Irish Examiner view: Welcome apology for Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey - but much more is needed

Barry McCaffrey (left) and Trevor Birney standing outside Belfast High Court after Northern Ireland's police chief has made an unreserved apology to the two investigative journalists arrested over material that appeared in a documentary on a Troubles massacre.

Had John le Carré offered the script of the TV documentary No Stone Unturned, on the 1994 Loughinisland atrocity — six people were murdered by UVF gunmen in a bar, while watching the World Cup — his publishers would have, correctly, raised the question that divides run-of-the-mill crime fiction from great crime fiction — plausibility.

Made by journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, the documentary is a chastening reminder of the officially-sanctioned division and oppression that fuelled and perpetuated deadly sectarianism.