David Norris: Trial By Media

David Norris: Trial By Media
David Norris was elected as in Irish Senator in 1987. In March 2011, he put himself forward as a nominee to become President of Ireland. Two months later, the Senator was mired in a controversy caused by the reappearance of two interviews, which he had given and that threatened to derail his presidential campaign.
“This is the cruellest thing that ever happened to me,” Norris told Irish journalist Joe Jackson at the time of the original publication of one those interviews in 2002. More recently, Norris has claimed that an interview Jackson himself did contains the “definitive rebuttal” of all the allegations made against him nearly a decade ago and says it “saved” his life. The senator made similar claims in relation to a 2011 interview Jackson did.
This book contains the transcripts of those lengthy, in-depth interviews, plus a third interview conducted during the presidential campaign, the subsequent
articles, and presents a critical perspective to the way the Irish media in general dealt with the Norris controversy. Trial By Media also tells David Norris’s life story in his own words.
Joe Jackson is an author, journalist, and broadcaster. His books included Troubadours and Troublemakers (Ireland Now: A Culture Reclaimed) and Other Voices, Other Rooms, A Personal History of Folk Music, which he co- authored with singer Nanci Griffith. Jackson’s articles interviews have been published globally in magazines such as Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Humo. He has interviewed 1,000 world famous musicians, artists, and politicians and has worked for Ireland’s most prestigious broadcast and print media, such as RTE Radio 1, The Irish Times, and Sunday Independent. Jackson is compiling a collection of his most inspirational interviews, Walk On With Hope in Your Heart and working on a play and a memoir based on his experiences as the biographer of actor Richard Harris. It is
titled, Excuse Me While I Disappear.