This category highlights frontline, on location reporting - finding the story, getting the footage and making the news.
Citizen journalist whose nomme-de-plume is "Grand Torino". Rowan travels all over the country covering evictions, corruption, and crime. For every DP center forced on a town Rowan most likely will be on the ground monitoring the protests and getting reaction from the locals. His footage of a pro-asylum seeker rally in Roosky last year opened people´s eyes to the peculiar nature of these events. Rowan´s reporting on controversial issues attracts the attention of vested interests and their NGO lobby groups, and he has had to run the gauntlet of a baying mob on more than one occasion at public events.
Uncanny ability to be in the right place and ready to film protest rally incidents and flashpoints. Also present at many of the DP town hall meetings during 2019 and was able to capture the angry objections expressed by locals on video. He was also the first to reveal the strategy used by the Department of Justice to co-opt resistance to the centers and the various tactics used to intimidate the locals into submission.
During 2019 Gemma documented all the issues not covered by the mainstream media. With the ability to stream via her own website without fear of censorship she has covered subjects all across the spectrum of Irish society from interviewing the homeless to confronting political elites at public events. Some 2019 highlights were her RFK jr interview, the Swords voting ballots getaway van story, the Connolly climate scientist revelations, and the Angela Ray case.
The first reporter on the scene after the violent response to the Strokestown eviction incident in December 2018 when a number of vehicles were set on fire. Subsequently Gardai visited his home and demanded he hand over his phone saying they would search his home, his grandparents' home and his office, and arrest him if he did not permit the search.
Last year the Fine Gael tent at the Ploughing Championship was the setting for an encounter between Niall and Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan. Niall upset the Minister by asking some questions about immigration policy, something mainstream media choose not to do. Niall also had some hard questions for Sinn Fein candidate Pierce Doherty when they came face to face in a radio studio debate during #GE2020.
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