Vincent Browne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vincent Browne is one of Ireland's best-known and most controversial print and broadcast journalists. He is editor of a weekly current affairs magazine Village, columnist with The Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post and a part time barrister. His nightly radio talk-show on RTÉ - Tonight with Vincent Browne is known for its unique mix of politics and entertainment.
[edit] Early life
Born on 17 July 1944, he was reared in Broadford, County Limerick, where he attended the local national school. He spent at year at the Irish college in Ring, County Waterford, then a year at St Mary's secondary school in Dromcollogher, County Limerick, before going to Castleknock College (1957-1962). He graduated from UCD with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and Economics - where he also founded the oldest surviving newspaper, the College Tribune - and worked on RTÉ's Late Late Show for 5 months in 1967-68. He reported on the Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 for The Irish Times and then edited a monthly news magazine, Nusight in 1969/1970.
[edit] Career
He was appointed northern news editor of the Irish Press group in 1970 (working for all three newspapers in the group, The Irish Press, the Evening Press and The Sunday Press). In 1974 he joined Independent Newspapers and after a brief period in the Evening Herald, worked for the Sunday Independent, then edited by Conor O'Brien and later by Michael Hand.
He launched Magill magazine in September 1977 with Noel Pearson and Mary Holland. He remained editor of Magill until he became involved in the relaunch of the Sunday Tribune, with Tony Ryan, then of GPA later of Ryanair, in 1983. He was editor of the Sunday Tribune until 1994, when he was removed suddenly by directors of Independent Newspapers and two outside directors (Independent Newspapers had acquired 29.9 per cent of the shareholding in the publishing company of the Sunday Tribune in late 1990) - a development which Vincent Browne had tried to prevent. He has written a weekly column for The Irish Times since then and since 2000 has written weekly for the Sunday Business Post.
In 1997 he relaunched Magill magazine, which had ceased publication in 1990. In the 13 issues he published then, the magazine broke several major stories - one led to the establishment of the Planning Tribunal, chaired by Mr Justice Feargus Flood, another caused a committee of the Irish Parliament (the Dáil) to examine the DIRT scandal, another caused an investigation of insurance "churning" by Irish Life, a leading Irish insurance company. He sold the Magill title to Hosen publisher, Mike Hogan, in November 1998. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1997 and for a while practiced as a barrister. He now practices on only a part time basis. In October 2004 he launched a weekly current affairs magazine Village, of which he is editor.
Browne's controversial radio interviewing style is seen by his fans as a sign of his determination to "get at the facts". His critics describe his behaviour as "boorish". He became involved in a controversy over the tapping of his telephone by the Irish state from February 1975 to February 1983. When this was disclosed by a former minister for justice, Seán Doherty, Browne sued the State. He made a settlement with the State in 1997 which included an agreement to publish a statement on the settlement, stating, inter alia, that the State had intercepted his telephone conversations for reasons of State security (Browne had written much about the IRA in the early to mid 1970's), while accepting that Browne had himself never been involved in subversion or criminality. Browne refused to agree to the release of this statement when he was allowed sight of 81 transcripts of telephone conversations that had been intercepted. His refusal to agree on the release on the statement was because, he asserted, it was false in that it justified the interceptions of his telephone conversations on the grounds of security, when, on the basis of the surviving transcripts, it was apparent the intercepts were undertaken for political reasons. Browne sought to have the agreement altered to permit a public acknowledgement that the intercepts were not done for security reasons. The then government of Fine Gael-Labour refused. He subsequently disclosed this himself on television and later in print.
In 1994 the then leader of Fine Gael and later Taoiseach, John Bruton, asked Browne to stand for the party in the Dubiln constituency in the Euroepan Parliament elections of that year. Browne declined. Later that year (1994), when it was thought a general election might follow the collapse of the Albert Reynolds government there were subsequent discussions with Browne about he standing for the party in a general election. However he informed John Bruton he had decided not to enter politics. Browne, and the controversial broadcaster Eamon Dunphy have often engaged in a bitter rivalry over the airwaves. During his period presenting The Last Word on Today FM, Dunphy's comedy sketch team constantly mocked Browne by using him as a model for an opinionated hairdresser in sketches called Vincenzo.
