The Guardian

How a story about Northern Ireland's sectarian murals created a storm | Roy Greenslade

A tale involving a BBC reporter and a publisher paints a picture of how journalism really works
A Belfast mural of the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands, who died in 1981. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The Guardian

Among the questions regularly asked of journalists are these: Where do you get your stories from? How do stories happen? How do you know a story is a story? And, inevitably, do you make stories up?

Given that there is no single, straightforward answer to any of them, especially that contentious last one, I came across an interesting case last week that helps to cast some light on the process – perhaps I should say, mystery – of story-getting.

A Belfast-based BBC reporter, Chris Lindsay, was casually reading a guidebook on a Singapore Airlines flight when he came across an item about the murals in the city which describes them as symbols of Northern Ireland and points to the thematic differences between those in republican areas and in loyalist areas.

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