Paul Cunningham

Paul Cunningham is an Irish journalist and author. He is currently Environment Correspondent for RTÉ News and Current Affairs.

A former winner of the "Radio Journalist of the Year" award, Cunningham is also known for his choice of hat. He has written the book Ireland's Burning.

Career

From 1999 to 2001, Paul Cunningham reported on the infection of Irish people with haemophilia, with HIV, and with Hepatitis C from contaminated blood products. In recognition, he won "National Radio Journalist of the Year" in the ESB National Media Awards in 2000.^[1] He followed this up with a documentary exposing the practices of US-based drug firms which exported infected blood products to Ireland. The programme, Bad Blood, won an Irish Film and Television Award.^[2] He co-wrote a book, with Rosemary Daly, on the impact of contaminated blood products called 'A Case of Bad Blood' for Poolbeg Press.^[3]

Cunningham has reported extensively from abroad. His first assignment was on the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He followed up with reports on numerous conflicts including Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Lebanon, Kosovo, Algeria, Pakistand/Afghanistan, Guatemala, Nepal, Darfur and Chad. He has also reported on flooding in Mozambique and New Orleans; racism in South Africa; and Chile post dictatorship.

In 2007, he presented an edition of RTÉ's current affairs interview programme One to One in which he interviewed award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh.^[4] In 2008, after Cunningham interviewed civil servant Padraig O hUiginn for the same series, Sunday Independent columnist Brendan O'Connor compared Cunningham to the hero in US television series Columbo: "seemingly awkward, nerdy and self-effacing and merely innocently asking odd questions, while all the time letting his subject reveal himself".^[5]

As RTÉ's Environment Correspondent Cunningham reports on climate change.^[6] In October 2006, he wrote about Greenland for RTÉ.^[7] In 2008 Cunningham travelled to Chad with Aoife Kavanagh to film a series of reports on the country for RTÉ.^[8] Cunningham covered the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference for RTÉ.^[9][10]

Cunningham has written the book Ireland's Burning,^[11] which was published in 2008.^[6] It features inerviews with Irish people concerned about the environment, including weatherman Gerald Fleming, journalist Kevin Myers and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley.^[6]

He covered the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and resulting Fukushima I nuclear accidents in Japan for RTÉ.^[12]

Hat

Since January 2010 Cunningham has become known for an outbreak of "hat mania" focusing on his choice of hat which, according to the journalist himself via Twitter, is from "Pakistan's tribal areas".^[13] He first wore the hat during a live television news report for RTÉ outside Government Buildings during the January 2010 weather emergency in Europe.^[13] The hat has been described variously as a “woolly pancake”, an “Aran Smurf’s hat” and “stylish, in a French pastry kind of way”.^[13] A Facebook group dedicated to the hat had more than one thousand fans within hours of the hat's television debut.^[13] Observers noted that Cunningham's hat did indeed resemble a pakul, a traditional men's hat worn in the Chitral and Gilgit regions of Pakistan.^{[citation needed]} Some of these fans met up outside Government Buildings wearing their own hats in a similar manner.^[13] Fans looked forward to tuning in each evening to observe Cunningham and the hat.^[14] RTÉ.ie even referenced the hat in their own weather updates.^[15] The hat was auctioned for GOAL on radio programme Mooney on January 21, 2010 to raise funds for the 2010 Haiti earthquake appeal: the hat was purchased after some "frenzied bidding" for €570 by a member of "We love Paul Cunningham's winter hat" Facebook society.^[16][17] Cunningham had responded after Derek Mooney said he would auction his own jumper on air.^[18]

References

External links

• Paul Cunningham on Twitter
• Paul Cunningham webchat on climate change
• Paul Cunningham at the Copenhagen Climate Summit