New challenges at the end of the Troubles: Maggie Brown looks at how peace is altering the mindset of journalists and film-makers

THE CONSEQUENCES of the IRA ceasefire are certainly being felt in the BBC's Northern Ireland drama department. The tone of its current production, a Screen Two film, Life After Life. is being rapidly changed before filming starts next month. And a reassessment of all future drama projects is under way.

Life After Life tells the story of a republican murderer, returning to his long-suffering family after 17 years inside: in a change of script, the ex-lifer will now be coming out to an armed peace. Robert Cooper, the producer, says 'we are looking at all our projects', because the context, which has spawned so much painful drama about the Troubles, has changed.

Even if the ceasefire breaks down, 'society is now saying that's behind us'. Cooper says the feeling of change was being picked up by the writers he deals with some time. 'They don't watch news, they watch people.'

As evidence he points to Ronan Bennett's Love Lies Bleeding. In this film, broadcast a year ago, moderate IRA men are let out on a day visit to talk over the hardliners, and end up killing them. 'At the time we were told investors would never back that film, because the British government wouldn't talk directly to the IRA,' he said. 'Good writers are generally ahead of the news.'

Keith Baker, head of news and current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland, says much of Monday morning's editorial meeting was concerned with the related question of how to deal with the new journalistic challenges ahead, now the broadcasting ban has been lifted. 'The landscape has changed so much.'

He does not minimise the difficulties ahead, the need to balance coverage and cover the changed agenda. 'Reporting Northern Ireland is like having a general election campaign every day of the week.' The province's future is becoming much more of an international story, rather than nasty regional conflict - his political editor has gone to the United States ahead of Gerry Adams' visit. 'Potentially there is a very new Northern Ireland around the corner. We have to think about all our programmes. For example, there has been very good comedy, but it has been of a black nature.'

At BBC Radio Foyle, the respected local station in Londonderry, news editor Poilin Ni Chiarain talks with huge relief at the ending of the broadcasting ban: so many of the local councillors in Derry belonged to Sinn Fein that the fine judgements over what to dub impaired the cut and thrust of proper debate. Levels of violence had been relatively low for several years in Derry, so the station was already able to concentrate its reporter power on social, economic and health stories, she said. But the ceasefire clearly opened the way for more analytical coverage.

The real reporting challenges face the press, which traditionally has divided along sectarian lines. Tom Collins, editor of the nationalist Irish News, says its editorial concern 'during this period of phoney peace is to ensure there is no backsliding by the British government or Northern Ireland Office about bringing Sinn Fein into the political process. As far as reporting the peace is concerned, although we are identified as a nationalist paper, we want to ensure the process is inclusive, not exclusive, we must involve Unionists.' Geoff Martin, the progressive editor of the Unionist News Letter, says that while the blanket coverage of the English nationals subsidised after the first few days, 'we are offering our readers very detailed coverage: things are moving very, very fast. The atrocities are gone; something else, equally compelling, has taken their place.'

He says that if peace becomes permanent then the papers should be able to substitute 'some real old-fashioned journalism' for the coverage of atrocities, with more stories arising from planning, health and environmental issues which are currently unexplored. The paper is trying to steer towards a policy in which it backs policies that are good for everyone, he says, rather than interpreting initiatives as, say, jobs for Protestants. 'We don't support any particular party now. We have fallen out with all the Unionist parties. We have been working hard at widening our readership.'

Barry McCall, a leading figure in the National Union of Journalists, says all journalists face the challenge of having to recast their mindsets and find a new critical balance against which to judge events.

For example, he points out that prior to the ceasefire any statement from Sinn Fein was treated as if it was tainted. 'Now Gerry Adams is being treated like a media star, staying in the top hotels, with more photographers around him than Mary Robinson. That's an equally unhealthy situation.' The majority of working journalists began their careers after the Troubles started 25 years ago. 'For reporters, it is hard to interpret the difficult mixed messages.' But that is the name of the new game.

(Photograph omitted)