Charlie Bird
| Charlie Bird | |
|---|---|
Bird in 2007
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| Born |
Charles Brown Bird 9 September 1949 Sandymount, Dublin, Ireland |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Education | Sandymount High School |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Notable credit(s) | RTÉ News |
| Spouse(s) | Mary O'Connor (1974 – 1998) |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | http://charliebird.ie/ |
Charles "Charlie" Bird (born 9 September 1949) is an Irish journalist and broadcaster. He was Chief News Correspondent with RTÉ News and Current Affairs until January 2009. He took up the role of Washington Correspondent, but prematurely returned to his earlier post in Ireland in June 2010. He retired from RTÉ in August 2012.
Bird was born in Sandymount, Dublin in 1949. He was educated at Sandymount High School.
In the late 1960s, Bird took an active interest in far left politics, being a member of Young Socialists. In this role, along with Tariq Ali of the International Marxist Group, he attended the funeral of Peter Graham of Saor Éire who was assassinated on 25 October 1971 in an internecine dispute. A photograph of the funeral shows Ali and Bird giving a clenched fist salute at the grave. Charlie Bird was recruited into RTÉ by Eoghan Harris in the mid 1970s.
In the early 1970s he joined Official Sinn Féin and in 1973 was their director of elections in Dublin South-Central.
For many years in the 1990s, Bird was the only point of contact between RTÉ and the Provisional IRA. He witnessed at first hand the ceasefires and the subsequent twists and turns of the peace process. In 1998, Bird and his colleague George Lee broke the story about tax evasion at National Irish Bank.
On the international front, Bird reported on both Gulf Wars and was in Syria for the release of Brian Keenan. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from University College Dublin in 2002.
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