Television
May 2015
The BBC's 'Irish troubles'
Television, conflict and Northern Ireland
by Robert J. Savage
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 a wide array of highly original sources to consider how Britain's public service broadcaster 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 citizens in Northern Ireland, Britain and the Irish Republic. 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.
