Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter in a statement on the Irish Daily Star (top) publishing Duchess of Cambridge pics: "Despite the existence of our Press Council and reasonable principles which the print media are expected to follow, it is clear that some sections of the print media are either unable or unwilling in their reportage to distinguish between 'prurient interest' and 'the public interest'."
SKY News reports: "Independent Star Limited has suspended editor Michael O'Kane with immediate effect, pending an investigation into the circumstances that led to the Irish Daily Star re-publishing pages from the French magazine 'Closer', which contained images of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge."
Daily Mail comment on the French publication of the pics of the Duchess of Cambridge topless: "Scandalously, the only ones who are protected by statutory regulation are the country’s politicians – whose sexual indiscretions and industrial-scale corruption are routinely ignored by a supine French Press which does not wish to upset those who make the law and often subsidise their journalism. The lesson of this regrettable saga for the Leveson Inquiry is that draconian privacy laws simply do not work. Worse, they are bad for democracy, freedom of speech and for holding the guilty to account. We trust that, in coming months, ministers will remember that."
Andrew Marr asked by the Guardian 'to whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?': "Gordon Brown, for asking that pills question."
Mick Hume in the Sunday Times [£]: "It is in the spirit of JS Mill that we ought to oppose the creeping culture of media conformism. Not because we necessarily want to defend or celebrate the available alternatives, whether they be page 3 girls or celebrity scandal stories. But because we recognise that compulsory conformism kills a free press, free thinking and eventually a free society."
Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) on the Index on Censorship website: "Where will this all end? Leveson will recommend some sort of beefed up successor to the Press Complaints Commission. It may or may not have a statutory underpinning, something that I think should be avoided because legislation will inevitably lead to judges becoming censors. My admittedly minority view is that we don’t need more regulations or regulators; the hacking of Milly Dowler was illegal, information blagging was illegal, we just need to enforce the laws we have."
Graham Jones, MP for Hyndburn, speaking at a Parliamentary debate, as reported by Press Gazette: “It seems that local newspapers now cannot have an online discussion or commentary following an article on their websites because trolls will totally dominate and post page after page of abuse, which means other people just switch off."
Telegraph owner Sir Frederick Barclay, quoted in The Times [£] about living in Monaco: “Sir David and I left the UK over 23 years ago for health reasons and not for tax reasons in any shape or form. Indeed, we continued to pay personal tax in the UK for 18 of those 23 years. (Our) charitable donations far outweigh what we would have paid in tax if we had remained residents of the UK.”"
Charles Moore interviewing Labour leader Ed Miliband in the Daily Telegraph: "At this point, a mosquito settles on my shoulder. With a commanding show of decision, Mr Miliband squashes it, spattering its remarkably copious blood over my light grey suit. So that’s how he deals with capitalist parasites."
[£] = Paywall.
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