La représentation de l’IRA sur les écrans britanniques après 1998 : rupture ou continuité ?

International audienceOn April 10th, 1998 the Belfast Agreement put an official end to thirty years of violent conflict in Northern Ireland. While the violence had mostly been allotted to the IRA for decades, we wonder if the Peace Agreement entailed a change – or not – in the way the IRA was represented on British Television.Our paper revolves around three questions. Did the signature of the Peace Agreement incite journalists to search for the "historical truth", leading to a new version of the narrative of the events or to the disclosure of new elements? Is there a determination not to reconsider events of past, thus betraying self-censorship concerning not only the past, but also the present and the future? How did British TV react to the resurgence of the Republican violence after 1998?Our analysis is based upon a directory including all the programmes dealing with the conflict in Northern Ireland broadcast on British national television between 1988 and 2005. It can be noticed that overall, from 1998 onwards, British TV neglected the situation in Northern Ireland. The channels did not make the most of the freedom they enjoyed at the end of the conflict, to raise questions which they were discouraged from handling previously. Neither did they adopt a critical attitude towards the new situation. Only a few programmes demonstrated a will to serve as intermediary to work for peace, but it does not correspond to the general trend which betrays an indifference towards the post-conflict situation in Northern Ireland