Vincent Hanna
| Vincent Hanna | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Vincent Leo Martin Hanna 9 August 1939 Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Died | 22 July 1997 (aged 58) United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Journalist, news presenter |
| Parent(s) | Frank Hanna |
Vincent Leo Martin Hanna (9 August 1939 – 22 July 1997) was a Northern Irish television journalist famed for his coverage of United Kingdom by-elections.
Hanna was from a Northern Ireland Catholic background and was born in Belfast. His father, Frank, was a prominent solicitor and a member of the Stormont Parliament. He married the daughter of Gerry Fitt. Hanna had a distinguished education which included Trinity College, Dublin, the Queen's University of Belfast, Harvard University and the London School of Economics. He was admitted as a solicitor in 1964 and worked briefly for the family legal practice in industrial injuries and civil rights cases before becoming an industrial relations correspondent for The Sunday Times in 1970.
In 1973, he was recruited by the BBC Current Affairs department to work on the television series Panorama. According to those who worked with him, he was extremely nervous when starting out, but he managed to master the medium. His greatest fame came from his BBC Newsnight coverage of by-elections from 1980 onward. His first campaign was spent doggedly pursuing candidates with difficult questions. Very few escaped unscathed. At Darlington in March 1983, Hanna's broadcasts helped to destroy the campaign of SDP candidate Tony Cook, who had been the early favourite to win.
In 1984, Hanna's impartiality came into question when he failed to disguise his support for tactical voting in some reports on the Chesterfield by-election of that year. The Labour candidate, Tony Benn, accused him of acting as the SDP candidate. During the Greenwich by-election of February 1987, he publicly accused Angela Rumbold, a Conservative Minister, of being a liar. Rumbold had cross-examined him over the alleged impartiality of a public opinion poll which showed the SDP candidate closing on the Labour candidate. On the day of the June 1987 general election, Hanna informed the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, of the early results of the BBC exit poll that showed the Labour party doing surprisingly well, and hinted to Kinnock that he might find himself in government. The poll proved wholly inaccurate, and Kinnock's party lost the election.
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