Updated on 21 March 2024

MEET THE TEAM of editors and reporters who work with the team here at The Journal FactCheck in 2024.

In alphabetical order:

CHRISTINE BOHAN

Deputy Editor of The Journal, Christine has led the day-to-day operations of FactCheck and innovated the unit’s Covid-19 Debunked Project in early 2020. She was executive producer for the award-winning Stardust podcast which exposed the facts behind the deaths of 48 young people in a nightclub fire in Ireland in 1981. She was selected for the Poynter Institute’s Leadership Academy for Women in Media in 2018. She previously worked at The Guardian on the comment desk and as a freelance news features journalist for The Irish Times and The Sunday Tribune. She is an occasional lecturer in journalism at Dublin City University.

LAUREN BOLAND

Lauren is the climate crisis reporter with The Journal. She first joined the team as a Google News Initiative Fellow, a programme run by the European Journalism Centre to select 40 fellows to work in newsrooms around Europe. In 2020, she was shortlisted in the National Print/Online category of the Headline Mental Health Media Awards for her work countering misinformation shared on social media in Ireland on the reporting of deaths by suicide. She holds a BA in English Literature and Sociology from Trinity College Dublin and is currently a candidate in the Master of Science (MSc) programme at Dublin City University in Climate Change: Policy, Media and Society.  Lauren has worked on a broad range of fact-checking projects with a particular focus on misinformation relating to Covid-19, and more recently on climate crisis disinformation. 

DARAGH BROPHY

Daragh is News Editor at The Journal and has played a key role in planning and editing the publication’s fact-checks in recent years, including during the contentious 2018 abortion referendum campaign, the lead-up to the 2020 Irish general election and throughout the pandemic. Daragh has been a journalist at The Journal since 2013, and has a particular interest in covering long-running issues such as the fallout from Covid-19 and the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis. He previously worked as a reporter and newsreader for UTV Radio News and Independent Network News, and as a facilitator on FETAC further education courses.

SUSAN DALY

As Managing Editor of Journal Media, Susan is responsible for directing, innovating and developing content and distribution strategy for Ireland’s biggest news website, sports site The42 and the community-based investigative platform Noteworthy. Susan set up The Journal FactCheck in 2016 as a way to monitor the Irish general election and was responsible for the expansion and development of the project, which has been the only Irish signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles to this point in time. She directs all external partnerships for FactCheck including work on the European Fact-Check Standards Network (EFCSN) and the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) Ireland hub.

She is a Fellow of the Sulzberger Program for news executives in Columbia University and sits on the advisory group of the FuJo (Future of Journalism Institute) in DCU and the steering group of the non-profit Media Literacy Ireland. She contributed to the scoping paper of the National Counter Disinformation Strategy group in Ireland, which is to publish its report in 2024.

RÓNÁN DUFFY

Rónán is Assistant News Editor with The Journal and has been a journalist for over a decade, working across print, web, radio and television. His wide-ranging fact-checking experience extends to research in the areas of law, health, society, infrastructure, climate and policy. Rónán’s areas of interests include reporting in the political arena as well as covering criminal and commercial court proceedings. Prior to his current role, Rónán was a business journalist with Business & Finance magazine, a reporter with Xinhua News Agency and a reporter with Independent Network News. He holds a BA Journalism from Dublin City University.

CHRISTINA FINN

Christina is the political correspondent at The Journal. Before joining the team in 2012, she worked in a number of local and national newspapers. She holds a BA in English and Art History, an MA in International Journalism and an MA in Arts Management and Cultural Policy. She received a Justice Media Award for her court reporting from the Irish Family Courts, and has also received funding from the Mary Raftery Fund for investigative work into mental health issues in Ireland. Over the course of her career,

Based out of Leinster House, Ireland’s national parliament, Christina covers day-to-day politics for The Journal, and often highlights claims made by politicians, lobbyists and other public figures that she feels should be factchecked.  She is a frequent contributor to national radio and television shows.

CORMAC FITZGERALD

Cormac Fitzgerald is an award-winning investigative reporter who works on special commissions for The Journal and its investigative site Noteworthy, as well as fact-checking work for the FactCheck unit. He was part of a Journal Media team to win the prestigious human rights journalism award, The Mary Raftery Prize, in 2021 for work on the institutional prejudice experienced by children from an ethnic minority in Ireland. He has previously been the recipient of the Simon Cumbers bursary for international reporting, and his work with The Journal colleague Stephen McDermott on the lobbying of politicians led to the correction of several hundred lobbying records lodged with authorities.

JANE MATTHEWS

A MSc graduate in Sustainable Development, and trained in Journalism and Media studies, Jane Matthews joined The Journal in July 2023 from a role in the Financial Times. With The Journal, Jane has become a political reporter, examining proceedings in Ireland’s houses of parliament and writing analyses of political and policy matters. Her expertise and contacts were employed in a fact-check around the movement of private landlords in the precarious rental sector in Ireland.

STEPHEN MCDERMOTT

Stephen is Assistant News Editor with The Journal. He has been the day-to-day lead on FactCheck. He covers a range of issues in news, with a strong focus on misinformation, and has previously worked for Newstalk and the Irish Mirror. He is direct manager for FactCheck’s full-time fact-checker and liaises with the Managing Editor on FactCheck’s partnership with the Ireland EDMO hub (European Digital Media Observatory). 

SINÉAD O’CARROLL

Sinéad is Editor at The Journal and is responsible for the daily output of the website’s reporters, as well as longer term planning on projects including FactCheck. She has provided fact-checking services to nationwide television broadcasters, appearing frequently during the referendum on the Eighth Amendment in 2018. She was the winner of a Justice Media Award 2017 for providing historical context around the first tribunal to be established in Ireland in a decade. She is a regular contributor to news and current affairs shows across radio and TV, and has also hosted a number of programmes.

SHANE RAYMOND

Shane is FactCheck’s full-time fact-check journalist, surfacing misinformation trends in Ireland and providing fact-checks to correct that information. He is experienced in the use of digital fact-checking tools, with a wealth of bylines for his fact-checking and misinformation work in outlets such as The Times, The Sunday Times, Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Irish Times, The Japan Times, ABC7, Storyful, The Irish Examiner and The Sunday Business Post. His research has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Guardian, Vice News, Sky News, Euronews, Global News, The Straits Times, RTÉ and The Irish Independent. 

Before coming on board The Journal FactCheck, Shane was an analyst for harmful content for misinformation tech specialists Kinzen, and worked previously for Reuters and social media verification company Storyful. He has a Master’s degree in International Journalism from TU Dublin.

NICKY RYAN

Nicky is a journalist and reporter with The Journal. He has an interest in factchecking a wide-range of topics in news and current affairs, as well as exploring ways to visualise the results. He wass the writer of The Journal’s popular Covid-19 newsletter which also outlines themes of disinformation and misinformation in the public health space. He edits The Journal’s various podcast outputs, paying particular attention to the accuracy of the audio content, and contributes to The Journal’s TikTok output, which often addresses and debunks viral claims and shows audiences how to spot disinformation. 

All of our journalists are available by direct email in their byline section at the end of every article they write. You can also contact FactCheck by our factcheck@thejournal.ie email address, on Twitter @TJ_FactCheck or to our misinfo Whatsapp hotline on 083 876 0971.

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here.