Eoghan Harris Twitter accounts banned for violating rules on 'manipulation and spam'

Sarah McInerney is the latest broadcaster to say she muted the account in question having been subjected to abuse. 

Former senator Eoghan Harris, who has claimed the anonymous Twitter accounts were 'benign'.

RTÉ broadcaster Sarah McInerney is the latest high-profile journalist to reveal that she muted an anonymous Twitter account linked to journalist Eoghan Harris because of personal abuse directed at her.

Ms McInerney has said that she muted the account because of inappropriate tweets, following similar claims made by journalist and commentator Emma DeSouza, among others. 

Mr Harris has denied any element of misogyny or sexism in the tweets from the account run under the name ‘Barbara J Pym’ which has now been suspended.

Social media company Twitter has said it has suspended a total of nine accounts it thinks are linked to an anonymous account run by ex-Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris. It said platform manipulation is strictly prohibited under the Twitter Rules.

“The account you referenced was permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam,” the company said.

“We also suspended eight accounts linked to the account referenced for violating our policy on platform manipulation and spam,” a Twitter spokesman said.

Mr Harris, a former senator was sacked by the Sunday Independent as a columnist on Thursday after he admitted to company management that he was operating an account behind a fake name.

"No one outed me, I outed myself to colleagues," Mr Harris said on RTÉ radio.

Sunday Independent editor Alan English on Thursday night said: “We regard Eoghan Harris’s involvement with this account as a betrayal of trust and as such his contract has been terminated.”

Mr Harris admitted running the Barbara Pym account, which he said was operated by a “team of five or six people”. He declined to name these people, saying he did not want to “get them shot.”

Since it was set up, the Barbara Pym account has repeatedly posted very strong anti-Sinn Féin tweets and has attacked certain members of the media, including Irish Examiner political correspondent Aoife Moore.

“This account sent me sexualised messages about whether Mary Lou McDonald ‘turned me on’, the size of my arse and called me a terrorist from the month I started at the Examiner. Since then, I’ve had to go to counselling and the guards,” Ms Moore tweeted on Thursday after Mr Harris’ sacking was announced.

In one tweet sent last October, the Pym account tweeted “Moore thinks she is sniping safely from behind Derry hedges, but she’s actually sniping from an ROI hedge in the Examiner and her SF backside is sticking up in the air.”

Responding to the controversy, Mr Harris denied the account was anything other than a benign platform to allow him and five or six others to connect with Northern loyalists.

He said that as the former curator of the Barbara J Pym Twitter account, his efforts were designed to oppose Sinn Fein’s campaign to bully Northern Protestants into an Irish Republic.

“These were robust message to tough political people who richly deserved criticism” as in his view they acted as Sinn Féin enablers, pawns or stooges.