My friend Paul Tanney, who has died aged 50, was a richly talented journalist. He played a key role in chronicling the events that have transformed Ireland over recent decades.
At the Irish national broadcaster, he applied his meticulous attention to detail and objectivity to roles such as editing RTÉ Radio 1′s Morning Ireland – the breakfast news programme – and Prime Time, RTÉ’s flagship television investigations and current affairs series.
Paul was born in Belfast, the son of Brian Tanney, an accountant, and Enda (nee Curran), a teacher. He attended Methodist College Belfast and studied history at Trinity College Dublin, before joining the first cohort on a new postgraduate diploma in journalism course at the University of Ulster in 1997.
After graduating, he joined the Irish Times, which subsequently sent him to work as a reporter at its Belfast bureau, where he was on the frontline of covering the growing pains of an emerging post-conflict society. Innately non-tribal, yet with a natural understanding of local nuances, Paul covered riots and political negotiations as well as the hopes and fears of communities.
His move into broadcasting came at the Dublin-based radio start-up Newstalk, where he produced and edited an early morning news show fronted by the economist David McWilliams. It was at this time that he met Jessica Scott, and they got 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 hot July day in Belfast, coolly holding a microphone aloft to capture the sound of a riot, and adjusting his recording equipment as bottles smashed around him.
He was promoted to programme editor at Morning Ireland, the country’s most listened-to programme, in 2009, moving four years later to become deputy programme editor of television news bulletins.
In 2016, he was appointed deputy editor of Prime Time and was deeply involved in covering major stories including Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, Ireland’s 2018 referendum to legalise abortion and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Paul was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2017. He faced the illness with the same humour and stoicism that characterised his work, refusing to let the condition limit him. After a first bone marrow transplant, he recovered well and enjoyed a number of years before the cancer returned.
Family came first for Paul, but when he could, he indulged a passion for countryside hikes, entertaining companions with a limitless reservoir of pop culture anecdotes from the 1980s and 90s. He continued to give counsel to friends and, in the midst of harsh treatment, always had the right Star Wars quote.
He is survived by Jessica, their children, Sadhbh and Daniel, his parents and his siblings, David and Claire.
