On this Sunday and Monday, the event of 30 years ago was given widespread coverage in the daily newspapers in the North, and the BBC and UTV. Here, I only saw two reports of the anniversary of the Teebane slaughter, and the Examiner was the only paper to contact me directly and asked me to write an opinion piece on the subject, which you are now reading.

My purpose in sending the email was hoping to encourage them to report on this atrocity, because I have become increasingly frustrated and annoyed at the imbalance in the coverage of the atrocities that occurred during the Northern Ireland Troubles.

My perception is that there appears to be a concentration in the Irish media primarily on atrocities that involved collusion between loyalist paramilitary organisations and a small number of corrupt members of Northern Ireland’s security forces, and also on the British Parachute Regiment who murdered innocents, particularly Catholics in Ballymurphy and on Bloody Sunday in Derry, but not only there.

Let me state unequivocally that I totally support the exposure of proven instances of collusion and murder by the security forces and the prosecution of those responsible.

Atrocities analysis

However, my perception is that the media in this part of Ireland in recent times rarely broadcasts documentaries or publishes analytical articles detailing the scale and sectarian nature of IRA atrocities that happened during the Troubles, particularly when the Provisional IRA was responsible for the murders of 52% of the 3,523 victims that were killed.

Five other republican terrorist groups were responsible for another 7%; 1,020 (20%) were attributed to loyalist paramilitary groups; 368 (10%) to security forces (and many of these were killed in firefights between the security forces and either loyalist or republican terrorists).

When these figures are analysed further, it emerges that victims consisted of 1,855 civilians; 1,123 members of the security forces; 394 members of republican terrorist groups, and 151 members of loyalist paramilitary groups.

I pose this question to our media; if you were to analyse the recent publication and broadcasting of the major and controversial incidents of the Troubles, would you not agree that it does not accurately reflect where the true responsibility lies for the suffering and heartbreak and pain that was callously inflicted on the families of the victims?

I am not claiming that there is any bias or deliberate misleading by journalists here.

As a leading politician in the North during the worst of the Troubles, I worked very closely with Belfast- and Dublin-based journalists of RTÉ, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Press and the Examiner. The quality, integrity, and courage of their reporting was beyond reproach.

I would say the same about their successors in their present-day reporting of Northern Ireland matters. A particular example of this is the recently retired northern editor of RTÉ, Tommie Gorman.

However, I still maintain my main point — the recent reporting of those
responsible for violence in the North prior to the Good Friday Agreement is unbalanced

Maybe part of the problem is that too many of our journalists (and voters) are too young to remember what happened in the northeastern part of our country in the years between 1970 and 2000.

But no matter what the reason, I hope that my comments will provide cause for reflection, not least of all because, in my opinion, there are significant consequences that flow from the current imbalance. I know my view on this is shared by many people, not only across the political divide here in the Republic, but also across the traditional divide in Northern Ireland itself.

I believe it influences young people in the Republic of Ireland to believe that the IRA campaign was justified. It feeds the Sinn Féin narrative, and encourages them to continue to glorify and excuse the murders that the IRA committed; and to continue to refuse to offer any apologies for what happened and therefore prolong the suffering and pain which continues to be experienced by the families whose fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters they callously murdered.

John Cushnahan is a former leader of the Alliance Party and a former Fine Gael MEP