Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

Cockburn was attacked by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia (1938). In 1936 Harry Pollitt General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain asked him to cover the Spanish Civil War. He was the second cousin once removed of novelists Alec Waugh and Evelyn Waugh.

: /ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn; 12 April 1904 – 15 December 1981) was a British journalist. He was a well known proponent of communism. His saying "believe nothing until it has been officially denied" is widely quoted in journalistic studies.