Media Quotes of the Week: From the Duke of Edinburgh runs Brexit off front pages to the Brexit-backing Sun sends a love letter to Germany

Anthony Spiro in a letter to The Times [£]: "Sir, The nation owes the duke a debt of gratitude for his valiant attempts to change the news agenda."

BuzzFeed's global investigations editor Heidi Blake @HeidilBlake on Twitter: "True grit. We’re standing by our story that Trump directed his longtime personal lawyer to lie to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal, and the law enforcement sources who informed it. We won’t stop reporting till the public has the whole truth."

Spokesperson for Dianne Abbot, quoted in the Guardian: “We are appalled by the treatment of Diane Abbott on BBC’s Question Time. It was clear that a hostile atmosphere was whipped up, propped up by reports of inappropriate and sexist commentary in the audience warm-up session. A public broadcaster like the BBC should be expected to be a model of impartiality and equality. The BBC cannot claim anything of the sort when analysis of the programme shows that the only black woman on the panel was jeered at and interrupted more times than any other panellist, including by the chair herself.”
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Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK on Twitter: "The hounding of Fiona Bruce for perceived bias - like that of @bbclaurak - is a worrying sign of the aggression that female journalists too often face for doing their jobs. It's interesting that I've seen claims that she's both pro & anti Brexit - maybe she's just fair?"

Christopher Williams in the Telegraph: "Rupert Murdoch has asked the Government to lift legal restrictions barring the merger of The Times and The Sunday Times, as News Corp seeks to cut costs in its newspaper empire. News UK, the Murdoch subsidiary that publishes the titles, has written to Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright to ask for freedom to share editorial resources across the titles, claiming supporting its separate newsrooms represent an "obsolete" approach."

Nick Cohen @NickCohen on Twitter: "The Observer's editor @paulfwebster announces that we are making a profit. It's all frightfully vulgar. I may have to resign." Nick Cohen @NickCohen on Twitter: "The editor has explained that since I submitted my expenses we are back in the red again. Still. Nice while it lasted."

Janice Turner in The Times [£]: "Why must TV reporting on big stories be conducted Outside Things? Fine if you’re in a war zone or a royal wedding is unfolding behind you. But if you’re simply describing what occurred inside a building, a journalist looks silly shivering on a traffic island."

Polly Toynbee on Twitter @pollytoynbee: "This Saturday Britain turns a remainer nation: more young remainers joined the electoral register, more old leavers died. A Final Say vote would stop the will of dead ruling over the will of the young."

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Isabel Oakeshott Retweeted Polly Toynbee

Isabel Oakeshott @IsabelOakeshott on Twitter: "On this basis, elderly commentators like you should be replaced by teenage bloggers to prevent the wisdom of age drowning out the naïveté of youth."

The Sun in a love letter to Germany: "Around 100,000 Brits live in Germany, and about 300,000 Germans call the UK their home. There’s no need to move out — our Government has announced EU citizens won’t need to pay a penny in fees to stay. So let’s not allow Brexit to come between us. If we can put two World Wars and five World Cups behind us, we can certainly manage a little regulatory divergence and the odd new treaty. It’s not auf wiedersehen, yet. Lots of love, your British friends."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From journalists facing biggest lay-offs in years in hollowed out industry to vulture capitalist swoops on Newsquest's US owner

From the Reuters Institute Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2019 report by Nic Newman: "Journalism will continue to be hollowed out by structural shifts that have already led to significant falls in advertising revenue. Publishers are looking to subscriptions to make up the difference but the limits of this are likely to become apparent in 2019. Taken together these trends are likely to lead to the biggest wave of journalistic lay-offs in years – weakening further the ability of publishers to hold populist politicians and powerful business leaders to account."

Owen Jones @OwenJones84 on Twitter: "When one of us on the left is hurt or killed, which will happen, the entire right wing press and their so called “journalists”, who could have chosen to take a job which actually helps people, are all partly responsible and let’s put that on record now."

Hannah Al-Othman @HannahAlOthman on Twitter on Owen Jones: "The ignorance & privilege of this is astounding. Some people have to take jobs that pay the bills - not everyone gets handed a column in the guardian. Junior reporters trying to make a career aren’t guilty of anything."

Emily Bell in The Atlantic: "The real damage that Trump has rendered to press access is in his general attitude of undermining journalists’ credibility, particularly those he sees as investigating his affairs, or those who are more generally considered to be adversarial. Trump’s lack of respect toward women reporters and reporters of color has widespread effects, too. Online harassment of reporters is flourishing, and women and nonwhite reporters are particularly vulnerable to it."

Mark Di Stefano of BuzzFeedNews revealing BBC journalists have been told top stop stating "the BBC understands" in news reports because it sounds pompous: "It also happens to be a running joke among those in the British media. Journalists often accuse the corporation of using the phrase "BBC understands" in relation to stories reported by other outlets, which the BBC has then confirmed with its sources."

Verified account@Joelcpj

Jeremy Hunt Retweeted Reuters Top News

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt @JeremyHunt on Twitter on after an appeal by Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in Myanmar against their imprisonment was turned down: "The thin red line between open and closed societies is whether journalists are able to do their job. Due process at best questionable in this case so please Aung San Suu Kyi take a personal interest in the future of these two brave journalists."

Joel Simon @Joelcpj on Twitter: "This has been a complete miscarriage of justice, from start to finish. It has done grave damage to Myanmar's standing in the world, and sullied the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi. It's time for a pardon. #JournalismIsNotACrime #PressFreedom"

Federica Bedendo, NUJ Newsquest group chapel MoC, in a statement: "We are really concerned about the news of a potential acquisition by MNG Enterprises Inc. to acquire Gannett. Journalists within Newsquest already think this company has hit rock bottom and the prospect of being acquired by an organisation that's renowned for cost cutting and job slashing isn't going to do anything to benefit our titles or indeed our working conditions.

Chris Morley, Newsquest NUJ national coordinator, in a statement: "The proprietorship of Gannett over Newsquest as its UK operation has been a sorry tale of shameless cost-cutting that has threatened to bring low once mighty titles through the pursuit of unsustainable profits and starvation of investment. But the reports coming out of the US from those who should know, is that Gannett itself is being pursued by the most predatory of vulture capitalist corporate raiders who are far distant from the needs and responsibilities of a modern media company."

Media Quotes of the Week: From Wikileaks confidential email to journalists leaks to how a sports reporter scored an own goal for Man City

John Simpson in The Times [£]: "The words “private” and “confidential” have had little deterrent effect on Julian Assange during his long career leaking other people’s secrets. It was no small irony, then, that the terminology sat atop a 5,000-word email from his Wikileaks site ordering journalists not to report 140 “false and defamatory” allegations about its founder. It was perhaps then doubly ironic that the instruction was so widely ignored by the email’s recipients that Wikileaks put the entire thing on the internet for all to see."

Anna Soubry MP  @Anna_Soubry on Twitter: "First for many a year - a #DailyMail front page to be proud of."

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian on media coverage of refugees crossing the channel in boats: "Looking at the totality of the news coverage brings one to the undeniably sad conclusion that Britain’s media is out of step with our modern multicultural society. Despite the demographic changes wrought over the last 60 years or so, its output is informed, albeit unconsciously, by an old-fashioned notion of white, Anglo-Saxon supremacy. The reporting of the migrants “surge” is but an extension of the pro-Brexit propaganda."

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times [£]: "I’ve reduced my wine intake to just three-quarters of a bottle a day. This will have an effect upon my work, my writing. Two or three glasses and the prose is full of life and there are jokes. More than that and the Independent Press Standards Organisation tends to get involved."

Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "With all of the success that our Country is having, including the just released jobs numbers which are off the charts, the Fake News & totally dishonest Media concerning me and my presidency has never been worse. Many have become crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!..."

HoldTheFrontPage reports: "The Northern Echo’s 102-year-old Priestgate home could be turned into 52 apartments under new plans submitted to Darlington Borough Council"

David Coates, regional managing director of Echo publisher Newsquest Yorkshire and North-East, quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: Hopefully this time we will see it through to completion and we’ll be able to move into accommodation that’s more befitting a modern digital marketing services business.”

Chris Morley, the NUJ’s regional organiser for the North of England, quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: “Clearly it is very sad that a once great newspaper building – with such a tremendous history – is faced with this but the reality of the situation after a decade of relentless cuts makes it perhaps understandable. However, what my members cannot understand is that the managing director talks about his business only as a ‘modern digital marketing services business’. I think this perhaps sums up where Newsquest and the major media companies have gone wrong – senior managers wish they were in a different industry and have little affinity for journalism as their business’s bedrock.”

Tim Crook Retweeted Press Gazette

Tim Crook @libertarianspir on Twitter: "When I was working as a journalist in the North East of England 40 years ago I would never have believed something so iconic being turned into something so banal."

Katie Clark @Katie_Messer_on Twitter: "Yesterday was my last day @Bournemouthecho after 11 yrs. I'll miss everyone so much. A team of talented journalists who work incredibly hard in an era of 'fake news'. A local press is vital and without it a vacuum created, leaving decisions which affect residents unchallenged..."

Daniel Taylor in the Observer: "I must confess, to my eternal shame, that in the mild panic of a last-minute, potentially deadline-busting goal during my early years of covering Manchester City I managed to type in the wrong name for the scorer, Gareth Taylor, and credit his heroics to, well, this is awkward ... myself instead. The readers of the newspaper I was working for at the time – and Gareth himself, I imagine – must have been bemused to find this rather fanciful version of events slipped past the subeditors and made it into the opening line of the subsequent match report. The only consolation being that it was, thank heavens, before the years when Twitter’s pitchfork mob could be found scouring the internet for fresh prey."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From media death toll shows a profound global crisis of press freedom to we must stand up for journalists wherever they are

The Washington Post in a leader:  "THE DEBATE triggered by the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was exceptional in part because, by some measures, his case was not unusual. The Post contributing columnist, who was assaulted, suffocated and dismembered by a hit squad in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, was just one of dozens of journalists around the world who were murdered in 2018 because of their work. Hundreds more are imprisoned. The growing climate of violence and intimidation directed against the media recently prompted the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) to describe “a profound global crisis of press freedom.”

The International Federation of Journalists in a statement: "This year’s roll call of loss of lives to violence includes 84 journalists, cameramen, fixers and technicians who died in targeted killings, bomb attacks and cross fire incidents. Ten other media staff members who worked as drivers, protection officers and a sales assistant also lost their lives...The IFJ list for 2018 paints a situation of on-going safety crisis in journalism, which was highlighted by the cruel murder of the Washington Post columnist and Saudi national, Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October."

IFJ President Philippe Leruth on the 2018 death toll of journalists: “These brazen acts of violence in utter disregard to human life have brought to an abrupt end the short lived decrease in journalists’ killings recorded over the last three year. Once again, the IFJ is asking United Nations' Members States to adopt at their general Assembly the Convention on the security and protection of journalists which the IFJ presented to diplomatic missions at the UN in New York last October. This Convention, supported by the profession as a whole, is a concrete response to crimes committed against journalists in full impunity.”

David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "Why is most of the coverage of the poor people in boats in the channel from OUR point of view not the point of view of those desperate men, women and CHILDREN? Where is our compassion at Christmas?"

One of BBC media editor Amol Rajan's predictions for 2019: "The Cairncross Review won't save a single local newspaper. That's not to say it won't be useful. Dame Frances Cairncross is clever, pragmatic and instinctively on the side of journalists: but her experience attests to the fact that, in some industries, the internet has created problems for which there is no solution."

From the Independent:"Newly released Cabinet papers reveal John Major told his ministers to avoid attending a “jamboree” for Rupert Murdoch, only to have his home secretary Michael Howard go anyway after refusing to catch a “diplomatic cold” as a polite excuse for not turning up. Mr Howard was at the time suspected of being one of the “bastards” referred to by Mr Major while venting his frustrations about three unnamed Eurosceptic cabinet ministers in off-the-record remarks picked up by TV microphones in July 1993." 

Sam Wallace @SamWallaceTel on Twitter: "[Jurgen] Klopp on journalists (and our questions about whether LFC can win the title). ‘That’s an easy job. I would love to be in your situation [*thinks for a moment*] - but still earn the money I earn’."

From the Washington Post: The numbers are astonishing. In the first eight months of his presidency, President Trump made 1,137 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. In October, as he barnstormed the country holding rallies in advance of the midterm elections, the president made 1,205 claims — an average of 39 a day.Combined with the rest of his presidency, that adds up to a total of 7,546 claims through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president."

John Kampfner in The Times [£]: "Jeremy Hunt’s intention to make Brexit Britain a beacon in defence of freedom of expression is both a problem and an opportunity...The initiative, however, will have conviction only if it is consistent. That means not just calling out countries where it is easy and opportune, such as Putin’s Russia and the Burmese generals. Will we really risk the wrath of China? Most countries are now too scared of its economic might. What about Bahrain, the UAE or Saudi Arabia? Arguably the biggest global threat to freedom of expression comes from Donald Trump. Not only does he humiliate and threaten reporters but in so doing he has empowered dictators. Every time he attacks journalists, or praises those who harm them, our government must denounce him. Free expression is a principle, not a bargaining chip. For any campaign to convince, it needs to apply to one and all."

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My Media Quotes of the Year 2018: InPublishing

My Media Quotes of the Year 2018 are up on InPublishing: Trump, Dacre, Brexit, Johnston Press, Leveson, Windrush and Cambridge Analytica scandals plus how many journalists did it take to consume a 13-bottle lunch? You can read them here:

Plus, here are some quotes from this year I liked, but came after the InPublishing deadline:

Sathnam Sanghera in The Times [£]: "The internet has not only taken advertising from local newspapers but has helped to accelerate the idea that anything “regional” is crap. The result is nothing less than a national tragedy. Corrupt politicians will go unchecked, the relationships that hold communities together will go unmarked, local heroes uncelebrated. Moreover, we have let local papers go without even really thinking about the consequences. I suspect that, one day, someone will have to reinvent them."

Lionel Barber, giving the James Cameron Lecture at City University, lists the threats to serious financial journalism as:

• The army of public relations advisers employed by individuals and companies with thin skins and deep pockets 
• “Black PR” — sometimes pushed by ex-spooks — that uses social media platforms to attack and undermine reputations and independent journalism 
• The rising power of private markets versus public markets, making it far harder for journalists to access information 
• The encroachment of the law via gagging injunctions, non-disclosure agreements and the chilling new notion of confidentiality 
• And, yes, the spectre of state-sponsored regulation of the press.

The Times in a leader [£]: "When The Times uncovered evidence which showed that Kate Osamor, the Labour MP for Edmonton, had not only known about her son’s arrest for drugs offences — about which she had denied all knowledge until his conviction in October — but had even written a letter to the judge pleading for leniency, our reporter went to Ms Osamor’s house to ask for her reaction to our story. Ms Osamor’s response was to tell our reporter that she “should have come down here with a bat and smashed your face in”. She told him to “f***” off, called police after accusing him of stalking her and hurled a bucket of water at him.

This was an outrageous way to treat our colleague. Ms Osamor has now rightly resigned from her job as the shadow international development secretary. Yet it is telling that her resignation statement included no acknowledgement that she had lied about her knowledge of her son’s drug arrest nor did it contain any word of apology to The Times or our reporter. Similarly the statement by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, accepting her resignation included no criticism of her behaviour.

Across the world, attacks and threats against journalists are on the rise. This is no longer limited to authoritarian countries. In the past year reporters have been killed in Slovakia and Malta. Populist politicians in western countries use increasingly violent language against journalists. President Trump routinely refers to the press as the “enemy of the people”. Ms Osamor — with Mr Corbyn’s approval — did not just throw a bucket of water at our reporter, she threw it at all of us."

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Media Quotes of the Week: Is Facebook a friend or foe to local journalism? to if you do enough business with the US you can murder journalists

David Higgerson, chief audience officer at Reach, in a statement on the plan to create 80 community journalsts via the Community News Project, funded with £4.5 million from Facebook: “This project is a fantastic way of increasing the number of stories published that would otherwise not be covered. The funding will help us pioneer new ways of local news gathering and distributing stories to underserved communities. It will help us increase newsroom diversity and inclusion and the publishers are pleased to be working with the NCTJ to recruit, train and qualify the community journalists.”

The Sunday Times [£] reporting the Facebook deal: "A senior industry source said it was a “dishonest” ploy to fend off the threat of tighter regulation at very little cost, adding: “Be honest about it, if you’re going to do it — just buy these papers. Local newspapers have seen readership and advertising revenues destroyed by the rise of Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook, Google and eBay. The strain on the industry was underscored on Friday when Johnston Press collapsed into administration."

Rory Cellan-Jones on BBC News: "A couple of years ago, many news organisations "pivoted" to video, convinced by Facebook that this was the route to huge audiences and revenues. Now many video journalists have been laid off after the crowds and the cash failed to materialise. At the beginning of this year, the News Feed was revamped to favour posts and videos from your friends and family, rather than those from businesses and news organisations. Facebook may aspire to boost the local content its users see, but right now regional newspaper groups don't appear to be benefitting. Any journalist will welcome the recruitment of 80 new community reporters, but unless their stories reach plenty of Facebook users and advertisers, this initiative could prove to be another blind alley."

Tom Watson@tom_watson on Twitter on Facebook: "When 250 local newspapers and their staff pensions are in jeopardy, this tax-avoiding, data crime-ridden monopoly, whose chief exec is too arrogant to appear before the DCMS Select Committee and parliaments around the world, responds...with a fig leaf."

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Richard Parkinson @parkyrich on Twitter: "The #JohnstonPress quick change act leaves me with mixed feelings: huge relief that former colleagues still have their jobs tomorrow; anger that pensioners & shareholders were made to pay for this; uncertainty that a US hedge fund is really interested in running local newspapers."

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, in a statement on Johnston Press going into administration: “We welcome the commitments made by the current management of Johnston Press that no jobs will be lost in this process and the terms and conditions of staff are protected. However, we have significant concerns about what the long-term intentions of the newly-created company will be...Forcing the pension scheme into the PPF is a terrible blow for all of those members of the scheme and their future retirement plans, whilst the new owners are rewarded with a company free of its responsibilities and obligations to its pension fund.”

Frank Field MP, quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: “In particular, it would be helpful to have an explanation of why it was not possible to find a solution that would have avoided the pension scheme entering the PPF. It is difficult to understand why it is possible for JPIMedia to acquire the business, no doubt in the expectation of generating a profit from it, but without taking any responsibility for its pension scheme."

• The FT reports: "The Pension Protection Fund is expected to lodge a claim of £305m with Johnston Press’s administrators amid concern that its pension scheme was not treated appropriately when the newspaper group went into administration."

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David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "PM backed and centre ground held by Daily Mail and Daily Express for third day on trot. Extraordinary. Brexit lunatics like Rees-Mogg and Boris have lost middle England, these papers might yet back a People’s Vote...‘Fleet Street’ Brexit editors are uniting to put out the flames their own papers set on fire.... I have never seen days like these. There is hope for the PM."

Allison Pearson @allisonpearson on Twitter: "Readers of @DailyMailUK have figured out their paper no longer agrees with them on Brexit. They are Very Cross... Interesting to see the next circulation figures.."

Will Hutton @williamnhutton on Twitter: "It's time to call out the British right for their casual use of pernicious derogatory, excessive language. Andrew Neil on Carol Cadwalladr: “mad cat lady”.J Rees-Mogg on the May deal:”slavery”. Not only wrong, but carriers of a degradation of our political & journalistic culture."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in a statement after Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order forcing the White House to reinstate CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials: "In response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter’s hard pass. We will also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future. There must be decorum at the White House.”

President Trump in a statement: "We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.

Joel Simon executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists @pressfreedom on Twitter: "If you boil the White House statement down to its essence, President Trump has just asserted that if you do enough business with the U.S., you are free to murder journalists. That's an appalling message to send to Saudi Arabia and the world."

Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan in a statement: “President Trump’s response to the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a betrayal of long-established American values of respect for human rights and the expectation of trust and honesty in our strategic relationships. He is placing personal relationships and commercial interests above American interests in his desire to continue to do business as usual with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia...President Trump is correct in saying the world is a very dangerous place. His surrender to this state-ordered murder will only make it more so. An innocent man, brutally slain, deserves better, as does the cause of truth and justice and human rights."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From BBC journalist admits you might as well get Mr Blobby to predict Brexit to no leader lost votes by insulting the media

Chris Mason on BBC Breakfast sums up the difficulty of predicting Brexit: "I haven't got the foggiest idea of what's going to happen...you might as well get Mr Blobby back on."

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David Yelland @davidyelland  on Twitter: "My old paper says we’re in the Brexs*hit but offers no workable way out. The current editor and the former Mail editor helped create this mess by allowing liars like Boris to mislead the readers and doing so itself. Shameful."

Guardian editor-in-chief Kath Viner in a message to readers: "To be able to announce today that we have received financial support from more than 1 million readers around the world in the last three years is such a significant step. This model of being funded by our readers through voluntary contributions, subscriptions to the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly, membership or as part of our patrons programme is working.This means that within just three years, the Guardian is on a path to being sustainable."

Ben Mcintyre in The Times [£] on the paper's coverage during the First World War: "Since the primary role of the newspaper, as its editors saw it, was to ensure victory, it consistently erred towards self-censorship. Objectivity was one of the first casualties of war."

Reporters Sans Frontiers making its 'L'esprit de RSF' award to Carole Cadwalladr for her work for the Observer and the Guardian: "Carole Cadwalladr’s reporting on the manipulation and subversion of democratic processes in the US and UK resulted in the exposure of the role of Cambridge Analytica and its satellite AggregateIQ in the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Cadwalladr’s investigation found that the data analytics firm that worked with Trump’s election team in the US and the Leave campaign in the UK harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest-ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software programme to predict and influence choice at the ballot box. She continues to face pressure and harassment in backlash for her reporting."

Jane Kennedy, NUJ Northern and Midlands organiser, in a statement after members  of the NUJ Carlisle chapel of Newsquest Cumbria, formerly Cumbrian Newspapers, voted in favour of industrial action over pay: "It is no surprise to us that the chapel have come out so strongly to vote for action. We have tried very hard with the company to reach a negotiated settlement but they simply refused to enter into meaningful discussions. Indeed their petty and spiteful decision do refuse to allow the chapel to meet in the workplace has only strengthened the resolve of the chapel to press on for a fair pay settlement. Since Newsquest has taken over we have only seen redundancies and empty promises."

Simon O'Neill Retweeted Behind Local News

Simon O'Neil @SimonO19 on Twitter on the departure of Reach East Midlands editor-in-chief  Steve Hall: "Oh dear. Steve Hall to leave his beloved Derby. I've worked with some amazing talent in my time and this guy is right up there with the very best of them. Great all round journalist and a fantastic editor. Snap him up someone!"

CNN in a statement: "CNN filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration this morning in DC District Court. It demands the return of the White House credentials of CNN's Chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta. The wrongful revocation of these credentials violates CNN and Acosta's First Amendment rights of freedom of the press, and their Fifth Amendment rights to due process. We have asked this court for an immediate restraining order requiring the pass be returned to Jim, and will seek permanent relief as part of this process."

Emily Matlis on BBC News blog: "What worries me is the wider question of how Trump and the media interact. When you watch the US morning shows - and evening shows come to that - what you notice is how things have changed. Even those who were not originally taking sides are now nailing their colours to the mast. Fox and MSNBC have always played to their own bases. But now CNN, too, has editorialised its evening slot with Chris Cuomo - who gives us an essay, a comment piece, on whatever is getting him fired up. It's a good watch actually. And makes you engaged. But make no mistake - it's the same game that Trump is playing. The one they pretend to despise. If DJT can rally his base - then - goes the logic - why shouldn't TV do it too."

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian:  "In the spat between Donald Trump and a CNN reporter, I would bet most Americans sided with the president. Who was this rude man refusing to sit down before his head of state? No leader lost votes insulting the media."

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