Katie Hannon is being touted as the “new face” of current affairs on RTE, but she has been breaking ground as an investigative
journalist for three decades.
She presented Prime Time for 14 years, held politicians to account on the Late Debate, and regularly fills in for Joe Duffy to host Liveline on RTE Radio One.
Yet for all that the modest Kerry woman – whose new TV show Upfront fills the slot vacated by Claire Byrne on Monday nights – shies away from the spotlight.
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She hates the idea of being the centre of attention and is hoping the new show will give people a platform to have their say and tell their stories.
Ahead of the first live studio debate tomorrow Katie, 51, told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I’m sure there will be some healthy nervous energy floating around.
“We just got the studio in place, built especially for it. It’s all live, what I love about it is the audience are very close to the panel.
“It’s a very intimate space and that is very deliberate – we wanted an equivalence to be between the audience and the panel.
“It’s very much audience driven, they have questions for the panel, these are people with experiences, stories, things to say.
“The idea is the audience is small enough so that people are not intimidated and feel there’s a good chance of getting involved.”
Straight talker Katie has stepped away from her Saturday radio show to devote all her energy to the new project.
She said: “I loved the Saturday show and I loved the Late Debate.
“I had fantastic times with the producers and researchers, it felt like I was leaving my family behind.
“But I realised that it’s great to have the head space to think about this.
“It’s not just Monday night, I’ll be doing a podcast and online content for during the week.
“So there are a lot of plates to keep spinning with this.
“I need to concentrate on Upfront, but I’m still doing cover for Joe on Liveline.
“So it’s great to have the best of both worlds.”
Liveline she described as “like Forrest Gump said, like a box of chocolates” because “you never know what you are going to get”.
She added: “That is kind of what I enjoy because having covered politics and current affairs for 30 years it’s very different.
“It has a lot of shade, it is an intense programme to present.
“You really don’t know from one day to the next what might happen, who might be on the other end of the line.You have to have your wits about you.”
Earlier this month Katie opened up about the traumatic birth of her twin daughters in 2010, who spent six weeks in the hospital’s special care unit.
The babies weighed two-and-a-half pounds and three pounds requiring round-the-clock care at Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital.
She said: “They are 12 now, they’re absolutely great. There were no consequences of them being born so premature.
“We were very lucky, they got the incredible care, they just really from day one thrived.
“Looking at them now they are the two tallest in their class.”
Katie said her work hours allowed her to spend time with the girls during the day before heading to RTE to prep for the Late Debate and work til 3am.
And she was scathing of the BBC’s controversial “Can Women Really Have It All?” headline after New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern resigned.
She said: “I hate seeing that line, what does it even mean? What does having it all mean, it means different things to different people.
“To some people having a family doesn’t mean having it all...
“I think obviously women traditionally and inevitably take on more of the care responsibilities, whether it’s children or elderly parents.
“That is really the way of the world since time immemorial.
“It’s only in the last 30 or 40 years the idea of working full time took hold. But most people don’t have a choice in this now, they need two incomes to pay the mortgage.
“Having the conversation in the public realm about whether we have it all, when most of us don’t have choices, I’m a bit wary of it.
“I tell my girls ‘do whatever you want to do, there’s lots of options out there. It’s important you don’t limit your ambitions. But at the end of the day we don’t have to be superwomen’.”
RTE came under scrutiny when it reported a gender pay gap of 13% in favour of men, well above the Irish average of 11.3%. Admitting there was still work to be done, Katie said: “It’s fantastic to see Deirdre McCarthy as the first female head of news.
“It’s kind of shocking that it’s taken this long, but that is a fairly significant appointment.
“Even myself, I’m getting the chance to front a new programme like this when I’m not one of the bright young things.
“I think that says a lot about RTE. I think we are not there yet but we’re making great strides.” A year ago Katie was on the receiving end of a threatening email warning her against discussing gender violence in the wake of Ashling Murphy’s murder.
She said: “I didn’t think it was a very serious threat really. I read it out to show how some men were unwilling to have that conversation.
“That was absolutely a one-off, I didn’t take it as a personal threat.
“I don’t get the kind of toxic messages and posts that I know other women in politics and media get.
“Maybe that will change now that I’m on a higher profile show.
“I’d rather not be dealing with it, even talking about it now makes me uncomfortable... putting attention on myself. I feel nobody should be having to deal with that, it’s really shocking, really dangerous.
“There needs to be a conversation about it.”
Katie admitted that reporting on tragedies can sometimes take its toll.
She said: “Some of the experiences are very traumatic and disturbing, you’d have to be made of stone not to be affected
“I always come away from these encounters feeling lucky, and you know, you look at what other people are going through... it puts your own troubles into perspective.” Despite winning accolades over the years Katie counts being named as young journalist of the year in her second year of college in Rathmines among her biggest achievements.
She said: It made me want to stick with it. There’s been times when you wonder what’s it all for.
“But when you do actually do
something that has a big impact on a person’s life.
“There’s an incredible privilege – very few people get to do that and get paid for it.”
- Upfront with Katie Hannon is on RTE One and RTE Player on Monday at 10.35pm.
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