RTÉ broadcaster Mary Wilson has said it is "a great honour" to be inducted into the IMRO Radio Awards Hall of Fame and used her acceptance speech to emphasize the importance of trustworthy journalism.
The Morning Ireland presenter accepted her award at a ceremony at the IMRO offices in Dublin as another round of Oireachtas hearings into the financial and governance issues that have rocked RTÉ got underway.
Accepting her reward from IMRO Radio Awards Chairperson Chris Doyle of Bauer Media, the Tipperary native said: "Journalism needs to be supported. The reasons I got into this trade are still valid. We need to hold power to account, we need to ask `why' over and over and over again.
"And we need to ask when, when things will change, when will circumstances improve, for example, for the rising homeless numbers in the country, for people fleeing war and the consequences of climate change who ask for shelter here, or our young people, who simply want to leave home and rent a flat and maybe buy a small house and for our older generation who need our care and our respect."
The broadcaster also said it was vital that news and media organisations look after their finances if they are to ensure the future of reliable journalism, adding, "They need them as well to look after the vision to develop the vision to enable us, the journalists and broadcasters, to continue to do our jobs in the public interest."
Wilson, who hails from Drangan in South Tipperary, joined RTÉ's local radio service in Cork in 1989, later moving to RTÉ's Dublin newsroom in 1990 to work as a reporter on Morning Ireland.
Congratulations to @JoeFinneganShow John Bennett MBE, Paddy Halpenny & Mary Wilson - inducted into the @IMRORadioAwards Hall of Fame at a ceremony this morning at Copyright House @bbcradioulster @ShannonsideFM @NorthernSoundFM @RTERadio1 #ExcellenceInBroadcasting #IMRO23 📻📡 pic.twitter.com/g24ZQBL1td
— Eleanor McEvoy (@eleanormcevoy) September 13, 2023
She won the National Journalist of the Year Award in 2000 and multiple Justice Media Awards for her news and documentary coverage.
In 2006, she joined the newly launched Drivetime radio show, which she anchored for 14 years, before returning to Morning Ireland's presenting team in 2020.
At today’s IMRO ceremony, Wilson also recalled the first time she walked into the RTÉ newsroom in Dublin.
"It was May of 1990 and there were legends all around me - Anne Doyle and Don Cockburn sitting at ordinary desks, doing work," she said. "Watching them on TV growing up I’d always thought they were conveyed to the studio to read the news by minions and acolytes all around them.
"And there was Charlie Bird, always on the coattails of a story begging to be told. People like Tom McCaughren and Tom McSweeney and Joe O’Brien... I thought I’d arrived on a film set.
"These were names from my teenage years in two channel land when I was growing up and now I moved among them but I soon discovered there was no rarefied air in the RTÉ newsroom - you did your work, you met your deadline and you got your story on air."
Wilson said the fact that she has enjoyed a long career in journalism spoke volumes for Ireland and for Irish people’s engagement with news and current affairs.
Mary joins Morning Ireland colleagues @EnglishRachael and @lawlor_aine in the broadcasting Hall of Fame
— Morning Ireland (@morningireland) September 13, 2023
@IMRORadioAwards #imro2023 https://t.co/WRj68hvAJ7
However, she noted the huge changes that had taken place since she began her career.
"The basics are still the same. There is still no hierarchy in news reporting and presenting," Wilson said.
"The technology of course has changed and the demands on journalists have increased tenfold and, sadly, the younger generation of journalists in RTÉ and elsewhere, the skillset you had that would give you a lifelong career in print or broadcasting, that’s no longer there."
She also thanked her daughter Aoife and her husband, Dublin GP Hugh Daly, who were in the audience, and her colleagues in RTÉ. "It is that support from editors and reporters and producers that enable presenters like me to do our job."
She also pad tribute to a figure from her past, saying: "And a final word to the long-dead nun who told me that journalism was no career for a young, shy convent schoolgirl from Drangan. Sister, you were wrong!"
Also being inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame today was veteran BBC Radio Ulster broadcaster John Bennett.
The Northern Irish presenter joined the BBC in 1956 and has presented music, entertainment, sports and current affairs programmes during his almost seven-decade career at the broadcaster.
Also inducted was Joe Finnegan who has worked in radio for over 34 years as a current affairs presenter, journalist, director, and station manager at Shannonside Northern Sound.
Alongside Wilson, Bennett and Finnegan was Patrick (Paddy) Halpenny who was the Chief Executive of Communicorp from 1997 to 2013. Over the 15 years he was at the helm, Communicorp grew to a portfolio of 42 stations in nine countries.
Past inductees to the IMRO Radio Awards Hall of Fame include Joe Duffy, Marian Finucane, Pat Kenny, Áine Lawlor, Gay Byrne, Larry Gogan and Ian Dempsey.
