SACKED Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris has been linked to a second anonymous Twitter account responsible for trolling high profile female media figures from the north.
The Sunday newspaper’s editor Alan English yesterday connected Mr Harris with the ‘Northern Whig’ account, now suspended on the social media platform.
Frequent targets of the account include Strabane-born ex-journalist Francine Cunningham, who is married to Independent News and Media (INM) publisher Peter Vandermeersch; Co Tyrone writer Martina Devlin, who writes a column for the Irish Independent; and Belfast Telegraph journalist Allison Morris, also part of the INM group.
INM announced it had terminated Mr Harris' contract on Thursday over his involvement with the fake Twitter account Barbara J Pym.
His involvement was exposed after the Twitter account posted a key detail of a major poll one day before it was due to be unveiled on the front page of the Sunday Independent.
The former columnist, a fierce critic of Sinn Féin, claimed he was among six people involved in running the account.
Eight further accounts linked to the Barbara J Pym profile were later suspended by Twitter.
Writing in yesterday's Sunday Independent, Alan English, himself a target of the Northern Whig account, said the profile had expressed “views notably similar to those held by Eoghan Harris and frequently complimented his articles and his stance against Sinn Féin”.
The account, which had just 20 followers at his time of writing, including Barbara J Pym, remained active on Twitter until Sunday morning.
It was set up in May 2020 in apparent tribute to Francis Finlay, founder of the Belfast liberal newspaper of the same name.
But the post pinned to the top of the account’s feed made clear its purpose was to track Sinn Féin’s “subversive influence on Irish media”.
Among the frequent targets of criticism was “Lady Macbeth”, confirmed by Alan English as a reference to the former Irish Times and Sunday Business Post arts and culture journalist Francine Cunningham. She returned to Ireland from Brussels in 2019 with her husband Peter Vandermeersch, now publisher at INM following the Irish group’s acquisition by Mediahuis.
In a blog post written in October 2020 in response to trolling and false accusations published under the Northern Whig account, Ms Cunnginham said: “The presumption that anyone from Strabane must be pro Sinn Féin is a sad, sectarian stereotype.”
She added: “As someone who has spent most of her adult life abroad, has never taken any public political stance and currently works for an international law firm, these tweets fall somewhere between sick and crazy.”
Alan English said Eoghan Harris denied being responsible for the Northern Whig account when he personally challenged him.
“He said it was not him, but had a good idea of who it might be. He declined to say, or to name, any of the co-contributors in the Barbara J Pym ‘entity’.”
Mr Harris also denied involvement in the now-suspended ‘Dolly White’ account.
Mr English wrote: “Dolly and Barbara are very much kindred spirits.”
Seán Murray, the Belfast director of the Unquiet Graves documentary, is among the individuals now considering taking legal action over derogatory comments posted by the Barbara J Pym account.
