The extraordinary career of the late Jim Fahy, the RTÉ broadcasting legend who knew how to break a story and was dogged in its pursuit will be shown on RTE 1 next Tuesday evening at 7pm.
Mr Fahy was RTÉ’s longest serving regional correspondent, when he retired in 2011. After starting his journalistic career with the Tuam Herald newspaper, he made the leap to broadcasting in the early 1970s and revolutionised regional reporting.
Over the years that followed, his voice on radio and television became synonymous with life in the west of Ireland. For decades, on nightly bulletins, he catalogued the twists and turns of life in the towns and villages of the region, covering tales of joy and heartbreak, despair, and delight.
But Jim Fahy was not just a local journalist, he travelled to Africa, Ukraine, South America, Haiti and beyond, documenting the lives of people who were impacted by famine, war, poverty, and injustice. For 38 busy years he was the go-to person when a story broke; was liked, admired and more than anything else trusted by the people of the west of Ireland and further afield.
His filmmaking earned him over forty national and international awards. Yet he shunned the limelight and never pursued the trappings of “personality.” He valued his privacy and guarded it fiercely. For Jim, it was the story and the pursuit of it that was always king.
Jim Fahy died in January 2022. The programme will hear from friends, colleagues and family who remember Jim Fahy as someone who was a born mentor, a keen sailor and hillwalker, a devoted husband and father and a doting grandfather.
One of those, Tommie Gorman (friend and former RTE Colleague ) said that Jim Fahy was like Patrick Kavanagh, in that he believed that the local was the universal.
Adi Roche, CEO Chernobyl Children’s Project International said that he was an ethical, kind, compassionate and loving.
For most, his legacy will be that of someone who often gave a voice to the voiceless, who was the ears of the west of Ireland and for over forty years documented a fast-disappearing life for future generations.
