Friday 12 October 2012

Quotes of the Week: What if Jimmy Savile had appeared at Leveson and Jagger as Murdoch



Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail"If Jimmy Savile was alive today, he’d have been a star witness at Leveson, given the full ‘Sir James’ treatment by his lordship and allowed to trash the Press without fear of contradiction or cross-examination."

Fleet Street Fox on her Mirror blog: "Journalists can't win. If they stick to the law and don't report what they can't prove, they're involved in a cover-up. And if they do report what they can only half-prove, they're lying cowboys who need to be brought to book."

David Cameron on Leveson on The Andrew Marr Show: "I don't want to pre-judge it. We don't want heavy-handed state intervention. We've got to have a free press."

"The state should be as remote from newspaper regulation as a viper from a nursery."

Brian Cathcart on Hacked Off: "Well it is surely relevant that it was television journalists who were free to break the Savile story – ITV journalists who are subject to independent regulation by Ofcom, underpinned by a statute."

Newspaper Society director David Newell, as reported by HoldtheFrontPage: "Put simply the freedom to publish in the UK is rightly exercised by all sorts of individuals and organisations for a myriad of motivations and all having a choice as to their mode of publication. This helps guarantee wider democratic freedoms. To target for inclusion in a special statutory regime all those that exercise those freedoms purely on the basis that they have chosen to do so on newsprint or magazine grade paper cannot be justified on any fair evaluation of the evidence presented to Leveson."

Daily Mail in a leader: "Like three harpies from Hell, they have been traipsing around TV studios and the party conferences denouncing media intrusion. Max Mosley (filmed being whipped until he bled in a sado-masochistic orgy with five German-uniformed prostitutes), Steve Coogan (exposed for having cocaine-fuelled sex with lap dancers) and Hugh Grant (caught by police in a sex act with a prostitute, and father of a child from a short-lived casual affair) are having a field day."

The Sun on Harriet Harman at the Labour Party conference: "SNOOTY Harriet Harman mocked Page 3 girls yesterday — by portraying them as dumb blondes. Labour’s deputy leader put on a squeaky voice to describe herself as “Hattie, 62, from Camberwell...and here’s today’s news in briefs” in her closing speech to the party conference. The remarks were a clear dig at the gorgeous girls who brighten up Britain’s favourite paper."

Daily Mail's Stephen Wright on his blog: "Because of the fall-out of the phone-hacking scandal, these are difficult days for police/media relations. Sadly, Scotland Yard’s answer has been to discourage one-to-one contact between reporters and police officers/staff, to say as little as possible about running cases, and to order leak inquiries into the most innocuous of stories. A climate of fear remains which is not good for anyone, particularly the Met. How refreshing it was to see officers in Dyfed-Powys wanting to engage with the media, making it clear they respected the role of journalists sent to report on the abduction of April."

Richard Ingrams in his just published collection Quips and Quotes. A Journalist's Commonplace Book : "I first experienced the excitement of seeing my words in print when I was about 16 and editor of the Shrewsbury school magazine, the Salopian - and I am ashamed to say that I still get a kick out of it now I am in my seventies."

Michael Wolff on the Financial Times on Comment is Free: "Why do rich men love the FT? Perhaps because its salmon color so distinctly identifies men of common interests and aspirations; or because its Britishness suggests a further class consciousness and, too, because among all business publications, it really is the liveliest read. At any rate, they like it so much that even though it is a newspaper – as doomed as any other – there is an intense competition among the super rich to own it."

Max Hastings in the Daily Mail: "If the day ever comes that Boris Johnson becomes tenant of Downing Street, I shall be among those packing my bags for a new life in Buenos Aires or suchlike, because it means that Britain has abandoned its last pretensions to be a serious country."!

Lynn Barber reviewing Mick Jagger by Philip Norman in the Sunday Times [£]: "Incidentally, Norman claims Jagger is hoping to make a film about Rupert Murdoch with himself as Murdoch. Wow, thrice wow, if it happens! But I wouldn’t hold your breath."

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