Do media outlets bear responsibility for their output? In practice, there doesn’t appear to be a definitive answer to this age-old question.

Some like to make much of that publish-and-be-damned maxim, arguing that there may be consequences but hell, as long as it’s factual, where’s the problem?

Others, aware that those consequences could be life-threatening, are willing to engage in what they would regard as sensible self-censorship.

So, for example, when reporting suicide it is now generally accepted, in Britain at least, that newspapers should not publish the exact methods on the grounds that it might lead to copycat actions. Editors believe that, in so doing, they are acting responsibly in the public interest.

Now consider a somewhat different scenario. The term originally used by the BBC to describe the terrorist organisation operating in Iraq and Syria was “Islamic state.”

Following criticism by MPs in June 2015, who said the name had the effect of legitimising the group, the corporation decided to refer to it as the “so-called Islamic state”, which it now does as a matter of routine.

The BBC’s change of policy suggests that, in taking the criticism on board, it accepted that there could be consequences in sticking to its original description.



Gradually, the simple prefix of “so-called”, which struck me as bizarre when first used, has seeped into the consciousness. I think it has helped to deligitimise Isis.

I was reminded of it when reading a comment in an Irish Times article yesterday, headlined “Dissident republicanism’s 20-year escalation”.

After a lengthy assessment of the continuing threat of “IRA splinter groups”, the writer quoted an academic, Jonny Byrne of Ulster university:

“We need to stop legitimising their [dissident] actions through the language of the past such as the description of paramilitary assaults. Anywhere else this would be referred to as gangsterism. Nobody yet has framed or articulated the political thought or rationale for dissident activity”.

In other words, by referring to “dissidents” - disparate overlapping groups that use IRA or similar in their self-descriptions - media outlets are investing them with an undeserved political raison d’être. The dissident tag imbues them with a spurious legitimacy. It embellishes them with a political veneer

In fact, their politics - such as they are - are virtually impossible to fathom. I accept that they want a united Ireland, but the route they have chosen to take to secure it - pursuing a war discontinued 20 years ago by the former Provisional IRA - makes no sense whatsoever.



It ignores the political reality of the peace process. It is also undeniable (look at the voting figures) that these groups have no validity in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the nationalist population, let alone the unionist population, in Northern Ireland.

They have killed people. They have sown discord. And it must be conceded that they have managed to recruit alienated, unemployed youth, often by suggesting that Sinn Féin, in sharing power at Stormont and in having eschewed violence, now represents “the establishment.”

This travesty of the truth has been given force by the way in which these groups have been represented in the media as alternative political entities rather than, echoing Byrne, gangsters.

I could take his argument a stage further by suggesting that the references by newspapers and broadcasters to these groups as IRA dissidents or, more usually, “dissident republicans”, has had an insidious consequence.

It has tended to tarnish the standing of, for want of a better phrase, mainstream republicanism. At best, this has been unconscious. At worst, it has been deliberate because Sinn Féin has few friends in the media.

But let’s accept for the purposes of this argument that it has been by accident rather than design and return to the central, substantive point. Media outlets should take a leaf out of the BBC’s book.

I suppose it might make a difference to adopt the BBC formula by renaming these anti-peace groups as “so-called dissidents” or “so-called republicans”. But that would still endow them with an unmerited political dimension. In the circumstances, gangs and gangsters is better. Better to criminalise rather than politicise.