QEwan 
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I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when aoife turned up at the station to report an anonymous Twitter account for making a remark about her “sinn fein backside” sticking out from behind a hedge
Harris is an uucoam but seriously…
Paul McGinley-esque
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His excuse reminds me of the old Billy Connolly gag about being caught wanking… ‘Oh I’m glad you’re here, there was this huge spider…’
Not quite sure but every time irvine was making good points mcmichael would jump in
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RDE
Declan Ganley too
Micheal Macnamara is putting in for this gig
How many abusive tweets can be linked to INM IP addresses?
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The reverse IP search will fuck Harris.
I’d imagine it won’t just be harris that’d be fucked
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I haven’t got sick of them yet theyre class. I love the way singing the lyrics in that real serious voice highlights the fucking ridiculousness of what’s said in the original clips 
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Superb.
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Get that to no 1
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Interesting. I would have thought they would have got on.
Why Eoghan Harris had to go – and the other Twitter accounts he denies running
May 09 2021 02:30 AM
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Columnist Eoghan Harris had his contract terminated by the Sunday Independent. Picture by Tony Gavin
Last week I made the decision that Eoghan Harris, one of the sharpest and most distinctive voices in the Sunday Independent for two decades, will no longer be writing for the paper.
Readers of this newspaper are entitled to a full and transparent explanation as to why the decision was made and how it was discovered that Harris was involved in running at least one fake Twitter account.
First, the basic facts. On Friday, Twitter suspended an account — created in February 2020 under the name Barbara J Pym. It frequently accused — with no evidence — respected journalists and others of being “Provos” spewing “sectarian bile”.
Eoghan Harris has admitted being “one of the founders” of the account. Eight more accounts which Twitter believes are linked to the Pym account have also been suspended. More on those later — along with details of another anonymous account not yet suspended.
First, the sequence of events that led to Eoghan Harris’s contract being terminated. Early last Saturday afternoon, I was made aware that ‘Barbara J Pym’ had revealed what only a small number of people were privy to — a key detail about a major poll which was to be the subject of the Sunday Independent’s lead story the following day.
My suspicion immediately fell on Eoghan Harris. Along with a few other columnists and staff members, he had been briefed on some of the poll findings. I did not know that Harris was connected to the Barbara J Pym account, but I suspected he was. I also had my suspicions that he was posting tweets anonymously from other accounts, but never had any proof with which to confront him.
I did, however, raise what I regarded as his obsession with Twitter during the course of a fraught conversation just over three months ago. On January 31, a Sunday afternoon, he called me to give out. He was angry about right of reply articles being offered to people on the receiving end of trenchant criticism in his column. In particular, he resented those who challenged his uncompromising views on Northern Ireland matters being given space in the newspaper.
He said he was surprised by my willingness to offer a platform to voices critical of his writing because he had previously checked out my “politics” with people in Limerick, where I am from.
For the record, I am not and have never been a supporter of any political party. In my time as editor of the Limerick Leader I attacked the cowardly and brutal murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe and strongly criticised Sinn Féin politicians for failing to condemn it, but such an editorial position did not prevent the paper from giving fair coverage to local Sinn Féin representatives in other matters.
Harris then speculated that I was being leaned on — or, as he put it, that I must be “under the cosh”. Angered by this baseless suggestion, I replied that it reminded me strongly of claims being made anonymously on fake Twitter accounts.
It was a pointed response — but not an accusation, because I had no proof of any involvement on his part and neither did anybody else. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about and changed the subject.
An account called ‘Northern Whig’ had accused me of being under a “witch’s spell”. This account — still active — frequently alleges that the editorial policy of this newspaper and other titles in the same group is being influenced by ‘Lady Macbeth’ in the case of Northern Ireland coverage. Northern Whig describes this alleged interference as “Lady Macbeth’s greening policy”.
I know all of this may sound preposterous, especially to readers of this newspaper who have the good sense to stay away from poisonous social media. Journalists, in particular, are drawn to Twitter because it has the power to break news instantly, but it can also be a nasty place. It gives anyone licence to say more or less anything they wish about named individuals.
For those who are targeted and traduced, Twitter sometimes feels like a sewer. It is only fair to point out that Eoghan Harris is constantly attacked by anonymous trolls who hate his views on Sinn Féin in particular. My colleague Philip Ryan has also been on the receiving end of vicious abuse by so-called ‘Shinnerbots’, as have plenty of other good journalists in this country. These attacks have now been renewed in the wake of Harris’s unmasking, along with wild and spurious conspiracy theories about other journalists employed by the owner of the Sunday Independent . Such is the world of Twitter and the trolls it attracts.
The Northern Whig account makes it perfectly clear that ‘Lady Macbeth’ is Francine Cunningham, the wife of INM’s publisher Peter Vandermeersch. These tweets — dozens of them — are laughable, ludicrous and almost certainly libellous. Francine Cunningham wrote about her experience of being trolled in a blog post she published last November, in which she described the tweets as “somewhere between sick and crazy”. She added: “The presumption that anyone from Strabane must be pro Sinn Féin is a sad, sectarian stereotype.”
There have been other targets – especially journalists seen as being too ‘green’, or not sufficiently hostile to Sinn Féin.
Northern Whig has fewer than 20 followers. Until a couple of days ago, one of them was Barbara J Pym. There are other accounts which express views notably similar to those held by Eoghan Harris and frequently compliment his articles and his stance against Sinn Féin. They are also in the habit of ‘tagging’ many prominent journalists — which on Twitter means drawing their attention to what has been posted. These accounts include the prolific and politics-obsessed ‘Dolly White’ — now suspended, along with seven others. ‘Dolly’ and ‘Barbara’ are very much kindred spirits.
Back to last Saturday. When details of our intended lead story leaked, I asked deputy editor Jody Corcoran to call Eoghan Harris. Rather than accuse him outright, Jody told him that if he had any influence over the Pym account, he should have the tweet deleted immediately.
Harris said that another individual, whom he named, had posted the tweet. The phone call took less than a minute, but at the end of it Harris was told that there would be an investigation into what had happened. Within one minute of that phone call ending, the tweet was deleted.
The following day, Harris admitted his involvement with the Pym account, contacting Jody Corcoran to do so. He said he passed the information about the poll on to a member of this group, not realising it was intended for publication the following day.
I believe that his error in this regard was genuine, but it was also a mistake that provided the first hard evidence of his anonymous activity.
When wondering whether he was behind Barbara J Pym or other accounts, I sometimes found it hard to believe that he would risk doing anything so foolish. Without evidence, it was impossible to be sure. Other accounts pushing his political views and retweeting the likes of ‘Barbara’ and ‘Dolly’ were run by verifiable individuals. In the absence of proof from Twitter, there could be speculation — and there was — but nobody could be certain.
Early last week, I began examining the Pym account, which was opened a month before I became editor of this paper. What I have already said bears repeating. Many tweets expressed hard opinions in keeping with those articulated by Eoghan Harris in his Sunday Independent column.
But dozens of others went far beyond the expression of robust political views. Some journalists were repeatedly targeted in what I regard as an appalling manner, including colleagues employed by INM (which will be rebranded as Mediahuis from this Wednesday). Aoife Moore of the Irish Examiner has received widespread support after disclosing that she went to gardaí and sought counselling after being on the receiving end of contemptible tweets posted by the Pym account.
When I spoke to him shortly after 5pm on Thursday, Harris once again confirmed his involvement in the Pym account. He wished to stress that he was “one of a group of people that contributed to a Barbara Pym entity”. I told him I suspected his involvement in other anonymous accounts and that I proposed to name a few of them. Dolly White, he said, was “definitely not me”. He claimed ‘Dolly’ was a former student of his, a woman in her 40s who had the ability to get inside his head and know what he was thinking. Further, the tweets were written in a way that was “not my prose style”, he said. I disagreed with this.
I then named Northern Whig. Again, he said it was not him, but he had “a good idea of who it might be”. He declined to say, or to name, any of the co-contributors in the Barbara J Pym “entity”.
Whatever about the others, he had admitted his involvement in the Pym account and I told him this represented a betrayal of trust and that I was left with no option but to terminate his contract . There were no raised voices, on either side. It was a sad conversation, for both of us.
One of the claims in recent days is that the Sunday Independent was looking for an excuse to get rid of Eoghan Harris and that his actions provided the paper with a welcome opportunity. That is false. Three days after our heated words on that Sunday afternoon in late January, Harris sent me his resignation in writing because I was not prepared to give him assurances about people being offered a right of reply to his columns. He needed protection from “ultra nationalists” targeting him.
Had I wanted him to leave, accepting his resignation would have been easy. Instead, I suggested we have a conversation about it. He said there was no point, as he was being offered no concessions by way of “negotiation”. He then provided the terms under which he would agree to withdraw his resignation, specifically our joint agreement on the publication of any articles by way of response to his own.
Clearly, no newspaper worthy of the name would agree to that. But I assured him that his contributions were valued and after missing one paper he agreed to return the following week, without receiving any concessions.
He will, I know, be missed by many devoted readers. A few have already told me they will never buy this newspaper again. That is their choice, of course. There are numerous others taking great pleasure in his demise as a columnist and the public embarrassment he has suffered. I would never have wished that on him, not least because he is 78 years old and facing a renewed battle with cancer.
In my experience, Eoghan Harris divided opinion like no other Sunday Independent writer. There was nothing at all wrong with that. Freedom of expression is a core principle of this newspaper and readers have long come to expect strong views on important issues.
Did I disagree with some of those opinions? Yes, but whether the editor agrees with the views expressed by a columnist is not important, so long as they are ethical, interesting and honestly held. Better again if they are well written — and long before he joined this newspaper I was struck by Harris’s rhetorical brilliance and the fluency of his writing. There was a deceptive simplicity to his polemical columns and his ability to get a point across. He made it look easy — and it is far from that.
Many of Harris’s strongest critics never read him and refused to buy the paper while he was in it. I know that because they repeatedly told me so, often by way of abusive tweets. We live in a country with plenty of good newspapers and news websites, so I hope they support one of them. Should they ever read this paper, they can expect Sinn Féin’s continuing failure to condemn IRA atrocities, including the murder of innocent children, to keep receiving the heavy criticism it deserves.
This newspaper and its journalists will continue to hold that party — and every other political party and Independent seeking the votes of the electorate — to account. It will do so in a manner that is fair – and transparent.
As for Eoghan Harris, I find it very sad that it has come to this because I know how much his column meant to him. But in the end — and in the circumstances — his departure was inevitable.
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What a load of self-serving bollox. Harris is a cunt. English is a cunt. Corcoran is a cunt. They are all cunts.
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Everyone is a cunt until they prove otherwise
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