Northern Ireland and Terrorism

Official beliefs and fears about the effect of documentary realism or ‘actuality’ reportage in television had an impact upon the representation of the Falklands campaign, and continue to have a similar effect upon news of the political and civil unrest in Northern Ireland. The concept of sovereignty is conventional for the press, and within its logic there is no way of simply ‘getting out’ of Northern Ireland. The need to ‘stay in’ is most easily explained in the concept of a United Kingdom. The press preserves the ‘mind-set’ it has, which is in line with the semantic division between terrorism and the state. The language of terrorism is important because it provides the frame within which ‘media discourse may routinely reproduce dominant meanings’. Photo-journalism can be used to move audiences in a direction which is politically opposed to the stance of the Independent on the broadcasting ban.