Claiming that its transmission prior to the official inquest was an impediment to justice, the British foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, attempted to stop the program from being broadcast by writing to the chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Lord Thomson of Monifieth. Lord Thomson refused to prevent transmission, noting that “the issues as we seem them relate to free speech and free inquiry which underpin individual liberty in a democracy.” Following transmission, there was widespread criticism in sections of the press of the program’s investigative stance (such as “Storm at SAS Telly Trial,” Sun; “Fury over SAS ‘Trial by TV,’” Daily Mail; “TV Slur on the SAS,” Daily Star). Subsequently, a number of papers, notably the Sunday Times and the Sun, attempted to show not only that the program’s procedures of inquiry were faulty but also that the character of some of its witnesses was dubious (in one case, a woman subjected to this latter charge successfully pursued a libel action against the newspapers that made it).

The debate that developed around the program intensified when one of its witnesses subsequently repudiated his testimony, and so an independent inquiry was conducted at the behest of Thames Television. This inquiry was undertaken by Lord Windlesham, a former government minister with experience as a managing director in television, and Richard Rampton, a barrister specializing in defamation and media law. The inquiry’s findings, which were published as a book in 1989, largely cleared the program of any impropriety, although it noted a number of errors.

Any assessment of the “Death on the Rocks” affair has to note a number of constituent factors. The hugely emotive and politically controversial issue of British military presence in Northern Ireland provides the backdrop. For much of the British public, the various bombing attacks of the IRA (many of them involving civilian casualties) seemed to give the incident in Gibraltar the character of a wartime event whose legitimacy was unquestionable. At a more focused level, the Windlesham/Rampton report analyzed, in unusual detail, the narrative structure of current affairs exposition— its movement between interview and presenter commentary, its use of location material, and its movements of evaluation. It also probed further back into the way in which the program was put together through the contacting of various witnesses and the investigations of researchers. This analysis was set in the context of long-standing tension between Conservative government and broadcasters, particularly investigative journalists, on the matter of “national interest” and on the “limits” that should be imposed (preferably self-imposed) on work that brought into question the activities of the state.

There is obviously little space here to look at the program’s form in any detail, but a number of features in its opening suggest something of its character. The program starts with a pre-title sequence featuring two of its principal witnesses, Carmen Proetta and Stephen Bullock, in '“sound bites” from the longer interviews. These go as follows:

Witness 1: “There was no exchange of words on either side, no warning, nothing said; no screams, nothing; just the shots.”

Witness 2: “I should say they were from a distance of about four feet and that the firing was continuous; in other words, probably as fast as it’s possible to fire.”

After the titles, the program is “launched” by the studio-based presenter (Jonathan Dimbleby):

The killing by the SAS of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar provoked intense debate not only in Britain but throughout the world —and especially in the Republic of Ireland and the United States. There are perhaps those who wonder what the fuss is about, who ask “Does it really matter where or how they were killed?”; who say “They were terrorists, there’s a war on; and we got to them before they got to us.” However, in the eyes of the law and of the state, it is not simple… The question which goes to the heart of the issue, is this: did the SAS men have the law on their side when they shot dead [photo stills] Danny McCann, Sean Savage, and Mairead Farrell, who were unarmed at the time? [photo of bodies and ambulance] Were the soldiers acting in self-defence or were they operating what has become known as a “shoot to kill policy” — simply eliminating a group of known terrorists outside the due process of law, without arrest, trial or verdict?

Dimblebly concludes his introduction by promising the viewer something of “critical importance for those who wish to find out what really happened.”

This use of a “shock” opener, followed by the framing of the report in terms that anticipate one kind of popular response but set against this expectation the need for questions to be asked, gives the program a strong but measured start. Its conclusion is simply balanced, anticipating at least some of the next morning’s complaints, by attempting to connect its own inquiries to the due process of the law:

The report by Julian Manyon was made, as you may have detected, without the cooperation of the British government, which says that it will make no comment until the inquest. As our film contained much new evidence hitherto unavailable to the coroner, we are sending the transcripts to his court in Gibraltar, where it’s been made clear to us that all such evidence is welcomed.

Given the political debate it caused, there is little doubt that “Death on the Rock” is established as a marker in the long history of government-broadcaster relationships in Britain.