Thursday 23 February 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From US journalists hit back at Trump's attack on media to is the British press up to the challenge of covering Brexit?



President Trump, as reported by BBC News: "Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system. The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk to find out what's going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control."

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!"


Dan Rather on Facebook: "I have resisted commenting on President Trump's outrageous attack on the press with his tweet calling the media 'the enemy of the American people.' It is a sentiment that is a deep betrayal of our national history. The evidence to the contrary is so overwhelming that to choose any one example is to play into the alternate reality Mr. Trump is seeking to exploit for his cynical political purposes. My message is not for he who will not listen. Instead I wish to address his enablers, specifically those in the Republican Party who by their silence on this travesty normalize a behaviour that is antithetical to our Constitutional principles. Future generations will not look kindly on profiles in cowardice. And to my fellow journalists, I know you will not be bullied or intimidated. Keep doing your job. Your country depends on your service. Courage."


Graydon Carter in Vanity Fair: "We aren’t even a third of the way through the administration’s 100-day honeymoon period and let’s face it: we’re plumb exhausted. We’re exhausted from the flurry of rash executive orders. Exhausted from the human carnage in the wake of the president’s ban on travelers from majority-Muslim countries. Exhausted from the battles with neighbors, allies, and strategic adversaries on the world stage. Exhausted from the lies, the alternative facts, the boasts, the conflicts, and the scandals from this 'fine-tuned machine.' Exhausted from our president’s cavalier habit of belittling our judiciary and intelligence services. Exhausted from having craven boneheads chosen to lead departments governing the environment, the Treasury, education, and the interior. Exhausted from an administration that turns a blind eye to Russian intrusions into Crimea, our election, and the imminent elections in Europe. Exhausted from the West Wing circus of misfits, clowns, and ghouls—politics’ answer to the Kardashians. Exhausted from the preening arrogance of the members of the First Family. Exhausted from waking up and not knowing what fresh hell this new president and his birdcage of a mind have cooked up overnight."


Marina Hyde in the Guardian: "Perhaps it’s time to ease off on news of Trump’s latest 'unprecedented attack on the media', on the basis that it is not only increasingly precedented, but is rapidly becoming so familiar that it is barely even news. Whatever the frisson of being insulted by the president may feel like to the reporters it’s happening to, it’s not the most important thing to anyone else. Just because the troll moved into the White House, it doesn’t mean the advice about handling him became suddenly invalid. Don’t feed him."


Piers Morgan on MailOnline: "Frankly, I have never seen such a concerted campaign of vicious personal vilification against a newly elected president. However, it would also be true to say I have never seen a newly elected president mount such a concerted campaign of vicious vilification against the media."

Stig Abell‏@StigAbell on Twitter: "MorePeople who read think-pieces about danger of Trump's attacks on the media need no convincing; people he talks to don't read the think-pieces."


Damian Collins MP , chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, quoted by Press Gazette: “If the vast majority of newspapers and magazines continue to refuse, on principle, to accept regulation under the terms of the Royal Charter, then the government should create an alternative path, that would allow IPSO to become established as the preferred body to take responsibility for the self-regulation of the press. However for this to be achieved, the committee believes that IPSO needs to make substantial progress in establishing a low cost arbitration scheme to consider complaints against the press, to increase the resources at its disposal to launch investigations, and to fund a campaign to inform the public about how and where to make complaints to IPSO. If IPSO can make the necessary reforms to become compliant with the spirt of the Leveson recommendations, then the government should repeal the provisions within Section 40 that relate to the awarding of costs in court cases taken up against the press.”

Fergal Keane ‏@fergalkeane on Twitter on Steve Hewlett who died this week: "The brightest, funniest and best. So brave as a journalist and man. He was a powerful antidote to the suits and placemen. I've never worked with a sharper editor and one who always had your back whatever the consequences. RIP."


Melanie Phillips in The Times [£]: "For nearly two decades I wrote for The Guardian and The Observer, from which Eden I was eventually driven out by the disgrace of my political heresies. From the late Eighties, I followed where the evidence led me to challenge one politically correct doctrine after another."


Grimsby Telegraph editor Michelle Lalor in an email to staff, reported by Press Gazette: “Today I say goodbye to an industry that I have lived and loved for almost 30 years – many of those spent in the newsrooms of Grimsby and Scunthorpe, which I have led for almost two decades. Sadly the Telegraphs in both towns now move forward with no editor, a person who has been so vital over the years in setting the tone for the towns, which are still true communities...While we must all embrace change, we must never lose that fight! Thank you for the good times…a truly sad end to a wonderful career.”


Sarah Helm in the Guardian on the challenge of covering Brexit: "So distorted was British coverage of Brussels over 40 years that it was hardly surprising 'the people' were confused about why Europe mattered. Indeed, Boris Johnson, now foreign secretary, is largely responsible for the biased coverage after inventing his own potent brand of 'fake news' while a Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph – a brand he then flogged during the Brexit campaign. British journalism is now having to play catch-up on a complex story much of it never bothered to understand, at a time when newsrooms are stripped to the bone."

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Thursday 16 February 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From press fury at jail threat to journalists over leaks to where to stick the barcode on a Donald Trump front page



The Telegraph reports: "Campaigners have expressed outrage at new proposals that could lead to journalists being jailed for up to 14 years for obtaining leaked official documents. The major overhaul of the Official Secrets Act – to be replaced by an updated Espionage Act – would give courts the power to increase jail terms against journalists receiving official material."

alan rusbridger ‏@arusbridger on Twitter: "The leakers & journos who exposed Gen Flynn wd face 14 yrs in jail in the UK with new Espionage Act."


The Times [£] in a leader: "There is no shortage of laws on the statute book with which to punish those who steal or misuse official secrets. But official Britain is already far too fond of secrets and public interest journalism is already under grave legal and commercial threat. The Cabinet Office should thank the Law Commission for its ideas, and reject them."


The Sun in a leader: "BRITAIN’S Press freedom has never been in greater peril than it is today. A state-approved regulator, run by tabloid-haters and bankrolled by an odious tycoon, continues its campaign to muzzle the printed Press. Investigative journalism is threatened by a perverse law that would force newspapers to pay the costs of anyone who takes them to court, win or lose...Now the Law Commission proposes that any journalist or whistleblower caught handling secret information should face up to 14 years in jail...Number 10 must show it values a free Press and throw out the Law Commission proposals immediately."


The Guardian in a leader: "News organisations, in an intensely hostile business climate, operate in an ever harsher environment. Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 may yet be brought into force, exposing any news organisation that refused to sign up to the recognised regulator to the full costs of both parties in a libel action, regardless of whether it won or lost. The Investigatory Powers Act, which became law last autumn, has in the words of one lawyer, “ripped the heart out” of any ability to protect journalistic sources. In this angry digital age of fake news, where hard fact grows ever more precious, accurate and fair reporting has never been more important. Without it, democracy itself is weakened."


Steve Dyson on HoldTheFrontPage: "Despite shrinking resources, local papers still have space to be filled, and websites to be updated, and there are, of course, some great stories to be found on social media. But reporters need to learn that not everything masquerading as news on Twitter, Facebook et al is worth covering, and much of it is, to be kind, trivial. And whether they’re reading online or in print, readers expect their local titles to know this, and not to feed them non-stories just because they were posted on social media by some over-excited volunteer. Remember the days when reporters all had physical spikes on their desks for poor press releases that weren’t worth a story? Well, in the modern world, a digital ‘spike’ is sometimes badly needed."


Apple chief executive Tim Cook interviewed by the Telegraph: “All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news. We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press, but we must also help the reader. Too many of us are just in the complain category right now and haven’t figured out what to do.”


A Sun spokesperson, quoted by Press Gazette, on the paper's ban by Liverpool Football Club: “The Sun and Liverpool FC have had a solid working relationship for the 28 years since the Hillsborough tragedy. Banning journalists from a club is bad for fans and bad for football. The Sun can reassure readers this won’t affect our full football coverage. A new generation of journalists on the paper congratulate the families on the hard fought victory they have achieved through the inquest. It is to their credit that the truth has emerged and, whilst we can’t undo the damage done, we would like to further a dialogue with the city and to show that the paper has respect for the people of Liverpool.”


The Times [£] in a leader: "Editors of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia whose entries are of notoriously variable reliability, have chosen to cease recognising the Daily Mail as a secondary source for information, and Jeremy Corbyn has condemned as “fake news” a clutch of reports suggesting that he is close to stepping down as Labour leader. Newspapers make errors and have the responsibility to correct them. Wikipedia editors’ fastidiousness, however, appears to reflect less a concern for accuracy than dislike of the Daily Mail’s opinions. And Mr Corbyn is in a state of undignified denial that his leadership is a liability for his party and that his colleagues are appalled by his ineptitude. That is a genuine story, not a manufactured one. And it is the duty of legitimate news organisations to reveal real news."


Ian Hislop on Private Eye hitting record sales of 287,334 copies, as reported by Press Gazette: “Our sales are real, we are not making these figures up. This is a record. It’s obviously to do with Brexit and Trump and people thinking where can I find something that might be true and something that might be funny. People say you can’t do satire any more because of Trump. I think people are saying: ‘Can we have some?' "


Private Eye reports: "WHEN Wiltshire Police officers turned up at the Eye offices last month to talk about Hello, Sailor-type cartoons and photo bubbles that once ribbed Sir Edward Heath in the magazine more than 40 years ago, the visit would have been faintly comical had it not been such a waste of yet more police time and public money. It was a sign of the lengths those involved in Operation Conifer (cost so far: roughly £900,000) are prepared to go to find something – anything – that might stand up wild allegations of historical child sex abuse, and worse, levelled at the former Conservative prime minister."


Jeremy Corbyn asked on BBC Breakfast if he has set a date to stand down as Labour Party leader: " “I’m really surprised the BBC is reporting fake news."


Peter Barron ‏@PeteBarronMedia on Twitter: "Barcodes can be irritating and get in the way of creative newspaper design - but not at @TheNewEuropean;"


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Thursday 9 February 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From Trump era boosts quality journalism to Hockney takes a shine to Sun



New York Times chief executive Mark Thompson on a tenfold increase in digital subscriptions to the paper frequently attacked by Donald Trump, quoted by BBC News:  "It's not a political point, it's purely a commercial point: the Trump era seems to be a very good era for quality journalism."


Donald Trump on the media and terrorist attacks, as reported by CBS News: “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. In many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.”


Der Spiegel editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbaeumer defending the magazine's Trump cover, quoted by the Guardian: “We want to show what this is about, it’s about democracy, it’s about freedom, it’s about freedom of the press, freedom of justice and all that is seriously endangered. So we are defending democracy … Are these serious times? Yes they are.”


Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Every one of the many financial and political scandals Trump will surely generate will emerge in the media. Every media organisation must therefore be branded as lying and fake before they publish. Journalists need to learn, if they have not learned already, that no accommodation is possible with the alt-right because its ideology and tactics preclude it from wanting an accommodation. You cannot 'balance' or appease such people – you can only expose them."


Mick Hume on Spiked: "Far from being an extraordinary throwback to fascism, Trump’s contempt for free speech might make him seem a representative president for his time. As my book Trigger Warning argues, we live in the age of the ‘reverse-Voltaires’. The classic statement of support for free speech credited to the French revolutionary Voltaire – ‘I may despise what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ – has now been twisted into its opposite: ‘I know I will hate what you say, and I will fight to the end of free speech for my right to stop you saying it.’ The reverse-Voltaire in the White House and the ones protesting outside just disagree about which ideas they find too offensive to tolerate."


Martin Kettle in the Guardian: "Today more than ever the Mail has a self-interest in the denigration of parliament, and an equally profound self-interest in the promotion of referendums it can shape and destabilise by its journalism. Though it speaks incessantly about the will of the people and the freedom of the press, it is in the end only interested in the will and freedom of the Daily Mail. Neither of these have anything to do with democracy or with good government – as the debacle of post-referendum politics is making clear each day. Cameron might have been a fool to try to oust Dacre, but one can easily understand precisely why he tried."


Matt Kelly, editor of The New European and chief content officer at Archant, interviewed in InPublishing: “The print format [of The New European] was very important for the start. There’s no way we’d have done it if we were ‘digital-first’ – it’d have been a website, and that would’ve been a mistake. No-one would’ve wanted to write for it or read it. It’s why ‘audience-first’ is a better approach. Could it now migrate to digital? Perhaps, and we’re looking at that. But it could never have established that audience in digital.”


The Sunday Times reports [£]: The Sunday Times has been gagged by an injunction preventing it from reporting details about a celebrity’s personal and professional life. The judge anonymised the individual using initials. The newspaper is in legal proceedings."


David Hockney on being asked to design a special Sun logo: “I was delighted to be asked. Once I thought about the idea it didn’t take me long. The sun and The Sun. I love it.”

Jonathan Jones in the Guardian reviews Hockney's work: "What he has done here is to beautifully turn the Sun into a hymn to the sun, by adding a childlike drawing of the orb spreading its white rays through the red masthead."

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Thursday 2 February 2017

Media Quotes of the Week: From 'humiliated' US media should shut up to Greenslade's greatest hits



White House strategist Stephen Bannon in an interview with the New York Times: “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while...The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”


Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "The failing @nytimes has been wrong about me from the very beginning. Said I would lose the primaries, then the general election. FAKE NEWS!...Thr coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.They got me wrong right from the beginning and still have not changed course, and never will. DISHONEST."


Roger Cohen in the New York Times: "From Trump’s White House there now seeps a kind of ignorance mixed with vulgarity and topped with meanness that I find impossible to wash from my skin. I wake up to its oleaginous texture."


Rod Liddle, quoted by the Guardian, on the appointment of Sarah Sands as editor of Radio 4's Today programme: “The outside viewpoint is crucial, especially at a time when politics has moved in a direction that the BBC has neither anticipated nor welcomed. Sarah’s right-ish and comes with a strong journalistic background in print, which is where the best journalism is.”


The Times [£] in a leader: "The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the court set up to adjudicate on claims of official misuse of surveillance powers, handed down a withering judgment on the conduct of Cleveland police. Five adjudicators found that the force broke the law on multiple occasions when spying on the communications data of a whistleblower complaining about racial discrimination within the service, and also of a number of journalists. The reason Cleveland police had undertaken this surveillance was not to combat serious crime but to prevent their own embarrassment."


BBC News reports: "The proprietor of the Daily Mail told its editor that David Cameron pressed for him to be sacked during the EU referendum, BBC Newsnight has learned. Lord Rothermere told Paul Dacre the prime minister urged him to rein in his pro-Brexit editor, then suggested he sack him, a source told the BBC."

David Yelland ‏@davidyelland on Twitter: "Wish I had a Euro for every person of influence whose asked Jonathan Rothermere to sack or retire Paul Dacre. Cameron wasn't alone or first."


Fraser Nelson on his Spectator blog on the magazine's former editor Alexander Chancellor: "The magazine exists, today, because of him. Those of us who work in The Spectator’s offices are there because of him. What readers know as the Spectator magic was created by him. It’s hard to overstate how much we owe him."


Roy Greenslade about ending his MediaGuardian blog, in an interview with Press Gazette: “Right back to 1992 I found that journalists, editors and owners are the thinnest skinned people in the world. Some of them issue legal threats and I think to myself how disgraceful that they should reach for libel laws which then they complain about being an inhibition to their own freedom."

Roy Greenslade's greatest hits:


Roy Greenslade on MediaGurdian 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."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on the way the publisher of the Mirror gave up a source to police: "Trinity Mirror has no right to own newspapers. Its board should resign."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on the future of newspapers: "It is time to recognise that the whole UK newspaper industry is heading for a cliff fall, that tipping point when there is no hope of a reversal of fortune."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on staff cuts at local papers: "Local paper publishers think it’s magic that they can produce papers on such slim staffs. I think it’s tragic because they are treating their audiences to a fake product."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on big digital companies taking advertising from the press: "The digital giants are sucking up advertising, which is threatening the viability of newspapers. More pertinently, and much more significantly, it is threatening journalism itself."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on editorial cutbacks: "No publisher, despite differing motivations, can escape the commercial effects of a technological revolution that is in the process of destroying the funding mechanism that has underpinned newspaper companies for more than 150 years. Journalists are aware of this but tend to turn a blind eye to reality. They blame publishers for the cutbacks, or at least, the way those cutbacks are carried out."

Roy Greenslade on Media Guardian on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa): "Ripa was supposed to protect national security and detect crime while preventing disorder and protecting public health. Its misuse and abuse inhibits journalists from acting on behalf of the public and therefore threatens our civil liberties."

Roy Greenslade on Media Guardian on privacy and the media: "It is time for the responsible, serious section of the British press to disengage from any coalition with the popular newspapers. The willingness to ignore their misconduct has led us all astray and increased the public's lack of trust in all journalism."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on Labour's defeat at the General Election: "As the Labour party tears itself apart trying to come to terms with its general election performance, it should understand this reality: the right-wing press was overwhelmingly responsible for its defeat."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on the Independent: "It is hard to imagine anyone buying The Independent and therefore places the paper's future existence in jeopardy. The fact that its owner has failed to find a buyer after months of seeking one suggest that its newsprint days are coming to an end. Though the financial losses have been significantly reduced over the past three years - down from more than £20m to just below £9m - the Indy's circulation has fallen to a level that no longer makes the paper a viable proposition."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on bullying: "Outsiders may wonder why adults put up with the MacKenzies and Dacres. The obvious answer is that they control people's livelihoods. It is a case of accepting it or getting out (and not "getting in" anywhere else)."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on subbing hubs: " 'Remote subbing' can work (and has worked). But I just wish that it didn't have to mean a reduction in editorial staff. Newspapers are fond of saying that there should be more bobbies on the beat (rather than at the station). The analogy should apply to papers. Saving desk jobs by utilising new technology is fine. But that should mean getting more reporters on to the streets (well, on the phone, at the computer, wherever necessary). It's just important to have more of them because news-gathering is the name of our game."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks: "Edward Snowden is an heroic whistleblower. The journalist who wrote his story, Glenn Greenwald, was responsible for breaking one of the world's greatest exclusives. Should we journalists, as a community, not be rallying to their cause rather than looking the other way?"

And finally...

Roy Greenslade quoted by Press Gazette: “I am sad to be giving up the blog, but I think the work of holding newspapers – their owners, controllers, editors and journalists – to account remains vital because they still set the daily agenda and therefore remain hugely influential."