Obituary: Austin Hunter

Austin Hunter, who has died aged 64 in a road accident in Bahrain, was one of the leading Northern Ireland media figures of his generation. His high-profile positions included reporter with BBC Northern Ireland, editor of the News Letter and public relations consultant to the Orange Order. He also headed the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) press office.

He was always courteous and considerate, always generous to colleagues and willing to share information, and he always ensured that more junior colleagues were credited for their work.

At the BBC he was one of the main news reporters, and thus one of the public faces of the evening news on television. He worked there at a time of intense violence. As a journalist he was sensitive to victims, remembering there was personal grief behind every incident.

He took over the editorship of the News Letter after the paper had gone through a difficult period, and turned the situation around. Circulation increased, after a prolonged decline. Journalists found him easy to work with, though no pushover. He always kept a jar of sweets on his desk, and everyone who went in had to take a sweet. During his editorship, he attended a DUP conference and spent much of his time talking to ordinary delegates, finding contacts and stories.

Orange Order

As a public relations consultant, Hunter set up the press operation for the Orange Order and Royal Black Preceptory. He had an instinctive understanding of what made the membership tick, because he came from a rural area of Tyrone where the Orders were strong. It was not the easiest of tasks, because the orders were suspicious of media, and diffuse.

He sensitively told them what they did not want to hear, and persuaded them to begin engaging with the media. His period in charge of the police press office came during the difficult policing transition from the RUC to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

In recent years, he had been working as a media consultant. He was on an assignment for the Northern Ireland Co-operation Overseas, an organisation that sends local experts to advise state bodies abroad, when he died in Bahrain.

Tyrone

Hunter was born in March 1952 and raised outside Artigarvan, a village north of Strabane, Co Tyrone. He was one of two sons to Billy Hunter, a bus driver and small farmer, and his wife Eileen. His father died when he was still young. He was educated at Ballylaw Primary School, then Strabane Grammar School. Cricket is part of the identity of rural north Tyrone, and he was always steeped in the sport. Strabane Grammar was historically a strong hockey school, and while there he acquired a life-long enthusiasm for that sport.

He studied in Belfast's College of Business Studies, then began his career with the Strabane Weekly, quickly showing a flair for a good story. He enthusiastically covered a strike at the town's Leisure Centre, building good relations with strikers and their supporters.

In a trade where heavy drinking was endemic, Hunter was a teetotaller. At the BBC Club in Belfast he was famous for drinking fizzy orange mixed with lemon. For much of his life he was on a diet – and always falling off it. He was also a man of quiet but strong faith, an elder in his Presbyterian Church in Comber. Above all, he was a family man whose life revolved around his wife Jean and children Rachael and Simon.

He was well thought of in the BBC and could have moved to a more senior role, but it would have meant relocating to Britain. That was not an option because, to him, there were more important things than work.

He is survived by his wife Jean, daughter Rachael, son Simon and brother Adrian.