Media Quotes of the Week: From Mair monsters Mayor to journalists' pay plunges by 12 per cent

Mair and Johnson (Pic: BBC)

 Eddie Mair to Boris Johnson on the Andrew Marr Show: "You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?"

Darius Guppy in the Spectator defends Boris: "Mr Mair attacks the Mayor of London for agreeing, when in his mid twenties, to supply a friend – me – with the address of a News of the World journalist so that the journalist in question can be given the hiding which most of us secretly admit such people deserve...As we all know, Mr Johnson never provided me with any address and it is perfectly clear from the tape recording in question that he was simply placating a friend he considered to be letting off steam. But while this may rightly exonerate the Mayor of London, my own line has always been somewhat different – and consistent: my only regret being that I was never able to finish the job."

Tony Parsons in the Daily Mirror: "How did we get to this? A noble and decent impulse to protect the rights of families like the Dowlers and the McCanns has been cynically hijacked by jumped-up political pygmies and sleazy celebrities. You would never guess it from all the Hacked Off propaganda, but newspapers like the one you are holding were emphatically on the side of the parents of Milly Dowler and Madeleine McCann. We desperately wanted them to find their daughters, we sincerely wanted their families restored. We wanted it as journalists, as parents and as human beings. If we felt any other way then you – the reader – would put us out of business overnight."

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in the Guardian: "We badly need reform. We also need a free press. Achieving both can't be done at speed or in the dark."

Lord Guy Black in the House of Lords on exemplary damages: "I’m sure they are almost certainly contrary to European law and so will collapse or be struck down. I think they are a constitutional nightmare."

Peter Hitchens on MailOnline on David Cameron:"Mr Slippery set up the original Leveson Inquiry in a short-sighted attempt to look good. By the time he realised he had created a great clanking, devouring monster, it was too late to stop. So he pretended that he would prevent the Leveson report from turning into state regulation of the press. Then he realised that he couldn’t, so he disguised his defeat as a decisive act of strength. That was when he abruptly halted the talks in which he was being wrestled to the ground by the press-hating lobby of spiteful, short-sighted leftists and vengeful celebrities.  Finally, he was responsible for what will come to be seen as one of the stupidest and most shameful moments in British political history."

Matthew Engel looking back at his days on the Northampton Chronicle and Echo, as reported by HoldTheFrontPage: "Regret no. 1 is that I failed to appreciate what fun it all was and that I would never ever have quite so much enjoyment from journalism again. To have a job that allowed me, at 21, 22, 23, to be at the very heart of a community, to gain an understanding of it I could get in no other way and to write with a surprising amount of freedom about it."

Geoffrey Cox QC, for Sun deputy editor Geoff Webster who is alleged to have authorised reporters to pay £8,000 in total to unnamed public officials in 2010 and 2011, told Westminster Magistrates’ Court: “Mr Webster was engaged in nothing more than doing his job. There is nothing to explain the reason why he has been charged.The only wrong he is said to have done is to approve a number of payments, in one case to an unknown public official.”

Bob Garfield on Comment Is Free: "Text, audio and video are rapidly converging. As journalism brands grow to look more like one another, we are seeing unmistakable signs of publishers slouching toward an ethical lowest common denominator. Anyone who cares deeply about quality, independent journalism should pray for paywalls  and other subscription models to take hold. Because in the world of the smart and the desperate, desperate always has the last word." 

Michael White on his Guardian politics blog: "Fleet Street is right to protest that there is still much wrong with the cross-party proposals over Leveson, but wrong to say 300 years of press freedom are at stake. It just isn't true. A system of self-regulation with a flick of external monitoring – not as tough as what the tabloids seek for the NHS this week – will just provide a new battleground with no permanent winner. The real threat to newspapers in 2013 is commercial viability in the internet age, not government censorship at a time when censorship looks ever more difficult in free societies."

Professor Ian Hargreaves in the NCTJ's Journalists At Work report, looking back over the last decade: "The pay of journalists has fallen behind general inflation and behind the overall level of pay inflation in the UK, with today’s average journalist salary standing at £27,500 per annum, a fall of 12% in real terms. This weakness in journalists’ pay reflects primarily conditions in newspaper journalism."

Media Quotes of the Week: From lashing the liberal-left to being hacked off with Hacked Off

 John Kampfner in the Guardian: "Many on the liberal-left sense a once-in-a-generation opportunity to 'tame' the unruly papers. They believe a more decent society cannot be achieved with the media we currently have, so it's time to act. Rather than seeing free expression as the bedrock of a strong society, they see it as providing an opportunity for nasty people to bludgeon nasty views on to a vulnerable public. They cannot tolerate an intolerant press."

Nick Cohen in The Observer: "We are in the middle of a liberal berserker, one of those demented moments when 'progressives' run riot and smash the liberties they are meant to defend...The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties are custodians of the best of Britain's radical traditions: the traditions not only of Orwell, but of John Milton, John Stuart Mill and the men and women who struggled against the Stamp Acts and the blasphemy and seditious libel laws. Their successors are not worthy to follow in their footsteps. For the sake of a brief partisan victory, for the chance to shout: 'Yah boo sucks' at the hated tabloids."

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian: "This is not the end of the world, and any such suggestion will sound self-serving from British papers. But, unlike the supine press so common abroad, they still have the irreverent vigour and diversity of a true political safeguard. This has been a grim, vengeful saga. The press faces tough times anyway, and must now do so wearing a ball and chain."

The Guardian in a leader: "The deal done should unblock the government's legislative programme, and secure early passage of a defamation bill, a potentially momentous advance for free speech. But doubts continue to linger, not only about powerful titles setting up secessionist self-regulators but also about fears of ruinously punitive damages for publications prospectively outside the system, such as Private Eye. After doing a deal among themselves, the politicians will breathe a sigh of relief and hope they can move on. But as the industry alights on grievances, both real and hyperbolic, the political class as a whole could discover that the brokering has only just begun."

Guido Fawkes on his blog: "Guido is opposed to all the proposals to control the press including the government’s misguided plan to enforce extra-territorial control of publications. We won’t be cooperating with any legislation that tries to control a foreign publication like this blog because it is, in the words of the Charter, 'targeted primarily at an audience in the United Kingdom'. Imagine if the Soviets had tried to do the same to Radio Free Europe during the Cold War, or the Iranian regime demanded today to regulate the BBC’s Persian Service on the grounds that it is 'targeted primarily at an audience in the Islamic Republic of Iran'."

Ben Brogan on his Telegraph blog: "For my part – and this is a personal view – I've concluded that we should note the outcome, thank the politicians for their engagement, and quietly but firmly decline to take part."

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, in the Financial Times: “There is a fair amount of concern and anger in some quarters – from regional newspapers in particular. The regional editors feel they have nothing to be ashamed of, yet they are caught in all of this.”

Rupert Murdoch ‏@rupertmurdoch on Twitter: "Oz media censorship beaten back. UK holy mess with Internet unworkably included. Cameron showing true colors shocking many supporters."

Raymond Snoddy ‏@RaymondSnoddy:"on Twitter: "Cynical, poisonous, manipulations of Hacked Off exposed in own words in memo leaked to MoS -a coup against free speech is under way"

Peter Oborne on his Telegraph blog on why he is quitting the NUJ: "I have been increasingly disturbed by the NUJ's growing sympathy for state control over the press. If the union represented journalists, as it claimed to do, it would have been up in arms at yesterday's squalid deal which has granted politicians power over newspapers for the first time in more than 300 years. It would have fought all the way. Instead the NUJ has been a largely silent and shamefaced collaborator with Hacked Off and its rich and powerful backers."

Simon Kelner in the Independent on Hacked Off: "They certainly represent the victims of phone-hacking, but they cannot claim to speak for the great British public, who - in case you may have forgotten - bought the News of the World in their millions, lapping up the tales of private indiscretions by public figures without a thought about how those stories reached them."

Daily Mail in a leader: "Labour has been hijacked by Hacked Off, a self-appointed cadre of Press-hating zealots, tarnished celebrities and small-town academics."

'Deeply contentious issues' on Royal Charter plan

While MPs were congratulating themselves in the Commons on reaching the cross-party agreement on a Royal Charter-based press regulation system,  major players in the industry warned it contains "deeply contentious issues".

A statement from major national titles and bodies representing the regional press and magazines said: "We would like to make it clear that, contrary to reports broadcast by the BBC this morning, no representative of the newspaper and magazine industry had any involvement in, or indeed any knowledge of, the cross-party talks on press regulation that took place on Sunday night.

"We have only late this afternoon seen the Royal Charter that the political parties have agreed between themselves and, more pertinently, the Recognition Criteria, early drafts of which contained several deeply contentious issues which have not yet been resolved with the industry.

"In the light of this we are not able to give any response on behalf of the industry to this afternoon’s proposals until we have had time to study them."

It was signed by Daily Mail Group, News International, Newspaper Society, Professional Publishers Association and  Telegraph Media Group.

Update: Adrian Jeakings (above), president of the Newspaper Society and chief executive of Archant, issued this statement:

“Lord Justice Leveson found that the UK’s local media had nothing to do with the phone hacking scandal which prompted the Inquiry. Indeed, he praised regional and local newspapers for their important social and democratic role and recommended that the regulatory model proposed should not provide an added burden to our sector. He called on the Government to look urgently at what action it might take to help safeguard regional and local newspapers’ ongoing viability as a valued and important part of the British press.

“Yet the deal announced by the three main political parties today completely ignores the Leveson recommendations on the local press. The Royal Charter proposals agreed by the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour - with huge financial penalties for newspapers which choose to be outside the system and an arbitration service which would open the floodgates to compensation claimants - would place a crippling burden on the UK’s 1100 local newspapers inhibiting freedom of speech and the freedom to publish.

"Local newspapers remain fiercely opposed to any form of statutory involvement or underpinning in the regulation of the press. A free press cannot be free if it is dependent on and accountable to a regulatory body recognised by the state."

Media Quotes of the Week: From Leveson comes down to a Parly vote to Vicky Price and betrayal

David Cameron ruling out a full legislative response to Leveson and opting for a vote in Parliament, as reported by the London Evening Standard: "“Effectively this is bringing this to a head. I have chosen action over inaction. I have chosen workability against unworkability. I have chosen something that would protect the freedom of the press over something that would undermine it.”

Ed Miliband on Cameron's move, as reported by the BBC: "I told him I thought he was making a historic mistake which would not serve the victims, and that we should carry on working to serve the victims of the abuses that took place in the past and to see whether we could find a solution together." 

Nick Davies ‏@Bynickdavies on Twitter: "Cameron caves in to Fleet Street bullies"
 
Dan Hodges on Telegraph blogs: "Next week’s vote in the Commons is now a win/win for the Prime Minister. Either the Government prevails, and Miliband is left humiliated and empty handed. Or the Opposition wins the vote, in which case David Cameron is able to frame himself as the heroic defender of press freedom; both now, and come the election in 2015."

The Daily Mail in a leader: "For deplorably cynical short-term motives, a tawdry alliance of Labour and LibDem politicians is holding Parliament to ransom in a bid to force through legislation which could seriously diminish the freedom of the Press to expose injustice, corruption and hypocrisy in public life."

The Independent in a leader: "This newspaper recently backed calls for a charter, underpinned by a short statute. With the Prime Minister still willing to talk, there is time for that compromise to be achieved. With so urgent a need for a tougher system of media regulation, a split between politicians and the press helps no one."

The Daily Telegraph in a leader: "In recent weeks, two senior police officers have been arrested for passing information to journalists even though no money was exchanged or even requested. In other words, they face prosecution for briefing reporters on their activities. This is a worrying development because maintaining a relationship between newspapers and people in public office – be they police chiefs, soldiers, civil servants or government ministers – is a central plank of democracy. Those who doubt this simply fail to understand that a function of the press in a free society is to act as a conduit between people in positions of authority and the public."

Sun investigations editor Brian Flynn, speaking at the 'Journalism in the Dock' debate at City University:"It feels like we are being frogmarched into a police state".

Lynn Barber on Piers Morgan in theSunday Times Magazine [£]: "He says he’s keenly aware that he must not come across as hectoring, but that’s exactly how it felt when he was reeling off statistics about gun deaths in America. I was impressed by his command of the subject, but also thinking: 'Can we get back to talking about Cowell soon?' Serious Morgan is all very well, but fluffy Morgan is far more fun."

Piers Morgan about his Twitter account, to Lynn Barber in the Sunday Times Magazine [£]: “I have more followers than eight British national newspapers put together have readers.”

Tom Streithorst on The Prospect blog:  "As industrial jobs evaporated, few of us in the news business cared. Remember that famous quote about Nazi Germany. When they came for the miners, I remained silent because I wasn’t a miner. When they came for the air traffic controllers, I remained silent because I wasn’t an air traffic controller. When they came for the middle managers, I remained silent because I wasn’t a middle manager. When they came for the journalists, only the journalists spoke out—and guess what, nobody listened."

Peter Preston in the Observer: "Ask local and regional journalists and they'll tell you the truth: journalism isn't well-paid. But where does it sit in the third division of trades and professions? Forbes, using government statistics, has just constructed a US league table around an annual mean yearly salary of $43,640. You'll be happy to learn that reporters, notebooks open, fit in the same category as airline stewards, marriage therapists, chefs – and embalmers. I know people keep saying papers are dying, but this is ridiculous."

Isabel Oakeshott on Vicky Pryce in the Sunday Times [£]: "While I was busy protecting her identity, she had been busy revealing all to a rival newspaper, The Mail on Sunday. Even worse, she had handed it a copy of the tapes. This was an extraordinary betrayal and deeply underhand after everything we had been through together. Our relationship had been based on trust. I had kept my side of the bargain; she had broken hers."

Nick Cohen on The Spectator blog: "Oakeshott does not understand that the moral obligations between a journalist and his or her sources flow in one direction only. They are putting their life and liberty in your hands not vice versa. They are free to deny the truth of the stories you print, if that's what it takes to keep them in a job or out of prison. They can speak to other journalists; they can do whatever they want. You are in their debt. They are not in yours."

[£] = paywall 

National press disunited: Look whose missing

The "industry" gave its response to the latest Leveson developments today but look whose missing...no Guardian, Independent, Mirror [which had other problems to deal with today] or FT reps have signed the statement.

It says: "We share the Prime Minister’s frustration at the way in which talks about the future of press regulation have broken down and legislation has been hijacked.

"The Prime Minister is right to reject statutory regulation of the press – free of political control for 300 years - as fundamentally wrong in principle and unworkable in practice.

"The industry has spent many weeks in negotiating a new independent system of self regulation, based on the Leveson principles, which provides £1 million fines and the toughest system of regulation in the western world. We have made major concessions in order to reach agreement, although there are elements of the proposed reforms – such as exemplary damages – to which we remain opposed. However, this need not stop a new regulator being put in place.

"We agree with the Prime Minister that matters cannot be allowed to drift on and that we need now to deliver real change.

"The UK’s newspaper and magazine publishing industry will rise to the challenge. We are ready to move with speed to establish a new system of tough, independent, effective self regulation which delivers fully on the Leveson principles and will provide real protection for members of the public. We will aim to get the new regulator up and running as soon as possible."

Paul Ashford Northern and Shell

Guy Black Press Standards Board of Finance

Tim Blott Scottish Newspaper Society

Paul Dacre Daily Mail Group

Barry McIlheney Professional Publishers’ Association

Murdoch MacLennan Telegraph Media Group

David Newell Newspaper Society

John Witherow News International

Journalism in the Dock: Are we being frogmarched into a police state or is that just tabloid tosh?

Brian Flynn and Neil Wallis: Journalism in the Dock debate (pic Jon Slattery)

The investigations editor of the Sun has warned that from his view on the frontline of journalism "it feels like we are being frogmarched into a police state".

Brian Flynn, speaking at the 'Journalism in the Dock' debate at City University last night, claimed the Leveson Inquiry was being used as "a land grab" to crackdown on the press.

"I'm 41 years old. I never thought I would see in my lifetime all the things that are happening," he said. "Officials are being arrested for speaking to journalists where no money is involved."

Flynn said journalists were working in an environment where they were seeing their colleagues arrested and stories were now being turned away because the bribery law contained no public interest defence. 

As an example, he claimed if a worker in a care home asked for money to expose abuse it would not  be published in the current climate even though it was clearly in the public interest.

"The sad thing, it feels to me, is that people are seeing the chance to crackdown on journalists because there's no sympathy for journalists."

Neil Wallis, the former executive editor of the News of the World, claimed the crackdown on the press was "payback time" for those who disliked the power of Rupert Murdoch and he told the student journalists in the audience: "They are destroying your career...the truth is they are not going to let you be journalists."

He added: "It's your freedom they are playing with. Once it [press freedom] goes you won't get it back."

Former News of the World journalist turned journalism lecturer Bethany Usher told of her ordeal at being arrested over material given to the police by News International. She was cleared after eight days but described it as "among the most terrifying of my life." Usher, the first journalist arrested during the Leveson Inquiry, said she was subjected to threats and abused on Twitter. "It was a very difficult eight days but was over quickly."

City University professor Ivor Gaber spoke out from the audience about the tabloid journalists apocalyptic vision. He said it was ludicrous to talk about a police state and claimed it did "a disservice to those who are struggling against repression" in other countries.

Gaber accused Flynn and Wallis of going into tabloid mode and seeing everything in black and white, while press regulation was a far more complex issue.

Hacked Off director Brian Cathcart said: "If people have broken the law and are found guilty, I don't think there's much to complain about."

Former Guardian editor Peter Preston warned of the impact the arrest of journalists in the UK was having  in the rest of the world. He said the Turkish prime minister had told the International Press Institute that it was alright to lock up journalists on terrorism charges "because it happens in Britain all the time."

• Neil Wallis said he was concerned that journalism colleges in the south of England were populated by people who had worked only for the broadsheets.
• Charlie Harris, from the Institute of Journalists, claimed the police had "more or less stopped talking to local journalists" and groups like Hacked Off should be aware of their impact on the press across the country.   

Quotes of the Week: From St. Bride's congregation of 'utter bastards' to journalist on toast for dinner

St Bride's Fleet Street

Fleet Street Fox in her diary: "The vicar at St. Bride's is the only one I've ever met that looks down  from the pulpit in the certain knowledge that most of his congregation  can be categorized as under the heading 'utter bastards', and doesn't seem to mind." 

US business magnate Warren Buffett, as reported by Romenesko: “I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time.”

The Sun in a leader: "A very senior policeman has been arrested by detectives on suspicion not of taking bribes but of simply talking — yes, TALKING — to a journalist. But hold on. This isn’t China or Russia or Zimbabwe. This is Britain. If you are running the country, Mr Cameron — and we have to assume you still are — was this on your instructions?"

A "conflicted colleague" quoted by Guardian readers' editor Chris Elliott in his Open Door column: "There have been occasions recently where stories have been commissioned by editors who have talked about how they hope it will 'play well' online – this appears to have been at the very forefront of their mind when commissioning. Certainly this is the prime driver of many online picture galleries. Obviously … we want to be well-read and popular, but it is a slippery slope, and it now appears that in a few cases we are creating stories purely to attract clicks."

Fleet Street Fox in her diary: "There's something strangey fitting about the fact that cabbies all hate driving, doctors can't stand illness and journalists dislike people."

New BBC director general Lord Hall in an interview with the Guardian: "You need to take risks but you don't take them willy-nilly or recklessly, you think them through. You give people the confidence to be bold and run with what they want to do. If things do go wrong then you have to have the confidence to say OK, we got that wrong, let's learn from it and move on."

Peter Preston in the Observer: "Welcome to Head-scratching Corner. In January, Mail Online broke all previous records (with a daily 7,977,039 unique browsers as measured: a 13% rise on December); Guardian online triumphed similarly (4,319,370 uniques, a 17% rise); and the Telegraph, third in the championship league, added 11% to record 3,129,599. Golly! That must have meant some walloping print circulation drops? Transition incarnate. But no: Mail print sales were up 1.01%, Telegraph sales up 1.53%, and the Guardian – up 0.11% – recorded newsprint gains for the third month in a row. Two halves of the same glass, both full."

Ben Locker ‏@benlocker on Twitter: "Screw you Sunday Times iPad 'app' developers. You've driven me back to print."

David Banks in the Guardian: "If the defamation bill fails because of the "Leveson clauses" added by the Lords it will be a criminal waste of years of campaigning for reform. It will damage the cause of public interest journalism in the UK and this country will maintain its status as the destination of choice for those who want to shut down their critics through the use of libel law."

Nadia Sawalha asked by the Sunday Times Magazine [£] "What's your dinner-island dinner?"replies: "Journalist on toast...with mayo."

[£]= paywall

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. …At appropriate prices – and that means at a very low multiple of current earnings – we will purchase more papers of the type we like.

* We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.xc8z4aVW.dpuf

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. …At appropriate prices – and that means at a very low multiple of current earnings – we will purchase more papers of the type we like.

* We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.xc8z4aVW.dpuf

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. …At appropriate prices – and that means at a very low multiple of current earnings – we will purchase more papers of the type we like.

* We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.xc8z4aVW.dpuf

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. …At appropriate prices – and that means at a very low multiple of current earnings – we will purchase more papers of the type we like.

* We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.xc8z4aVW.dpuf

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. …At appropriate prices – and that means at a very low multiple of current earnings – we will purchase more papers of the type we like.

* We do not believe that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities – while it may improve profits in the short term – seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.xc8z4aVW.dpuf

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.IuZFLTvT.dpuf

* I love newspapers and, if their economics make sense, will buy them even when they fall far short of the size threshold we would require for the purchase of, say, a widget company. - See more at: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/01/i-love-newspapers-warren-buffett-tells-shareholders/#sthash.IuZFLTvT.dpuf

Quotes of the Week: From sexism in newspaper offices to the press regulation war kicks off

Cathy Newman (top) in the Telegraph: "Some of the most glaring instances of sexism directed at me took place in newspaper offices or at the hands of newspaper executives. When I worked for the Financial Times, I confronted a senior executive about the fact that a man who was significantly junior to me was getting paid a lot more. The executive asked me what I needed the money for, since I didn’t have a mortgage or a family. I laughed it off and made sure I got a pay rise. Slightly more intimidating was the time, ironically at a political party conference, when a man who was then the editor of a national newspaper started propositioning me in the bar, despite knowing I was in a long-term relationship, and despite my making it patently clear that I wasn’t interested."

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg , as quoted by the Daily Mail, on the journalists investigating Lord Rennard: "Self-appointed detectives."

Neil Wallis, former deputy editor at the News of the World, speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme after being told there was “insufficient evidence” to bring charges against him: “I think that they [the police] were under tremendous political pressure to make an arrest. I think something has to be questioned. We’re not bank robbers, we’re not rapists, we’re not murderers. 21 months is an awful long time. There should be a cut off point. There are 60 journalists under arrest at the moment – more journalists than are under arrest in Iran.”

 Peter Oborne in the Telegraph: "Meanwhile there’s informed speculation that James Harding, recently sacked as editor of the Times, is to be given un unspecified role in the news operation. This is hardly encouraging. ''Scoop’’ Harding memorably turned down the MPs’ expenses story (later picked up by The Daily Telegraph) while overseeing a 40 per cent collapse in circulation during his five years as editor."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet, in a statement: "They [newspaper publishers] have gone back on their promises to pick up the Leveson recommendations, generally seen as moderate and proportionate, and have conspired together to offer a solution that ignores journalists, excludes the public and the victims of phone hacking and serves only the interests of publishers.”

Mick Brown on 25 years of Matt cartoons in the Telegraph: "What makes Matt so distinctive? His cartoons are gentle, wry, alive to the absurdities of daily life; the things we love, and the things we don’t. They are unerring in their dissection of the follies and vanities of human nature, but they are utterly devoid of venom or malice. It is the humour of gentle mockery, cut with the delicious pang of recognition. They are often a beat ahead of you – the joke you wish you had thought of, but know you never could."

Professor Peter Cole in the new book After Leveson? on the various meetings of hackademics and media pundits that followed the Leveson Report: "The meetings were frequently lofty, seldom including representation (of advocates or views) from the popular press which was at the heart of the Leveson inquiry. The ‘hackademics’ seemed often to be the most detached from the real commercial world, some giving the impression that all would be well if the Guardian was the only newspaper on sale, distaste for the Daily Mail and all things Murdoch seemingly a badge of office."

Dorothy Byrne, commissioning editor for Channel 4 news and current affairs, speaking at the , reported launch of After Leveson?: "Anybody thinking about legal regulation of the press needs to take into account that large corporations and evil regimes will try to use it to stop freedom of speech."

Hacked Off associate director Evan Harris on the prospects of press regulation backed by a Royal Charter, at the After Leveson? launch: "There is no sign of agreement. It is far short of Leveson. I don't believe a Royal Charter will happen"

Mick Hume, after being told to calm down by Evan Harris at the After Leveson? launch debate: "This is a fucking war."