Quotes of the Week: From Brown to Pompey News

Gordon Brown at the Leveson Inquiry:  “Would any mother or father presented with a choice as to whether the medical condition of their four-month-old son should be broadcast on the front page of a tabloid newspaper, and who had a choice in this matter, allow it?”

Gordon Brown, again at Leveson: "My own local newspaper has just had its editorial staff merged with the next door newspaper. They’re running down the numbers of staff that are providing this local service and I think you would find this in every part of the country that you go into, and more than that, you’re finding it all across the world now, because an internet journalist, who is someone who’s sort of doing their own, if you like, self-journalism, can put their views up on a screen and put their views across the world, but if they’re not resourced and they’re not doing proper research and there’s no investigative journalism, then we’re diminishing the quality of the output that is available to us.”

David Cameron at Leveson: "The thing you spend your time on are the Six o'clock news and the Ten o'clock news"

Rebekah Brooks in a text to Cameron: "Professionally we're definitely in this together."

George Osborne at Leveson on News Corp's £8bn bid for BSkyB: "A political inconvenience".

Sir John Major on Rupert Murdoch at Leveson “I think the sheer scale of the influence he is believed to have whether he exercises it or not, is an unattractive facet in British national life, and it does seem to me an oddity that in a nation which prides itself on one man, one vote, we should have one man, who can't vote, with a large collection of newspapers and a large share of the electronic media outlets.”

Alex Salmond at Leveson: "I believe that my bank account was accessed by the Observer newspaper some time ago, in 1999". 

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: “The upshot of the Leveson revelations of the Murdoch influence and stranglehold on the UK’s political process is a desperate need for a re-evaluation of the BBC licence deal. This was made behind closed doors and under what we know to be Murdoch-driven pressure." 


Ex-Loaded editor Martin Daubney recants in the Daily Mail: "When I look back now, I see we were severely pushing the envelope of what was considered decent. We were normalising soft porn, and in so doing we must have made it more acceptable for young men to dive into the murky waters of harder stuff on the internet. And, for that, I have a haunting sense of regret."

Laurie Penny in the Independent on trolls: "I've had to handle threats to my family, too, alongside a daily splatter of missives that range from nastily suggestive to straightforwardly frightening. Only last week, one of these helpful people took time out of their busy day to write in with the suggestion that because I had written a short article about racism and sexism in a popular television show, a former colleague who happens to be Muslim should 'slit [my] throat in an honour killing'."

Journalist at The News, Portsmouth, quoted anonymously in Press Gazette after new job cuts were announced at the paper: "We are in a situation where news editors are designing pages, sending stories to web, co-ordinating staff and managing stories; where reporters are increasingly expected to file copy and pictures for the website, film video and also come up with stories for the following day's paper; where 12-hour shifts without a lunch break is the norm and not a rarity. I certainly hope the shareholders are happy with their stake in this sweatshop; where corporate greed rules over and above anything else - especially dedicated and proud staff.”