In The News

By the time the final episode of The Traitors Ireland was aired last September, the nation was gripped.

The RTÉ version of the gameshow was a hit with nearly three quarters of a million people tuning in to see a trio of “Faithfuls”, Oyin, Vanessa and Kelly bag the prize.
It’s been quite the year for Vanessa Ogbonna and Oyin Adeyemi.

They came into the In the News studio to talk about their time in the castle under the watchful eye of Siobhán McSweeney; how they won and what the spent the prize on; how they dealt with social media trolls, and their fun new podcast, Oya C’mere.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.
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Swiss media have compared what happened to Irish teenager Paula and her mother, Iwona, to the Pelicot case in France.

Prosecutors allege that Patrick Frei, 57, drugged and raped both Paula, then aged 14, and her mother, Iwona while they were living with him in the Swiss town of Untersiggenthal. It is also alleged that he filmed the assaults.

Paula and Iwona had moved from their home in Sligo in 2022 to live with Frei, a high-profile right-wing politician, a year after Iwona and Frei had begun a long-distance relationship.

So how did the case come to light and when did the alleged abuse begin? How did police build their case? And why did Swiss authorities move to deport Paula and Iwona while the investigation was under way?

Frei is due to stand trial in February 2027. His lawyer says he “disputes substantial parts of the allegations and, in particular, the legal characterisation of several of the charges”.

Conor Gallagher of The Irish Times investigations team travelled to Switzerland to speak with Paula and her mother, Iwona.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey.

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For Washington insiders observing how the Trump administration conducts its business, Natalie Harp is an alarming figure.

The 35-year-old White House aide appears never to leave the president’s side, whether he is meeting a world leader in the Oval Office or playing golf. Her influential role has been questioned, and ridiculed, for years.

Harp’s nickname is “the human printer”; she is rarely seen without a sheaf of documents ready for her boss. When it emerged that those documents included highly personal letters she had written to him, laying bare her devotion, insider gossip turned into public soap opera.

A political attack line delivered by Democratic senator Jon Ossoff put her in the public spotlight when he said of the president: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Shawn McCreesh, a White House reporter for The New York Times, explains this latest, and perhaps most puzzling, controversy to hit the Trump administration.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan, with Andrew McNair.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now in its fifth week, the trial of Lindsay Clancy in the US for the murder of her three children has been headline news, with blanket TV and press coverage and endless online discussion.

What is known – and what she admits – is that on the evening of January 23rd, 2023 while her husband Patrick was out running errands, she killed their three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3 and Callan aged 8 months in their suburban home.

When Patrick came home, and before he found the children, he found her on the ground outside their house.

As Shanelle Kaul, a national correspondent for CBS News, tells In the News, his 911 call for help was one of the most harrowing evidence heard in court.

Her defence is that she was suffering from post-partum psychosis; the prosecution maintains her actions were deliberate.

As the jury prepare to begin deliberations this week, Kaul discusses the key evidence heard at the trial so far.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode was originally published in March 2026.

In his new documentary Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars, director Mike Sheridan explores the profound influence of toxic discourse in the United States on the rest of the world – and in particular, Ireland.

Through interviews and examples he shows how, with the amplification of social media, legitimate grievance can bloom into conspiracist, and how easily performance, paranoia, and power intertwine.

As Irish Times reviewer Tara Brady notes, the film which “begins as a study of toxic discourse in the United States expands into a sobering excavation of recent unrest in Dublin. The riots of November 2023, along with the persistence of aggressive anti-immigrant demonstrations, are presented as symptoms of a transnational malaise”.

Sheridan explains to In the News how he made the documentary, how imported misinformation can gain such a powerful hold, and why high-profile US commentators including Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes became so invested in the Dublin riots without any apparent factual knowledge of what occurred.

Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars is available to rent on Apple TV and other digital platforms

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.