Veteran journalist and author Robert Fisk dies aged 74
Journalist Robert Fisk speaking at the World Editors Forum at the World Association of Newspapers 56th Congress at the RDS in Dublin yesterday. Picture: Billy Higgins
Veteran journalist and author Robert Fisk has died at the age of 74.
Mr Fisk suffered what is believed to have been a stroke at his home in Dublin.
It was reported that he became unwell on Friday and was admitted to St Vincent's Hospital where he died a short time later.
From 1972, Mr Fisk worked as the Northern Ireland correspondent for the London Times during the Troubles.
He went on to become one of the most highly regarded and controversial British foreign correspondents, reporting on the first Gulf War, and was one of the only western journalists to interview Osama Bin Laden.
President Michael D Higgins paid tribute to the late journalist saying that people "all over the world, relied on him for a critical and informed view of what was taking place in the conflict zones of the world."
"I have had the privilege of knowing Robert Fisk since the 1990s, and of meeting him in some of the countries of which he wrote with such great understanding. I met him in Iraq, and last year I had my last meeting with him in Beirut, during my Official Visit to Lebanon.
"I knew that his taking of Irish citizenship meant a great deal to him, and his influence on young practitioners in journalism and political writing was attested by the huge audiences which attended the occasions on which he spoke in Ireland."
Veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn has paid tribute to his long time friend describing Mr Fisk as his best friend and a wonderful person who had been exactly the sort of person that the world needed.
Mr Fisk’s efforts to find out the truth and to report on what mattered had made him very special, Mr Cockburn told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
In a world of Trump and Johnson it was important to have people like Robert Fisk, he said.
The two men met in Belfast in the early 1970s when Mr Fisk was a reporter for the London Times and Mr Cockburn was completing his Phd in Queen's university. The two spoke at least once a week and remained in “constant touch”.
Mr Cockburn said Robert Fisk was a wonderful journalist who sought out justice and held governments to account with his “extraordinarily good reporting,” Mr Fisk had been the first to report on the Israeli bombing of Lebanon at a time when nobody else was reporting on it, said Mr Cockburn.
