A 19th-century telegraph key sits in a display case in a new temporary exhibition at Epic The Irish Emigration Museum. For decades, journalists relied on this sort of electrical switch to send breaking news across vast distances. One of the earliest reporters to make use of the telegraph was Tallaght-born William Howard Russell, who covered the Crimean War (1853-6) for The Times of London. The new technology allowed his frontline reports to reach Britain at a speed unthinkable just a few years before.
Technology has since transformed the tools and formats through which news is shared, but the drive to uncover important stories remains unchanged. Epic’s exhibition, Frontlines: Irish Journalists Abroad, highlights the impact made by Irish reporters since the mid-19th century, from Europe and North America to the Middle East and Africa.
The multimedia exhibition explores different political and social moments through the journalists who worked on them. Among the featured reporters is Declan Walsh, chief Africa correspondent for the New York Times, who was born in Ballina. Walsh and his team, including Cork-born photojournalist Ivor Prickett, won a Pulitzer Prize this year for their revelatory coverage of the Sudanese Civil War. The conflict has seen more than 12 million people displaced and more than double that figure facing extreme hunger.
An interview with Sally Hayden, a contributor to this paper, is also shown as part of the exhibition. Hayden’s non-fiction book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned, exposed the human rights abuses perpetrated on Europe’s borders, drawing on interviews with hundreds of migrants and refugees who had attempted to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. She was spurred to dive deeper into this story when refugees incarcerated in Libyan detention centres began contacting her through social media, using secret phones to beg for her help in telling their stories.
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Other interviewees include Northern Irish reporter Steven Grattan, Amazon correspondent for the Associated Press, who is based in Colombia. Grattan has reported extensively on the challenges facing indigenous communities and on environmental issues such as deforestation.
Frontlines also documents the careers of historic figures such as Galway-born Catherine Ferguson, who would become better known as Kit Coleman. Coleman moved to Toronto as a young widow and, after the breakup of her second marriage, turned to journalism to support her two children. She honed her political voice writing a weekly women’s column for the Toronto Mail. In 1898, she became one of the first accredited female war correspondents, overcoming military resistance to report from Cuba during the Spanish-American War. She later co-founded the Canadian Women’s Press Club and served as its inaugural president.
Michael Davitt is best known as the founder of the Irish National Land League, but he too made a living as a journalist. Among his most significant assignments was a 1903 investigation into the anti-Jewish pogrom in Kishinev, Russia (now Chişinau, Moldova), commissioned by William Randolph Hearst’s American newspapers. His dispatches were widely reprinted and later compiled into a book, Within the Pale: The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecutions in Russia.
The work of photojournalists receives attention here as well. In 2017, a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar forced hundreds of thousands to flee the country. Antrim-born Cathal McNaughton was part of a Pulitzer-winning Reuters photography team that captured the struggles faced by refugees. After a break from photojournalism, McNaughton travelled to Ukraine in 2023 to capture daily life in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
Another area of focus is the role played by Irish immigrant newspapers in challenging negative stereotypes and helping immigrants adapt to their adopted homelands. There are clippings from the Southern Cross in Buenos Aires, founded in 1875, making it one of the oldest Irish newspapers outside of Ireland. The publication’s editors have included William Bulfin, author of Tales of the Pampas, and Fr Fred Richards, who spoke out against Argentina’s military dictatorship. It became a mainly Spanish-language publication in the 1970s.
The Pilot, meanwhile, was a go-to news source for generations of Irish in Boston. A Catholic newspaper, it sought to guide new arrivals in their assimilation to America but also to keep them connected to their faith and to Ireland. It had a long-running column, Missing Friends, where readers could post adverts seeking information on lost relatives. John Boyle O’Reilly, the Irish Fenian exile, served as the newspaper’s editor from 1874 until 1890 and as co-owner from 1876.
In London, the Irish Post has been fostering a sense of community among Irish immigrants since 1970. The newspaper operated for many years in an anti-Irish climate, but it continually spotlighted stories of Irish achievement and campaigned against miscarriages of justice following the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974.
Others focused on setting trends, redefining style on a global stage. Carmel Snow from Dalkey was credited with transforming American fashion journalism as editor of Harper’s Bazaar. She described her audience as “well-dressed women with well-dressed minds”. Today, Samantha Barry, a Cork woman, carries that spirit forward as global editorial director of Glamour magazine.
Other writers featured include Charlotte O’Conor Eccles, author of a nineteenth-century magazine column titled Distinguished Irishwomen in London; Seaghan Maynes, who covered the D-Day landing and Nuremberg trials for Reuters; Caitriona Perry, chief presenter with BBC News in Washington; and Donie O’Sullivan, a CNN senior correspondent who has reported on the rise of extremism and online misinformation.
These are just some of the hundreds of Irish emigrants celebrated at Epic. The museum, opened in 2016, highlights how Irish emigration has changed the world, showcasing the men and women who left their homeland and went on to shape the worlds of politics, science, art, sport and literature. Their stories remind us that Irish identity is not confined to one island, but carried and reimagined wherever the Irish have journeyed.
Frontlines: Irish Journalists Abroad, which is supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is open now at Epic until March 31st, 2026. It replaces the museum’s previous temporary exhibition, On the Move: A Century of the Irish Passport. Entry to the exhibition is included with general admission into Epic.
For more information and ticket bookings, visit epicchq.com.
