Quotes of the Week: Snowden snooper scoop to why punch-ups at dog shows are national news

Guardian Edward Snowden scoop makes four splashes

 NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Guardian: "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Matthew Ingram on PaidContent: "The fact that both Greenwald and the Guardian are to some extent 'outsiders' may have helped them land what could be one of the biggest national-security stories since Watergate. And the stories — a series that Greenwald says has only just begun — will undoubtedly burnish the Guardian‘s reputation in the U.S., not to mention its web traffic."

Rod Logan in a letter to the Guardian:  "It is good to know that our email letters to the Guardian that do not make it into your paper are at least being read by somebody, somewhere, sometime."

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGuardian blog: "The breaking of the Snowden revelations story must surely put The Guardian in line for a Pulitzer, making it the first British newspaper to win the award."

Ben Brogan in the Telegraph on Edward Snowden: "A close reading of his manifesto, with his talk of a “federation of secret law” ruling the world, CIA hit-squads, surveillance nets on the verge of activation and his right to act against a duly constituted, democratically elected government, suggests he has spent too much time watching Hollywood DVDs on his laptop and studying conspiracy theory forums on the web. Whether he is naive, deluded or malicious, he has generated a drama that is more about the fantastical steps he took to put himself beyond America’s grasp than the content of the classified information he released."

Boris Johnson in the Telegraph on the NSA allegations: "I think if I were Shami Chakrabarti, or my old chum David Davis, I might get thoroughly aerated at this point; and I have some sympathy with their general position. But then I am afraid I also have sympathy with our security services, and their very powerful need to use the internet to catch the bad guys – the terrorists, the jihadis, the child porn creeps. There is a trade-off between freedom and security, as Barack Obama rightly says; between the citizen’s right to total internet privacy, and the duty of the state to protect us all from harm."

The Sun apologises to Aliens: "IN an article on Saturday headlined ‘Flying saucers over British Scientology HQ’, we stated “two flat silver discs” were seen “above the Church of Scientology HQ”. Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologise to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists." 

Grey Cardigan on The Spin Alley: "I was quite interested in the Newspaper Society’s seven-point plan to save the regional publishing industry – and then I actually read it. Dropping opposition to mergers despite monopoly issues, curbing BBC competition, enforced use of local press advertising by government and public bodies, keeping statuary public notices in newspapers, shutting down council newspapers which compete with the local press, tighter copyright enforcement on the content of newspaper websites and maintaining zero-rating on newspaper cover prices. Is this really the best the NS can do? Seven points, every single one of them either defensive or protectionist (although I do agree with a couple of them). No leadership, no innovation, no brilliant ideas… Pathetic, just pathetic."

Peter Preston in the Observer: "The delay in agreeing some formula for press regulation is dangerous on both sides. The press – having written off the PCC as not tough enough – can't bodge along indefinitely with no successor in place. Something, in such a vacuum, is bound to go wrong. It always does. Witness the rather unexpected award of damages to a Tory deputy fundraising chairman complaining about a Sunday Times sting. If newspapers can't provide their own authority together, they may be left to swing separately. And think of what, post-2015, an incoming government with a clear mandate might do then."

Acting Times editor John Witherow ruling out an editorial merger with the Sunday Times [£]: “Fundamental changes are limited by the undertakings and in fact we see no great benefits at this stage from merging much of editorial, though we will keep this under review. It is important as much for commercial reasons as editorial that we keep the characters of the papers separate and this requires different staff in several areas.”

Peter Wright on the deal between Hacked Off and the political parties at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, as reported by Press Gazette: "I think it has placed the Government in a position where they are trapped with a royal charter proposal and a set of recognition criteria that they know the industry are not going to sign up to. I can quite see that it may be difficult to get things moving again but at some point they do need to be got moving."

Guido Fawkes ‏@GuidoFawkes on Twitter: "Great strategic thinker and master tactician Harriet Harman has devised a plan to force Murdoch to support the Tories. 15% market share cap." 

The Media Blog ‏@TheMediaTweets  on Twitter re-Murdoch divorce: "Hopefully everyone will respect Rupert Murdoch's right to privacy. Pretty sure he'd do the same."

Charles Moore in the Telegraph accusing the national press of being dominated by bad news compared to the local media: "Local papers and broadcasters are unashamedly on the side of the areas they serve. Of course they relish scandals, but they also delight in successes. At flower and dog shows, if local papers are to be believed, rain always 'fails to dampen the spirits'. National papers only really get interested when every exhibit is swept away in a tidal wave or, as happened recently at a dog show in Kent, people start punching one another."

Peter Hirsch posts on Charles Moore's article (above): "Thank you, Charles. Now perhaps you could just post the link to that dog show in Kent?"

[£] = paywall

Basil Clarke: Frontline journalist and father of PR

A biography of Sir Basil Clarke, the First World War newspaper correspondent and the father of the UK's public relations industry, is published this week.

From the Frontline is by Richard Evans, a media historian who has written for The Times and the Guardian, and is the first biography of Clarke.

Clarke joined the (then Manchester) Guardian in 1904 and then the Daily Mail in 1910, where he made his name during the First World War by defying a ban on reporters at the Front and living in Dunkirk as a fugitive so that he could send back reports of the fighting.

He was the first reporter into Ypres following the bombardment of it and he also caused a global scandal by accusing the Government of effectively "feeding the Germans" by failing to properly enforce its naval blockade.

After the war, Clarke became the UK's first public relations officer in 1917 and established the UK's first PR firm in 1924. His public relations career included leading British propaganda during the Irish War of Independence.

From the Frontline is published on June 14 and available from Amazon.

---

Quotes of the Week: From online-only can mean death to Guardian headline spoilt my breakfast

Peter Preston in The Observer: "Newsweek used to sell 3.3m copies per edition. Even when it was sold for a dollar, then folded in with Tina Brown's Daily Beast in a digital merger last December, there were more than a million customers out there wanting their old print fix. So the story that Newsweek online was blazing a path into the future rather than lurching towards oblivion seemed to have some validity. But today? What's left is up for sale again: think 50 cents. The owners want to 'concentrate' on the Beast instead. Sometimes going online-only is the sensible thing to do; but more often than not, it can seem like euthanasia with a buoyant press release."

Janice Turner in The Times: "I’m not sure where it started to go wrong with Rhys Ifans. A truly awful interview can catch you like a cloudburst in August. How quickly his answers escalated through disdain to disgust then mad-eyed vibrating hostility until he announced 'I am bored with you' and stalked out, leaving his publicist hand-wringing and ashen."

MP Patrick Mercer asked by an undercover Panorama reporter to lobby on behalf of Fiji: "Guido Fawkes will be all over this like a dose of clap."

The Sun in a leader: "WHAT a bonanza the Leveson inquiry was for lucky lawyers David Sherborne and his doe-eyed lover Carine Patry Hoskins. Not only did they find each other — but they also pocketed £385,000 of taxpayers’ money." 

Acting editor John Witherow in a letter to readers of The Times [£]: "The Times is different from Britain’s other newspapers. Most are dominated by voices from the Left or Right. In contrast, readers of The Times can find a variety of opinions from across the political spectrum. That adds up to a more intellectually stimulating experience."

Daily Mail in a leader: "The politicians may have spent yesterday insisting they are committed to cleaning up the Westminster cesspit. But, disturbingly, their determination to try to silence the newspapers who continue to expose their wrong-doing suggests otherwise." 

Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch, on USA Today: "Murdoch, gruff, cold, unable to talk in any personal sense, has seemed like the most steely and hard-hearted of businessmen — that's the Murdoch myth. In fact, he has always been a besieged king, balancing a precarious empire, fighting each battle as it came, seeing his wins and losses as a wholly personal reflection of his strength and character. The hard man is all emotion."

Attorney General Dominic Grieve on ITV News: "Clearly, if the press [has] got to know who somebody is who has been arrested and are publicising that, then clearly it might be very sensible for the police to confirm that fact."

Felix Dennis in The Observer: "I can't even count the number of business failures I've had. Mags that never worked. Mags that worked at the start then failed. Mags that we poured money into and they tanked. No one else remembers them, but I remember them all. They are engraved on my soul."

Suzanne Moore in the Guardian: "Governments play up the idea that a digital future creates jobs rather than eats them up. Culturally, there is now a fantasy world of start-ups and blogs and YouTube TV where a very few people manage to make money but most work simply for 'experience'."

Roy Greenslade's verdict on his MediaGuardian blog on Trinity Mirror's new Sunday Brands division for all its national and regional Sunday newspapers: "Sunday Brands is, quite simply, a giant mistake."

Tim Crook ‏@libertarianspir on Twitter: " 'Oral sex caused my cancer' What an awful headline for the Guardian. Put me off my muesli." 


[£]=paywall

Quotes of the Week: From Guardian's Woolwich front page to who is Britain's best columnist?

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in the Guardian on the paper's front page on the Woolwich murder (above): "This was an extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, event. In broad daylight on a British street a man was hacked to death allegedly by someone who then essentially gave a press conference, using Islamist justifications. It was, by any standards, a unique news picture – but in a new media context in which the killer's message had already been distributed around the world virtually in real time."

Guardian readers' editor Chris Elliott in his Open door column on the same front page:  "It was right to use the picture and the video, as both were crucial to an understanding of the event. It's not the first time shocking images have been run on the front page. However, the effect of the quote embedded in the photograph meant the message was unmediated."

Daily Mail in a leader: "It is morally unfathomable of our national broadcaster to seize on the gruesome murder of a British soldier as a reason to give a platform to hate preachers blamed for inspiring his killers. Yet such is the BBC’s grotesque thinking when it invites the likes of Anjem Choudary, who refuses to condemn Lee Rigby’s slaughter, to outline their case for destroying our country’s way of life."

Sarah Branthwaite of Foot Ansty on Woolwich and the contempt law in the digital age, on HoldtheFrontPage: "In order to assemble a truly neutral jury for any future trial of these suspects, one imagines enquires being made to locate individuals who were in a coma last week but fully recovered in time for the trial."  

Carl Bernstein interviewed in the Daily Telegraph claims Britain is: "On the verge of inhibiting press freedom and that is corrosive, even potentially fatally corrosive, to a democracy, and to your great democracy, because a free press is the only institution that, when push comes to shove, is liable to keep up freedom."

Matthew Parris in The Times [£] salutes newspaper proprietors after they were criticised in a speech by ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin at The Orwell Prize:  "Does he not understand how many proprietors down the ages have loved newspapers, cared about their survival, believed in their journalism and knowingly acted as patrons to talented journalists and tremendously important investigation, reporting and scrutiny, whose commercial usefulness is often a complete unknown? Does he realise how precarious now is the whole future of daily newspapers in Britain? Apart from historic buildings and football clubs I know no other sector where owners and investors appear so willing to pay for the privilege of losing money in the public interest."

Michelle Stanistreet in the Guardianon Local World boss David Montgomery: "Amid the management-speak, Montgomery's vision is a chilling one. Does he really have so little inkling that it is high-quality journalism and top-quality writing that is the key to successful newspapers and websites? His thinking is sadly not unique; it is a pattern we are already seeing. Journalists are being reduced to pouring words – sorry content – into pre-determined grids, with the danger of turning newspapers into open sewers."

Former Irish Times editor Conor Brady, quoted by Roy Greenslade, on problems facing the press in Ireland: "There are fewer journalists and they're working longer hours, discharging more tasks and spreading themselves across a wider range of duties than ever before. Not only this. Many of them are being poorly paid; there are very few new entrants now with the security of staff jobs."

Ex-Birmingham Mail editor Steve Dyson on HoldtheFrontPage on why he no longer buys his old paper: "The reason I’ve stopped buying the paper is because an exact replica is now available free of charge – yes, completely buckshee – on my iPad. I’m owning up to my print desertion because this iPad moment deserves comment, debate and careful consideration by the industry."

The NUJ in a submission to the Culture Secretary opposes the industry's proposed Royal Charter on press regulation:  “The alternate charter removes the obligation to offer an arbitration system, run under the auspices of the regulator set out in the Crime and Courts Act 2013. The NUJ believes this attempt to drop the arbitration system is a sign of contempt for both the public and parliament from UK publishers. They are not prepared to accept their past bad behaviour; they have little intention of behaving better in the future and they will continue to put profit before ethics.”

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGurdian blog on steep cover price rises on some of Newsquest's regional newspapers: "You have to hand it to Newsquest/Gannett. They certainly know how to milk a cow to death." 

Michael Wolff ‏@MichaelWolffNYC on Twitter: "Let's say it again, not just because it irritates people, but because it's true: Rod Liddle is the best columnist in the English language."

[£]=paywall

Quotes of the Week: Twitter becomes a Weapon of Mass Destruction and winds up Polly Toynbee

Ben Brogan about Twitter on his Telegraph blog: "Politically, the micro-blogging site has become a weapon of mass destruction. Where Alastair Campbell complained about the drumbeat of the 24-hour news channels, Mr Cameron must contend with the minute-by-minute verdict of social media, where his performances and policies are scrutinised, judged and discarded instantly. Where journalists used to meet in the bar, they now exchange gags and gossip on Twitter. It is a political accelerant."

Times executive editor Roger Alton picking up the London Press Club award for best daily newspaper of the year, as reported by Press Gazette's Axegrinder: "Thanks to the London Press Club for standing by the British press and celebrating its excellence at a time when it’s under some ferocious attack from an unruly collection of clapped-out hackademics, coked-up celebrities, loved-up lawyers, vengeful politicians [applause, cries of ‘well-said Rog’]. They are bastards one and all."

John Humphrys picking up the London Press Club's broadcaster of the year award, modestly suggests it should have gone to someone else: “All I had to do was get the director general sacked.”

ITN spokesman defends broadcasting video of bloodied Woolwich murder suspect, as reported by the Guardian: "We carefully considered showing this footage ahead of broadcast and made the decision to do so on a public interest basis as the material is integral to understanding the horrific incident that took place."

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian: "The Woolwich killers wanted publicity for their crime, available nowadays at the click of a mobile phone. They got it in buckets. Any incident is now transmitted instantly round the globe by the nearest 'citizen journalist'. The deranged of all causes and continents can step on stage and enjoy the freedom of cyberspace. Kill someone in the street and an obliging passerby will transmit the 'message' to millions."

Max Hastings in the Daily Mail: "Some 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher, as prime minister, imposed a ban upon the broadcasting of interviews with members of Sinn Fein and the IRA, to ‘deny them the oxygen of publicity’. But in the modern world in which privacy is almost extinct, and censorship unenforceable as well as unacceptable, it would have been impossible to prevent the Woolwich killers from triggering an avalanche of national and worldwide publicity." 

Melanie Hall in the Telegraph: "Every officer in England and Wales will have to formally declare any friendship outside his workplace with a journalist, effectively meaning that people working in media organisations would be placed in the same bracket as criminals." 

Keith Perch on his blog: "Johnston Press is gaining just £1 in digital sales for every £21 in print sales lost. There can be little doubt that newspaper companies are shrinking in size.  Indeed, it is my belief that the only way local newspaper companies are going to survive is if they become small, low cost, digital and print businesses."

Local World chairman David Montgomery speaking to MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, as reported by Press Gazette: “We can’t keep taking costs out but employ the same production techniques in print. We have to be truly digital, so that in three or four years from now, much of our human interface will have disappeared. We will have to harvest content and publish it without human interface, which will change the role of journalists."

BBC Trust Review of  BBC online services: "The BBC should develop plans to provide better local news and information, as a number of consultation respondents, and the BBC Trust’s Audience Councils, told us the BBC’s local sites are not as strong as its UK and international news."

Former Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald in the Mail on Sunday on keeping arrests secret: "It is, of course, true that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) doesn’t really represent the police. Instead, it is an unaccountable club of senior policemen who have tended over the years to serve their own interests. But even so, their recent announcement that, when officers make arrests in the future, the identity of their prisoners will be kept secret from the public, is deeply shocking. This new policy is, it seems, a poorly judged over-reaction to perceived media and police excesses in the past and, in particular, to the strictures of the Leveson Inquiry."

Times obit on Richard Beeston, the paper's foreign editor: "Richard Beeston was one of the finest and most courageous foreign correspondents of his generation. Fearless, always fair, and unflappable even in the most extreme situations, he reported on many of the wars, civil wars and violent upheavals of the past 20 years, from Chechnya to Iraq, the Lebanese civil wars to the present bloodshed in Syria."

Judges' ruling that public has right to know that Boris Johnson fathered a child during an affair, as reported by the Guardian: "It is not in dispute that the legitimate public interest in the father's character is an important factor to be weighed in the balance against the claimant's expectation of privacy. The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother's partner and that the claimant, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father's child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office."

Chris Elliott, readers’ editor at the Guardian and chair of the NCTJ’s accreditation board, on HoldtheFrontPage about his struggle to learn shorthand: "I bought the cassettes and practised Ted Heath’s speeches until I finally became competent in Teeline. I paid to take exams and got 80 wpm – not perfect, but over the years it has become an invaluable tool that I still use every day. I wish I had got the 100. Of course there are tape recorders and mobile phones. There are also trains, boats and planes, but everyone takes their driving test because most of the time you drive yourself. Once learned, shorthand is there as a basic support forever; learn it because you’re worth it."

Polly Toynbee ‏@pollytoynbee  on Twitter: "Twitter suggests I follow Mail DepPol Ed. Check blurb:he boasts 'Breaking news and reputations' Is poison+malice re politicians prime purpose?"

Polly Toynbee ‏@pollytoynbee on Twitter: "Time for bed: twitter is suggesting I follow Melanie Phillips."

Quotes of the Week: From nightmare interview with Ginger Baker to Fleet Street's Fergie frenzy

Michael Hann on the Guardian's Music Blog on interviewing drummer Ginger Baker (top) in front of a live audience: "I've had peculiar interviews before. I once sat on the floor in the dressing rooms at Spurs' training ground to talk to Sol Campbell, while John Scales stood just to my right, listening in. He was naked. His penis kept dangling in and out of my eyeline at disconcertingly close range. But I've never had any interview experience quite so unsettling as half an hour with Ginger Baker in front of a couple of hundred people. It's not something I want to repeat." 

• Mark Ellen interviewed an irascible Ginger Baker for The Word in 2009, you can read an extract here.

Les Hinton on Twitter re-departure of Ian Katz from Guardian to edit Newsnight: Les Hinton ‏@leshinton  "Do @guardian journos feel a little abandoned with the popular heir-apparent editor jumping ship just when things get rocky?" 

Police Federation chairman Steve Williams, as quoted by the Daily Mail: "There’s been a sea change on the back of Leveson. Cops are very reluctant to speak to the media and say how it really is."

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian: "Giving in to terrorism has given data intrusion, "back door" surveillance and press restriction all the best tunes. The Pentagon pleads 9/11 and Whitehall pleads 7/7. Lord Justice Leveson can only plead Hugh Grant, but he is enough. They all say they want a "responsible press". But the direction of travel is the same, towards the pollution of freedom. Acts of government that would once have caused outrage are now met with a shrug."

 Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times [£]: "I’m constantly being hauled over the coals in the Daily Mail and the Daily Star and the Mirror for all sorts of things. Calling Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot. Saying public sector workers should be executed. Sparking fury with fox enthusiasts. I’m portrayed as an evil, racist, homophobic misogynist who goes through life stabbing baby badgers for fun. And I’ve worked out that it makes no difference. Taxi drivers still pick me up. People still watch my television shows. My books aren’t remaindered for weeks; sometimes months. That’s because the endless criticism is just a background hum. The BBC should accept this. It should make decisions on what it thinks to be right, not on how that decision will be reviewed in the next day’s papers."

Grey Cardigan responds to a PR on TheSpinAlley: “Dear Kacey-Lee. Thank you for your interest in the well-being of myself and my family. Unfortunately I couldn’t get out in the sun to enjoy myself because I am twice-divorced and therefore don’t have enough money to even pay for a Mr Whippy. As for a barbecue, a Lidl sausage toasted over a blow-lamp is about my limit. My children won’t talk to me, my latest ex-wife is shagging an investment banker while still shafting me for every penny she can get, and I can’t go out in the sun because I have red hair and turn bright crimson if I even walk past a microwave oven. Anyway, it was rainy and foggy up here, somewhere north of Kensington, so there was no sun anyway. Oh, and my dog died, which somewhat took the gloss off the weekend…”

David Simon in The Observer: "You already have too much prior restraint of the British press. I couldn't operate under your press law, couldn't do good journalism consistently. Your ability to criticise people in public or reveal secrets that are in the public's interest are much more constrained than ours. And I find that to be unworkable in terms of democracy."

The Times [£]: "Local authorities are threatening to withdraw advertising from newspapers that publish stories they do not like, according to a survey that examined the impact of the Leveson inquiry on the local press. Nearly half of all local newspaper editors believe that the inquiry into press standards has negatively affected their titles’ relationship with readers. More than a quarter (27 per cent) had received a threat from a public body to suspend advertising as a result of journalistic activity, such as a story being published, a query being made or a reporter attending a meeting."

Brian Cathcart, the executive director of Hacked Off, in a letter to regional newspaper editors, as reported by HoldtheFrontPage: “You may be concerned that any changes to the press regulation system could make your job harder and put extra burdens on regional and local papers. That’s what the Newspaper Society has been warning. I am writing to say that what the Newspaper Society has been telling you is not correct. The Royal Charter approved by all parties in Parliament in March is good for working journalists, good for the regional and local press – and good for the public."

Private Eye on coverage of Alex Ferguson's retirement: "Perhaps the most spectacular example of Stockholm syndrome was displayed by the BBC. Having been sent to Coventry by Ferguson for a full seven years after daring to expose his son Jason's activities as a football agent - a ban which ended only in 2011 -  the corporation found the perfect pundit to  pay tribute to Sir Alex on Radio Five Live. Step-up long-standing Fergie friend and fellow Labour stalwart Alastair Campbell, the man whose rabid desire to 'fuck Gilligan' over the BBC's WMD story in 2003 brought the corporation  as close to extinction  as it has ever been."

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "'I've never held a grudge against the media, not my style' - Sir Alex Ferguson, who refused to speak to BBC for 5yrs."

BBC Sport Interactive editor  Stuart Rowson ‏@StuartRowson on Twitter: "Led by the #MUFC and Fergie coverage, last week was the biggest ever outside of the Olympics for @bbcsport - 17.3m unique UK browsers."

SubScribe by Gameoldgirl on Press Gazette: "The Ferguson retirement killed almost as many trees as the Iron Lady's death. Every daily newspaper, bar the Express, lost touch with reality in a race to be the most obsequious...This is daft. The Knight of the Hairdryer is a football manager. He is retiring, he has not died - and even if he had, this would still be over the top." 


[£] = paywall

New survey on legal claims made against media

A new survey hoping to establish solid data on the nature and quantity of legal claims made against the media in the UK, is being conducted by Judith Townend, who runs the Meeja Law blog.

She says: "There is very little solid data about the nature and quantity of legal claims made against the media, including small bloggers. Because the majority of libel claims, for example, are believed to be resolved out of court, there is no complete record of disputes. In short, little is known about bloggers’ and journalists’ actual legal experiences and opinions."

The questionnaire can be found here:

• https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/medialawsurvey

It is part of Judith Townend’s doctoral project at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism (CLJJ), City University London. The research project, which has been given ethical approval by the CLJJ, explores how journalists and online writers are affected by libel and privacy law, as well as other social and legal factors. It will draw attention to the issues faced by online writers and journalists, and help inform the development of resources in this area.

• The questionnaire is open to all types of journalists and online writers who expect their readership to be predominantly based in England and/or Wales.
• It should take between 10 and 30 minutes to complete, depending on your experiences and views. Some questions require an answer so you can be taken to the next relevant question.
• All data will be collected anonymously with no identification of organisations or individuals.