a fantastic article in this mornings irish times written by their main foreign correspondent conor o cleary who is retiring from the paper after over 30 years of reporting. i remember reading his articles for the last ten years or so from when he was in moscow, bejing and america.
i remember reading the irish independent all the time growing up, i loved reading the international news on the back page but as i grew older i realised that most/all of their international stories were syndicated from english or american news sources (not a bad thing – but i just preferred reading things from an irish correspondents perspective) so i started reading the irish times which had a good network of international reporters for a newspaper of its size.
in todays irish times conor talks about his career, here are some snippets:
in moscow i presented myself, and a bottle of bushmills, to gennady gerasimov, spokesman for mikhail gorbachev. “aha! a small corruption,” he said, “i’ll take it.” irish whiskey was then a rarity in moscow, as were many basic foodstuffs. when asked in an interview broadcast in ireland what i missed most, i replied flippantly, “marmalade”, and soon received more than a dozen jars from listeners. communications were abysmal. telephone calls took a day to get through. i hammered out news copy on a big, noisy telex machine that left my knuckles out of shape. how i loved it! on my first visit home pat kenny asked me on rtéif i was ever followed in moscow by the kgb. i told him i didn’t think so. but i mentioned somewhat indignantly that the tass news agency correspondent in ireland, mikhail smirnov, was followed everywhere by the irish special branch – i had seen them do it quite openly when i met smirnov one day for lunch in dublin. some time later, after smirnov had returned to moscow, a kgb defector exposed him in a book as ireland’s kgb station chief, and next time i was on rtéi made a point of praising the special branch for doing their work.
back home the fast-unfolding events in the ussr were followed closely. on a holiday in co leitrim, i encountered a taciturn old farmer, trousers tied with cord, who, when he found out what i did, asked me: “is it true that collectivisation is fucked?” i assured him it was.
the end of the cold war meant that when elected president in 1992 bill clinton could take a new approach to northern ireland, and he started a process of bringing the political “untouchables” in from the cold. we entertained loyalists and republicans in the irish times residence in bethesda, just outside washington. when gustyspence and his pals came to dinner they surprised the guests, including irish ambassador dermot gallagher, by singing the nationalist song the fields of athenry – and then telling everyone they noted who joined in and now knew who the republicans were.
during that hectic time [reporting from jakarta the time thousands died in uprest] i was introduced to a late-arriving american tv reporter who said (i’m sure he thought in a friendly way): “irish times? you’re a long way from home.” that remark rankles with me to this day – and the fact that i didn’t retort: “so are you!”
it is now the rule, not the exception, that an irish times reporter will be there, covering the main world stories. i got revenge of a sort in kuala lumpur when i was singled out from a crowd of foreign reporters (including the american), clamouring for an interview with wan azizah ismail, whose husband, the deputy prime minister of malaysia, had just been imprisoned. i alone was called into the house by wan azizah, who, it turned out, had trained as an eye doctor for six years in dublin. she sat me on the couch and said: “now tell me all the latest scandals about charles haughey!”
finally, on a personal note. i worked for several years as a civil servant in northern ireland, and then resigned to do a computer science degree course at queen’s university in belfast. the day i registered at queen’s the course was cancelled and, somewhat arbitrarily, i took english instead, and this led me into student journalism and then the irish times. i had not considered journalism before, nor had anyone in my family, as far as i knew.
but in my last years in new york i wrote a column from wall street for the business pages, pretty certain that i was the first irish journalist to do so. then, out of the blue, i was sent some columns from the 1880s, written by a thomas mcconville of guilford, co down, for the ulster observer, when he was travelling in the us. one of these was a column from wall street.
thomas mcconville was my great-grandfather. so it was in the genes after all.
One response to “roving reporter”
Yes, it sounds like he had a most interesting career.