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EMMA LITTLE-PENGELLY, the new Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister, is the first unionist to hold the position.
The DUP MLA was appointed to the role on Saturday, along with Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill as First Minister, as powersharing institutions returned after a two-year hiatus.
The First Minister and Deputy First Minister hold a joint office and have equal power in their positions.
Little-Pengelly, interestingly, is taking up the role despite not being elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
She was, instead, co-opted to replace her party leader Jeffrey Donaldson on the Stormont benches in May 2022.
Donaldson won the seat in Lagan Valley – the constituency he represents at Westminster – in the North’s 2022 general election.
However, he decided to remain at Westminster as an MP. Little-Pengelly was chosen to step into his seat as an MLA.
Little-Pengelly, aged 44, was raised in Markethill, Co Armagh, according to BBC News.
She studied law at Queen’s University Belfast from 1998 to 2011. She also studied for a time at Harvard.
She was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 2003 and has worked as a barrister through the years.
Little-Pengelly is married to Richard Pengelly, the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.
Looking at her political career, she served as a special adviser to Ian Paisley when he was First Minister and remained in the role when Peter Robinson took over as First Minister.
She was co-opted as an MLA for Belfast South in 2015, replacing Jimmy Spratt.
She was appointed a Junior Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive Office in October 2015 and was elected again in May 2016.
Following this election, she took on the role as Chairperson for the Finance Committee.
Little-Pengelly lost her seat in the March 2017 election when the number of seats per constituency was reduced from six to five.
However, a few months later she was elected to represent Belfast South as an MP in Westminster. She remained in this role until 2019 when she lost her seat.
She went on to become a special adviser to then-First Minister Arlene Foster. The Irish News reported that she said in June 2021 she was stepping away from her DUP role after being “deeply saddened” over tensions following Edwin Poots’ election as leader to the party.
The time away from the party was short lived as she returned when she was co-opted to Donaldson’s seat in 2022.
Fast forward to last weekend, as she took up the position of Deputy First Minister, Little-Pengelly said she and Michelle O’Neill come from “very different backgrounds”, but for her part she will work “tirelessly to ensure that we can deliver for all in Northern Ireland”.
The first plenary session of the Northern Ireland Assembly is taking place this morning following the restoration of powersharing on Saturday.
Includes reporting by Press Association
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The article highlights solid data and real experiences, i do not dispute this. However it’s apparent too that people’s lives can he turned upside down by journalists without consideration.
In 2019 I was subject to being named in international press and mistakenly. It took two years to address and I only ever received an apology after 16 months. To this very day I receive threats by email from strangers.
@Osprey: what a horrible experience for ya, people should never be allowed work in journalism again after doing that
Wonder are some “journalists” trying to prop up the upcoming Hate bill?
@Dave Barrett: Sad state of affairs that such legislation is needed.
How about an article on the persecution of Julian Assange?
@Winston Smith: That’s different apparently, because his feelings weren’t hurt by something somebody said, that he found personally offensive.
He’s also obviously not a real journalist, because he didn’t once regurgitate the press packets of government propaganda and he had some crazy conspiracy theorist idea about delivering the entire truth warts and all for people to draw their own conclusions from it, once again, that’s clearly not real journalism..
/sarcasm
Delete your Twitter account. Problem solved.
@Mr. Cullen: Our slew of ex-CIA directors in leading positions (content moderation, strategy, etc.) within Twitter, Facebook, Google et. al. strongly advise that you do not delete your twitter account.
@Mr. Cullen: It’s hilarious that people aren’t capable of handling the mass of information in front of them, it may be the most enjoyable aspect of the media, seeing how people can underpin reality with complete trash.
@Mr. Cullen: that won’t work as that’s how they research and get ideas, quotes etc. now they can use ChatGPT to write copy …. the good ones know this and get on with it without complaining
@thesaltyurchin: You find it hilarious, I find it horrifying.
Do all genders have representation among DCU’s professors and associate professors of digital media?
Journalist’s definition of “trolling”= anyone online objecting to or criticizing a piece of my writing/reporting and countering it with a different opinion or viewpoint.
Because they attract cowards, keyboard warriors is all they are
Is there any evidence that female journalists are marked out for any more aggressive criticism/hate/abuse than male ones? Should there be a different standard then i.e. female journalists should be treated better because they’re more sensitive to the criticism. Surely that wouldn’t be a very feminist point of view. Surely, there’s a difference between strong criticism and hate and abuse as there clearly is in the examples above.
@Tom D: These new legal regulations that are being recommended in the article will be for everyone irrespective of gender. I didn’t see any suggestion of having different standards. This is about digital ID
@Tom D: there has been evidence gathered time and again, the Irish times made the decision to stop comments on any article on their website written by a woman almost a decade ago after the tone of those comments regularly degenerated into personal attacks. The Guardian in the uk ran the metrics about that time for their comments and found of the 10 journalists who got the most abuse 8 were female and 2 were men of colour. Their white male colleagues never got anything like the same level of abuse. Be clear here this is talking about abuse not arguments or differences of opinion, it is personal attacks based on nothing more than the gender of the journalist. I heard The Irish Times decision directly from their online editor when he gave a talk to journalism students in 2015.
Sadly comes with the job. I worked customer support for years and the abuse colleagues would get male or female was disgusting and uncalled for from customer’s who assumed cos they spwnt money on our service, meant they could say anything, so can only imagine what journos get. Think covid has also helped bring out the anger and crazy in a lot now who think they can say what they like.
@Tom Newell: I’ve been there. People are sometimes worse over the phone. I once got a furious rant from someone who’d bought products from a completely different company & misdialled in his rage. At least when I mentioned that, he had the grace to laugh at himself savaging the wrong number in an effort to impress his boss!
Dreadful that female journalists suffer like that. The elephant in the room is that nobody (including hacks) are held accountable for their online activity and when AI grows up, it’ll get millions of times worse. On the other side some irresponsible ‘journalists’ stir the pot too – the sick frenzy around Turbity or the BBC witchhunt are too good examples. Its chaos in digital and social media. And when the Gov tries to take action, the “freedom of speech” card gets played.
@Chris Curran: We have sufficiently harvested enough data (see recent Google announcements to circumvent GDPR and transfer to US) to fool you into thinking AI is real and generate much of the content on this website (AFP) for example, in line with our overall objectives. We thank you for using our service. Terms and conditions apply.
@Chris Curran: its free content, everyone gets a break from thinking.
Why were journalists targeting men women and children who refused COVID vaccines for online abuse? Why are you deleting this comment?
Yes-but, what about, if you only…..and freedom!
All the usual suspects are here.
Because the people doing this think women are easy targets it’s a form of harassment intimidation bullying but for the the bully’s that doing this will always fall victim when they become the bullied and soon reliaze the mental stress it causes that could lead to health issues.
Sounds reasonable. Who wouldn’t want to protect women from abuse. It looks like the onus for bringing in digital ID(this can then be linked to CBDCs/health certificate/social credit score) will be shifted to companies. Pesky constitutional safeguards on free speech can be easily circumvented on the internet if AI filters off a low threshold.
“Being subject to a barrage of tweets describing you as monstrous, calculating or conniving eats away at your sense of professional and personal worth, as much as you try to tell yourself it’s not true”
“So what do we do? The journalists interviewed for the DCU research expressed a desire for social media platforms to take a pro-active, rather than reactive, approach to online abuse. Instead of having moderators – some of whom are volunteers or AI – responding to flagged tweets and deciding whether they should be taken down, users could simply be prohibited from publishing tweets containing certain words or phrases.
“Bolstering the law around social media platforms’ positions as publishers of content would make it easier to take legal action for defamation. As the report points out, this could force the platforms to clean up their act, “because they’re about money”
So will the AI be filtering comments that accuse someone of being “calculating or
conniving” or other subjective personal opinions? Bit of a slippery slope
@Sean: No more slagging Bertie, lads. The AI will be filtering it because Bertie might sue if you call him “the most cunning” according to the recommendation in this article
Twitter has really taken a dive since musk took it over. People that were banned all back and very little oversight now.
@James King: Our various directors have been parachuted from CIA and Pentagon to director positions within the organisation. Everything is under control. It is for your greater good.
@Corporate Interests: And Fossetts are hiring, you should send a CV.
“I always struggled to understand why apparently ordinary people engage in such hateful, abusive rhetoric online.”
It’s not difficult to understand at all. All people need to do is read random comments from any online forum or social media and it will be very easy to see that a lot of commenters are a bit thick, their bark is bigger than their bite, most of the time they would not say things to you face. It’s far more apparent these days as the internet allows for all sorts of yobos to have their say, but it’s certainly not a new thing. The nature of the job probably makes it an easier target. Male journos also get abused, but as males do, they usually just suck it up and not report it, which is not always the best way.
My comment on this article was deleted and so were others, mainly I assume because they were somewhat critical, but not offensive. I guess you either toe the line or get deleted, I’ll be banned after this watch. Pure nonsense and you guys think you’re paragons of virtue.
A lot of weak cowards out there, with tinfoil hats and living in their moms attic!
@Emmet Murphy:
“Mom” is such an Americanism. It’s Ma!
@Sean: In fairness, and I say this as a Dub who has always slagged people who say anything other than Mam, I’ve been told since by pals in Cork and Kerry that a lot of people in Munster call their Mam ‘Mom’ from the pronunciation of the Irish word.
D4s who say Mom need to give it a rest though
@Sean: Ma is such a Dublinism, it’s Mother. :)
The term “sex” should be used when referring to biological characteristics, while “gender” should be reserved for social and cultural differences.
If journalists are getting repeatedly harassed by the same people, the law should already protect them. Sounds like the process is not being followed or taken seriously.
If this hate speech bill was really trying to deal with harmful discrimination, it would include class – the single most widespread form of discrimination anywhere in the world. It doesn’t because the people bringing in the new law are all from the same segment of society and just want to protect themselves – not anyone else further down the social hierarchy, whatever they claim. The hate speech bill will be used overwhelmingly by middle class people to go after working-class people.
My original comment from 12 hours ago removed because it got 600 upvote. The journal censors comments that don’t break guidelines
@ Megan Ward
Mammy is a classic. Mam also.
Interesting about the west. I can hear my cousins saying mom now that you raise that
Noel Gallagher-if i had a boom boom stick lyrics, i’d shoot a hole into the sun.. Hope ye get the idea
It’s generally the same scared cowards and children who sound off on here all the time about immigrants, LGBTQ issues and anything climate related.
They’re just angry and scared that someone is going to take things from them and a lot of them are to unintelligent to understand that they are being played.
I feel sorry for them really.
@Schrodingers Immigrant: The “I feel sorry for them really” comment is a passive aggressive response and that kind of psychological manipulation should be discouraged as much as physical violence is in men. It’s the kind of passive aggressive comment which makes people angrier because it is difficult to argue with directly. Your own arguments aren’t very intelligent either (no basis) even if you do think you’re morally superior.
If people are reluctant to allow an influx of immigrants then maybe it is because of a fear of losing something and that’s not irrational. It should be discussed openly not ignorantly dismissed. You won’t win anyone over to your opinions that way.
Because the people who do this are cowards.
have your say