Jude Collins

Sunday 15 January 2012

BBC's Sunday Sequence - better and better

Sunday Sequence's William Crawley 

If BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh's Sunday Sequence  gets any better, it'll be a must-listen and half  the church-going population will arrive late. This morning it had David Vance and Finola Meredith on, talking about those recent images of American soldiers urinating on dead Taliban. To say they differed would be to put it mildly. Finola thought that urinating on dead bodies was disgusting, inhuman and totally defenceless conduct, which struck me as a fair description. David thought that...well I found it hard to tell what David thought. He talked about how bad the Taliban were and how he had a website called 'A Tangled Web' that didn't have racist stuff by him on it, and how putting those images on Youtube or wherever was inhuman, or was it terrible, or maybe deserving of punishment, but the urinating itself...No I'll stop,  I'm afraid I'm an unreliable witness. I kept having this red mist at the notion that someone was  whataboutering around this  ghastly act.  Finola Meredith, from what I've seen of her, is not a woman who loses her temper easily, but she came near to it this morning with Vance.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, the programme produced Anthony McIntyre and Danny Morrison talking about the Boston tapes - those recorded interviews with a selection of participants, loyalist and republican, where they talk about who did what in the Troubles.  The people used were given an assurance that what they said would not be made public until after their death; unfortunately, this was an assurance no-one could give, as Boston College apparently knew and Anthony McIntyre and his colleague Ed Moloney should have known. Now it's looking as though the tapes may pass to the PSNI ; what was to remain confidential will no longer be so.

Morrison, who believes he was slandered on the tapes,  argued that Moloney and McIntyre shouldn't have encouraged people to make claims about what others did as well as what they themselves did, and that they should have been warned the information could be seized and passed to the authorities.  McIntyre said they'd been more or less misled by Boston College and that in hindsight yes, they should have sought legal advice before embarking on the project.

Just two comments - for the moment. One,  if I'd been doing such interviews,  the first thing I'd have checked would have been the legal possibility of anyone else having access to this stuff?  It's almost inconceivable that Moloney and McIntyre didn't think of knocking on a very sharp lawyer's door before they started recording.

The second thing is,  Moloney and McIntyre really should stop referring to this project as "research".  A basic ingredient of  research is that the sample you use reflects the larger population; in this case, only those with an anti-Sinn Féin perspective on the Troubles got used. Sorry, chaps. Skewed sample, skewed research.  There must be a better word for the Boston project.

5 comments:

  1. You write, "The second thing is, Moloney and McIntyre really should stop referring to this project as "research". A basic ingredient of research is that the sample you use reflects the larger population; in this case, only those with an anti-Sinn Féin perspective on the Troubles got used."
    Blah, Blah, Sinn Fein Rule, Blah.
    Jude, I take it that you know the entire list of 30 something interviewees for the project? You must be the only one with that information as the full list of people that provided oral testimony on their activities during war/troubles has never been revealed. The fact is that apart from Brendan Hughes and Marion Price, you don't have a clue who the interviewees are, so quit peddling Danny Morrison's propaganda that only anti Adams types gave recordings. The project will need to be judged in the round. It is just unfortunate for your party of choice that the first interview released came from a deceased man who probably knew the truth about Gerry Adams better than anyone else.

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    1. Anonymous- 9 50 AM
      Good post.Sadly Jude has been proclaiming the Sinn Fein line so long that he cant break the habit.The latest blog on The Pensive Quill website is a useful riposte to thinking such as Judes or Niall O Dowd.

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  2. Jude - really enjoy reading your blogs. On a dull technical note your blogspot isn't very mobile device friendly. e.g. on an iphone the text isn't 'wrapped' and it's difficult to read. Has any one else reported the same? Apologies for the gripe, and I appreciate this is probably something beyond your control, and as I say the content is excellent.

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  3. Good piece Jude, and have to agree with your analysis of Boston tapes. Going from Maloney and Mcintyre's track record they aint going to have someone say something good about Sinn Féin and besides I would say the majority of republicans who support SF would not have anything to do with the duo as they know they write with a poision pen.

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  4. Jude,

    Why does Wm Crawley continue to have Vance on his programme? And laud him as a commentator? It detracts from a fantastic and thought provoking programme, but Vance's sheer racism is never challenged nor does he add anything intellectual to debate - either on BBC RU or the Internet.

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