Anne Harris, the former editor of the Sunday Independent, is born on August 25, 1947. She is the former wife of Eoghan Harris who was an opinion columnist for the newspaper. Her daughter, Constance Harris, writes for the newspaper as a fashion writer.
In 1972, Harris writes a controversial article defending the 1972 Aldershot Bombing, an article she later expresses regret for. She also works for The Irish Press, as well as the political magazine Hibernia and the fashion magazine Image.
Harris is originally a socialist and a feminist. In the 1980s she abandons socialism in favour of the free market but remains a feminist. Harris also becomes known for her opposition to Irish nationalism and Irish republicanism, similar to her then-husband Eoghan Harris and Conor Cruise O’Brien. This position is reflected in the Sunday Independent‘s coverage of Northern Ireland. This causes some commentators to claim Harris is a “Southern Unionist.”
Harris lives with Sunday Independent editor Aengus Fanning until his death on January 17, 2012. On February 5, 2012, the Sunday Independent announces that she will succeed Fanning as the publication’s editor.
On the evening of Saturday, July 19, 2014, group editor of INM newspaper publishers, Stephen Rae, orders the presses to be stopped to amend a column written by Harris, the Sunday Independent editor, which features references to Denis O’Brien. Copies of the original article do however appear, allowing comparisons between the two. Harris originally writes: “Denis O’Brien is the major shareholder in INM. In theory, with 29% of the shares, he does not control it. In practice, he does.” Rae has the last sentence deleted. She also writes: “The question is whether he understands newspapers. In order to confront the truths in our society, we must have a free press. With the restrictive charter for journalists proposed last year, and some garrotive (sic) new structures, Denis O’Brien does not make this easy.” This is changed to: “The question is whether he understands newspapers. In order to confront the truths in our society, we must have a free press. If the restrictive charter for journalists proposed last year, along with some other structural changes, are anything to go by, it might be instructive for him to listen to journalists, troublesome and all as they are.“
Harris leaves the newspaper some months later, with The Irish Times noting her departing speech to staff as follows: “She is understood to have spoken only about journalists and journalism and not about newspapers and their owners, a subject matter she has previously addressed in several columns.”
seamus dubhghaill 