Media Quotes of the Week: From journalists have adapted to change but where's the fun gone? to many staff on Brexit-backing papers are Remainers

NUJ organiser Chris Morley, interviewed by Steve Dyson in InPublishing: “There can be few other professions where workers have done as much to accommodate change and got so little reward for it. When you consider the new technologies and techniques journalists have had to embrace and be proficient at with minimal training, it’s incredible that the love of the job still shines through. [But] the one thing I never hear now is how the work is fun, and rarely that it’s a joy to be given free rein to carry out investigations. The problem is that as no-one has found the answer to making a sustainable media future online, my members are still serving two worlds: analogue and digital. The more they see of what appears to work online, generally and professionally, the less they like it.”

Martin Shipton on WalesOnline: "If Theresa May wanted to convince me that she’d cracked Brexit, she could hardly have gone about it in a more inept way. A day before she arrived in Wales as part of her four-nation Brexit tour of the UK – which was taking place exactly 12 months in advance of our departure from the EU – I was asked by a Number 10 press officer to send in the single question I would be allowed to ask her. This I did – knowing that if I failed to do so, I wouldn’t get a question at all.Surely this made New Labour control freakery – which I also experienced – appear positively benign. What faith can one have in a political leader who wants to know all the questions they will face in advance?"

Media academics in a letter to the Guardian: "It is not “whataboutery” to suggest that the debate on antisemitism has been framed in such a way as to mystify the real sources of anti-Jewish bigotry and instead to weaponise it against a single political figure just ahead of important elections. We condemn antisemitism wherever it exists. We also condemn journalism that so blatantly lacks context, perspective and a meaningful range of voices in its determination to condemn Jeremy Corbyn."

Sun political correspondent Matt Dathan @matt_dathan on Twitter: "Jeremy Corbyn's senior policy adviser Andrew Fisher told a meeting of Labour Shadow Cabinet political advisers today that people who continue to leak would be sacked. And that threat has now been leaked to me."

Channel 4 head of news Ben de Pear, interviewed by Ian Burrell for The Drum: “The question we have had over the past year is: is Facebook too toxic a platform to actually appear on as news?” he says. “All the news organisations need to talk to each other and maybe we can come up with a separate platform – I don’t know, call it Newsbook? – where we can be funded.”

Scott Rosenberg on Axios: "Outrage over Facebook’s misuse of user data and failure to rein in election fraud is real. But the zeal that media outlets bring to their Facebook coverage is personal, too. It’s turbocharged because journalists, individually and collectively, blame Facebook — along with other tech giants, like Google, and the internet itself — for seducing their readers, impoverishing their employers, and killing off their jobs. This blame war is the latest phase of a decades-long grudge match between traditional media companies and new technology giants."

Jane Martinson in the Guardian on criticism of the way journalists behaved covering the Manchester Arena terror attack: "What’s needed more than anything is a new mindset. Codes and panels have their place but too many journalists, desperate for a fresh story or a new line, appear more afraid of disappointing editors and scuppering careers than upsetting already traumatised human beings. Editors, however innocent they think themselves to be, should act to change this culture."

Peter Habara, an editor at murdered Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak’s website, quoted in the Washington Post: “If it was 1918, when journalism was done only on paper, it would be a ‘good’ precaution to silence a journalist. After the murder … the story would die as well. But not in this era. Even if they kill us all, the story and truth will prevail.”

The Times [£] reports: "A newsagent will be buried with a copy of the local newspaper he had delivered for 60 years. Peter Field had walked the rounds since he was 12, eventually owning the shop, Hedgers, in East Preston, West Sussex, where he made sure that his 370 customers received their papers each day. Mr Field, 72, who rarely had a day off, provided a vital function for his community and hundreds of mourners are expected to attend his funeral on Wednesday following his death from leukaemia. The cortège will pass his newsagents and a copy of the Littlehampton Gazette and a delivery bag will be buried with him as a mark of respect."

Simon Kuper in the Financial Times on Brexit: "In the media, the BBC curtails the instincts of its mostly Remainer journalists. A colleague at one big Brexit-supporting newspaper told me “95 per cent” of its journalists oppose Brexit. Another friend puts the figure at his pro-Brexit paper at “80 to 90 per cent”. He tries to switch his mind off Brexit. At least Remoaners like me believe the stuff we write, pointless as it is."

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