Media Quotes of the Week: From crime reporter condemns police failure to act over rape threats to her baby boy to why journalists should stick to journalism and not go and work for politicians

Sunday World crime reporter Patricia Devlin on the NUJ website on why she has made a formal complaint to the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland: "Because of my job as a journalist, exposing criminals and paramilitaries, I have been on the receiving end of threats of violence and death threats for years. In Northern Ireland, that now seems to go with the territory where press freedom comes at the price of constant and repeated threats to journalists. But, when I received a threat to rape my new-born baby, also identifying my grandmother and the location of where the sender believed she lived, I had enough. I reported the threat to the PSNI and was even able to name the individual I suspect was behind the threat. The police have had this individual’s name all this time, yet, a year on, no-one has been brought in for questioning, never mind arrested. Meanwhile, the police have given me a constantly changing and contradictory story as to why they have not acted. It is not acceptable for journalists to have to live under this sort of constant threat, to themselves and their families, simply for doing their jobs."

The Times [£] in a leader on Darren Grimes being investigated by police over his YouTube interview with David Starkey: "Mr Grimes is no reporter but to pursue an interviewer, however incompetent, for offensive remarks made by their subject would be to risk criminalising legitimate journalistic inquiry. Police forces may dislike robust public interest reporting, as Neil Basu, the Met’s assistant commissioner, made clear when he threatened to prosecute journalists who published confidential government documents last year. But questions of taste are not questions of law and the right to free speech is the essence of democracy. Neither Dr Starkey nor Mr Grimes deserves martyrdom. Heavy handed police action risks elevating them to it."

David Banks on Twitter: "Before you dismiss Darren Grimes as ‘not being a journalist’ because he lacks credentials, NCTJ exams etc, you should remember that a lot of your journalistic heroes might not have had any either. I would be very slow to dictate who is or isn’t a journalist."

Marina Hyde in the Guardian: "Alas, much of Britain has yet to come to terms with the implications of the fact it elected a newspaper journalist to run it. I honestly can’t believe Boris Johnson has turned out to be a clinical procrastinator, a short-termist headline grabber, and a total chancer who only really responds to the need to do his job three minutes after deadline. If only there’d been some clue, you know?"

Daily Mail editor Geordie Greig interviewed by Matt Kelly in GQ: “My aim is to make the Mail a force for good, a badge of great journalism, crusading, entertaining, informative. Every day I feel this on the newsroom floor – a renewed sense of pride and positivity for what we can achieve...There are times when the Mail should be abrupt, but I don’t think we should ever be acid or toxic. There’s a positive way to tell hard truths. Papers can get stuck in permanent attack mode, but that’s less effective than championing the values it does support. I want my modern Mail to be an effective agent of change for a better Britain. But please don’t think the Mail can never show brutal thunder.”

• Amber Rudd quoted in the GQ article about Greig's Mail: “It’s been a big change. It’s just less nasty. It’s more playful in a way that the former Daily Mail was unpleasant. It’s no longer positioned to egg the readers on to hate their neighbour or particular groups.”

Andrew Neil on Twitter: "I’ve spent the past two hours jumping between @MSNBC and @FoxNews. American broadcast journalism is truly screwed. Nothing but a wall of partisan propaganda masquerading as reporting."

James Murdoch interviewed in the New York Times on the US election: “I’m just concerned that the leadership that we have, to me, just seems characterized by callousness and a level of cruelty that I think is really dangerous and then it infects the population,” he said, referring to the Trump administration. “It’s not a coincidence that the number of hate crimes in this country are rising over the last three years for the first time in a long time.”

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, in a statement calling on MPs to ensure any new powers in the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill do not override existing legal protections on press freedom by giving access to confidential journalistic material and sources:  "Our main concern with the new draft legislation currently being rushed through parliament relates to covert criminal conduct, if it is sanctioned in law then it may act as a means to circumvent the existing legal protections for journalists and journalism. This is a red flag for our democracy so we are calling on every politician who supports press freedom to intervene in the next parliamentary debate to ensure that any new law that is introduced cannot override existing media freedoms."

Irish Times correspondent Conor Gallagher on Twitter:  "This is a cocktail called The Journalist we made tonight  

60 ml gin 15 ml sweet vermouth 15 ml dry vermouth 2 dashes lemon juice 2 dashes triple sec Dash of bitters

 It's nice but I prefer my version: 12 pints of stout and a deep sense of anxiety about the future of the industry."

Martin Kettle in the Guardian on former colleague Allegra Stratton becoming Downing Street press secretary: "I say that journalists should stick with journalism. They should not cross the floor to work for the politicians, let alone to become politicians. Far too many of my colleagues have done that over the years and the results have rarely been good – from Johnson himself downwards. I regret every one of those departures from journalism. Naturally, I especially regret the friends who have made the switch. But I even regret the people I disliked and mistrusted who have also trodden that path. The loss of each one of them is bad for the standing of journalism as an independent, truth-seeking trade."

Matt Chorley in The Times [£]: "Sometimes, as Stratton will soon discover, the job means pretending everything is fine even (or perhaps especially) when everyone else can see that it isn’t. Paul Harrison [Theresa May's spokesman]: 'It’s one of those strange experiences where you’re sort of pretending that you’re not standing in front of everybody wearing a clown hat with your trousers on fire'.”

[£]=paywall

Media Quotes of the Week: Save local press by following Australia and make tech giants pay for news to the paper that's more fun than the Sun

Jawad Iqbal in The Times [£]: "The collapse of local journalism in the digital age is not inevitable but no one should underestimate the threat to democracy if steps are not taken to address the monopolistic practices of the tech behemoths. Ministers should follow the Australian government in requiring tech companies to reimburse news outlets for stories that appear on their sites. More broadly Google and Facebook have to be reined in through regulation and taxation to restore fairness in the digital advertising marketplace."

Key findings of the research into local news consumption and democracy conducted by Plum Consulting for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: 

Importance of journalism: "Local journalism has a key role to play in civil society. The decline of the local newspaper industry and resulting negative impacts on journalism reduce scrutiny of democratic functions. This situation is unlikely to change without intervention."

Correlations between news provision, news consumption and local democracy: "Local newspaper provision and consumption has a positive effect on local democratic participation over time. Further erosion of local newspaper consumption is likely to damage this effect."

Brad Bender, Google's vice president of product management for news, quoted by CNN Business on plans by the digital giant to pay publishers more than $1 billion over the next three years for licensing news: "It's clear that the newspaper industry has long faced economic challenges. I think a number of us in the ecosystem want to step up and enable a better future for news. This is a very big investment, our biggest investment today, but it really does build on our 20 years of efforts with the industry."

The Times [£] obit on former Sunday Telegraph editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne:  "As a commentator he could be salty, moralistic, reactionary, contrary and even, on occasion, self-contradictory, but he was rarely, if ever, boring or predictable. On Desert Island Discs in 1992 he chose as his luxury item a lifetime supply of LSD. "

The Queen in a message of support highlighting the vital role played by newspapers during the coronavirus pandemic to News Media Association members for the Journalism Matters campaign: "The Covid-19 pandemic has once again demonstrated what an important public service the established news media provides, both nationally and regionally. As our world has changed dramatically, having trusted, reliable sources of information, particularly at a time when there are so many sources competing for our attention, is vital."

Bill Grueskin in the Columbia Journalism Review on covering Trump: "The President of the United States is acting like a drunk driver, and the press needs to cover him that way. He demonstrated last week a callous disregard for those around him—most critically, those who work for him and those who are assigned to protect him—and there is no benefit of the doubt that can justify his actions. Anything that journalists write or broadcast needs to reflect that reality."

Andrew Marr interviewed in the Guardian: “The Murdoch empire and others are trying to push us towards a world in which the BBC is pretty marginal and people are getting most of their news and their views from privately funded television companies, as in America. There is a drive on to destroy the BBC. They’ve clearly got supporters in the government, and it’s a very difficult moment for the new director general Tim Davie.”

David Yelland on Twitter: "Oh Jenni Murray. When WILL BBC talent and former executives realise they play with fire if they do deals with the print press which wishes to destroy the corporation. Grow up! Wise up!"

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "The BBC has become, for the British right, what the tabloid press was for the socialists of the 20th century: the cause of all their frustrations and an explanation for all their failures. When Conservatives ask why the young won’t vote for them, why Christianity is in decline, why Israel is regarded as a pariah state, why Trump is feared, why anything and everything they hate is happening, the BBC is at the root of the evil."

The Independent's Middle East Correspondent Patrick Cockburn in a statement to the Julian Assange extradition hearing, as reported by the Evening Standard, said the deaths of two Reuters journalists and unarmed civilians in Iraq by US forces was only confirmed by a classified video given to Wikileaks: “It was known that a film of the killing had been taken by the gun camera of the US Apache helicopter, but the Pentagon refused to give this up even under a Freedom of Information Act request...The information that was disclosed by Wikileaks was no secret to Iraqis or Afghans or foreign journalists, who all know very well about who had been killed and by whom. But this could never be confirmed in the face of official US silence or denial...Making such information public, as Assange and Wikileaks had done, weaponised freedom of expression. If disclosures of this kind went unpunished and became the norm, it would radically shift the balance of power between government and society – and especially the media – in favour of the latter.”

Press Gazette reports: "Investigative reporter John Ware is seeking £50,000 in damages over reports attempting to discredit his Panorama programme into anti-Semitism in the Labour party in a rare case of one journalist suing another. Paddy French, who edits the Press Gang website, published a 16-page pamphlet in December describing the “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” Panorama that aired in July 2019 as 'a piece of rogue journalism'.”

Peter Jukes on Twitter: "I don’t care what the case is. I don’t care who’s doing it. Journalists should never sue journalists. Period. Reporting is hard enough (as Ware should know) under UK libel laws. Any journalist who then deploys them is effectively undermining the whole trade."

Daily Star editor Jon Clark, interviewed in the i, on making the Star more fun than the Sun: “I don’t want to get caught up in any hate; hate is not what we are about – we are about fun. I want us to make people joyous. I want to be the antidote to the really, really miserable news agenda that we are having to live with...I think we are more like they [the Sun] were 15-20 years ago in the glory days. They are the market leader and good for them but I think we have moved into the space that they vacated.”

[£]=paywall

Media Quotes of the Week: From First Amendment allows press to publish Trump tax story to would a young Harry Evans rise to a top editorship today?

New York Times editor Dean Baquet on the paper's investigation into President Trump's tax affairs: "We are publishing this report because we believe citizens should understand as much as possible about their leaders and representatives — their priorities, their experiences and also their finances...Some will raise questions about publishing the president’s personal tax information. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the First Amendment allows the press to publish newsworthy information that was legally obtained by reporters even when those in power fight to keep it hidden. That powerful principle of the First Amendment applies here."

David Corn on Twitter: "To all those newspapers with headlines proclaiming the debate was chaotic and disorderly without tying that to Trump: If a man runs into a house, throws gasoline everywhere, and lights a match, the headline should be 'Arsonist Attacks Home,' not 'Fire Breaks Out'."

Andrew Neil quoted by the Financial Times on the planned GB News 24-hour television channel which he will chair and also present programmes: “GB News is the most exciting thing to happen in British television news for more than 20 years. We will champion robust, balanced debate and a range of perspectives on the issues that affect everyone in the UK, not just those living in the London area.”

Andrew Neil on Twitter: "With heavy heart I announce I will be leaving the BBC. Despite sterling efforts by new DG to come up with other programming opportunities, it could not quite repair damage done when Andrew Neil Show cancelled early summer + Politics Live taken off air. They were/are the best of the best. If they can make me look good, they can make anybody look good. There could have been a different outcome but for reasons too dull to adumbrate, we’ll leave it there. I wish the BBC and the new DG well. The BBC will always be special to me."

MP Steve Baker interviewed by Sophy Ridge on Sky News welcoming reports that Charles Moore may be appointed chair of the BBC and Paul Dacre head of Ofcom: “They are conservatives and they might actually start to look at the way the media functions and ensure there is some impartiality.”

David Dimbleby interviewed in The Times [£]: “I’m a broadcaster, not a bureaucrat. The BBC’s morale is always at an all-time low, it’s always looking at its navel. I am very dismayed by the [Boris] Johnson attacks on the institution. I think they are crowd-pleasing; I think they are quite dangerous; I don’t think they will work...I’ve had him on Question Time a couple of times, way back. He was an entertainer, you don’t really know what he is getting at most of the time, he just blathers.”

Rod Liddle in The Spectator: "In the light of recent articles in The Spectator, I think it vital I should point out here and now that I thought Boris Johnson was crap long before Toby Young and our editor, Fraser Nelson, did. I remember suggesting more than a year ago that the entire Johnson clan was a bit thick and borne aloft simply by depthless ambition and droit de seigneur. I felt a bit bad about it because Boris was a former boss and also a kind of mate. But you have to be ruthless in this job, get in quick with your bludgeon, even if its your own granny on the end of it."

Reuters Institute report on how local and regional news organisations across Europe have embraced the shift to paid content online: "In the last two years, all of the case newspapers have shifted from digital strategies emphasising the pursuit of audience reach, monetised through advertising or a blend of paid-content models and auxiliary sources, to a focus on building lasting relationships with readers who will pay for online content in the form of subscriptions, memberships, access to premium articles, donations, or micropayments."

World News Day 2020 — which took place on Monday [September 28] — aimed: "To raise awareness of the critical role that journalists play in providing credible and reliable news, to help people make sense of — and improve — the rapidly changing world around them. At a time when journalism has the power to save lives and build trust, World News Day is a powerful reminder that journalism can be a force for good."

Alan Rusbridger in the Guardian on Sir Harold Evans: "He could do it all. Write like a dream; design with impact; edit with flair; dash off the perfect headline; crop a picture; see off a writ. There was no one who knew more about the craft of journalism, nor anyone to match his passion for communicating that craft – documented in numerous textbooks that were, in turn, studied by generations of would-be journalists...He knew why journalism mattered. He gave journalism a good name. He reminded us why we wanted to be journalists and what, at its best, journalism could – and should – be. None of us should forget that."

Former Northern Echo editor Peter Barron on Twitter: “Once picked up Sir Harold Evans from #Darlington railway station during one of his visits back to the North-East. As a newly-appointed editor of @TheNorthernEcho I asked what advice he'd give me. 'Take no notice of the ******* bean counters,' came the reply."

Stephen O’Loughlin in a letter to The Times [£]: "Sir, One wonders if Sir Harold Evans’s rise from leaving school in Eccles at 16 to becoming editor of The Sunday Times could be replicated today. One doubts it: in particular the growth of internships, and their seminal place in a modern career path, puts working-class children, such as he was, at a distinct disadvantage."

[£]=paywall

Media Quotes of the Week: From horrific online abuse is driving journalists out of the profession to when a Scottish Sid Vicious joined the Telegraph plus some of the best quotes from Sir Harold Evans

Newsquest Oxfordshire editor Samantha Harman on Behind Local News UK on Medium on a survey of online abuse suffered by regional journalists: “We’ve seen a toxic rhetoric emerge over the last couple of years that all journalists are ‘scum’ and that it’s acceptable to hide behind the internet to say whatever you want to them. It reached a boiling point this year during coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, with reporters having to deal with abhorrent, disgusting and racist comments on stories...I’ve been threatened numerous times during the course of my career but now face a daily barrage of abuse — from being threatened with rape to personal attacks on my appearance. I live in the community I work in, as do many of our reporters. Yet we do not feel safe. I am paranoid about people knowing where I live, the car I drive. I worry that the person who used an anonymous account to threaten me today could be standing right behind me in the supermarket. And I know these worries are shared by many other reporters, to the point where they want to, or have left, the profession."

Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the US-based Commmittee to Protect Journalists, launching the U.S. Press Freedom Accountability Project which will award grants for coverage of attacks on journalists during Black Lives Matter protests: “For more than a generation, the Committee to Protect Journalists has defended journalists around the world by reporting on attacks and threats against the press. Now it’s time to intensify these efforts at home. Only by holding accountable those who have assaulted or hindered the work of the press during the Black Lives Matter protests do we ensure that reporters can serve us, the public.”

• The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is investigating reports of more than 700 press freedom violations, including arrests, assaults, tear gassing, and journalists hit with rubber bullets, during Black Lives Matter protests around the U.S. since late May.

Amal Clooney in her letter resigning as the UK government's special envoy for media freedom, as reported by the Huffington Post: ''I have always been proud of the UK's reputation as a champion of the international legal order, and of the culture of fair play for which it is known. However, very sadly, it has now become untenable for me, as Special Envoy, to urge other states to respect and enforce international obligations while the UK declares that it does not intend to do so itself."

Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, in a statement: “The Society is deeply concerned  journalists were not allowed to follow-up Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance’s briefing with questions. Throughout the entirety of the pandemic, the government has stressed its policy of 'following the science' and it is only right that journalists, on behalf of the public, are permitted to question that science and the scientists that are helping to lead the government’s response."

Alan Rusbridger on Twitter: "Charles Moore is an elegant and provocative columnist. But it is inconceivable someone fined for refusing to pay a licence fee (in protest at a programme he didn't like) should be Chair of the BBC, an organisation he appears to loathe."

Hugh Grant on twitter: "Astonished and revolted to see @DailyMailUK has a prominent ‘interview’ with me today. Never spoke to them. Yuk."

Nigel Pauley on Twitter: Incredibly disingenuous of Hugh Grant to snag a front cover of the UK’s biggest selling newspaper magazine to plug his latest film - then moan about it.. and claim he never spoke to them. He may or may not not have spoken to the Mail direct but he gave a pool interview to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which is basically full of freelances who provided copy for papers and magazines .. like the Mail."

James Marriott in The Times [£]: "Twitter-addicted journalists are popularly supposed to overegg the importance of social media but it’s a crucial factor in the way we think and talk about power. Indeed, one of the most important things social media does is to induce feelings of powerlessness. Thanks to Twitter, politicians, newspaper columnists and the PR managers of big brands who spent the first decades of their careers meeting the public under relatively controlled circumstances are exposed to the power of the mob every day. Brands overreact and cave when confronted with swirling storms of outrage, journalists panic and decide they’re being cancelled."

Anthony Bellanger. International Federation of Journalists general secretary, in a statement backing a campaign for governments to tax major internet companies and support print media: “The current global health crisis is significantly increasing the great difficulties facing the print media sector. Governments need to react urgently. The sector is a public good and a crucial pillar of our democracies. Governments are well aware of this. Indeed, with the COVID crisis they have identified the sector as essential. Today, they cannot just watch the ship sink from their balconies.”

Jonathan Heawood, executive director of the Public Interest News Foundation, which has just been granted charitable status: "This decision means we can ensure the public have access to high-quality, independent news, by supporting public interest publishers with grants, training and resources. We have already awarded emergency grants to publishers who were struggling during lockdown, and now we can support more public interest news organisations across the UK.”

David Higgerson on Twitter: "I find it boggling that often new journalism titles/products spend more time saying what they won't do (a passive-agg way of criticising existing publishers) rather than celebrating what they will do. Imagine if Cadbury launched chocolate celebrating 'fewer bubbles than an Aero'."

Chris Deerin in the Press & Journal on being a Scot joining the Sunday Telegraph to run the comment section in the mid 2000s: "It was like Sid Vicious joining the London Philharmonic.The English gentry get nervous around gruff, sweary Scots, so I adopted a persona that was part Bill Shankly, part Taggart. I cajoled and argued and took the mickey. By the time I left, a decade later, I had found my place and, I think, acquitted myself well enough. But I never quite got used to, or bridged, the class divide. I was never going to, of course. Our work experience kids had names like Peregrine and Camilla, and were often louchely arrogant. My better-off colleagues glided through life. The wealthy upper classes live and work differently – a job is a way to pass the time or to fulfil their inevitable destiny, not a lifeline between survival and catastrophe. There is often an easiness, a lightness, to them."

Finally, a few quotes from Sir Harold Evans, who has died aged 92:

At the Leveson Inquiry: "We have a situation where newspapers employ private detectives. We used to employ reporters". 

In his Hugh Cudlipp Lecture: "As depressing as exposure of the dark arts has been, it is deepened by the cynicism and arrogance of much of the reaction to Leveson, coming from figures in the press who did nothing to penetrate - indeed whose inertia assisted - the cover-up conducted into oblivion by News International, a cover up which would have continued, but for the skill of Nick Davies and the courage of his editor."

On the revelation Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch met shortly before he was allowed to buy The Times and Sunday Times: "It's highly improper. Here's a prime minister meeting one of a number of bidders for Times Newspapers in secret. There's no mention of the law on monopolies. The whole thing is so squalid, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at being vindicated after all this time."

On the local press in an article for Local Newspaper Week: “I must stress that the relationship between a local newspaper and its community has to be robust. If the relationship is be based on mutual respect, the local newspaper may have to puncture local pride, risk offending advertisers as well as authority; mere boosterism is no substitute for honest, thorough reporting . After a lifetime in journalism, however I have no doubt that when it is true to its community, the local newspaper is an incomparable resource, one to nurture and cherish.”

In his autobiography My Paper Chase, Sir Harold writes about working in the regional press as an assistant editor at the Manchester Evening News and as a campaigning editor of the Northern Echo. He says of working on the MEN: "Nothing before, and nothing I have experienced since, working for newspapers, radio, television and websites in London and New York and Washington, matches the speed demanded of everyone on the Evening News."

Sir Harold on Press Gazette on the digital giants: "Facebook and Google are the Harvey and Irma of journalism – and democracy. Whatever else they do, the electronic duopoly deprive millions of information and argument as surely as the series of super storms deprive millions of light, power, home and hearth. And more to come. Fret as much as Trumpian skeptics still do about the precise link between hurricanes and greenhouse gases – I don’t! – no one can deny the devastating effect of Facebook and Google on the viability of news organisations to investigate complexity and resist suppression."

[£]=paywall

Media Quotes of the Week: From journalists attacked, arrested and killed covering protests to national BBC radio reporters face redundancy

A new UNESCO report Safety of Journalists Covering Protests – Preserving Freedom of the Press During Times of Civil Unrest  highlights a sharp increase in the global number of protests during which the police and security forces violated media freedom in the first half of 2020. It says: "Between January and June this year, 21 protests around the world were marred by violations of press freedom, including protests in which journalists were attacked, arrested and even killed. The report suggests that a troubling new threshold has been crossed, revealing a significant and growing threat to media freedom and freedom of access to information in all regions of the world. The report also found that ten journalists were killed while covering protests over the last five years."

The Welsh Parliament’s Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee report on regional press, as reported by HoldTheFrontPage:  “The UK government’s Job Retention Scheme has been widely used within the sector. However, we are concerned that the scheme appears to have turned into a ‘waiting room for redundancy’ and that there could be an avalanche of redundancies and newspapers closures when it ends in October. We are therefore calling on the Welsh government to lobby the UK government to extend the scheme beyond October to allow businesses more time to plan for the future and to avoid major and permanent decisions with potentially severe consequences being made during this crisis.”

Georgina Morris, lead NUJ  rep for the JPIMedia group chapel, in a statement on planned job cuts and the company being up for sale: "The news of up to 30 job cuts has caused huge upset and anxiety, particularly for the 150 or so journalists working in the teams directly affected. While everyone was still reeling from that announcement, we then learned JPIMedia had £22m in cash reserves - via an email confirming the company was up for sale again. It has been difficult for people to reconcile the job cuts in light of those reserves, and more than one reference has been made to the #therewithyou pledge carried on our papers' mastheads after the pandemic began."

Claire Beal in her last column after 20 years at Campaign: "Two decades, and what a ride: a vein-pulsing, heart-swelling, frustrating, dirty rush of a ride. A relentless privilege. I’ve loved it. I have hated a few things: the newspaper sales chief who threatened to break my legs, the recruitment company boss who menacingly told me they were going to kill my career (15 years ago), the CEO who tried to bring down Campaign because of something we published on our diary page, the agency chief who broke into my conference hotel room in the middle of the night while I was asleep and tried to get into my bed, countless bullying legal threats when we wrote about things people would rather keep hidden."

A Women in Journalism report, based on a week-long review in mid-July of front pages of major newspapers, prime-time popular TV news channels and 100 hours of radio news, found:

● Not a single black reporter was featured on the front page of any of the newspapers.
● Out of the 174 front-page bylines counted, just one in four went to women.
● Out of the 111 people quoted on the front pages, just 16% were women. 
● Out of the 111 people quoted on the front pages, just one was a black woman. 

● Seven of the 11 major newspapers checked did not feature a single BAME reporter on the front page.

David Bartlett, Reach audience and content director, on LinkedIn: "Journalism has a problem. Most people working in the industry would recognise it. We are not representative enough of the communities we aim to report on...We've received support from across the company and as a result announced the launch of Reach Boost. Under the scheme the company will fund three training places for aspiring journalists from a diverse range of backgrounds. If the scheme is successful we hope it can be rolled out in more areas."

George Monbiot on Twitter: "There is no such thing as "the news". At any time, millions of events and trends are happening around the world. Editors select a tiny handful of them and declare them newsworthy. And, with the help of thinktanks and lobbyists, they invent stories out of thin air."

Donald Trump after being asked by ABC News' Jon Karl about his response to Covid 19: "Why did you lie to the American people, and why should we trust what you have to say now?” as reported by Deadline: "That’s a terrible question, And the phraseology. I didn’t lie. What I said is we have to be calm. We can’t be panicked. It’s a disgrace to ABC television network. It’s a disgrace to your employer.”

Trump on why he gave 17 interviews to Bob Woodward for his book Rage: "I did it out of curiosity. I wonder whether or not somebody like that can write good. I don't think he can. Let's see what happens."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet in a statement on the Julian Assange extradition hearing: "If this extradition is allowed, it will send a clear signal that journalists and publishers are at risk whenever their work discomforts the United States government. Media freedom the world over will take a significant backward step if Assange is forced to face these charges at the behest of a US president."

Matt Hancock gets the newspapers

Alastair Campbell in the New European on the Government's response to the Extinction Rebellion blockade of newspaper print works: "The problem for Johnson is that a belief in freedom of the press is what we call a ‘principle,’ and he is somewhat short on those. His government is not upholding that belief as a principle, but as a political tactic. They were not rushing to defend the free press but to make sure Murdoch and Co stayed broadly on side. They support and stand up for the press that supports and stands up for them. Hancock and Jenrick would have been far smarter to have included a Mirror, a Guardian or, even better, a New European, in their staged photos."

The Observer reports: "The BBC plans to axe all its national radio reporters and ask them to reapply for a smaller number of jobs as television, radio and digital reporters, rather than as dedicated audio journalists. Many fear it is not just the end of their careers but the premature end of an era for the BBC."

A radio journalists tells the Observer: “Radio reporting is a different job. Of course, you can do both, but a report designed for television starts from a completely different place. Radio is also more agile and also a lot less expensive. I am pretty sure most of us will not be given new TV roles. It seems sad to lose all that specific radio expertise.”