Harvey Matusow and The Birth of Fake News
BBC Radio 4
Written and narrated by Robert Cohen
A slippery, slithery story of one of the most significant Americans you’ve never heard of, Harvey Matusow was America’s king of fake news. This was the tale of how he fed hogwash to the House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI.
Misinformation, disinformation, streaming fake news to the gullible consumer? All sounds very 2026, very The Traitors, but it’s nothing new. This new documentary, researched, written and presented by actor and Sussex Playwrights Vice Chair Robert Cohen explores the life and strange work of Communist, anti-Communist and anti-anti-Communist Harvey Matusow, born one hundred years ago.
Throughout McCarthyite conspiracies and the rise of post war communism and its perceived threat, Matusow was there at the centre of it all, lying for cash as the most unreliable of witnesses. From Communist party newspaper salesman to actor, voice artist, puppeteer and professional liar [some might say the same thing], pretending to be someone he wasn’t, speaking in whatever voice they wanted to hear and pulling the strings was Matusow’s craft.
Cohen knows him better than most, having written and performed his own one man show about him, and the research and understanding shows in this blend of research project, academic pursuit, journalism, writing and performance. It’s a chatty, thoughtful and knowing delivery of an eminently quotable script that reels you in, unpacking and exploring layers of intriguing complexities.
In this entertaining and informative rush through American history, politics and paranoia this twisting, turning account comes with academic professorship, anecdotes from those who [thought they?] knew him, newsreel snippets and interviews, revelations and probably lies.
So was it a case of Matusow just wanting his 20th century fifteen minutes of fame, an actor craving an audience [or an income], or something darker? In the end, whatever the motivation, his perjury and lies must have had serious consequences for so many.
In a final little nugget – his archive is now held at The Keep at the University of Sussex.
On BBC Sounds at time of posting
Philippa Hammond
For Sussex Playwrights October 2026