TO write them up or play them down is one question about dissident republicans, arguably the least important. What matters is their effect: on a police service still trying to transform into something equally supported by Catholics and Protestants; on republicans who signed up to Stormont and those who vote for them; on everyday life. But it is just possible that how dissidents are reported has already strengthened their self-belief.
Didn't we get argument about the duty of reporters out of the way in the 1970s and 1980s, as it became clear that violence was indeed turning into a saga, when opinion regularly frothed up about media behaviour? Opinion, of course, split down the middle. Nationalists almost to a person thought reporting ought to be straight, as near objective as possible, except when interviewers were facing the British army or RUC, when more edge was required. Unionists even more universally wanted disapproval in reports, aggressive interviews with IRA front-men (and they were all men). Plus blanket approval for security force assertions, except when they involved loyalist paramilitarism or clashes in Protestant districts.
Media behaviour and attitudes was a hot-button issue early on. The BBC in Belfast, with few and disregarded Catholic broadcasters until considerably later, was regarded by unionist governments as almost an official press agency. Several network programmes on discrimination and Catholic grievance were pulled on the anxious local say-so of Ormeau Avenue. But they took flak in any case from unhappy unionists, about the audacity of London-based journalists who thought to make these programmes in the first place.
At the other end, some nationalist/ republican opinion has always held that the British Broadcasting Corporation is what it says it is, as an angry letter to this paper put it only weeks ago. A far larger unionist sector regularly burnishes the gripe. Every documentary querying security force Troubles behaviour is thought to be flagrant contradiction of the "British" bit of the name.
In the worst days, when people were killed in the space of 24 hours in separate incidents by different agencies of death, for most print reporters the details were so evidently awful that ordering them mentally and writing under pressure left neither time nor inclination to evaluate, or pontificate, about the scale of horror. For television reporters, perhaps struggling against nausea to broadcast beside distorted wreckage from which human wreckage had just been recovered, visual details were best made by the camera, or voiced by a paramedic, doctor or fireman. The largest quantity of explosive used since/greatest loss of life in a single incident since/ damage which looks set to outstrip ... was the height of contextualisation, though the word was unheard.
There was no need to call the killers and would-be killers scum, animals, murderers. The facts were enough. Rage is a human response, but the most heart-rending bereaved people, who draw in watchers and listeners of all or most political beliefs, have always been the most under-stated.
It was easy enough to defend steering away from using "murder", "terrorist " and "terrorism." All were used blithely by unionists and some British politicians of republican violence, rarely if ever about that of loyalists, never about the dirty war tactics of security force members. These were not expression of revulsion at violence but political terms, used for political reasons.
What is the voicing of contempt and repeated condemnation meant to achieve? Well, a media organisation may be convinced that it has a civic duty to assert abhorrence of violence. Editorials are the place for those assertions, opinion slots. They have no place in straight reports.
Shouting at the Provos never worked. The condemnation that hurt came from their own supporters. It must have been a sadness for Father Alec Reid the peacemaker, to stare death in the face as dissident republicans geared up yet again, with the same attitude the Provos professed at their least political: when they claimed a mandate from the dead generations, Ireland unfree.
The most demoralising aspect of the present dissidents at this point, though perhaps not for them, is that they have so few declared supporters. Their purpose is so clearly spite and vindictiveness towards mainstream republicanism, plus pleasure in causing disorder, and fear. Out to destabilise a stalled political vehicle, it could be they neither need nor want more support. Supporters bring demands, after all, and sometimes reproof.
The most highly-coloured and prolonged condemnations during the Troubles achieved nothing beyond making the name-callers feel more righteous. This society has enough self-righteous citizens.