Brian Cathcart

Brian Cathcart

Author

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University London and was a founder of the Hacked Off campaign. He served as specialist adviser to the commons media select committee in 2008-10. Irish by background, he was a journalist at Reuters, the Independent papers and the New Statesman, and has written books about the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Jill Dando, as well as on the history of nuclear science.

Brian’s book, Everybody’s Hacked Off: Why We Don’t Have the Press We Deserve and What to Do About It, with an introduction by Hugh Grant, was published as a Penguin Special in September 2012. His latest book, The News From Waterloo, was published by Faber in Spring 2015.

Brian Cathcart @BrianCathcart

A good time to remind everyone of a time when Johnson did not seem to need anyone else to advise him that gatherings were not within the rules - a rule that Josephine (aged 7) got.

"We have all got to do our bit," he said, congratulating her for cancelling her birthday. ~AA https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1241348429546217475

80% of this involves him being entirely unaware of how any other workplaces operated during lockdown.

He adds: remember, people [in number 10] did follow social distancing and were acutely conscious of it. https://twitter.com/jaymitchinson/status/1638558094098591746

It’s your responsibility to find out the rules and abide by them - @BorisJohnson

I urge all Londoners to email their MPs and demand action to restore @metpoliceuk as an organisation that is fit for purpose and deserves our confidence.
This will be a huge job and will require consistent public pressure and support.
Please RT.

The question is not whether Johnson lied. It’s obvious he did. The question is whether our political system is able to acknowledge he lied and to ensure there are consequences.

This is from the BBC journalist who bravely went undercover and whom the Home Secretary of the time was desperate to silence. The scale of official failure and wrongdoing on police reform is appalling.

Almost exactly 20 years since the BBC went undercover to expose virulent racism in one of the UK’s biggest police forces, the question today is, has any progress has been made at all? Seems worth reposting this cutdown of our 2003 Secret Policeman doc https://youtu.be/BxH99SIjfsQ

@brokenbottleboy The retired officer talking on BBC Scotland this morning was saying recommendations from the Stephen Lawrence enquiry had still not been implemented. Why do people feel this latest report will be the one?

I have been to Rwanda. I have met Paul Kagame. And I am disgusted by Suella Braverman acting as PR agent for this chilling regime. All in the name of a cruel forced resettlement plan for refugees who deserve our help. No decent voter should back this outrage

Stock your feeders & get ready because today is #WorldSparrowDay.

We thought we would take a moment to celebrate the sparrows of the UK & share some fun facts about them!

📷 @ajcritchwild

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Ill Met By Gaslight https://tinyurl.com/4puvvphb cc/ @BrianCathcart @pguk10 @brokenbottleboy @gameoldgirl @Ian_Fraser @snigskitchen

@WritesBright and @bylinetimes have consistently covered and nudged other outlets into covering many stories. Well worth supporting and checking out this https://twitter.com/BylineTimes/status/1636376122517762050

@chrisclipson @BrianCathcart Some, certainly. But there are many more who care very much about independence of thought and who are willing to put in the work. It's just that ultimately the ones who are rewarded and promoted are overwhelmingly those who best serve the interests of their proprietors.

Read of the day.

My mother, the troll: ‘I think she lost sight of the McCanns’ humanity’ By @shattenstone https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/18/my-mother-troll-of-madeleine-mccann-parents?CMP=share_btn_tw

My word, the Mail is a hard read today. So much anger. Albanian drug gangs, gender wars, wokeism taking over the world. But there's nothing it likes more than a bit of woman-on-woman action. Because the woman is always to blame. And successful women are "daddy's girls".
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Dear @BBCNews I’ve come back to this piece several times and I can’t for the life of me understand why you’ve printed it

You seem to imply that women escaping a hateful and totalitarian regime is a bad thing - worse still that we should vilify them for doing so https://twitter.com/bbcnews/status/1636251281491734529

Not just independent from Downing St, I would say, but from any party political influence. If political involvement is ever necessary it must be on terms of cross-party consensus. Politicians should never have influence over journalists, who must be free to hold them to account.

This week’s story will keep happening unless the BBC is truly independent of the government of the day. Appointments to its Board, and of its Director General, and determination of its funding, need to be visibly separate from Downing St. Or the public will lose trust in the BBC.