‘A spectacular missed opportunity’

A new Welsh-language book celebrates 12 examples of great journalism and emphasises the importance of thorough reporting. Contributor Vaughan Roderick told Jenny White why he chose to revisit a case from the 1980s that should have toppled police corruption nationwide

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WITH journalism increasingly under pressure due to cuts in revenue and jobs, the publication of Fy Stori Fawr Arall (My Other Big Story) highlights the importance of quality reporting at a time when it is vitally needed.

Based on accounts by some of Wales’ leading journalists about the biggest stories they have broken in their careers, and taken from interviews in the BBC Radio Cymru series Fy Stori Fawr, the book features 12 contributors, including Siôn Jenkins (ITV Cymru / Pawb a'i Farn, Y Byd ar Bedwar), Rhodri Llywelyn (BBC), Mai Davies (freelance) and BBC Wales Welsh Affairs editor Vaughan Roderick.

In the book, Roderick discusses the conspiracy trial of 1983 in Cardiff, which centred on an alleged conspiracy by the short-lived Welsh Socialist Republican Movement (WSRM) to cause explosions.

Roderick chose to revisit the story from a reporter's point of view because of the light it shines on police corruption at the time, and the fact the trial outcome was a missed opportunity to shine a light on similar issues that were happening around the same time.

“I thought this was a really interesting story, because it was a period when South Wales Police had, fundamentally, been fabricating evidence in a whole series of cases - most famously the Cardiff Three [the murder of Lynette White, for which three men were wrongly convicted] and the Cardiff Newsagent Three, [the 1987 wrongful conviction of three men for the killing of Cardiff newsagent Philip Saunders],” says Roderick.

“The interesting thing is that in the other cases, those people were exonerated years, even decades later - but this was a case where the jury simply believed the defendants and refused to believe the police, which, back in the 1980s, was an extraordinary thing, because people then were far more trusting of the police than they are today.