers for video footage of excluded political figures, such as those from 新芬党; the actors spoke the words in real time along with the person whose voice was being dubbed. 但英国政府仍然认为这种策略有问题, 说的, 历史系的实践教授.
罗伯特·萨维奇
“High-ranking officials were concerned that the actors were doing too good a job, and that viewers might therefore think they were hearing the actual voices of 新芬党 representatives,萨维奇解释道, 最近出版的那本书的作者 北爱尔兰、英国广播公司和撒切尔时代英国的审查制度. “The actors had to be instructed not to synch their voices too closely with the persons on film, 这样配音就很明显了. In other words, these British officials wanted people to know that the audio was faked.”
审查法, 以及由此产生的微观管理程度, was the culmination of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s long-simmering mistrust of a media—in particular the BBC and Independent Broadcasting Authority, 或IBA, 网络——她认为是相反的, 如果不是彻头彻尾的敌意, 她的利益和政策，包括那些与“麻烦”有关的,萨维奇在书中写道.
北爱尔兰、英国广播公司和撒切尔时代英国的审查制度 is the fourth in a series of books Savage has published on Irish broadcasting, 并继承了它的前身, BBC的《电子游戏正规平台》——该片于2015年上映, shortly before the BBC made available material from its archives covering the Thatcher years, including internal communications and correspondence with governmental officials and other news organizations.
The new book examines the escalating tension between the broadcast media and the Thatcher government over various flashpoints in the Northern Irish conflict, including the 1981 hunger strike by IRA prisoners; a deadly IRA bombing attempt that Thatcher narrowly escaped; the killing of three Provisional IRA members in Gibraltar, followed by a loyalist’s attack on the funeral for the three in West Belfast; the killing of two off-duty British soldiers who drove into an IRA funeral procession; and a planned, 但从未播出, September 1988 TV interview with the 新芬党 president Gerry Adams just before the ban was issued by Home Secretary Douglas Hurd.
“当英国颁布广播禁令时, 专制政权国家, 像古巴, remarked on the irony of this beacon of democracy clamping down on the press.”
One of Britain’s many at-best questionable decisions in its governance of Northern Ireland, 据萨维奇说, the broadcasting ban—which also applied to some pro-British loyalist organizations—failed to ease the conflict and also damaged the United Kingdom’s reputation as a leading global democracy.
“英国政府痴迷于其在世界范围内的形象, and the last thing they wanted was to be seen as making a heavy-handed effort to suppress free speech,他说. “撒切尔夫人自己也说过，‘任何可行的民主制度都不可能实行审查制度,但她总是欺负英国广播公司, making threatening public statements and packing the BBC Board of Governors with her allies to influence its operation. 当英国颁布广播禁令时, 专制政权国家, 像古巴, remarked on the irony of this beacon of democracy clamping down on the press.”
正如萨维奇指出的, 几十年来,, the BBC’s Northern Ireland regional station had a close relationship with the unionist, 政府军/新教徒建立, 几乎不包括爱尔兰民族主义者和天主教的观点. But when the nationalist/Catholic community began to demand civil rights in the late 1960s, 宗派冲突开始了, the BBC and other British media made far more of an effort to cover this previously underreported viewpoint.
到20世纪70年代, the BBC realized they had paid no attention to issues of discrimination in housing, 投票, 以及引发天主教怨恨的就业问题, 作为一家公共服务广播公司，这样做是失败的,萨维奇说。. “他们试图纠正这个错误, and began asking difficult questions about government policies that contributed to the violence, which convinced the government that there was a left-wing bias in the BBC and other media. This discord escalated when Thatcher became prime minister [in 1979]: Criticism of the army or police, 她相信, 为爱尔兰共和军提供了“宣传氧气. 在她看来，这是不可接受的，因为这破坏了法治.”
对支持暴力的组织或个人的新闻报道, 比如恐怖组织或大规模枪手, 一直以来都是争议的来源. 但是英国的禁令是有问题的, 据萨维奇说, 因为它适用于一个受欢迎的政党, 新芬党.
“新芬党 was described as the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, but it was also an established political party whose members were democratically elected,他说. ”与此同时, the BBC was interviewing combatants in other countries’ conflicts that their governments denounced as being waged by terrorists or subversives, 比如南非的非洲人国民大会. 这是一个明显的脱节.”
The start of what would be the decisive Northern Irish peace process in 1994 led the government to finally rescind the ban.
“The imposition of censorship was an unsuccessful attempt to control the narrative of the conflict for domestic and international audiences. Obviously, there weren’t multiple platforms or sources for news like today. A two-minute segment on the national news could be very influential: The Foreign Office remarked that media coverage of Bloody Sunday in 1972 had ‘undermined all our work; now we’re seen as oppressors.“赌注很高.”
作为他电影的一个项目, 媒体, 和现代爱尔兰课, Savage and his undergraduate students have assembled an exhibit of republican and loyalist posters from a Burns Library collection that is currently on display in the 历史 Department.
肖恩·史密斯|大学传播| 2023年2月