Private Eye's patron saint

PETER MCKAY

Believe Nothing until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism By Patrick Cockburn Verso £30 A cynical title, designed to lure lefties? Wikipedia says that Believe Nothing is widely quoted in journalistic studies. Really? Nor am I familiar with the boastful-sounding ‘guerrilla journalism'. These people sound like journalists who think they're more important than the stories. However, I enjoyed Patrick's admiring portrait of his father, Claud, an upper middle-class, Oxford-educated Communist who - ditching a plum job on the Times - set up the Week, a leftish magazine he more or less wrote himself with the purpose of sowing public doubt and disbelief in the actions of our government and its allies. Patrick admits the Week was designed as a one-man band in which all…

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The Oldie (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2025

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