Thursday 1 September 2016

Media Quotes of the Week: From why those who believe in a free press should fear Impress to Matt would win gold in the cartoon Olympics



Index on Censorship in a statement: "We are extremely concerned that recognition of Impress has the potential to introduce punitive measures for small publishers and to stifle investigative journalism. We are also concerned about the transparency of its funding. These are factors that threaten freedom of the press... Although Impress has said it would not 'be beholden to anyone' and that a charity would would act as 'buffer' between any donor from which it receives funds, the idea that a single wealthy individual should control the purse strings for a supposedly independent regulator should strike fear into the hearts of those who believe in a free press."


Michael Wolff in USA Today: "There are two clear winners in digital media, Google and Facebook, and their imperial success has largely reduced everybody else to a vassal state, living off their patronage and goodwill. This duopoly has forced the cost of advertising down and the price of traffic up, meaning, for everybody else in the advertising and traffic business, prospects shrink."



Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Optimists might have hoped we would take the opportunity of fast broadband to read more widely, and challenge more preconceptions. Not a bit of it. The better the access to the web many enjoyed, the more they clung to their own kind. The longer they stayed online, the more they turned for comfort to ideologues who shared their ideology."


Philip Collins on The Times [£]: "Mr Corbyn has a theory of politics that is deeply patronising. He thinks the mainstream media, to adopt his strange language, gulls people into their beliefs. He has no faith in the intelligence of the electorate. He is a populist with no regard for the people. His plan was to appeal directly, avoiding the media game."

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Press Gazette reports: "The Independent has grown its audience by 46 per cent year-on-year after moving to a digital-only model in March and closing its print edition, the latest readership figures show. The title has added 6.6m readers to its total daily audience across online and mobile over the last year, up to 21.201m, according to Published Audience Measurement Company (PAMco) data."

Neil Thackray ‏@neilthackray on Twitter: "Will spectacular audience growth 4 @Independent lead 2 revenue & profit?It hasn't done so sustainably 4 anybody else."


 Mature Times publisher Andrew Silk quoted by the Guardian on Jeremy Paxman, who described the free magazine as the "most unfashionable publication in Britain" in the Financial Times: “I see similarities between him and Jeremy Clarkson. He could be Clarkson without the money - Clarkson has made a living from being offensive. Paxman tries to be the intellectual one but he’s lacking the charisma of Clarkson."


Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian: "It is hugely important to highlight the fact, yes the fact, that opinions continue to hold sway in all news output. That, of course, is the major role of media commentators: to make transparent to as wide an audience as possible, as often as possible, the underlying messages of so-called facts...If journalism is to have any value to society then it has to analyse itself. What is at issue here is truth and trust."


Ben Fenton ‏@benfenton on Twitter: "If cartooning were an Olympic sport, Matt would have won every gold since 1988."

[£]=paywall

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