Journalists who covered Northern Ireland during the Troubles used to tell a story, possibly apocryphal, about gaggles of children that would trail after camera crews filming on the Falls Road. “Hey, mister,” they would shout out, “do you fancy a soundbite?”
The anecdote was a wry admission that the conflict had reached media saturation and that local people had become all too media savvy. Some riots had a staged, theatrical quality. Coverage of the Troubles became a blur of burning cars, shootings and funerals. For outsiders, it was all rather incomprehensible.
