Brian Cathcart

Brian Cathcart (born 26 October 1956) is a London-based journalist, author and media campaigner. He is professor of journalism at Kingston University London and in 2011 was a founder of Hacked Off, which campaigns for a free and accountable press. His books include Were You Still Up for Portillo? (1997), The Case of Stephen Lawrence (1999), The Fly in the Cathedral (2004) and The News From Waterloo (2015).

Born in Ireland, Cathcart attended school in Dublin and Belfast before taking a degree in history at Trinity College Dublin. After graduating in 1978, he joined Reuters news agency, first as a trainee and then as a correspondent. He was on the founding staff of The Independent in 1986, and of The Independent on Sunday in 1990, rising to become deputy editor of the latter paper.

From 1997 Cathcart was a freelance journalist and author, writing about the aftermath of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the scandal of trainee deaths at the British army’s Deepcut Barracks and the false conviction of Barry George for the murder of Jill Dando. In 2005-8 he was assistant editor and then media columnist at the New Statesman. From 2002 he helped launch journalism teaching at Kingston University, finally becoming professor there in 2006.

From 2008-10 Cathcart was specialist adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport at a time when it was investigating press standards and the phone-hacking scandal. The Committee report was highly critical of News International (now News UK) and of the Press Complaints Commission (since abolished). From 2010 Cathcart blogged on the unfolding hacking affair, mostly for Index on Censorship, and in 2011, with Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, he launched Hacked Off to press for a public inquiry into hacking and press standards. Cathcart served as Hacked Off’s first executive director from 2012 to 2014, writing extensively on press self-regulation and acting as the campaign’s principal spokesman. He appeared before The Leveson Inquiry twice, and his stance on press standards has drawn criticism and personal attacks from some in the industry.

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