Bill Tyson

Bill Tyson is a multi-award winning Irish writer and producer.

Financial journalism

Tyson won three ESB national media awards for business journalism. Two of these (in 2000 and 2002) were for campaigning investigative journalism into the Irish Nationwide Building Society. In 2004, he won another ESB media award for stories on borrowers who were lured into unaffordable debts and subjected to aggressive repossession tactics. In 2006, Tyson become personal finance correspondent for the Sunday Tribune. Highlights included an exposé of an orgiastic lend-to-invest spree at ACC Bank, which was followed by the resignation of ACC's CEO three weeks later. For this story, Tyson received an "honourable mention" in the inaugural UCD Michael Smurfit Business Journalism Awards. In 2008 Tyson resigned from the Tribune over the immediate sacking of business editor Richard Delevan following a complaint from a leading advertiser about one of his articles (see -columnist resigns). From 2011 to 2013, Tyson was a financial reporter on the RTÉ TV series The Consumer Show. In the 2012 series Bill highlighted a Payment Protection Insurance mis-selling controversy, following which widespread repayments were made by banks to thousands of consumers. He also exposed high mortgage rates charged at the time by Permanent tsb. These rates were reduced shortly after the issue was aired on the show. Other stories dealt with the "Phoenix company" phenomenon, where consumers lost out when businesses went into liquidation. Tyson has also worked as a freelance journalist for the Sunday Times, Sunday Independent and The Business Show on RTÉ Radio 1. In the Sunday Times in 2012, Tyson showed exactly how much brokers mis-sell investment policies by "churning" the existing business of unsuspecting clients. Following this article, the Irish Insurance Federation called for an investigation and shortly after, the Central Bank instigated one.

TV and film production

In 2005 Tyson teamed up with Declan Cassidy to establish Timesnap, a film production company. In 2007, he earned a Masters degree in screenwriting from IADT. In July 2008, the Tyson-produced short film "Whatever Turns You On", directed by Cassidy, premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh and went on to win eight international awards including Best Short Short at Aspen Shortsfest USA 2009, an 'Oscar' qualifying event. In the same month it was short-listed for the award of Best Short Film at the Boston Irish Film Festival and received a theatrical release in Ireland and France. The short was also bought by TV stations in Poland, Ireland, Belgium, France and the UK.

In 2008–2009 Tyson co-wrote and produced a four-hour television series for DCTV. The House (The House) 2009 also saw the release of the short film Veronique – penned and produced by Tyson – under the Irish Film Board's Virtual Cinema scheme. Veronique was acquired by NBC Asia and screened in several countries with a potential audience of billions. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn8Q8FyUTWM)

The following year saw the release of two documentaries produced by Tyson for DCTV A Century of Sailing, on the oldest sailing boats in the world still racing (Howth 17s), and Little Jerusalem, a portrayal of a tiny Irish Jewish community, which has had an extraordinary impact. In 2011, the Tyson-produced documentary JJ and the Admiral was launched by Taoiseach Enda Kenny at the Royal Theatre Castlebar in front of an audience of over 1,000 people.(film-story-of-admiral-brown-and-jj-ohara)

Books

Tyson wrote and published an annual finance book – Your Money – which was a top ten non-fiction best-seller several times between 1996 and 2004. In 2006, a biography of Mayoman Admiral William Brown written by well-known Argentine author Marcos Aguinis and translated by Bill Tyson was published to critical acclaim. (Admiral-William-Brown)

Other work

Through a voluntary group of media professionals, Community Media Associates, Tyson is a member of Dublin Community Television (DCTV) and was involved in a project to teach video production skills to disadvantaged youth in Drogheda in 2010. The following year, Timesnap Ltd, where he is a director, became a fully fledged partner on two major EU training projects.

References

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