Friday 26 April 2013

Quotes of the Week: From make that two Royal Charters to Santorini and the Loveson Inquiry


The Newspaper Society on the industry's draft Royal Charter on press regulation: "It is a workable, practical way swiftly to deliver the Leveson recommendations, which the industry accepts, without any form of state-sponsored regulation that would endanger freedom of speech. It has widespread backing across the industry. It will deliver a system of regulation which will provide real protection for the public."

Hacked Off responds: "This desperate move by editors and proprietors – rejecting the Royal Charter agreed last month by all parties in Parliament and due to be approved by the Queen in days – is only the latest proof that most of the industry has learned no lessons from the Leveson experience. They are not sorry for the abuses exposed at the inquiry, or for the further abuses exposed almost weekly since, and they do not accept the need for real change."

The Guardian in a leader: "Like the Schleswig-Holstein question, the few people who still understand the arguments about the post-Leveson royal charter are dead, mad or past caring." 

Fiona Richmond in the Telegraph: “I was also so upset with Steve Coogan...During the lunch I asked, given that he had been part of the Leveson Inquiry and strongly complained about invasion of privacy, why he thought it was acceptable putting me in scenes that never happened: wasn’t it an invasion of my privacy? I never, for example, took part in orgies, or a threesome. But it didn’t seem to matter to him in the slightest." 

The Daily Mail in a leader: "The arrest of three civilian police workers for revealing that their elected commissioner was lavishing taxpayers' money on unwarranted trips in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes is a truly chilling story of how freedom of expression is being suppressed in this country...It's the kind of behaviour we normally associate with tyrants, but since the Leveson inquiry effectively criminalised unauthorised contacts between journalists and public officials, the police seem to think that such harassment is acceptable. The implications for democracy, our open society and the public's right to know could not be more grave."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage interviewed in the West Sussex Gazette: " I am mortified that in a smoke filled room in Westminster at half past two in the morning the Lib Dem and Labour agenda was agreed to by David Cameron and we’re heading towards state regulation of the press, and what we know with all forms of state regulation is that it becomes costly bureaucratic and effectively puts out of the game many of the smaller and medium sized players." 

The Guardian in a leader: "The overall situation relating to press freedom is by no means uniformly bleak. The country's appalling defamation laws, which led to London being treated as the libel capital of the world, have finally and historically been reformed – the work of a determined group of lawyers, peers, MPs and human rights organisations. Speech in Britain should be notably freer as a result. But at the same time there are justifiable concerns about attempts to criminalise some forms of unauthorised disclosure or whistleblowing. And we share the anxieties many media organisations have about the prospect of unreportable arrests." 

Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki quoted in Time about covering the Boston Marathon bombings: "I was so shook up about it — I was speechless when I was there [on scene]. My eyes were swelling up behind my camera. We use a camera as a defense but I was shaken when I got back, just scanning the pictures. The other sad part was that I took my shoes off because they were covered in blood from walking on the sidewalk taking pictures."

IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass, quoted by the Guardian: "We will never know what would have happened had Surrey police carried out an investigation into the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone in 2002. Phone hacking was a crime and this should have been acted upon, if not in 2002, then later, once the News of the World's widespread use of phone hacking became a matter of public knowledge and concern. We have not been able to uncover any evidence, in documentation or witness statements, of why and by whom that decision was made: former senior officers, in particular, appear to have been afflicted by a form of collective amnesia in relation to the events of 2002."

Lawyers Harbottle and Lewis in emails sent to the Mail on Sunday about their client Rolf Harris: "There is no public interest in publishing such an article as is entirely self-evident following publication of the Leveson report."

Henry Winter on Barcelona and Real Madrid being thrashed in the first legs of the Champions League semi-finals, in the Telegraph: "Nobody expected the Spanish inhibition." 

Hacked Associated Press Twitter account:  The Associated Press: "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured."

Santorini

The Mail in a leader on the affair of Leveson lawyers David Sherborne and Carine Patry Hoskins: "When the affair began is unclear. They say it didn't start until after Leveson reported last November, but admit they went on holiday to the romantic Greek island of Santorini last August. They claim - with a straight face - their relationship was then still platonic. But even if there was no pillow talk, it beggars belief they wouldn't have discussed Leveson over the odd glass of Retsina."

Rowan Pelling in the Telegraph: "The self-restraint of Gandhi, who slept alongside naked virgins to test his commitment to celibacy, is as nothing compared to the iron willpower of David Sherborne and Carine Patry Hoskins."

on Twitter: "Ho! Ho! Leverson becomes Loverson! Can affirm Santorini very romantic."

Lord Justice Leveson on Carine Patry Hoskins, quoted in the Telegraph: "Save for some proof reading in the final few days before publication, she did not see and was not involved in any discussions about the other sections of the report or, indeed, in any of my eventual recommendations. There was simply no room for a 'breach of confidence or other conspiracy' as a result of personal relations between her and Mr Sherborne.”

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