Friday 21 October 2011

Media Quotes of the Week: From how to alienate people to not throwing journalists overboard

Stephen Glover in the Independent on Kelvin MacKenzie's performance at the Leveson Inquiry: "By accusing David Cameron of 'obsessive arse kissing', and Lord Justice Leveson of being a fool, Mr MacKenzie will have alienated potential supporters and undermined the cause."

Kelvin MacKenzie says sorry, in his Daily Mail column, to Lord Leveson: "On reflection, I owe an apology to Lord Leveson, the judge heading the inquiry set up in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. On Wednesday I made a speech to the hearing — with Lord Leveson only yards away — in which I was somewhat disparaging of his ability when, as a young QC, he failed to win a conviction for tax evasion charges against Ken Dodd. Before I delivered my speech, he was very courteous to me and yet I repaid him by being disobliging. I shouldn’t have done it and I am sorry."

Liverpool MP Steve Rotherham on Kelvin MacKenzie during the Commons debate on Hillsborough: "Given what he said about the Prime Minister the other day, there may even be some Tories that now agree that the man is a pariah (as we on Merseyside know him to be). This is a man who preaches about free speech, but who dehumanized the deaths of 96 people for a cheap headline. What an absolute hypocrite!"

Liam Fox in his House of Commons' statement: "It is unacceptable that family and friends who have nothing to do with the central issues should be hounded and intimidated by elements of the media including, in this case, elderly relatives and children. It is difficult to operate in the modern environment, as we know, where every bit of information, however irrelevant or immaterial, is sensationalised, and where opinions or even accusations are treated as fact."

Simon Hoggart in the Guradian on Liam Fox's statement: "What a farrago of self-regarding, self-congratulatory self-exculpation it was! He even contrived to tiptoe round the notion that he had done anything wrong. 'The ministerial code has been found to be breached,' he said, as if it were like a hurricane battering a levee, a force of nature for which nobody is to blame."

Dole House Blues, a blog by an unemployed journalism graduate:
"I’ve written more stories for websites that make lots of money without receiving any myself. And I’ve applied for a job, posted today, that already has several hundred views. As I conclude this post, I realise there’s no real point to it – hence the title. Perhaps I’ve invented my own genre: Benefit Beat. That’ll catch on, right? I really wasn’t prepared for just how tough it is out there at the moment."

Sir Ray Tindle on how his titles have fared in the recession: "The papers are surviving but profits have fallen very considerably against pre-recession levels. Eight or nine of our centres are losing money. The group's profits are currently running at around one fifth of 2007 and still falling. Despite this, the directors are proud that the company is the only newspaper group which has not yet had to turn to redundancy to keep the ship on an even course. No journalist has been asked to leave our employ."

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