The Sun in a leader: "HEAVEN help our judicial system if the judges who upheld the celebrity gagging order yesterday are the best it can find for the Supreme Court. Their illogical and idiotic ruling exposed them as out-of-touch old duffers with a predictably contemptuous snobbery towards popular papers and our millions of readers...They have sneered at tabloid readers and created a charter for cheating celebs, especially those with kids. Any caught with their pants down can use the children as a Get Out Of Jail Free card. And their pricey lawyers are already eyeing up new holiday homes in Tuscany."
Lord Mance, as the Supreme Court upholding the celebrity threesome privacy injunction against the Sun on Sunday, as reported by BBC News: "There is no public interest (however much it may be of interest to some members of the public) in publishing kiss and tell stories or criticisms of private sexual conduct, simply because the persons involved are well known; and so there is no right to invade privacy by publishing them."
The Times [£] in a leader: "The Supreme Court has come to a decision which would have been merely foolish 20 years ago. Today it is both sinister and absurd. Courts of all levels should think very carefully before allowing this sort of farce to unfold again."
Ex-MP John Hemming on his blog: “I am surprised that the Supreme Court have upheld this injunction. The logical conclusion of this is that gossip about anyone with children will become a criminal offence subject to a potential penalty of 2 years's imprisonment. It is important to note that the injunction covers people talking in pubs, gossiping over the garden fence, or twittering on the internet. All of these could potentially see an application for committal for contempt of court. That comes with large amounts of legal costs and up to 2 years imprisonment...the Supreme Court have not learnt from the lesson of King Canute that there are realities that it is not practical to resist."
The Sun in a leader: "DOES the Queen back Brexit? We’re sure she does. But today we are having to publish a front page ruling by the Press regulator IPSO over our March 9 headline which claimed Her Majesty was for Leaving. 'Queen Backs Brexit' was qualified by another headline above it reading 'Exclusive: bombshell claim over Europe vote'. It seemed fair enough to us. Tabloid newspapers like The Sun have long made eye-catching assertions in headlines alongside a smaller headline to qualify or attribute them. It is a standard device. But IPSO decided it wasn’t right — though it had no problem with the story beneath it, about Her Majesty’s eurosceptic remarks which two impeccable sources confirmed. We stand by all of it."
David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "Hats off to @tonygallagher for skilled @BBCr4today defence. Headline was clearly as dodgy as some of mine."
Alan Rusbridger in an email, published by BuzzFeed, to Guardian Media Group staff explaining his reasons for no longer becoming chair of the Scott Trust: “When, in late 2014, the Scott Trust appointed me to succeed Liz as chair I was beyond honoured, But much has changed in the year since I stepped down. All newspapers – and many media organisations beyond – have been battered by turbulent and economic forces that were difficult to see last summer. I have been on the trust long enough to understand its role. We all currently do our journalism in the teeth of a force 12 digital hurricane. It is surely obvious to anyone that changed circumstances will demand dramatically changed solutions. Kath [Viner] and David [Pemsel] clearly believe they would like to plot a route into the future with a new chair and I understand their reasoning."
Ian Katzt@iankatz1000 on Twitter: "Whatever you think of @arusbridger becoming trust chair, v sad that his Guardian career ends like this. He did more for paper than anyone."
Michael Wolff in GQ: "In the end, the Rusbridger legacy cannot likely be undone. The brand is what there is—that’s the asset. Rusbridger had the fun part of the job, spending money like a Romanoff to create it. Now the workers have to figure out how to claw back value from it."
Croydon Advertiser reporter Gareth Davies after Met Police revoked a harassment warning against him for questioning a convicted fraudster: "I behaved as journalists across the country do on a daily basis but was issued with a warning by the police, which could have appeared on my criminal record, without officers conducting any form of investigation to establish whether the allegations were true. I'm glad that, in agreeing to write to the College of Policing, the Met and the IPCC have acknowledged that the use of PINs [Police Information Notices] in relation to journalists needs to be reviewed. As my case has demonstrated, PINs can be used to impede responsible journalism."
Philip Collins in The Times [£]: "The loudest noises in politics are now made by empty vessels who believe in systematic bias, arranged and dispensed to do down their pet cause. One side thinks “the media” is pro-EU. The other thinks it is anti-Corbyn. Presumably “the media” gets all confused when Mr Corbyn delivers a pro-EU speech, not knowing which of its establishment causes to abandon. This is the context into which John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, has dropped his BBC white paper and it is dispiriting to see, once you get past the unexciting, predictable boringness of most of it, that he doesn’t trust the BBC either."
Can Dündar, the editor of Cumhuriyet in Turkey, who is facing more than five years in prison for publishing leaked star documents, quoted in the Guardian: “During this entire saga, it has particularly attracted my attention that the British government preferred not to utter even a single word. This should be embarrassing for the government of a country that takes pride in its democracy.”
Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian: "Those now fighting for freedom of expression around the world should perceive more support from the land of John Milton, John Stuart Mill and George Orwell."
Times in a leader [£]: "Facebook, perhaps the most visited website in the world, is suffering from an identity crisis. Around 1.65 billion people worldwide use the service every month, and media analysts estimate that 70 per cent of them rely upon it as their gateway to reading news. In keeping with other social networks, however, Facebook continues to regard itself as a platform and not as a publisher. The difference is not just semantic. A publisher, such as the one that brings you this newspaper, has a clearly defined responsibility towards its readers...The internet is global and online freedom of speech is, today, one of America’s greatest exports. Influence this vast, even so, must at least be scrutinised. Most of all, it would be far easier to defend the companies which are now the most powerful publishers in the world if they could admit, at least, that this is what they are."
Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times Magazine [£]: "At school, after committing some trivial misdemeanour — hopping through the memorial garden or putting Polyfilla in all the classroom locks; I can’t remember what — I was made to write a thousand-word essay about the inside of a ping-pong ball. It was tough, but the practice was useful later, on the Rotherham Advertiser, where I was regularly made to file a report on what had happened at the previous evening’s meeting of Brinsworth parish council. That meant coming up with six or seven paragraphs about absolutely nothing at all."
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