Friday 9 March 2012

Media Quotes of the Week: From wanting real news back to will Sun journalists get a fair trial?


Fleet Street Fox on her blog: "I do not want news that has been approved by a press officer, run past the police or checked against Hugh Grant's moral compass first. I want my news back - cleaned of criminality and paying off its debts but just as badly-behaved and mischievous as it ever was, kicking over the dustbins, cocking a snook and scribbling away frantically because it had a really, really good story to tell."

Former Met Police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson in a written statement to the Leveson Inquiry: "On several occasions after Operation Weeting had started and I had returned from sick leave, the chair of the MPA, Kit Malthouse, expressed a view that we should not be devoting this level of resources to the phone-hacking inquiry as a consequence of a largely political and media-driven 'level of hysteria'."

Former Met Police commissioner Lord Stevens at Leveson:"From what I have heard people are absolutely terrified of picking up the phone and speaking to the press in any way. I don't think that is healthy. The press has their job to do, they have delivered some outstanding work."

Robert Fisk in the Independent: "We have grown so used to the devil-may-care heroics of the movie version of 'war' correspondents that they somehow become more important than the people about whom they report."

Chris Oakley on the regional press in forthcoming book What Do We Mean By Local?, edited by John Mair, Neil Fowler and Ian Reeves: "The real losers from the financial folly of the past decade are communities up and down the country which are now worse informed than a century ago."

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger collecting the Goldsmith Career Award from Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center: "Open versus closed is not just a debate about newspapers. It is a fundamental choice in every corner of our public life and business world. You see it in academic study; in pharmaceuticals and research; in how governments handle data and information. In journalism, it’s not about displanting or replacing the skills of a reporter or an editor. It is about understanding how life has changed and how we can harness the revolution we’re living through to produce a better account of the world around us."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet on the closure of the Press Complaints Commission: "Despite many opportunities and sustained lobbying by the NUJ and other groups such as Mediawise and the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, the PCC has failed repeatedly to seize the chance to reform. We are pleased that its closure has been announced today."

Rebekah Brooks' solicitor Stephen Parkinson in the Daily Telegraph on the possible impact of evidence given at the Leveson Inquiry on any forthcoming trials: "The judge will be bound to consider – if there is ever a prosecution – whether a fair trial is possible. Those of us representing the current and former journalists, particularly at The Sun, who bore the brunt of the prejudicial comments, will inevitably make the point that publicity of this kind does not fade from the memory."

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