The dustup over US prosecutors’ stooging for British authorities in the quest for Boston College’s IRA oral history archives has spilled over into the social mediascape.
Say hello to @BCSubpoenaNews, a new Twitter feed that promises to “Keep [you] up to date on the latest news involving Boston College’s fight against the subpoenas seeking the Burns Library’s Belfast Project Oral History of the IRA.”
No explicit mention of who’s behind the effort, but this Twitter gravatar –
– and this BostonCollegeSubpoena blog certainly point to BC’s Burns Library. (Also see the site’s Chris Bray-Cliopatria link.)
[UPDATE: From an excellent, although anonymous, commenter: “[P]erhaps you should have scrolled all the way down the home page where, lo and behold, you would have read this: ‘This site is not affiliated with nor endorsed by Boston College. All material on the site is publicly available.’”]
BC is clearly in this for the long run, although Kevin Cullen’s Saturday Boston Globe piece indicates that the donnybrook is getting more complicated:
The two men who organized and carried out the interviews of former IRA members for Boston College’s oral history project on the conflict in Northern Ireland have filed suit, seeking to intervene in the legal dispute between the school and US prosecutors seeking BC’s records.
Ed Moloney, who directed the oral history project, and Anthony McIntyre, who interviewed 26 former Irish Republican Army members for the project, sued in US District Court in Boston, asking to argue on their own behalf separately from BC.
Which seems to be problematic for the college:
Moloney said his and McIntyre’s suit complements the legal arguments that BC lawyers have filed. He acknowledged that the pair’s legal approach frames the case in more political terms.
“This is to supplement, not conflict with, BC’s action, and we are doing it because it is a much more political approach,’’ said Moloney, who last year wrote a book, “Voices from the Grave,’’ based in large part on Hughes’s interviews with McIntyre.
BC was cool in its response.
“We obviously share the same goal in the outcome of this matter, but these filings, which we are just now reviewing, may not necessarily reflect the views of Boston College,’’ said Jack Dunn, a BC spokesman.
Translation: Three’s a crowd.
More complications, no doubt, to come.
Campaign Outsider 
Do you think the Globe’s editors are remiss in assigning Kevin Cullen to do news coverage on this issue? I thought their policy after last year’s coverage of the Brandeis graduation was not to assign coverage to reporters who had expressed strong views on the issue they were covering.
Good question, Bob. Whaddaya think – was Saturday’s piece even-handed?
Nope. I think he was trying to leave that impression, but I think the article was pretty one-sided. You might have noticed that Cullen used himself as an anonymous source.
But that judgement is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. A lot of people thought the article on the Brandeis graduation was one-sided–I thought it was reasonable.
Which is why, I thought, that the debate last year was whether a newspaper should assign a reporter who has expressed a strong opinion on an issue to cover it.
Any one know if this has gotten before the court yet? It could get snarly.
It will be interesting to see if the court wades into the journalist definition and how it will handle the contractual aspects of the case.
I don’t see them buying an “academic freedom” argument on its own because it is hard to argue that “research” is a Constitutionally-protected right.
This one is going to bump into a lot of walls before the dust settles.
As for the solemn promise of the Brits to Congress, if it ain’t law, it ain’t law; and if it ain’t a treaty, it ain’t a treaty. That one likely won’t go anywhere.
you speculate that the burns library might be behind this website and twitter feed. perhaps you should have scrolled all the way down the home page where, lo and behold, you would have read this: ‘This site is not affiliated with nor endorsed by Boston College. All material on the site is publicly available.’ okay?
Okay. Thanks.
I am not sure, but I believe the Twitter feed belongs to Ed Moloney. The Broken Elbow blog, appears to belong to him, and it references the Twitter feed.
Thanks, Ted. I’ll add a post with this info.
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