Brian Cathcart (born 26 October 1956) is an Irish-born journalist, academic and media campaigner based in the United Kingdom.
[6] From 2008 to 2010, 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.
[9] Cathcart served as Hacked Off’s first executive director[10] from 2012 to 2014, writing extensively on press self-regulation and acting as the campaign's principal spokesman.
At The Independent on Sunday he wrote a weekly column on the subject called "Rear Window", and began publishing on the history of science.
Cathcart later wrote about the early history of journalism and communication, which is the subject of The News From Waterloo: The Race to Tell Britain of Wellington's Victory published in May 2015.