Media Quotes of the Week: From will Meghan Markle's privacy victory put manacles on the media? to NI journalist faces new threats

Mr Justice Warby ruling against the Mail on Sunday over the publication of the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle's letter to her father, as reported by Press Gazette: “It was, in short, a personal and private letter. The majority of what was published was about the claimant’s own behaviour, her feelings of anguish about her father’s behaviour – as she saw it – and the resulting rift between them. These are inherently private and personal matters.“The claimant had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private. The Mail articles interfered with that reasonable expectation.”

• In a statement, the Duchess said she was grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers to account "for their illegal and dehumanising practices" and added: “These tactics are not new; in fact, they’ve been going on for far too long without consequence. For these outlets, it’s a game. For me and so many others, it’s real life, real relationships, and very real sadness. The damage they have done and continue to do runs deep."

• The Mail on Sunday in a statement:"We are very surprised by today's summary judgment and disappointed at being denied the chance to have all the evidence heard and tested in open court at a full trial. We are carefully considering the judgement's contents and will decide in due course whether to lodge an appeal."

Media lawyer Mark Stephens in the Guardian: "You are putting manacles on the media and that is going to be one of the issues from this going forward What you have is a situation where any letter that is leaked to a journalist cannot be published under the terms of this judgment. And it is unclear when public interest comes in to allow you to publish.”

Alan Rusbridger in the Observer: "For most people, Warby’s decision that even a world-famous duchess should be able to write to her father in private is not, on the face of it, unreasonable."

The Times [£] reports: "The fact that the dispute over the publication of Meghan’s letter to her father could be decided without being aired at a full trial adds to concern that a free press is being hamstrung by a judicial elite with little or no public debate. Mr Justice Warby’s ruling has prompted some lawyers to argue that the decision is a shot in the arm for high-profile privacy claimants. They will rely with increasing confidence on the principle that public figures can claim an expectation of privacy in their correspondence. Others predict that The Mail on Sunday has potentially strong grounds for appeal."

The Times [£] in a leader: "This case, which may yet be subject to an appeal, should prompt a debate about the extent to which the law in this area is evolving. A balance needs to be struck between privacy and freedom of expression. And it should be up to parliament, and not a judge acting alone, to strike it."

Marina Hyde in the Guardian: "We’re a country where the guys leading the media charge against Meghan are so emotionally warped that the only way they can begin to release their feelings of social, racial and sexual resentment is by using a 94-year-old woman’s feelings as a proxy. 'They have disrespected the Queen' really means 'they have disrespected this newspaper' or 'they have disrespected me'. So you keep hearing people saying 'how could they do this to the Queen?' and 'it’s the Queen I feel sorry for'. Why? She’s not your grandmother. You don’t know her socially. It doesn’t count that you’ve been through her bins or covertly taken pictures of her breakfast table or whatever. And it hardly needs saying that she would find you, personally, absolutely detestable. I honestly wouldn’t wet your pants about it, you know?"

Josh Taylor in the Guardian: "Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code. The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director Will Easton said that it would prevent links posted from Australian publishers, while all Australian users would not be able to share or see content from any news outlets both Australian or internationally as a result of the ban."

Alan Sparrow, chairman of the UK Picture Editors’ Guild, quoted in The Times [£] in a story about Number 10 employing three photographers to take pictures of Boris Johnson, his ministers and his dog: “If the prime minister was to visit Saudi Arabia, or the Falklands, or go to Yorkshire after the floods, will we just be issued with pictures after the event? Pictures selected to present the government in the best possible light, not candid or journalistic. They’re just handout pictures — a bit like North Korea.”

Ex-Leicester City manager Nigel Pearson on the growing trend of football clubs to use in-house journalists, in a talk to journalism students at De Montfort University, as quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: “If all we get is journalism from the perspective of the football club, we’re moving towards a dictatorial state and that’s not what we are. If we don’t have [independent journalism] we may as well not bother, we may as well live in a Communist state where we’re taught not to think.”

Jeanne Cavelier, head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF): "The police in Russia have been flouting press freedom visibly and massively ever since Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny’s return. Dozens of journalists have been arrested, often violently, during the latest pro-Navalny demonstrations in Moscow and more than 30 provincial cities. We’ve also been receiving frequent reports of heavy-handed searches of journalists’ homes in Russia. A shocking video of one of these has been leaked. It shows Gennadiy Shulga, the editor of the local news website Newsbox24, being pressed to the floor with his face against a dog bowl during a dawn raid on his home on 6 February by masked police armed with rifles. This shocking act of intimidation was designed to terrorize all journalists who, like him, have been covering the pro-Navalny demonstrations."

Seamus Dooley, NUJ Irish secretary, in a statement after sinister graffiti with a crosshair appeared in East Belfast threatening Sunday World journalist Patricia Devlin:"This menacing and cowardly graffiti is the behaviour of thugs who are trying to target and intimidate a specific journalist, but they are also trying to send a warning message to other media workers. The NUJ calls on the PSNI as well as Northern Ireland's political and community leaders to do all they can to support independent, quality journalism. The authorities must now identify and prosecute the perpetrators to the full extent of the law."

Patricia Devlin speaking to BBC News: "Male journalists who do the same job as me, who have written closer to the bone about paramilitaries, do not get the same level of abuse. I suppose these people think that these women are an easier target."

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