The PSNI has launched an investigation after it handed over blank interview tapes to arrested Loughinisland journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey. Last year police agreed in the High Court to provide the recordings of officers from the PSNI and Durham Constabulary interviewing the two reporters at Musgrave Street Police Station in August 2018. However, last week the men’s respective legal representatives both received tapes which were blank apart from opening introductions made by the detectives who were in charge of the interviews. Mr Birney’s solicitor Niall Murphy told The Detail that the disclosure of the tape recordings of the police interviews was an “explicit term of the settlement agreement” signed last November following his client’s successful judicial review of the PSNI’s decision to arrest him and his colleague, and to raid their homes and office.