Veronica Guerin
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- £4.49
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
At 1pm on 26 June 1996 the Sunday Independent's crime reporter Veronica Guerin was shot dead by a motorcycle pillion passenger as she waited at traffic lights on the outskirts of Dublin - the victim of her own crusading expos-s of leading criminals. Her death profoundly shocked the country. Both the President and the Taoiseach attended her funeral; tributes were paid to her in parliament, and hundreds of bouquets of flowers were placed in her memory by members of the public. Within a month new anti-crime measures had been introduced and two of the leading murder suspects had fled the country. While Guerin was hailed as a heroine, the finest journalist of her generation, the Sunday Independent was busy denying any culpability in her death, and its officials vigorously refuted accusations that the paper's cult of personality and cynical controversialism put its writers in danger. Emily O'Reilly's book exposes the frightening moral bankruptcy of the media and the devastating consequences of this - for the individual and for society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a vivid biographical portrait of slain Irish journalist Victoria Guerin, O'Reilly (Masterminds of the Right) tells a compelling story while thoughtfully exploring issues of journalistic ethics. When Guerin was shot dead in June 1996, she had been writing a series of investigative reports about the shadowy Dublin underworld for the Sunday Independent. She had interviewed notorious criminal Martin Cahill (subject of John Boorman's recent film, The General) shortly before he was killed in 1994. Cahill's death left Guerin free to describe his life and criminal associates in greater detail; still, those who knew the inner workings of Dublin's armed gangs feared for her safety. Guerin, writes O'Reilly, was uncommonly aggressive in pursuit of a story and "showed no discrimination--an approach to a known or suspected psychopath was carried out as nonchalantly as an approach to a harmless politician." Although O'Reilly believes that Guerin was reckless in ignoring the obvious warning signs, she concludes that Guerin was ultimately a victim of the tabloid tactics of her employers, whose sensationalist promotional stunts--picture bylines and personalized headlines such as "I'm Threatened In Underworld Battle for City"--made her a very visible target. O'Reilly turns Geurin's case into a cautionary tale about what can happen when the media is determined to sell papers at any cost.