ABSTRACT
This chapter examines television news coverage which surrounded the IRA ceasefire of August 1994 and compares the implications of that coverage in relation to views expressed about reporting by politicians, journalists and editors. A content analysis of 17 news provides discussion about the media's role within the peace process and its part in shaping communications around a key event in that process. The chapter tends to confirm rather than dispute the interview comments of politicians, journalists and editors and their experiences of the news within the peace process. It underlines how news maintained a preoccupation with values concerned with conflictual scenarios, negativity and simplistic interpretation and how these conventions of reporting were prioritised over examination of the political change and negotiation which was going on. Although this analysis highlights that television news referred overwhelmingly to elites for their views and comments on the IRA ceasefire and therefore tended to rely on dominant discourse.
