Friday 4 May 2012

Quotes of the Week: From mocking Hodgson to the difference between a good and bad newspaper


Former Sun editor David Yelland tweets on his old paper's mocking of new England manager Roy Hodgson's speech (top): "So little compassion for Roy Hodgson today, bullying language, pointlessly cruel, pointlessly hurtful."

Sly Bailey: "For the past ten years I have had the privilege of being CEO of Trinity Mirror Plc, a fascinating and all consuming role. Newspapers are a business like no other. Now I feel the time has come to hand over to someone else to take up the challenge and for me to seek new challenges and opportunities elsewhere."

Select Committee report on News International and hacking:"If at all relevant times, Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindess to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International. We conclude therefore that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person  to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".

Select Committe member Tom Watson MP quotes Bob Dylan's 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll': "The ladder of law has no top and no bottom."

Select Committee member Louise Mensch: "It will be correctly seen as a partisan report and will have lost a very great deal of its credibility, which is an enormous shame. The issue on which no Conservative member felt they could support the report itself was the line in the middle of the report that said that Mr Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to run an international company."

News Corp in a statement: "Hard truths have emerged from the Select Committee Report: that there was serious wrongdoing at the News of the World; that our response to the wrongdoing was too slow and too defensive; and that some of our employees misled the Select Committee in 2009. News Corporation regrets, however, that the Select Committee's analysis of the factual record was followed by some commentary that we, and indeed several members of the committee, consider unjustified and highly partisan. These remarks divided the members along party lines.

Former News International chief executive Les Hinton: "I have always been truthful in my dealings with the Committee and its findings are unfounded, unfair and erroneous."

Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph: "So Leveson is turning out to be an unintended, peacetime version of a war crimes trial. The Murdochs have already been brought before us, in metaphorical handcuffs. Soon will appear, among many others, Mr Blair, Mr Brown, Andy Coulson, whom Mr Cameron hired to handle his press, and, of course, the Prime Minister himself. Because it is a judicial inquiry, the Government dare not concoct a line to take. Each witness is on his own, and so there is a danger of every man for himself. All are “lawyering up”. This is the first week since the election when I have seen the look of fear on ministers’ faces that I remember from the worst days of John Major and of Mr Brown. No one is confident of the ground on which he stands."

London NUJ Freelance Branch: "Some media enterprises seem to regard the serial exploitation of 'workies' as a business model, while outlets that used to pay now seem to work on the basis that online means unpaid."

Nick Cohen on his  Spectator  blog about The Times outing NightJack, the detective blogger Richard Horton: "Educated people in particular think there must be a rational explanation for everything — the Times must have been seeking readers or looking to right a wrong. They forget the power of motiveless malevolence. There is no rational explanation for the Times’ behaviour. It was pure malice. Horton was a successful writer, who was winning awards. But he wasn’t a member of the journalists’ club, so like a vicious boy, who tortures animals, it destroyed him, for no reason at all — just because it could."

Ben Fenton, of the Financial Times, speaking in a discussion on the Leveson Inquiry at the Frontline Club: "The difference between a good newspaper and a bad newspaper is that on a good newspaper the reporter tells the newsdesk what the story is and on a bad newspaper it is the other way around." 

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