North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?
US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty Anti-Empire >>
Promoting Human Rights in IrelandHuman Rights in Ireland >>
Energy Geopolitics in a Putin-Trump World Mon Feb 24, 2025 07:00 | Tilak Doshi In a world reshaped by Putin and Trump, the Daily Sceptic's Energy Editor explains how a thaw between Russia and the US could change the global energy game, sidelining Europe and lifting the Global South.
The post Energy Geopolitics in a Putin-Trump World appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Mon Feb 24, 2025 01:15 | Richard Eldred A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
BP Faces ?Existential Crisis? After Ruinous Attempt to Go Green Sun Feb 23, 2025 19:00 | Richard Eldred BP's big green energy gamble has backfired, leaving profits in freefall and activist investors circling like sharks ? now, desperate to stay afloat, it's making a frantic dash back to oil and gas.
The post BP Faces ?Existential Crisis? After Ruinous Attempt to Go Green appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Migrant Powder Keg: Turmoil in Ireland Amid 300% Rise in Asylum Seekers Sun Feb 23, 2025 17:00 | Richard Eldred With asylum claims up 300%, Ireland is ablaze with anti-migrant rage, with Dublin now a warzone of bus-smashing thugs, street machete fights and all-out brawls.
The post Migrant Powder Keg: Turmoil in Ireland Amid 300% Rise in Asylum Seekers appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Firemen Are Too Male and Too White, Say Chiefs Sun Feb 23, 2025 15:00 | Richard Eldred Britain's fire service is too male, too white and stuck in the Dark Ages of bigotry, according to a report for the National Fire Chiefs Council.
The post Firemen Are Too Male and Too White, Say Chiefs appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?121 Sat Feb 22, 2025 05:50 | en
US-Russian peace talks against the backdrop of Ukrainian attack on US interests ... Sat Feb 22, 2025 05:40 | en
Putin's triumph after 18 years: Munich Security Conference embraces multipolarit... Thu Feb 20, 2025 13:25 | en
Westerners and the conflict in Ukraine, by Thierry Meyssan Tue Feb 18, 2025 06:56 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?120 Fri Feb 14, 2025 13:14 | en Voltaire Network >>
|
NEW FLAW found in Eoghan Harris / Gerry Gregg RTE TV documentary An Tost Fada (The Long Silence)
national |
history and heritage |
news report
Saturday July 29, 2017 10:02 by Tom Cooper

Documentary re-edited for West Cork History Festival
A NEW FLAW has been discovered in the Eoghan Harris / Gerry Gregg TV documentary An Tost Fada (The Long Silence)
A 1939 gravestone (& inscription) of a woman was presented as that of man killed in 1921 (who An Tost Fada said was killed in April 1922). See link to original story below.
Original Story of successful complaint:
RTE upholds complaint against Eoghan Harris programme on War of independence
http://indymedia.ie/article/102026
 How Eoghan Harris and Gerry Gregg got it wrong - shot by shot - click for bigger image Re-edited documetnary to be shown at West Cork History Festival. See
http://www.southernstar.ie/news/roundup/articles/2017/0...tary/
History festival to screen amended documentary
Thursday, 27th July, 2017 3:17pm
by Jackie Keogh
A CORRECTED version of a documentary about the killing of Protestants in West Cork in the 1920s will be screened at noon on Saturday, July 29th as part of the inaugural West Cork History Festival.
The documentary – An Tost Fada, The Long Silence – is an RTÉ production that was first shown in 2012, but was not broadcast in the intervening years because it contained a number of errors.
RTÉ confirmed that an edited version of the documentary in which the inaccuracies have been removed has been licensed to the festival at a rate of €600.
Gerry Gregg, the producer, confirmed that two errors have been rectified. The first – an incorrect date of April 1922 was given for the IRA shooting of Matthew Connell and William Sweetman – has been amended to February 1921.
The second – a claim that Canon George Salter’s father, William, had received £1,700 compensation from the British government – has been removed from the edited version.
Eoghan Harris, who wrote and narrated the documentary, will attend the screening at noon at Rosebank House, just outside of Skibbereen on the Tragumna Road, and will discuss the documentary with the audience afterwards.
Organisers of the West Cork History Festival say they are pleased to include the amended film as part of a full programme of events over the weekend Friday, July 28th to Sunday, July 30th.
The documentary is a personal account by Canon George Salter, then an 87-year old retired Church of Ireland minister, of his family’s flight from their farm near Dunmanway after 13 Protestants were killed in April 1922.
Tom Cooper, chairman of the Irish National Congress, which advocates Irish reunification, had originally complained to RTÉ in 2012 that the film contained inaccuracies.
And, in a letter to The Southern Star this week, he welcomed the fact that An Tost Fada has been amended to correct ‘two of its more glaring errors.’
Mr Cooper said he believes ‘the general public deserves better from our national broadcaster, and so, too, do those attending the West Cork History Festival.
‘My advice to those watching in silence the Gregg-Harris RTÉ documentary – take it with a large pinch of salt.’
 News coverage of flaws in An Tost Fada documentary and re-edit for West Cork History Festival - click for bigger image
|
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (1 of 1)
Jump To Comment: 1https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/ira-spies-an...77098
IRA, spies and west Cork killing
Irish Times 7 August 2017
Sir, – Barry Roche noted that, following my complaint, the 2012 Gerry Gregg and Eoghan Harris RTÉ documentary An Tost Fada (The Long Silence) was “corrected for some errors since its first screening” (Home News, July 31st). The programme was re-edited for the recent West Cork History Festival, after I alerted RTÉ of the intention to screen it.
RTÉ admitted to two errors. In one, the programme got the date wrong in relation to the killing of two Protestant farmers by a factor of 14 months.
The significance of the date of the killings is crucial. Gregg and Harris claim the killings took place in April 1922, when the War of Independence was over, implying that the killings were sectarian, when in fact they had taken place in February 1921, at the height of the war.
Images were screened from the graveyard in which the two men, Mathew Sweetnam and William Connell, were laid to rest.
It puzzled me as to how the mistake occurred, particularly as the camera lingered over the gravestone surname of one of the victims, Mathew Sweetnam. The puzzle was resolved last week when I examined some West Cork Graveyard Database, Aughadown burial ground, photographs.
The An Tost Fada camera shots were not of Mathew Sweetnam’s grave. They were of a Winnie Sweetnam’s gravestone. She was laid to rest in April 1939.
Barry Roche reported Eoghan Harris stating that Irish Protestants “must feel free to talk about their past’. So they must. And we all must listen.
A good start would be if alleged professional communicators who purport to assist them left their personal agendas at the door. They should check evidence thoroughly. It is time-consuming but rewarding.
I suggested to RTÉ that they should reintroduce historical advisers for such programmes. The value of considered judgments is evident in Barry Roche’s report of Andy Bielenberg’s festival talk.
Bielenberg’s research, as distinct from Mr Harris’s imagination, suggested an absence of republican sectarianism during the course of the War of Independence. – Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER