Journalist critical of Colombia arrests coverage

The Irish media's reporting of the detention of three suspected IRA members in Colombia was criticised at the school.

Mr Niels Lindvig, foreign editor of Denmark's national radio, said that in the first couple of days reporting the arrests journalists never questioned the timing of the story, the amount of evidence piling up against the three in Colombia, and the effects on the peace processes in Ireland and Colombia where a civil war has been waged for the past 37 years.

They also never questioned who had an interest in releasing the story at that time.

Mr Lindvig, who has lived in Colombia, has just returned from making a documentary there.

He said FARC was not a Marxist organisation. "Even people in Washington do not label FARC as Marxist."

He said that FARC is not a drug-dealing organisation but it makes "heaps of money from the drugs trade".

In the FARC-controlled areas of Colombia, every business representing more than a million dollars pays 10 per cent tax to FARC. He said multinationals, oil companies and drug dealers pay FARC too.

"They are not drug dealers. But they don't see it as their job to stop the drugs trade," Mr Lindvig said.

"The UN's drug control programme in Colombia confirmed that it was the rightwing paramilitaries, who co-operate with the Colombian army against FARC, who produce and refine cocaine and heroin rather than FARC who tax other producers," Mr Lindvig added.

"The Irish press and media did not get it right. Did it occur to anyone that the sources to the stories could be people who wanted to wreck both peace processes?"