Brian Cathcart

Brian Cathcart counts himself lucky to have started his journalistic career at Reuters. Taken on as a 21-year-old trainee in 1978, he stayed eight years. “You get this huge leap into Fleet Street,” he told members of The Reuter Society in a talk entitled “A debt to Reuters”. “Nine months later I was in Paris thinking, someone’s going to pay me to live here.” After Paris, London and the Hague, Cathcart left to join The Independent at its launch and later became deputy editor of The Independent on Sunday. “What I think about it now - every day - is the fantastic ethical foundation that Reuters gave me. This is the right way to do it, I remind myself every day. It has lived with me ever since.”

Cathcart is now a university professor of journalism and co-founder and director of Hacked Off, the UK campaign for a free and accountable press. He traces his interest in press freedom to his background in Reuters. He has written books about the 1997 British general election and two high profile crimes, the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Jill Dando. He also served as a specialist adviser to the House of Commons select committee on culture, media and sport. ■