'Stakeknife' reporting a scandal

There have been media disgraces on both sides of the Atlantic these past two weeks. In the case of one, there has been contrition and self-examination. In the case of the other, indifference and brazenness.

The disgrace in America concerned the New York Times. A young reporter embellished colour stories by cutting a few corners and stealing from other reporters' stories. Not much damage done, the public was not significantly deceived, the newspaper owned up when the fabrications came to light and it has undertaken an examination on how partly fabricated copy made it into the paper.

On this side of the Atlantic several newspapers in Ireland and Britain published stories in the last 10 days on a subject of significant importance - the alleged presence of a secret British agent within the IRA who was permitted by his intelligence handlers to murder people. Most of what was written, by its nature, remains unverifiable, but one significant fact that has been verifiable has been found to be untrue, thereby casting doubt on the stories in general. And not a whimper of unease among these newspapers since.

The worst offender has been the Sunday Tribune . On Sunday week last, it published an "exclusive" on its front page, purporting to name "Stakeknife", the British agent at the heart of the IRA, as Alfredo Scappaticci. Its first sentence began with: "The British army and intelligence services this weekend spirited into hiding its top agent within the IRA. . ."

The Sunday Tribune claimed Scappaticci had been permitted by his British intelligence handlers to engage in several murders, including that of the Louth farmer, Tom Oliver. No named sources were quoted in support of these claims. Indeed, no named journalists were stated to have written the story.

The first sentence of the report contained the sole verifiable fact and this has proved to be false. At the very time that it was being written that Alfredo Scappaticci had been "spirited" out of Northern Ireland, we now know Mr Scappaticci was sitting at home in Belfast.

This was not the only dodgy bit of the Tribune's story. Almost uniquely for the Sunday Tribune, the identity of the journalist or journalists who wrote the story was concealed, and the story was claimed to be "exclusive".

It has since become evident that the story was not "exclusive", for it was also carried in the Sunday Herald of Glasgow, in suspiciously similar form. The reporter who wrote that story, Nial Mackay, the investigations editor of that newspaper, was bylined in a feature article in the Sunday Tribune last Sunday on the same issue and it seems to me, although not confirmed, that he was at least one of the authors of the Sunday Tribune story of Sunday week last. And last Sunday's Sunday Tribune carried another story on the Stakeknife affair, almost identical to a story bylined Nial Mackay in last Sunday's Sunday Herald (how Stakeknife witnessed a high-profile republican shoot an informer in the head). Thus, it appears, not alone was the Sunday Tribune story not exclusive, but its authors were not all "Tribune reporters" as was claimed.

Instead of an expression of regret for the errors of the previous week, last Sunday the newspaper was self-congratulatory over its "exclusive" - i.e. the story that was not just wrong but, apparently, was not "exclusive" and not even a Sunday Tribune story.

The deception was compounded last Sunday when it was claimed that the newspaper had another "exclusive", this time an interview with one of the British Intelligence handlers of "Stakeknife". As is obvious from Mr Mackay's report in the Sunday Herald, this "exclusive" interview was obtained, not by the Sunday Tribune but by the Sunday Herald.

It was not just the Sunday Tribune that has compromised itself over this story; so too did several other newspapers and broadcast stations that went with it subsequently, knowing it was based on dodgy foundations, supplemented with "confirmations" from notoriously unreliable sources (those oddly classified as "Intelligence").

(I should acknowledge that the scepticism that I expressed last week in this column about the Stakeknife story was prompted by the more cautious approach of The Irish Times.)

Newspapers regularly get things wrong but what is peculiar about this episode is first that there has been no hint of apology or contrition in any of these newspapers for getting it wrong (if nothing else, the claims that Mr Scappaticci had left Northern Ireland and was in protective custody in the UK), no regret for relying on sources that are classically unreliable, and no self-examination on how such lapses could occur on a story of such significance.

It may transpire in the future that Mr Scappaticci was involved with British Intelligence, in which case we can expect the newspapers to claim "vindication". It won't do.

They ran a story of huge significance on the flimsiest of evidence and as such damaged the credibility of journalism generally.

(By the time of going to press, neither of the editors of the Sunday Tribune had returned repeated calls on the Stakeknife story, nor did Nial Mackay of the Sunday Herald.)

vbrowne@irish-times.ie