DO I really want to be a woman working in journalism? Two recent articles make me ask myself that question. The first was a column by the great Maureen Dowd in the New York Times . The second was Vincent Browne's venomous attack on Anne Harris, the deputy editor of this paper, in a recent issue of Village magazine.

Let's deal with Dowd first. This formidable feminist firebrand (the White House calls her "the Cobra") finally cracked and revealed her inner Bridget Jones. The 53-year-old spinster feels that when it comes to dating, men favour dumbing down. Grim reading for a young woman who wants to get on - but wants to get off as well.

But Vincent Browne vomiting his bile all over our deputy editor was both depressing and disgusting. Two-faced too, because the attack revealed him as an avid reader of the Sunday Independent . This is the same huffer who told my media law class in Griffith College three years ago that he doesn't read the Sunday Independent .

Well he's certainly making up for it. Actually you could say he is addicted to attacking Independent News & Media. In the past few weeks, he has attacked our group in every single organ he owns or works for - in Village , the Irish Times , the Sunday Business Post and RTE. So much so that he seemed to sense he needed counselling in his Irish Times column last week which contained the risible sentence: "It is with hesitation that I refer yet again to the example of Tony O'Reilly."

Hesitation my head. Browne should come clean about his animus against Sir Anthony O'Reilly - and Anne Harris. In 1994 he was sacked as editor of the Sunday Tribune , which he had run into the red, at a time when Anne Harris was helping to turn the Sunday Independent into a major commercial success. But even Sinn Fein never sank to Browne's depth when he accused our deputy editor of being driven by her former husband's "ideological" agenda - as if she could not oppose the IRA on her own account.

Let me put the boot on Browne's foot. Suppose I said that his daughter Emma Browne, a reporter with Village - who sometimes shares a byline with him - is ideologically influenced by her father? Actually I would never assume she shared her father's primitive prejudices. But she should have protested at the blatant sexism of her father's fulminations. And why the silence from all the feminist firebrands in Women's Studies, who would be quick to defend a similar sexistattack on Mary Lou McDonald? And why no sound from Seamus Dooley of the NUJ who is normally so fast on his feet to slate real or imagined crimes against political correctness?

There was a time when I was taken in by Browne. As a 'He reduced Dana Rosemary Scallon to tears on his radio show . . . Afterwards, Dana told the Irish Examiner: He was huffing and puffing and kept running his hands through his hair, and I thought this man was ill.'

journalist junkie I blush to recall sending him a gushy teenage fan letter. But when I studied under him at Griffith College School of Journalism,I soon found my idol had feet of clay. He seemed addicted to the adulation he got fromminor politicians in Montrose every night, becoming sullen when he didn't receivethe same deference fromthe students.

But I still thought that he might help one of his own former students in her first job. In the summer of 2003, the Sunday Independent commissioned me to ask a few personalities about their best and worst summers. As a former student of his, I felt sure Browne would give me a good quote. Instead, he launched into a tirade against the Sunday Independent which he said was (a) disgusting and (b) had not been nice to him. I repeated my request for help but he snorted hard and said no.

From then on I followed his career with growing confusion. How can he not be aware of his own apparent hypocrisy? In Village last week, he said the Terry Keane column in the Sunday Independent "caused much hurt to its victims". But, if he thought it was that bad, why did Browne himself attempt to recruit Terry Keane to write just such a gossip column in the Sunday Tribune in the Eighties?

Could it be that Browne's obsession with the privacy laws is subconsciously connected to the revelation in an interview with Sinead O'Connor by Patricia Deevy (now senior editor at Penguin Ireland) in the Sunday Independent about his fling with Sinead in the Nineties?Is this why Browne is so obsessed with the "privacy" aspect of Ireland's libel law?

But there was an even bigger example of Browne's hypocrisy in the Village article. He referred to Eamon Dunphy's famous polemic against Proinsias de Rossa as a "vindictive and comprehensively ignorant assault on the character and reputation of Proinsias de Rossa which justly ended up costing the newspaper well in excess of €1m." So how come I can clearly recall - and so do the classmates I consulted - Browne in my media law class in Griffith College saying the exact opposite about the case?

Apart from his double standards in dealing with the Sunday Independent , Browne's big problem is his patronising attitude to women.

He was part of the smug male club - Fintan O'Toole and John Waters were other members - which challenged Geraldine Kennedy's authority when she was trying to calm the Kevin Myers "Mothers of b*****ds" controversy last February. Would he have challenged Conor Brady inthe same cavalier fashion? Come to think of it, wouldFintan O'Toole have challenged Conor Brady's salary as he has challenged Geraldine Kennedy's?

We saw Browne's bullying streak again when he reduced Dana Rosemary Scallon to tears on his radio show in advance of the 1997 Presidential Election. Afterwards, Dana told the Irish Examiner , "He was huffing and puffing and drawing deep breaths and kept running his hands through his hair and I thought this man was ill." The Broadcasting Complaints Commission decided in March 1999 that the broadcast was neither objective nor impartial.

All of Browne's anger seems directed at strong women. Browne has no problem with weak women. Hence the pathetic parade of timid Chrissies from politics and the media who are patronised on his programme. But he has never been happy working with women who stand up to him. RTE is rich in women who worked with Browne and won't be back. We can look forward to some feisty memoirs in the foreseeable future.

This does not mean that Browne lacks admirers. And they tell you all youneed to know about him. Because his two major fan groups are drawn from two radically different groups of damaged males.

First, he is revered by the kind of rednecks who tell you that "Vincent's great crack", and who most likely share Vincent's view of bright women. Second, in my experience he is adored by the by the kind of emotionally immature males who are turned on by his panto belligerence and snorting histrionics.

A noteworthy straggler is convicted IRA terrorist Eddie Gallagher, who declared himself a Browne - and Village - buff on a recent Liveline .

That is why I find it significant that I seldom meet many mature women who like Browne's written journalism - just as I seldom meet sexually immature barristers who do not. Like Browne they think that talking about tribunals is real talk, whereas talk about relationships is simply gossip. But of course spoofing about tribunals, sport and cars is simply the male version of gossip.

Which makes Vincent Browne the biggest ol' boy gossip in town.

- Gwen Halley