Claire Byrne
Media TribeListen to Claire Byrne on Spotify.
Shaunagh talks to Claire Byrne
This episode features RTÉ television and radio broadcaster, Claire Byrne. Claire hosts Claire Byrne Live on RTÉ television and Today with Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio 1 and is one of the most prominent journalists in Ireland.
We chat about Claire's journey from BBC to ITN back to TV3 and RTE in Ireland. We talk about her finding a mentor of sorts in Gay Byrne and we discuss the mother and baby home scandal in Ireland and how journalists must try to keep this story in the news.
This episode's sponsors:
Noa
⚡ The first 100 people to use this link (or use discount code TRIBE50) will get a free week of Noa Premium, plus 50% off the annual price: ⚡
Credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
Shaunagh Connaire
Media Tribe family, this is a public service announcement to let you know I must hit pause after this episode for a few months as I'm, well, very pregnant. I'm so grateful to all of you who have subscribed and supported the Media Tribe Podcast. And I promise to bring you more great interviews when I'm back up and running. Please do keep your guest suggestions coming in. And if I can ask you one last time to leave me that rating and review, as it really does help new people find our show. Thank you so much for everything. It's been an absolute delight chatting to you every week. See you soon. This episode is sponsored by NOA, an audio journalism app obsessed with helping you know more about news that matters. The first 100 people to visit newsoveraudio.com/mediatribe will get a week free to listen to articles from The Economist, Bloomberg, and The Irish times, plus 50% off.
Shaunagh Connaire
Welcome to Media Tribe, the podcast that's on a mission to restore faith in journalism. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, an award-winning journalist with over 10 years of experience working for some of the biggest news outlets in the industry. Every week I'm going to introduce you to some of the world's most respected journalists, film makers, and media executives, and you're going to hear the story behind the storyteller. You'll get a sense of the integrity and hard graph that's involved in journalism, and hopefully you'll go away feeling that this craft is worth valuing.
Claire Byrne
It was society that were partially responsible, the state and the religious orders. But why was society like that? Why did society think that having a baby outside of wedlock was so unacceptable that your family had to disown you? Who told society to behave like that? I just think that we owe so much to those women, and we owe so much to the memory of the children who didn't survive.
Shaunagh Connaire
My guest today is RTE television and radio broadcaster, Claire Byrne. Claire Byrne, you are so welcome to the Media Tribe.
Claire Byrne
Delighted to be with you.
Shaunagh Connaire
It's lovely to kind of meet you in person. And it looks like you're in the man cave in Bray, is that right?
Claire Byrne
Yeah. I'm in the man cave. Well, this is the infamous shed that, when I had COVID, I did a TV show from here and a couple of radio shows as well. So it's weird being back here doing something like this, because it reminds me of a year ago when all the crazy stuff was happening. Well, the crazy stuff is still happening, but that was particularly crazy.
Shaunagh Connaire
Yeah. So that was a particular... Well, it's an iconic moment, isn't it? In an Irish broadcasting. My mom did tell me you had COVID. I didn't realize this was the shed that's in question. I hope it doesn't bring back any PTSD or anything like that.
Claire Byrne
It's funny. I was chatting to somebody about it today, and probably if I'd realized then... I thought, "Oh, I've got a mild dose, and it's fine, and I'd be grand." But I didn't realize that you get COVID, and then you get through the first week, and then it's like you've been hit by a truck then the second week. And I'm fighting to get back to work, when really, I should have been hiding in my bedroom with a duvet over my head because my husband got sick as well. We have three children here, couldn't have anybody helping us. And at one stage, comically, I was crawling on the floor in the kitchen trying to mind them. And he was trying to work up here, and he came back into the house, and I'm almost in tears saying, "I can't do it. I'm so sick." And then within a few days, I was back on air doing the radio show from here. And he was looking after the children. I went back down when I was doing the News At One at the time, went back down to relieve him. And he just looked at me and he said, "Are you finished?" And I said, "Yes." And he keeled over where he was sitting, right over onto his side, and fell fast asleep in front of my eyes within two minutes. So it was just, it was crazy. It was insane. Yeah.
Shaunagh Connaire
How is it striking that balance of being a mother, and a broadcaster? Your schedule must be completely and utterly insane.
Claire Byrne
Yeah, it is. It's pretty mad at the moment. And my children are young. They're all... Patrick is seven, and Jane is six, and Emma is three. So they're young. They need me quite a bit. Not as demanding as babies, but it's tough. It's really tough. And that's what I say about the whole equality thing, and the lack of state supported childcare, and blah, I could go on. But it's really tough, but I've spoken to more experienced mothers who say to me, "It gets easier as they get bigger," because I have it in my head that I just can't... I don't know how many years I can keep this up because it's just really draining. I mean it's just-
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, you're on a treadmill, aren't you?
Claire Byrne
There's no doubt about it. It's tough. And I was only saying earlier, I try to... I like having home cooked meals for them and I like doing stuff for them myself. And then you're questioning your choices, going, "Maybe I should be just down on the floor playing with them and let them eat pizza." So I don't know. I don't know what the right answer is, but you just keep on trucking.
Shaunagh Connaire
I would say the good thing as well, from looking at your colleagues, you are surrounded by many fantastic mothers, who are also in front of the camera, isn't that right? So you can be inspired by the best of them as well, Claire.
Claire Byrne
That's the great thing about RTA, and always has been. If you think right back to Olivia O'Leary, and Anne Doyle, and all these great women. Marian Finucane, of course, who we sadly lost. But there's always been a strong tradition of women out front and center in RTE, and that's only growing. And I think it's been one of RTE's strengths. It's great to see.
Shaunagh Connaire
Do you want to kickstart the interview at tell our audience, not all of them are Irish, how your amazing career began?
Claire Byrne
Well, I always wanted to be a journalist. It was just a one track path in my mind. So when I left school... Well, when I was in school, I was annoying people, knocking on people's doors, and trying to get work experience in local papers. Did a bit of that. Then went on to UCD because somebody told me it would be a great idea to do psychology, politics, and sociology, which was a mad combination anyway. But anyway, it wasn't for me. I left there and I went to journalism college, which was what I should have been doing in the first place. And there was only one, imagine, there's only one journalism school at that time. I'm getting old. Anyway, went there. It was a short course, really practical course. They had you out on work experience, and they had you in radio studios.
Claire Byrne
And the minute I walked into a radio studio, I thought, "Aha, this is the thing I want to do." So from there, I worked in a local radio station in Ireland, and then I moved to Jersey on a whim with a friend of mine, and worked in commercial radio over there as a journalist. Went to the BBC, did a bit there for a while as a journalist, and then came back to Ireland and worked with TV3, which is Virgin Media News. Went to London, worked for ITN, came back to Ireland. TV, radio, and then RTE about 10 years ago.
Shaunagh Connaire
Wow. So it's quite a zig zagged journey, actually like most of our guests to be fair. And it's interesting Claire, you say, somebody told you to go to UCD and do a completely different degree. I actually got the same advice from my journalist uncle who was also a Morning Ireland-er at RTE, Paddy Clancy. And he said, "Gosh. Yeah, yeah. You don't need to do a degree in journalism if you want to be a journalist. You just need to be curious." And I actually thought that was great advice at the time.
Claire Byrne
Oh, it is though. It is. But I just thought I have to do this thing to get to this place. And I was very impatient. I didn't want to have to hang around doing the arts course, do you know what I mean? So I left it anyway. And it was the right decision for me at the time. But I think the advice is good, probably, if you have patience.
Shaunagh Connaire
If you have... Which I'm sure neither of us have, so that's good. So Claire, I want to maybe take you back a little bit further. I recall hearing a wonderful tale about you being very, very young, maybe seven or eight, and knowing, even back then, that broadcasting was for you. It involved a cutout cardboard box on your head.
Claire Byrne
Oh yes. My mother's shopping. So the Tuesday shop was when she went in. And actually, I love the idea of this. And she got the groceries in a cardboard box, which is what we're trying to do now, all of us. And there had been a fire at a neighbor's kitchen. So I caught the front out of the box or the side out of the box, drew the buttons on with a marker, like the one I'm holding now, Crayola is best. And I did the news of the fire. And my sister, who's a nurse now, was a better journalist than I was at the time, because she said, "You can't say you don't know what happened. You have to say, there's no more information. Because it's not your fault that you don't know, because there is no more information," which was good advice when you think about it. But yeah, I was very young. I was about seven at that stage. And then later on I thought, well, I wanted to be Enid Blyton for a while, so I saved up and bought a typewriter. But I was always interested in news. Always, right from the get-go.
Shaunagh Connaire
And where did that stem from?
Claire Byrne
I don't know. I don't know. I try to figure it out. My parents, I suppose. When I talk to people now about the news being an event in the house, and the newspaper being at a moment in the day that you couldn't skip. And you bought the newspaper, you paid good money for it. So by God, you were going to read it. The back page of the Irish Independent at the time was all the foreign news. So we all knew about these strange leaders in South America. Just you get the value out the paper because you read. And then-
Shaunagh Connaire
Exactly.
Claire Byrne
... the 6:00 news was a thing. And then the 9:00 news. And as I got a bit bigger, I realized, if you stayed really quiet during the weather, after that 9:00 news, you could stay up and watch Today Tonight. I mean imagine. And I would hide under my dad's arm, and be really quiet, and I wouldn't annoy him. And then I get to see it.
Shaunagh Connaire
What a good show that was as well. God, so you were getting to watch the likes of Glenroe then as well, before the news and all sorts.
Claire Byrne
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Shaunagh Connaire
You had a very privileged childhood, by the sounds of it Claire. I want to ask you, I also read something lovely, and I can't tell you where I read it, but was Gay Byrne, the late Gay Byrne, who was an icon for the non Irish listeners, was he a mentor of yours or did you call him for advice?
Claire Byrne
He was of sorts. Yeah, he was. I met him quite early on in my career, and I remember when I was moving to RTE 10 years ago, I phoned him out of the blue. I'd met him a couple of times, but I phoned him and I said, "I'd be really grateful if you'd speak to me." And he spent an hour on the phone with me and he said, "What do you want to do? What's going to make you happy? Make sure you look after yourself." He just had all of this really nice, almost fatherly advice. And then every time... And then he said to me, at the end of that phone call, "Why don't you just get on the train and see where it takes you?" That's that's my best advice. And then when I met him the next time, he took my two hands, which he'd always do. "Are you all right? Are you okay now?" And then that was enough. And it was just lovely. He was lovely. And he would send me messages if I did an interview that he liked, or sometimes he would tell me I was speaking too fast. He was great. He was really great.
Shaunagh Connaire
That's extraordinary. So that was during your transition from TV3 over to RTE, and RTE is of course our major broadcaster. It's the equivalent of the BBC, and PBS here in the US. So that was a major transition. And now Claire, just it's worth pointing out to our audience that you are the, I don't want to say the star journalist, but you are one of the main journalists at RTE now, one of the main broadcasters.
Claire Byrne
Well, I'm busy, I suppose.
Shaunagh Connaire
That's another way of putting it as well.
Claire Byrne
Look at my week, and think, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to do this?" Yeah, it's busy. So I do Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM until 12:00 on a current affairs, stroke magazine radio program. And then on Monday night at half past 10, I present a current affairs program which, up until COVID, had a live audience, which was a fantastic point of difference. And it was a really important thing for us to have. And we've lost that element now. So we've been trying to be quite inventive with how we take that forward, and how we're different to other current affairs programs. So we're trying to always focus on the fact that we're visual. So rather than have talking heads in studio, we're showing, rather than telling, to replace the element of the audience, which was, as I say, hugely important. And we had that little vibe of anything could happen when the audience was there.
Claire Byrne
So it's trying to keep that element of the program. But yeah, it's busy. I mean, my Sundays are terrible. There are just... On Sundays, I'm getting up, reading the newspapers. And you know here, you've got five big thick newspapers every week, that you feel you have to read as a journalist. So I do that, listen to the current affairs radio shows, try and cook a decent Sunday lunch, because my mommy lives within me. And we have to feed our children food that we make with our own hands. And then I have to try and prep for the radio show on a Monday, the TV show on the Monday night. And then if I can, I'll try and do some briefs for Tuesday as well, because I only get about four and a half hours sleep on a Monday night. So once I get over Monday, Shaunagh, it's fine. Do you know?
Shaunagh Connaire
Yeah, yeah. It sounds plain sailing. It sounds really easy. So interestingly, Claire, we were very, very lucky to get home this summer from New York, my husband and our little baby. And of course, we did our quarantine, and we ended up being in Ireland for about six weeks. But interestingly, I was there at the time when there was a transition for you to become the host of your morning show now. And so you were taking over from Seán O'Rourke and Sarah McInerney had been there at the time. And I noticed the press coverage at the time, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but they were nearly pitting you and Sarah McInerney, who's a fantastic journalist as well, against each other. And I just thought it was so crass, a nearly obvious thing, or a silly thing to do really.
Claire Byrne
Yeah. It's an obvious thing to do. And it was done for that reason. I mean, there were the photographs, a big headshot of me, a big headshot of her, facing off against each other. And through all of that time, movements in media organizations are sensitive because other pieces have to move around where I'm moving to and where Sarah was moving to. So we both knew what was happening. We had to wait until everybody else was in place, and was told, and all of those chess pieces had to be sorted out. So we couldn't say anything, but we knew what was happening. And it was just awkward because you feel like saying, "Lads, this is sorted, it's fine. It's a great story, but there's nothing in it really." And it was a bit uncomfortable to be honest with you. And I just tried to ignore it as much as I could, but it was uncomfortable. There's no doubt about it.
Shaunagh Connaire
Yeah. I just thought it was... Well, it was terribly boring and predictable. And I just felt like would they have done that if it was two male presenters and two male journalists?
Claire Byrne
I don't think so. I really don't think so. No, they wouldn't is the short answer.
Shaunagh Connaire
They wouldn't have. As I say, you're both fantastic journalists. Anyway, it all worked out in the end, but I was nearly sad to see that at the time. We'll move on to our main part of the interview, Claire, where I ask all of my guests if there's a particular story or report that you've covered, that you're perhaps a little bit proud of, or something that feels like it had impact?
Claire Byrne
Yeah. I mean, there are lots of them, and you know that question that you get asked? You probably get asked it as well, who do you most want to interview, right? And I think I found the answer to this question, finally after 25 years. It's never the fancy people. It's never the celebrities, the actors, the others, even though they're great and fascinating to interview. It's always the normal people, the ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen. They're the ones that get me, going right back, because I was thinking about this before we started chatting. When I was a very young journalist in Jersey, I didn't really have a clue what I was doing, but I was pretending I did. I was sent to cover an inquest. And it was a really sad one. It was a really tough one.
Claire Byrne
It was a young boy in his late teens who had been out with his friends. They'd all taken some drugs. And he, unfortunately, had a terrible reaction and he died. His friends panicked, and they left him in a public place, right? Just horrible. Really, really sad. So I went to the inquest and I covered the story. I did my report. I came back, and I filed it, and it ran. And after the bulletin went out, his father rang the newsroom, and I picked up the phone, and his father was so angry, like white, hot anger, shouting at me, "I saw you at that inquest. You don't know my son. You don't know what happened." So I tried to calm him down. I couldn't. It was just, it was horrible. I was shaking. You know when you're young, and you just... It wasn't my intention to upset anybody.
Claire Byrne
And anyway, my editor at the time, who was a fabulous person called Anthony Lewis said, "Right, this is a really important lesson for you. You now phone that man back. And you say, 'Tell me about your son.'" So I phoned him back. Let a bit of time passed, phoned him back. And the dad invited me to the house. We recorded a lovely interview over a cup of tea. I got to see his son's bedroom with the drum kit still there, and his football boots. And we ran a really nice story about a boy who tragically lost his life on a night out. It could happen to any of us. And it just... I came away from that thinking, this is what my job is about now. It's about getting behind the clinical, formulaic, legal side of things, and finding out what was behind that. You know?
Shaunagh Connaire
Absolutely. So it's nearly like going beyond, behind the frontline nearly, or the headline.
Claire Byrne
[inaudible 00:17:10], yeah.
Shaunagh Connaire
Yeah. And I think that's really important to Claire and that, as journalists, we don't have to get to have this opportunity, but to actually try and get to know the people that we're reporting on, and try to get to know them as human beings, as opposed to headlines in the news story. So that sounds like a great lesson to have learned very, very early on in your career.
Claire Byrne
Well, I think, I mean, I find it, quite selfishly, I find it more fulfilling than a lot of the other stuff I do. Some of the stuff is great crack, some of the politics is good fun, and a bit of a knockabout. But it's the other stuff. It's the human interest stories. And I hate that term, but it covers what I'm trying to say. I find that most fulfilling.
Shaunagh Connaire
Absolutely. And Claire, so in recent weeks, I guess, RTE and you in particular have been covering the mother and baby homes. I don't really even want to call it a scandal. That feels crass. But have there been particular interviews or moments that have stood out for you within this story?
Claire Byrne
Yes. Most days since that report was published, I feel guilty that we're not still talking about it. It really bothers me. I know we move on, and I know that's how journalism works, but sometimes I say, "God, we owe more to those women." And I know my colleagues at thejournal.ie have been doing a lot of work on keeping the story going, and they're still publishing testimonies, which is hugely important. But on I think it was the second morning after the report, we spoke to a woman called Noelle, who had been asking for her testimony. She'd been asking for her witness statement, and they kept saying to her, "No, you can't have that. We're not doing that. We're not sending people the witness statement." And then the witness statement arrives the day the report was published or the day after, but the witness statement wasn't what she had said to them.
Claire Byrne
It was completely different. And it said that she had been brought up by her natural parents, by her birth parents, when she hadn't. She'd been adopted. And her statement, they had fitted it into a set number of questions that she felt she'd never been asked. It was just extraordinary. I just felt this is more abuse. This is more abuse. Asking people to come and talk to you about what happened to them when they were practically babies, and you do that, and you trust them enough to do that. And then you come out of that process, thinking that your story hasn't been heard, and that you haven't been listened to. And I think that we owe it to those women to hear those stories in full and to have them published in full. And I'm really heartened that we might have some sort of a truth and reconciliation forum where that might happen, that we might have a monument in the form of a museum where those stories might be heard, because I just think if we don't do that, we're just doing those women as severe disservice. And men too, who are survivors of those homes.
Shaunagh Connaire
So for our non Irish audience, again, I mean the story, it's very, very hard to paraphrase it into just a sentence. But basically, it's a story over the course of several decades in Ireland, whereby pregnant women, women who got pregnant outside of marriage, were sent to these homes that were run by the Catholic Church, so that they could hide their pregnancies. And a lot of these babies were taken from the moms, and put up for adoption against their will often. And then these moms sometimes went back into society. Sometimes they did not. And this report documented 9,000 babies, or it said that 9,000 babies had died within these homes. And so much reporting has gone into this. Is there anything you would add to that Claire? Because it's impossible to sum this up in a headline, isn't it really?
Claire Byrne
It is. It is. I suppose the one thing that stays with me is the report found that there were no forced adoptions, and the report found no evidence of physical abuse. And yet, in the report, there's evidence from women who say, and children who say, "I was beaten. I felt I had no choice, but to give my... I was told I had no choice, but to give my baby up." And you can imagine being in one of those places. Your family has perhaps disowned you, you're being fed by these people. They're putting a roof over your head, and they tell you you must have that baby adopted. And then you try to tell me that, that wasn't a forced adoption when you're isolated and you're 16. I just find it really upsetting because, as somebody who has children, and you know this yourself, you just imagine what that was like.
Claire Byrne
And the report also found, Shaunagh, that it was society that were partially responsible, the state on the religious orders. But why was society like that? Why did society think that having a baby outside of wedlock was so unacceptable that your family had to disown you? Who told society to behave like that? I think they're the really fundamental questions that we need to answer and that the report needed to answer. And I just didn't feel that that was there. I accept that, legally, they did a wonderful job. They probably did exactly as the terms of reference asked them to do, but to blame society without attributing that to the church, and to what the church said was acceptable. And to explain how powerful the church was at that time. I mean, we can't begin to understand how powerful the church was.
Claire Byrne
I have vague memories of the abortion referendum in 1983, and being in the church, and feeling scared because there was a man on the altar shouting and beating the pulpit. But I didn't really understand it. It didn't affect me as much as say my parents' generation. So we could only begin to understand that. But again, I just think that we owe so much to those women, and we owe so much to the memory of the children who didn't survive. And we need to keep listening. And that's why I said at the start of this conversation about this, that I do feel guilt sometimes that the news agenda moves on. And I hope that we, as a community of journalists, keep their stories going, and keep seeking the answers.
Shaunagh Connaire
Well, it does feel like there's a lot of unanswered questions, doesn't it? As you are saying there, Claire, what was the zeitgeist back then? And in some ways it feels easy just to point the finger of blame at the church, I would say. There had to have been people... Where were the whistle blowers? Where were the journalists? Where were other parts of society who should have been exposing these atrocities? And I totally agree. It's certainly a story that should be kept in the news cycle, if at all possible. The onus is on all of us, I would say. And it sounds like such a horror story, but I'm sure you know many people who've been affected directly by this. I certainly do. I mean, just in my natural circle of friends, there's a couple of very close people to me who've been affected directly. And there's so many more stories that need to be told, and somehow these women need to seek justice.
Claire Byrne
Listen, there are people in my circle who, only on the publication of that report, found that their family was directly affected by this. And I've heard those stories from my contemporaries, both in work and outside of work. "Oh, I heard the other day about my aunt or..." It's extraordinary the reach of that whole issue. And there's still a shame around it. I mean, the fact that people in their 40s are only finding out that people in their close family were impacted by this, they're only finding out now. I mean, I just think for people who aren't from Ireland, it's really difficult to understand the depth of this.
Claire Byrne
And it's really difficult to understand the power of the church. And there were some people who spoke out. There some inspectors who went into those homes. They said the children are starving. The children are malnourished. The children are sick. They weren't listened to. And they weren't listened to by a state because the relationship between the state and the church was so, so tight. I mean, the church at the time tried to influence what it said in the Constitution of Ireland. I suppose, it's not for me to explain it because I'm not a historian, but the depth and the intricate nature of that relationship is one that we shouldn't underestimate, the power of them at the time.
Shaunagh Connaire
Yeah. And I think just the narrative of how women were treated back then, and up until recently, people were still fighting for women's rights in Ireland. So it all feels quite current at the same time, I would say Claire.
Claire Byrne
I think we still have a way to go on that, actually. I really do.
Shaunagh Connaire
The Media Tribe Podcast is brought to you by NOA, an app I listen to regularly. NOA is obsessed with quality journalism and lets you listen to important curated audio articles from world class publishers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many more. Their mission is to help listeners like you understand the big issues, get multiple perspectives, and go beyond breaking news. NOA is offering the first 100 Media Tribe listeners one week free, plus 50% off. Go to newsoveraudio.com/mediatribe, or hit the link in the show notes to begin your free trial. That's newsoveraudio.com/mediatribe. And what's more, by supporting NOA, you're massively supporting the Media Tribe Podcast and helping me bring you more episodes like this one. Right, back to Claire. But Claire, on a lighter note, is there a moment in your career that has been rather crazy, and nobody really knows about, that you'd like to tell us all the juicy details about? No pressure, of course.
Claire Byrne
Probably so many. At one time I was filming a PTC in Mumbai in the rain. It was rainy season. It was awful weather. I was standing there, I was soaked but hot. You know that feeling? Like muggy. And the cameraman was talking to this lovely smiley young Indian man, who was clearly asking him, "Are you making a movie?" And the cameraman was like, "No, it's not a movie." And I'm standing there trying to get the PTC out in my rain coat, looking my most unglamorous. The Indian chap says, "Who's the hero?" And the cameraman says, "She is." And the Indian chap said, "It's not so good then." And walked off. Thought, "Okay, that's my day ruined." But look, there's loads of things that I probably, they're so awful, that I banished them from my mind. But things like I have to do a lot of running around the studio in my TV program, and my mics fall off, I've had a broken heel. But I find the best thing is just to be honest about it and just say, "This thing happened." Actually today, Dr. Harry Barry, appearing on my program. And I say, "Dr. Barry Harry, you're very welcome." Can't hide that. You can't hide that. That's just out there.
Shaunagh Connaire
But yeah, I'm sure there's many, many giggles behind the microphone at RTE. But Claire, before I let you go. Is there anything we should look out for in the next few weeks? Any surprises around the corner that you can tell us about it?
Claire Byrne
Not particularly. I mean, I'm just keeping on. I'm just keeping on this treadmill. We have this struggle at the moment where we have to cover the news, okay? And that's COVID. And I feel like every morning at 10:00, we almost lead on a COVID story, and people tell us off for that. So it's a tricky time in news because the variety isn't there that you would normally have. And of course you're constrained because we can only have a certain number of guests in the studio at any one time. So it's a tricky moment because 50% of your audience will get in touch going, "I'm sick of COVID. I've had enough." And then the rest, you mention vaccines, for example. My gosh, they're all sending in their questions on MRNAs, and AstraZeneca, and Johnson and Johnson. So it's just hard to know how to best serve your audience at the moment. So that's the challenge that we're facing. But other than that, we're just keeping on. So there are no big plans or big changes in my future. I'm still getting my feet under the table with The Today Program, to be honest.
Shaunagh Connaire
And you're doing it so well. Well Claire, listen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know how busy you are. I should point out to the audience, it's nearly 9:00 back in Ireland at nighttime. So Claire is very generous to come on and give us your time. Especially when you have three kids. They're hopefully in bed by now, Claire.
Claire Byrne
When we started, I had one asleep, and two running around looking for water.
Shaunagh Connaire
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Claire Byrne
I'm delighted to talk to you. Thank you for inviting me.
Shaunagh Connaire
If you like what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, that's very good news because I am going to be dropping new shows every week and every month on my new Media Tribe spotlight series. Also, if you haven't already, make sure to take a listen to previous shows with some legendary folk in the industry. And as ever, please, please, please do leave me a rating and review as it really does have other people find this podcast. Finally, if you do have any guest suggestions, drop me a note on Twitter. I'm @Shaunagh, with a G-H. Or @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram. And again, that's with the G-H. Right, that's it. See you soon. This episode was edited by Ryan Ferguson.
