InPublishing: My Media Quotes of the Year

My Media Quotes of the Year are up on InPublishing.

They cover media milestones of 2016: including Indy quits print, Boris and Brexit, Trump and Corbyn, launches and closures, cuts and more cuts, press investigations, the future of news plus privacy and olive oil.

My Media Quotes of the Week are below.

Media Quotes of the Week: From President-elect Trump continues his war on media to President Obama on the dangers created by 'fake news'

New York Post on Trump's media summit with network chiefs: "Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.'It was like a f–ing firing squad,' one source said of the encounter. Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ the source said."

Jon Snow ‏@jonsnowC4 on Twitter: "Hard to imagine in the Western world, media bosses being summoned and abused in such a way: Though Idi Amin once did it to me in 1977."

Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior aide to Barack Obama, quoted by the Guardian: “If your media outlet is focused on Trump v Hamilton instead of Trump’s $25m fraud settlement, you are a sad pawn in Trump’s game.”

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!"

Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon, interviewed by Michael Woolf in the Hollywood Reporter: "The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what's wrong with this country. It's just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what's going on. If The New York Times didn't exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It's a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening."

Bannon on the Murdochs: "They got it more wrong than anybody, Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical."

CNN's Christiane Amanpour, speaking in New York after accepting the Committee to Project Journalists' Burton Benjamin Memorial Award: "I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for the freedom and safety of American journalists at home."

AA Gill in the Sunday Times Magazine [£]: "I’ve got cancer. Sorry to drop that onto the breakfast table apropos of nothing at all. Apropos and cancer are rarely found in the same sentence. I wasn’t going to mention it, the way you don’t. In truth, I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English. There is barely a morsel of offal not included. I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy."

The NUJ in a statement on the Investigatory Powers Bill: "The bill is an attack on democracy and on the public’s right to know and it enables unjustified, secret, state interference in the press. The government has argued the bill is about dealing with national security and serious crime but what they have actually done is use terrorism as an excuse to give themselves new powers to spy on journalists.

 Motion passed by City University's Students' Union:

This Union Resolves:

1. That there is no place for the Sun, Daily Mail or Express (In their current form) on City, University of London campuses or properties.

2. To promote, amongst City students, the active pressuring of the aforementioned media outlets to cease to fuel fascism, racial tension and hatred in society.

3. To unite with other student bodies, community organisations, and businesses, to bring about a tangible change in the way the UK’s media operate.

4. To use the University’s industry contacts to reach out to employees and shareholders of the media outlets in question.

5. To provide the resources and meeting space needed to organise direct action, online and social media campaigns.

City journalism student Jack Fenwick on The Huffington Post: "Add in the fact that the word fascism was spelt incorrectly in the title of the motion and you’re left with a scene from a dark sitcom. Twitter has today been awash with high-profile journalists deriding this horrible decision. But they must understand that this terrible, terrible SU does not represent the thousands of liberal, intelligent minds that are today embarrassed by a decision that has been made on their behalf. To all students in the country who feel let down by a culture of censorship and anti-free speech within our elected student officials and activists, the time has come for change. Let’s not let them get away with it any longer."

Harriet Marsden in the Independent: "One of the first things I learnt at City is that the Sun and the Daily Mail are the two most widely-read newspapers in the country.  This means that students voted to ban the news publications that most of their country is reading, even while there are those studying at the university who are ostensibly learning how to produce news for their country. Some students are even taught by professors who have worked for these papers. They voted in the full knowledge that many City graduates will go on to work for those papers, and even aspire to do so."

Barack Obama on fake news, as reported by Tech Crunch: "Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect. We won’t know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we’ve gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we’ve come to take for granted."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From The Times says trust traditional media as antidote to fake news to Facebook under fire following Trump's victory

The Times [£] in a leader: "The internet in its early years was hailed as the media’s great diversifier and democratiser. News outlets were able to multiply and challenge established ones quickly and at low cost. This, however, has not meant that consumers necessarily use a wider range of sources. On the contrary, they are more free than ever to read, hear and watch only what they want to and have their views reflected back. Truth and fiction are blurred. Research has shown that fake news is more likely to go viral than real. The argument about whether more of it is produced by the right than the left is unlikely to be resolved soon. In the meantime there is a solution, and you are holding (or at least reading) it....Traditional news outlets such as The Times are the obvious antidote. We offer real news, carefully checked, clearly distinguished from opinion and corrected if found to be in error, and we make no apology for promoting ourselves here. The stakes could hardly be higher."

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet post the Trump victory, as reported by Deadline: “We’ve got to do a much better job of being on the road, out in the country, talking to different kinds of people than we talk to — especially if you happen to be a New York-based news organization — and remind ourselves that New York is not the real world.”

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the 'Trump phenomena'."

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "Love all these pompous US politicians & journalists telling @realDonaldTrump how to now behave as President. He won by ignoring all of you."

Piers Morgan on MailOnline: "The US media exposed themselves, with few exceptions, as a bunch of ratings-and-circulation-hungry Dr Frankensteins who created and ravenously fuelled the monster of Trump the presidential candidate -before equally ravenously trying to kill him off."

Ian McEwan in the Guardian: "This is a crisis of identity, a sense of betrayal, among the incumbent working class of many nations. Doorstep concerns have been too easily dismissed as dimly patriotic, ignorant or racist. The electoral space has been left wide open to the demagogic right, the conspiracy and misinformation websites and cynical tabloids."

Rachel Sylvester in The Times [£] on Boris Johnson: "Having spent years as a newspaper columnist using jokes to disguise his intelligence and being rude about foreigners for comic effect, Mr Johnson seems not to have realised that diplomacy is a serious business."

John Lewis in a statement reported by City AM on the campaign by Stop Funding Hate to get companies not to advertise in the Mail, Sun or Express: “We fully appreciate the strength of feeling on this issue but we never make an editorial judgement on a particular newspaper.”

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors on Prince Harry: "The Editors’ Code of Practice, which is policed by the Independent Press Standards Organisation, is strict on issues such as harassment and photography. The British press takes the Code very seriously and abides by it. The Code was strengthened after the death of Princess Diana and reporting of Royal stories has been much more considered since then. It should be remembered that the whole of the UK Media agreed a voluntary reporting embargo, arranged by the Society of Editors, while Prince Harry was in Afghanistan which allowed him to carry out his duties with the Army. The embargo was broken only by an American website. Prince Harry is aware of the IPSO system. He has used it in the past so he knows the process."

Peter Preston in the Observer on the complaints against the press by Prince Harry: "Ipso has been a bit thin on its promised self-started inquiries into areas of coverage thus far. It whizzed round a 'desist' letter to editors when [Meghan] Markle coverage seemed to get out of hand, but hasn’t expanded those parameters. Yet isn’t this the perfect, 10-week opportunity to probe and report at the double?"

Letter to the Guardian signed by NUJ secretary Michelle Stanistreet, the Media Reform Coalition and others: "Digital intermediaries such as Google and Facebook are not only amassing eye-watering profits and paying minimal tax in the UK, they are also bleeding the newspaper industry dry by sucking up advertising revenue. As national and local newspapers try to cut their way out of trouble by slashing editorial budgets and shedding staff, journalistic quality is becoming a casualty. Public interest journalism in particular has been hit the hardest as newspapers are lured into a clickbait culture which favours the sensational and the trivial. In the light of this, we propose a 1% levy on the operations of the largest digital intermediaries with the resulting funds redistributed to non-profit ventures with a mandate to produce original local or investigative news reporting."

Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian: "The digital giants are sucking up advertising, which is threatening the viability of newspapers. More pertinently, and much more significantly, it is threatening journalism itself. That’s why I support the call by the Media Reform Coalition (MRC) and National Union of Journalists to impose a 1% levy on the operations of Google and Facebook in order to fund public service reporting."

The Guardian in a leader: "Facebook wants to publish news and profit from it, but it does not want to act as a traditional news organisation would by separating fiction from facts using human editorial judgment. By relying on algorithms Facebook privileges engagement, not quality. It acts as a publisher without accepting the burdens of doing so."

Fleet Street Fox on her Mirror blog: "I've worked in newspapers for almost 25 years. I've seen people make stuff up, and most of the time they get sued, taken to the regulator, or bawled out because it made the editor look stupid. My copy has always gone through several hands before publication, and it's always been checked - by a news editor, a sub-editor laying out the page, the lawyer or the editor themselves. But in all that time, as the internet arrived and my job changed, I don't think I've ever seen anyone point out newspapers are written by people who think and the internet is produced by people with thoughts. A Facebook image of some words isn't checked by anyone. A tweet claiming Trump just did a thing isn't proof."

Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times: "Only Facebook has the data that can exactly reveal how fake news, hoaxes and misinformation spread, how much there is of it, who creates and who reads it, and how much influence it may have. Unfortunately, Facebook exercises complete control over access to this data by independent researchers. It’s as if tobacco companies controlled access to all medical and hospital records."

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Media Quotes of the Week: Prince Harry vs press, newspapers vs judges, Mail vs Guardian and how did the media get Trump's triumph so wrong?

Kensington Palace in a statement on behalf of Prince Harry: "The past week has seen a line crossed. His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public - the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments. Some of it has been hidden from the public - the nightly legal battles to keep defamatory stories out of papers; her mother having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door; the attempts of reporters and photographers to gain illegal entry to her home and the calls to police that followed; the substantial bribes offered by papers to her ex-boyfriend; the bombardment of nearly every friend, co-worker, and loved one in her life. Prince Harry is worried about Ms Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her."

Jane Moore in the Sun: "MEGHAN MARKLE is an uber glamorous and talented actor who stars in one of the biggest shows on US TV and has 1.2million followers on Instagram. It’s fair to say that she’s probably used to press and public ­attention. Indeed, you could argue that it’s essential to her job.After all, an actor ­without an audience is merely rehearsing and, equally, without its legion of loyal viewers, her smash-hit series Suits would have been cancelled five seasons ago.  o when she and the media-savvy Prince Harry decided to start a relationship, one can only assume that they had an inkling of what to expect once it became public. Which is why his unprecedented statement that ­condemns the 'wave of abuse and harassment aimed at Ms Markle seems ill-advised, particularly as it’s being interpreted by some as an attack on the British press that, for the most part, treats him well."

The Guardian in a leader: "It is the misfortune of Prince Harry and Ms Markle that news of their relationship has broken just as the tabloids are relishing their renewed sense of impunity."

The Times [£] in a leader: "The prince is entitled to fight for his privacy and to seek to defend his girlfriend from coverage he regards as nasty and intrusive. In this country the public is likely to sympathise with his predicament, while being simultaneously keen to devour as much coverage as possible."

David Yelland ‏@davidyelland on Twitter: "I've just seen tomorrow's front pages. Blimey. The angriest splashes in entire Brexit era. They ain't happy..."

Gary Lineker ‏@GaryLineker on Twitter: "The front page attacks on the 3 judges for basically just doing their job is scary. This is fast becoming a dystopian land."

Michael Gove@michaelgove on Twitter: "A raucous, vigorous, press is just as much a guarantor of freedom as our independent judiciary - we are the land of Wilkes and Edward Coke."

Anna Soubry MP‏@Anna_Soubry on Twitter: "Lies verging on racism & bully boy tactics shame Britain's journalists & media #Leavers #Remainers unite to condemn."

Paul Mason in the Guardian: "In Britain, since the high-court decision, and with the tabloids ramping up their attack on the judiciary, people have been asking: what do Jonathan Harmsworth, owner of the Daily Mail, and Rupert Murdoch want? What would make them stop? The answer is: they want Britain ruled by a xenophobic mob, controlled by them. The policies are secondary – as long as their legal offshore tax-dodging facilities are maintained. They also want a Labour party they can control and a Tory party they can intimidate."

The Observer in a leader: "Castigating the judges and by extension, anybody who has the effrontery to agree with them, is exactly what the hard Tory Brexiters and their accomplices in the lie factories of Fleet Street have resorted to with a venom, vindictiveness and vituperation remarkable even by their standards. The will of the people has been thwarted by an 'activist' judiciary. These bewigged, closet Remainers, members of the fabled 'well-heeled liberal metropolitan elite', are 'enemies of the people', they shriek. Some of these sleaze-peddlers even dipped into homophobia, highlighting the sexual orientation of one of the judges. Inexcusable."

The Times [£] in a leader: "It is intellectually incoherent to uphold parliamentary sovereignty by leaving the EU, and then to seek to deny it. Those who question the judgment in such intemperate terms might calm down and read it."

The Telegraph in a leader: "In a free society and a healthy democracy, robust differences should be aired. Judges are surely able to withstand personal criticism without whingeing about their independence being under threat. It isn’t; and no one, least of all this newspaper, is suggesting that it should be."

Theresa May speaking to reporters, as quoted by The Independent: "I believe in and value the independence of our judiciary. I also value the freedom of our press. I think these both underpin our democracy and they are important."

Alex Bannister managing editor of the Daily Mail in a letter to the Guardian: "Your editorial (9 November) accepted without question the claims made in the statement by Prince Harry’s communications secretary, then used them as a vehicle to attack the tabloids, including the Mail, which, of course, is a middle-market paper with more than three times as many ABC1 readers as the Guardian...This was disingenuous to say the least: the statement was clearly addressed to the media in general, and in particular social media. No section of the British press was singled out for criticism. May I humbly suggest that if the Guardian spent as much time examining its own deficiencies as it does obsessing about the Mail, it would be a much more readable paper. Why, it might even make a profit."

Michael Wolff on the Hollywood Reporter: "The media turned itself into the opposition and, accordingly, was voted down as the new political reality emerged: Ads don’t work, polls don’t work, celebrities don’t work, media endorsements don’t work, ground games don’t work. Not only did the media get almost everything about this presidential election wrong, but the media became the central issue, or the stand-in for all those issues, that the great new American Trump Party voted against... And it was a failure of modern journalist technique too. It was the day the data died. All of the money poured by a financially challenged media industry into polls and polling analysis was for naught. It profoundly misinformed. It created a compelling and powerful narrative that was the opposite of what was actually happening."

Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post: "One thing is certain in the presumptive era of President Trump. Journalists are going to have to be better — stronger, more courageous, stiffer-spined — than they’ve ever been. Donald Trump made hatred of the media the centerpiece of his campaign. Journalists were just cogs in a corporate machine, part of the rigged system. If many Americans distrusted us in the past, now they came to actively hate us."

Piers Morgan on MailOnline: " ‘The new President-elect of the United States of America is Donald J. Trump.’ Those, I can say with some certainty, were the words that only Donald himself and me ever thought he might eventually be saying when he first announced he was running last year to global mockery and scorn."

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "I might have to run for British Prime Minister now so we can properly restore the Special Relationship. #PresidentTrump"

Nick Cohen ‏@NickCohen4 on Twitter: "After Trump, there needs to be a serious discussion about whether journalists should use opinion polls when we have no idea if they are false."

Archant content chief content officer Matt Kelly, quoted by Press Gazette: “What I am proposing for Archant is not a digital-first strategy. Nor is it a mobile first or a social first or whatever the next buzzword-strategy-du-jour may be. Our strategy to be more relevant than ever before is not dependent on platform. Our strategy begins and ends with our audience. That’s why we describe our approach, quite simply, as audience-first.”

Andy Smith, NUJ national executive member, in a statement: “We are extremely concerned by the news of the proposed job losses at Archant. The union has yet to meet Archant management formally to discuss the proposals, but the there is little in the reported statements from Jeff Henry, chief executive, or Matt Kelly, chief content officer,to indicate how moving to an ‘audience first’ approach can justify the loss of at least 17 jobs."

The Sun in a leader: "WE don’t envy Theresa May having to sort out the dog’s dinner on press regulation her predecessor left. David Cameron’s foolish inquiry cost taxpayers almost £50 million and barely touched on news provided by internet giants Facebook and Google. Worst of all it created a condition under which a publication that rejects state intrusion would be forced to pay the entire legal costs of anyone who sues them, whether they win or lose. This perversion of justice would spell doom for struggling local newspapers and kill investigative journalism."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From London Mayor urged to try and resolve Newsquest dispute to where have all the court reporters gone?

From a motion on the Newsquest South London dispute over job cuts passed by the London Assembly: "London needs quality local newspapers to ensure democratic scrutiny, accountability, and to encourage an informed and active citizenship – these proposals do not provide that. This Assembly calls on the Mayor to continue to engage with the NUJ and Newsquest in this dispute to find a solution that maintains the quality of the South London Press publications, and commit to look at ways in which local newspaper provision can be supported in London.”

Twitter reacts in Teeline to the news that the NCTJ is to make shorthand optional for journalists. Whatever would Harry Butler say?

Culture Secretary Karen Bradley in a statement to Parliament on a consultation seeking views on the implementation of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act and Part 2 of the Leveson Inquiry: "The Government is determined that a balance is struck between press freedom and the freedom of the individual. Those who are treated improperly must have redress. Likewise politicians must not seek to muffle the press or prevent it doing legitimate work, such as holding us to account. And the police must take seriously its role in protecting not only its own reputation, but also those people it is meant to serve. This is the balance that we wish to strike, and this consultation is the most appropriate and fairest way of doing so."

Lawyers acting for the News Media Association in a letter to the Press Recognition Panel challenging the decision to recognise IMPRESS as a regulator: “Sir Brian Leveson stated that a regulatory body should ‘be established by the industry, that it be able to secure the voluntary support and membership of the entire industry.’ IMPRESS clearly fails to meet this requirement… IMPRESS is, quite simply, unable effectively to regulate the press as it will not secure membership or support of a significant part of the industry, let alone its entirety.”

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGuardian blog: "The government, having realised the implications after intense lobbing by publishers, has yet to trigger section 40, but it’s on the statute book and could be introduced at any time. Whether you see this as a carrot to lure publishers into an approved regulator or a stick to compel them to do so, it is a form of blackmail and, by extension, inimical to freedom of expression. Why? Because it is conceivable that a publisher outside the system, such as the Guardian or Private Eye, could face crippling legal costs."

Frederic Filloux on the Monday Note: "Today, the economic value of a journalism item stems from its popularity, i.e. the number of clicks (or views) it generates. A well-crafted listicle put together by a clever Millennial will generate more revenue that any public-interest piece, this in total disregard for who actually reads it, for how long, etc. That’s the absurdity in today's system."

Guido Fawkes: "Sun reporter Anthony France, the only journalist found guilty following the Met Police’s disastrous Operation Elveden, has had his conviction quashed. France’s ordeal lasted 1,379 days – he was convicted last May – yet today he was cleared by the Court of Appeal in a 30 second hearing. Operation Elveden, which targeted journalists and arrested over 20 Sun reporters, wasted the time of 60 police officers and cost the taxpayer £30 million, has now failed to convict a single journalist."

Anthony France, quoted by Press Gazette: “Having spent more than three years and nine months fighting to clear my name, this is not a time for celebration. Nobody has ‘won’ and the public are less informed.”

The Daily Mail in a leader: "Lovers of justice will shudder at the cringe-making collusion between police and the BBC to destroy Sir Cliff Richard over spurious allegations of child abuse. Imagine the BBC’s outrage if a newspaper had broken the story in such an invasive and sensationalist manner, with such disturbing disregard for the presumption of innocence. Yet, after a cosy in-house inquiry, director-general Tony Hall insisted the BBC had no need to apologise for its coverage. This week’s court papers tell a very different story. We hear a great deal from self-professed liberals about the need for state control of the Press – already the most strictly regulated in the free world. But shouldn’t true freedom-lovers target the over-mighty, statist, self-regulating BBC."

From The Justice Gap: "More than half of all local newspaper editors acknowledge that the courts are not being adequately covered in their own papers, according to new research by the Justice Gap. The study also reports a 40% drop off in the number of court stories on a single day this year compared to the same date four years ago."

Gareth Davies ‏@Gareth_Davies09 on Twitter: "Reporters often sent to cover openings and only able to return for the verdicts, resulting in inaccurate/misleading copy."