Martin O'Hagan

Owen Martin O'Hagan, (23 June 1950 – 28 September 2001) was an Irish investigative journalist from Lurgan, Northern Ireland and a former member of the Official Irish Republican Army who spent much of the 1970s in prison. He was assassinated by the Loyalist Volunteer Force, the only journalist to be killed in Northern Ireland.

Martin O'Hagan's father worked as a radio and TV repairman for the British military. O'Hagan was one of six children, and spent part of his childhood in the married quarters of British bases in Germany. His grandfather was also a British soldier, and saw service at Dunkirk. O'Hagan's family returned to Lurgan when he was seven, and he was educated in the town, leaving after taking O-levels to work in his father's TV repair shop.

O'Hagan worked as a reporter for the tabloid newspaper, the Sunday World. In this capacity, he wrote about a range of criminals and paramilitaries. He was also secretary of the Belfast branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) at the time of his death.

O'Hagan was an atheist.

Notwithstanding his history with the Official IRA, O'Hagan became accepted into the press community in Northern Ireland, his hard work quickly gaining him respect. In addition to his insightful stories on paramilitaries, he was known for old-fashioned, muck-raking tabloid stories, especially for exposing the private and sometimes seedy lifestyles of Ulster loyalists. One story included a picture of a well-known Orangeman, wearing Orange Order regalia, beside one of the same man found in a sex-contact publication, showing him naked.

In the late 1980s he was prominently featured in the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Committee, which made allegations of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) collusion in loyalist murders of Roman Catholics. As a witness in a subsequent libel action against the producer of the programme at the High Court in London, he said: "I have tried to be an independent and objective journalist but my conviction has hung over me like a sword, although I have always tried to be honest about it... I have always tried to be squeaky clean because people will always try to cast this up in my face."

...
Wikipedia