IT is every journalist’s worst nightmare. It doesn’t often happen that a story is either important or sinister enough to lead a writer into direct conflict with dangerous forces. But stories do come along which confront journalists and editors with the dilemma: is it worth the potential risk to life, limb, family or property, to put my name or my paper’s name to this piece? We all like to imagine that we’d make the hard choices. Only some writers do.

The evil hour has dawned on more than one occasion in recent years for journalists working in the North. Reporters have consistently been threatened and intimidated there, mainly by loyalist paramilitaries. Some, like Jim Campbell of the Sunday World have been shot. Others, like Pat Cox when he did an investigation for Today Tonight on RTE into the activities of the Official IRA, have been put in genuine fear for their lives. On one occasion a bomb was placed by the UVF in the offices of the Sunday World. That kind of ruthlessness was endemic among paramilitaries in the North; it is hardly surprising that the tactic of terrorising people was used to silence journalists.

But until the shooting of Veronica Guerin, no journalist in the Republic had ever been the target of a premeditated attack, and seriously injured as a result, in the course of journalistic work. (Clearly those reporters on Wicklow GAA matches don’t count – Ed.) The laws of libel may have been a factor here – newspapers in the Republic have to be enormously cautious about what they publish and as a result there has been a real dearth of investigative journalism in Irish newspapers over the past twenty years at least.

Against that background, Veronica Guerin has established a reputation as a fearless writer, prepared to take on difficult – and sometimes extremely risky – assignments. For this, she clearly deserves the respect of her colleagues. The fact that someone felt strongly enough about what she had written to put a gun to her head, and ultimately to shoot her in the thigh, was evidence that her work had touched a raw nerve among those involved in organised crime here. The profession of journalism would have far less claim on people’s respect if reporters were not prepared to take these risks. But from any journalist’s perspective, the incident clearly defines a whole new area of threat that must be weighed and measured. Crime reporters may never sleep quite so easily in their beds again.

The shooting also throws a fresh spotlight on the nature of investigative journalism, and crime reporting in particular. The vast majority of stories in this field are published as a result of contact with Garda sources. The danger for journalists is that they can be used by Gardaí who are pursuing their own agenda, often with only a passing reference to the truth. Clearly a particularly high level of sensitivity and care is required where stories about crime are concerned. Yet too often this is lacking. Sensational headlines about crime sell newspapers by playing on people’s insecurities and fears. Newspapers have run campaigns on the issue of law and order which clearly flew in the face of the real facts and statistics. Whatever about journalists, publishers’ motives in this regard are not always pure.

Nor are those of the Gardai. There is a sense in which they need characters like Mr Big or Mr Clean and that journalists can be used to hype so-called crime bosses into anti-heroes. It is far easier for the Gardaí to win arguments about the need for more resources, more funding, more overtime and so on, if the notion is promulgated via the media that the city of Dublin is being run by a bunch of Al Capone-style figures whom the Gardaí have identified but can’t nail because of inadequate funding. With those undercurrents in mind, the job of journalism is always to get – and to deliver to the public – an accurate and truthful picture and not to be drawn into a PR exercise for either the cops or for any elements of the criminal ‘community’.

This is particularly important in the context of the fact that people’s lives may be put at risk – and not just those of journalists. For example, late last year the Sunday Independent, in an exclusive written by Veronica Guerin, stated categorically that Mr Big rather than the Provisional IRA had shot and killed the General, Martin Cahill. This version of events is not taken seriously by anyone who knows the way the Provos operate – and yet in itself it might have had the effect of inspiring a blood bath between rival gangs. More recently the Evening Herald suggested that the money from the Brinks-Allied robbery would be used by Mr Clean (the same man as Mr Big) to flood the streets of Dublin with heroin: reliable sources who know him, who have no axe to grind either way, insist he has absolutely nothing to do with heroin or drugs.

Even the assumption that Mr Clean/Mr Big/Mr Whatever You’re Having Yourself shot Veronica Guerin has to be questioned, as the police above all must know. It could, for example, have been the work of someone else whose own aims it suited to have the attention of the Gardaí focussed exclusively on the gang suspected of the Brinks-Allied heist. And yet it is being stated and re-stated in newspapers as if it were fact.

One recent report suggested that the Gardaí were aware of five people killed by this new super anti-hero. The fact that putting that kind of sensational and unsubstantiated claim into print was in itself irresponsible is hardly the point. What it really begs is the question – if it’s true, how does he get away with it? And what the fuck are the cops at if they can’t convict him for even one of them?

Be very careful out there.

• Niall Stokes

Editor