Friday 11 March 2011

Quotes of the week: From is Piers Morgan returnable? to Fred the Shred's super-injunction

James Wolcott in Vanity Fair: "Many questions torment America in its dark night of the soul, questions more urgently pressing, and yet it must be asked: How did we get stuck with Piers Morgan? Who is he, why is he here, is he returnable?"

Daily Mail leader on BSkyB deal being given green light by Jeremy Hunt: "It’s all very smelly. Yesterday was a sorry day for our supposedly independent media regulator, a bad day for Mr Cameron (who had Christmas dinner at the home of a News Corp boss) because after the Coulson imbroglio he will stand accused of being closer to Mr Murdoch than ever.It is also a gloomy day for consumers who will eventually face a world with less choice and a deeply depressing day for those who, against the odds, try to believe that there is still a smidgeon of integrity in British politics."

Kelvin MacKenzie in the Independent: "I cannot understand this decision. Why was Sky News powering ahead? Where do you think they got their investment for HD and to expand their reporter coverage? Why was it News Channel of the Year? It was because of News Corporation. I feel sorry for those people because previously they had certainty. It's going to end up with some clapped-out independent CEO who wouldn't normally be able to run a sweet shop. It will lose Rupert Murdoch's personal dynamism and News Corporation's executive dynamism."

Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiatt’s "I quit" letter to proprietor Richard Desmond: “ 'The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.,Well, try this: 'The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved in down an alley in Bradford.' If you can’t see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines. But if you do, yet still allow your editors to use inciteful over insightful language, then far from standing up for Britain, you’re a menace against all things that make it great."

City University's Professor George Brock on XCity online looks to the future: "People will regularly ask whether in a world in which anyone can publish instantly to anyone, anything called “journalism” is needed. They will discover that trying to discover and describe the truth is best done by people trained to do it well."

Dan Sabbagh on MediaGuardian:"So unconfident are the banks in the future of newspapers, or at least Johnston Press, that the interest rate on its borrowings is 10%. Usury is the word that springs to mind. Yet, despite the lack of faith, the crumb of comfort, of sorts, is that at least JP is profitable. Local newspapers, in short, are not a bust proposition - rather one that was milked too hard in the good times - and weighed down by too much debt in the bad."

Editor Colin Parker on the closure of the Woking News & Mail and Woking Review by Guardian Media Group: “It is a shame these two newspapers, it seems, will be added to the list of local publications across the country that have ceased to exist.The papers have been at the forefront of holding to account local authorities, reporting on community events, and following the ups and downs of our town’s football club."

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming in the Commons: "In a secret hearing this week Fred Goodwin has obtained a super-injunction preventing him being identified as a banker. Will the government have a debate or a statement on freedom of speech and whether there's one rule for the rich like Fred Goodwin and one rule for the poor?"

No comments: