Priest criticises `States of Fear' for giving only one side of story

The communications director of the Catholic Church's Dublin Archdiocese, Father John Dardis, has criticised the States of Fear television series for lack of balance. "I believe States of Fear missed an opportunity to give historical context and a balanced overview and thereby failed to develop our understanding of what was happening in childcare in Ireland in the last 50 years," he said.

Writing in the current issue of Link-Up, the Archdiocese's magazine, he continued that "for example, during the making of the series, the Christian Brothers offered to put the programme-makers in touch with a range of people who had more positive experiences of being at industrial schools. RTE said they would talk to the men but that it was extremely unlikely they would be interviewed for broadcast."

Father Dardis said "the Christian Brothers were asked to provide an official spokesman for interview for the programmes. On further inquiry, it transpired they were being offered a 20-minute interview of which 4-5 minutes would be used over the course of three programmes. The Christian Brothers felt this was a recipe for being quoted out of context and they therefore declined to take part. The programme, it seemed, was really only interested in one side of the story and so the full story remains to be told."

He criticised the advance marketing of the programme, which he felt "prevented a balanced discussion from taking place". Journalists were allowed a preview of the first programme a few days before it was aired, he said.

"This is standard practice and it is obviously a good way to promote your programme if you are a producer" and it meant the series got almost unprecedented pre-publicity, he said. However, "it also meant that opinion about the programmes and the issues portrayed in them had become framed in a particular direction by the time the first programme was aired."

In that context, there was little church spokespeople could do afterwards "to get across their perspective," he said.

He also pointed out that "despite the fact that such serious allegations were being made against the religious orders and congregations, their representatives were refused a similar preview of the programme."

Father Dardis warned of the danger in the current climate of anger and resentment that the church would exclude itself or be excluded from the debate about an emerging Ireland. "There are things in the Ireland of the past for which the church feels shame," he said. The challenge was to be faithful to that reality while also believing the church could contribute positively to the emerging Ireland. It was an "in-between time", "in between a painful accountability for the past and an equally painful birth into the future".

Attempts to contact Ms Mary Raftery, producer of the States of Fear series, about Father Dardis's criticisms were unsuccessful last night.