Media Quotes of the Week: From horrific online abuse is driving journalists out of the profession to when a Scottish Sid Vicious joined the Telegraph plus some of the best quotes from Sir Harold Evans

Newsquest Oxfordshire editor Samantha Harman on Behind Local News UK on Medium on a survey of online abuse suffered by regional journalists: “We’ve seen a toxic rhetoric emerge over the last couple of years that all journalists are ‘scum’ and that it’s acceptable to hide behind the internet to say whatever you want to them. It reached a boiling point this year during coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, with reporters having to deal with abhorrent, disgusting and racist comments on stories...I’ve been threatened numerous times during the course of my career but now face a daily barrage of abuse — from being threatened with rape to personal attacks on my appearance. I live in the community I work in, as do many of our reporters. Yet we do not feel safe. I am paranoid about people knowing where I live, the car I drive. I worry that the person who used an anonymous account to threaten me today could be standing right behind me in the supermarket. And I know these worries are shared by many other reporters, to the point where they want to, or have left, the profession."

Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the US-based Commmittee to Protect Journalists, launching the U.S. Press Freedom Accountability Project which will award grants for coverage of attacks on journalists during Black Lives Matter protests: “For more than a generation, the Committee to Protect Journalists has defended journalists around the world by reporting on attacks and threats against the press. Now it’s time to intensify these efforts at home. Only by holding accountable those who have assaulted or hindered the work of the press during the Black Lives Matter protests do we ensure that reporters can serve us, the public.”

• The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is investigating reports of more than 700 press freedom violations, including arrests, assaults, tear gassing, and journalists hit with rubber bullets, during Black Lives Matter protests around the U.S. since late May.

Amal Clooney in her letter resigning as the UK government's special envoy for media freedom, as reported by the Huffington Post: ''I have always been proud of the UK's reputation as a champion of the international legal order, and of the culture of fair play for which it is known. However, very sadly, it has now become untenable for me, as Special Envoy, to urge other states to respect and enforce international obligations while the UK declares that it does not intend to do so itself."

Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, in a statement: “The Society is deeply concerned  journalists were not allowed to follow-up Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance’s briefing with questions. Throughout the entirety of the pandemic, the government has stressed its policy of 'following the science' and it is only right that journalists, on behalf of the public, are permitted to question that science and the scientists that are helping to lead the government’s response."

Alan Rusbridger on Twitter: "Charles Moore is an elegant and provocative columnist. But it is inconceivable someone fined for refusing to pay a licence fee (in protest at a programme he didn't like) should be Chair of the BBC, an organisation he appears to loathe."

Hugh Grant on twitter: "Astonished and revolted to see @DailyMailUK has a prominent ‘interview’ with me today. Never spoke to them. Yuk."

Nigel Pauley on Twitter: Incredibly disingenuous of Hugh Grant to snag a front cover of the UK’s biggest selling newspaper magazine to plug his latest film - then moan about it.. and claim he never spoke to them. He may or may not not have spoken to the Mail direct but he gave a pool interview to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which is basically full of freelances who provided copy for papers and magazines .. like the Mail."

James Marriott in The Times [£]: "Twitter-addicted journalists are popularly supposed to overegg the importance of social media but it’s a crucial factor in the way we think and talk about power. Indeed, one of the most important things social media does is to induce feelings of powerlessness. Thanks to Twitter, politicians, newspaper columnists and the PR managers of big brands who spent the first decades of their careers meeting the public under relatively controlled circumstances are exposed to the power of the mob every day. Brands overreact and cave when confronted with swirling storms of outrage, journalists panic and decide they’re being cancelled."

Anthony Bellanger. International Federation of Journalists general secretary, in a statement backing a campaign for governments to tax major internet companies and support print media: “The current global health crisis is significantly increasing the great difficulties facing the print media sector. Governments need to react urgently. The sector is a public good and a crucial pillar of our democracies. Governments are well aware of this. Indeed, with the COVID crisis they have identified the sector as essential. Today, they cannot just watch the ship sink from their balconies.”

Jonathan Heawood, executive director of the Public Interest News Foundation, which has just been granted charitable status: "This decision means we can ensure the public have access to high-quality, independent news, by supporting public interest publishers with grants, training and resources. We have already awarded emergency grants to publishers who were struggling during lockdown, and now we can support more public interest news organisations across the UK.”

David Higgerson on Twitter: "I find it boggling that often new journalism titles/products spend more time saying what they won't do (a passive-agg way of criticising existing publishers) rather than celebrating what they will do. Imagine if Cadbury launched chocolate celebrating 'fewer bubbles than an Aero'."

Chris Deerin in the Press & Journal on being a Scot joining the Sunday Telegraph to run the comment section in the mid 2000s: "It was like Sid Vicious joining the London Philharmonic.The English gentry get nervous around gruff, sweary Scots, so I adopted a persona that was part Bill Shankly, part Taggart. I cajoled and argued and took the mickey. By the time I left, a decade later, I had found my place and, I think, acquitted myself well enough. But I never quite got used to, or bridged, the class divide. I was never going to, of course. Our work experience kids had names like Peregrine and Camilla, and were often louchely arrogant. My better-off colleagues glided through life. The wealthy upper classes live and work differently – a job is a way to pass the time or to fulfil their inevitable destiny, not a lifeline between survival and catastrophe. There is often an easiness, a lightness, to them."

Finally, a few quotes from Sir Harold Evans, who has died aged 92:

At the Leveson Inquiry: "We have a situation where newspapers employ private detectives. We used to employ reporters". 

In his Hugh Cudlipp Lecture: "As depressing as exposure of the dark arts has been, it is deepened by the cynicism and arrogance of much of the reaction to Leveson, coming from figures in the press who did nothing to penetrate - indeed whose inertia assisted - the cover-up conducted into oblivion by News International, a cover up which would have continued, but for the skill of Nick Davies and the courage of his editor."

On the revelation Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch met shortly before he was allowed to buy The Times and Sunday Times: "It's highly improper. Here's a prime minister meeting one of a number of bidders for Times Newspapers in secret. There's no mention of the law on monopolies. The whole thing is so squalid, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at being vindicated after all this time."

On the local press in an article for Local Newspaper Week: “I must stress that the relationship between a local newspaper and its community has to be robust. If the relationship is be based on mutual respect, the local newspaper may have to puncture local pride, risk offending advertisers as well as authority; mere boosterism is no substitute for honest, thorough reporting . After a lifetime in journalism, however I have no doubt that when it is true to its community, the local newspaper is an incomparable resource, one to nurture and cherish.”

In his autobiography My Paper Chase, Sir Harold writes about working in the regional press as an assistant editor at the Manchester Evening News and as a campaigning editor of the Northern Echo. He says of working on the MEN: "Nothing before, and nothing I have experienced since, working for newspapers, radio, television and websites in London and New York and Washington, matches the speed demanded of everyone on the Evening News."

Sir Harold on Press Gazette on the digital giants: "Facebook and Google are the Harvey and Irma of journalism – and democracy. Whatever else they do, the electronic duopoly deprive millions of information and argument as surely as the series of super storms deprive millions of light, power, home and hearth. And more to come. Fret as much as Trumpian skeptics still do about the precise link between hurricanes and greenhouse gases – I don’t! – no one can deny the devastating effect of Facebook and Google on the viability of news organisations to investigate complexity and resist suppression."

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