My pal Paul Tanney, who has died aged 50, was a richly gifted journalist. He performed a key position in chronicling the occasions which have remodeled Eire over current many years.
On the Irish nationwide broadcaster, he utilized his meticulous consideration to element and objectivity to roles akin to enhancing RTÉ Radio 1′s Morning Eire – the breakfast information programme – and Prime Time, RTÉ’s flagship tv investigations and present affairs sequence.
Paul was born in Belfast, the son of Brian Tanney, an accountant, and Enda (nee Curran), a trainer. He attended Methodist Faculty Belfast and studied historical past at Trinity Faculty Dublin, earlier than becoming a member of the primary cohort on a brand new postgraduate diploma in journalism course on the College of Ulster in 1997.
After graduating, he joined the Irish Instances, which subsequently despatched him to work as a reporter at its Belfast bureau, the place he was on the frontline of masking the rising pains of an rising post-conflict society. Innately non-tribal, but with a pure understanding of native nuances, Paul coated riots and political negotiations in addition to the hopes and fears of communities.
His transfer into broadcasting got here on the Dublin-based radio start-up Newstalk, the place he produced and edited an early morning information present fronted by the economist David McWilliams. It was presently that he met Jessica Scott, and so they bought married in 2008.
In 2005 he joined RTÉ as a multimedia journalist. From this time, I vividly recall seeing Paul in shirt-sleeves on a scorching July day in Belfast, coolly holding a microphone aloft to seize the sound of a riot, and adjusting his recording tools as bottles smashed round him.
He was promoted to programme editor at Morning Eire, the nation’s most listened-to programme, in 2009, transferring 4 years later to turn into deputy programme editor of tv information bulletins.
In 2016, he was appointed deputy editor of Prime Time and was deeply concerned in masking main tales together with Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, Eire’s 2018 referendum to legalise abortion and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paul was recognized with leukaemia in 2017. He confronted the sickness with the identical humour and stoicism that characterised his work, refusing to let the situation restrict him. After a primary bone marrow transplant, he recovered nicely and loved quite a lot of years earlier than the most cancers returned.
Household got here first for Paul, however when he may, he indulged a ardour for countryside hikes, entertaining companions with a limitless reservoir of popular culture anecdotes from the Nineteen Eighties and 90s. He continued to present counsel to pals and, within the midst of harsh therapy, all the time had the appropriate Star Wars quote.
He’s survived by Jessica, their youngsters, Sadhbh and Daniel, his dad and mom and his siblings, David and Claire.
