I’M just flat-out confused.
Mostly when I comment on stories in the papers – and I do it a lot – I have a handle on what I find odd, enraging, engaging, right, wrong, righter or wronger. But I’ve found one that has me completely and utterly flabbergasted.
On Monday the Belfast Telegraph carried a story headlined ‘Deputy director of victims’ group under fire for “grossly inappropriate” criticism of DUP and Orange Order’. Let’s take a stroll through this little forest of words and thoughts and see if we can come out the other side any more informed, or at least any less confused.
First up, a declaration of interest: The story is about Andrée Murphy, an outstanding Andersonstown News columnist, a tireless campaigner for victims’ rights and a very dear and valued friend of mine. So I am not a neutral chronicler of this journalistic imbroglio, but the facts of the story are there online for all to see in all the relevant places, so go ahead and check for yourself, if you’re so minded.
The DUP are unhappy with Andrée. Why? Well, because Andrée wrote in an Andytown News article headlined ‘Unionist cold war aggression takes hold yet again’ that some of the actions of the party and that other estimable Loyal Ulster institution, the Orange Order, indicate a “unique psychosis” that speaks of them being both “deeply insecure” and “incredibly arrogant”. She added: “How lovely to have a home-grown disorder.”
North Belfast DUP MLA Philip Brett wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy at all. And so he took to the mattresses in the BelTel to defend himself. “I make it clear that I do not have any disorder. The article was grossly inappropriate.”
Then the BelTel and Fearless Phil turned their attention to another Andrée article in the Andytown News – ‘Is it time we had a commissioner for commissioners?’ – in which she paid tribute to “The disruptors. The protesters. Those who refuse to be bought.” The BelTel reported: “Mr Brett asked Dr Murphy which commissioners, which the Assembly’s Executive Committee is responsible for monitoring, had in her view ‘been bought’.”
Where to start? Well, the start might be as good a place as any…
One of the reasons for my aforementioned confusion is that I have a pretty good understanding of what Andrée Murphy writes and when. Not because I’m particularly astute or observant, but because it’s literally my job. I edit her columns and put them on the page every week. And I was pretty certain that in her column in the days prior to the BelTel piece I hadn’t read any of the words ascribed to Andrée, or written the headline. And I was equally assured in my conviction that the words hadn’t appeared in the previous week’s column either. And so I went looking for the words. Turns out the articles were written and published two weeks apart. Last November. Which is to say that the words that the BelTel and Philip Brett have presented to us as problematic were written four months ago.
One of the great paradoxes of the digital age is that – our jawdropping technology notwithstanding – there is less late news in printed newspapers today than there was when I were a lad. But even so, the BelTel publishing a story on Monday about a DUP bloke giving off about two Andytown News stories from a quarter of a year ago seems a little… unusual. Bonkers even.
And so I tried sucking my stubby pencil a little harder, and as I furiously knitted my brow and loudly slurped my tea, somewhere in the recesses of my ageing brain a small electrical charge sparked from one synapse to another and a vague and blurry film played on my mind’s screen of an Andrée Murphy-Philip Brett interaction that might go some way to explaining the BelTel’s sudden interest in two columns from last autumn. The occasion was a meeting on February 18 of the Committee for the Executive Office to discuss a strategy on victims and survivors. And at that meeting nearly a month ago, Philip put the same questions that he put to Andrée in Monday’s BelTel. I don’t know if the BelTel interviewed Philip for their Monday story and he repeated the points and questions he put to Andrée last month in very similar terms, or if the BelTel just lifted them from the committee record. What I do know is that nowhere in the piece does the BelTel mention the month-old committee meeting at which Philip’s concerns about Andrée’s words were first articulated.
And here’s something even odder. The Belfast Telegraph report doesn’t tell us where the Andrée Murphy ‘articles’ came from. They don’t say they came from a newspaper column and they certainly don’t say they came from the Andersonstown News – the articles seem in the BelTel story to have simply appeared out of nowhere. It should be said, though, that when he first put his concerns to Andrée at that committee meeting, Philip acknowledged them as coming from her Andersonstown News column. Why the BelTel is so coy about the provenance of the quotes is, again, something that has me scratching my head, but the words ‘four months ago’ keep springing to mind.
Then the BelTel story contains the following paragraph: “Dr Murphy said she had written the articles in a private capacity, but Mr Brett argued they pointed out her position as deputy director of Relatives for Justice.” (My emphasis.)
But nowhere in either of Andrée’s articles is her job mentioned, so just who ‘they’ are is another question which must be left up on its hind legs begging plaintively for an answer. Unless ‘they’ refers to the Andersonstown News, which at first blush would appear to make sense, as we include Andrée’s job title in her bio on our website. But then we recall that the Andersonstown News isn’t mentioned once in the BelTel piece, so unfortunately that’s out the window too.
And then there’s this: Andrée Murphy is quoted in Monday’s BelTel article replying to Philip Brett’s concerns about the language she used in her two columns. I had initially and naturally assumed that her quotes in the BelTel had come from an interview the paper had conducted with her. But in my attempts to make some sense out of what I had just read I learned that the quotes were lifted directly from that month-old committee meeting I mentioned earlier. But the BelTel doesn’t tell us that’s where they came from. And of course – altogether now and louder for those at the back – nowhere in Monday’s story is the committee meeting from which the story sprang mentioned.
As I say, odd. The whole thing. Not odd like a flying saucer odd, or Jim Allister cracking a joke odd. Just odd. Low-level, haven’t-got-a-scooby-mate odd. Almost as odd as Philip’s rather snowflakey response to the column in which Andrée referred to a DUP and Orange Order “psychosis”. If Philip is telling us that he’s unable to differentiate between the use of the word as a political analogy and its use in the literal psychiatric sense, then I can only suggest he does more reading. If he does he will very quickly find that clinical terms being deployed as colourful figures of speech are ten a penny. Yes, even in the Belfast Telegraph.
And if he wants to take Andrée’s very carefully-aimed tribute to people she admires for their refusal to be bought as an oblique dig at others, I urge him to crack on. Just as Andrée’s free to write what she likes, he’s free to read whatever he likes into it.
Finally, and to put the tin hat on this rather esoteric and serpentine tale, the BelTel insists on referring to Andrée Murphy throughout the article as “Doctor Andrée Murphy”. Where they plucked that doozie from is anybody’s guess, but the inexplicable mistake is strangely in keeping with the inexplicable and strange nature of the article itself. Andrée’s achievements are legion, but a doctorate is not among them. Although having now seen her referred to as “Dr Murphy” so many times by the BelTel I have to say that it is a title that becomes her quite beautifully. Maybe it’s something she should consider adding to her considerable list of achievements. I’d love to be there to be there to see her accept her doctorate and – who knows? – maybe the BelTel would write a story about it.
Four months later.
