Media Quotes of the Week: From Trump's media ban to is the Telegraph becoming the Faragegraph? and sacked Leicester City manager thanks journalists who reported football's greatest story

New York Daily News reports: "The White House ramped up its war against the press Friday, barring multiple outlets including the Daily News from asking questions of press secretary Sean Spicer.
The move came just hours after President Trump promised to 'do something' about the 'fake news' during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference."

Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Joel Simon in the New York Times: "The unrelenting attacks on the news media damage American democracy. They appear to be part of a deliberate strategy to undermine public confidence and trust by sowing confusion and uncertainty about what is true. But they do even greater damage outside the United States, where America’s standing as a global beacon of press freedom is being drastically eroded. This is not just a matter of United States prestige. At a time when journalists around the world are being killed and imprisoned in record numbers, Mr. Trump’s relentless tirades against 'fake news' are emboldening autocrats and depriving threatened and endangered journalists of one of their strongest supporters — the United States government."

Brian Klaas on Twitter: "Attacking accurate, well-sourced press as an "enemy of the American people" while blocking critical press is unacceptable in a democracy...This is clearly a deliberate strategy and one that endangers American democracy. A free press is absolutely crucial."

Donald J. Trump on Twitter:"FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn't tell the truth. A great danger to our country. The failing @nytimes has become a joke. Likewise @CNN. Sad!

Steve Bannon at CPAC 17, quoted by the Guardian: “The corporatist, globalist media are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda that Donald Trump has.”

Piers Morgan in the Mail on Sunday: "It’s not easy right now being someone who works in the entertainment industry that doesn’t profess to loathe and detest Donald Trump. My old friend’s victory in the US presidential election has turned Hillary-adoring Planet Showbiz into a seething cesspit of bilious hatred towards him and anyone, like me, who dares defend him in any way."

Bonnie Greer in The New European on Piers Morgan: "Morgan has become ‘the Explainer of Trump’, his Representative on Earth, the Snow White to Nigel Farage’s Rose Red. That’s his right and his business. But it has consequences. That’s because Trump is also the man who – among many things he does – calls the press 'The enemy of the people'. And that’s where Piers Morgan comes a cropper to me... and, it turns out, to many. He’s Trump’s shill. Trump, the guy who hates journalists."

Nigel Farage interviewed on Piers Morgan's Life Stories on ITV: "Will I ever forgive the British media for what they've done to me? No."

UKIP MP Douglas Carswell in an email to Lord Pearson apparently mocking a suggested knighthood for Nigel Farage, leaked to the Telegraph: “Perhaps we might try angling to get Nigel an OBE next time round? For services to headline writers? An MBE, maybe?”

Mark Wallace on Conservative Home: "Farage is a perfect fit for that wider and distinctive worldview that the Telegraph is carving out for itself. He not only shares its support for Brexit, but articulates plenty of its other opinions, too. From his tone to his real ale, he hits a certain cultural sweet spot for the paper – and his anti-politics theme of course sits well in the pages which exposed the MPs’ expenses scandal. He is an avatar for much of what it wants and feels, the closest thing yet discovered to the newspaper made flesh... it isn’t so surprising to see the emergence of The Daily Faragegraph – for the man and the newspaper alike it makes good sense."

Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell on Labour Briefing: “We have to alert party members and supporters that the soft coup is underway,” McDonnell wrote. It’s planned, co-ordinated and fully resourced. It is being perpetrated by an alliance between elements in the Labour Party and the Murdoch media empire, both intent on destroying Jeremy Corbyn and all that he stands for.”

Sir Harold Evans, quoted by the Guardian: “In terms of truth of journalism it is a very perilous time. We have those people who don’t have the brains to distinguish facts [from fiction]. Then we have the bad performers in the press, particularly numerous in the UK … Then you have got the assault [on the media].”

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet in a statement backing recommendations on press regulation from the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee: "The NUJ’s position, now supported by the parliamentary committee, has been to call for partial implementation of Section 40. In our view, publications who have signed up to a system which facilitates cheap and accessible arbitration can only be a good thing. The punitive elements of Section 40, however, must be held back. It is untenable for any newspaper or magazine to face bearing both sides’ costs when vexatious litigants initiate action."

The Society of Editors in a statement: "The Society remains opposed to the commencement of Section 40 and, alongside other media organisations and members of the public, recognise that the legislation would have a chilling effect on both national and regional and local newspapers."

Pic: Getty Images

Claudio Ranieri, after being sacked by Leicester City, in a statement reported by@PAdugout on Twitter: "Thank you to all the journalists and the media who came with us and enjoyed reporting on the greatest story in football."