Media Quotes of the Week: Why PM wanted to save Hancock despite media pile-on to news group wants safety editor to address abuse of journalists

Paul Goodman in The Times [£]: "Never forget that the prime minister is a long-time working journalist who, over the years, has developed a jaded view of media pile-ons. Furthermore, he was combining journalism with trying to build a political career when John Major’s government was overwhelmed by sleaze claims. Johnson’s political opponents have been seeking to resurrect the charge: remember the recent contretemps about the Downing Street refurbishment. I suspect that Johnson has drawn precisely the opposite conclusion from the Major years to what one might expect. This would be: never show weakness. Don’t give the media what it wants (especially with a back story as colourful as his own)."

Sun editor-in-chief Victoria Newton in the New Statesman: "The news desk had been contacted by an angry whistle-blower. They claimed to have irrefutable evidence that the married Secretary of State for Health was breaching his own lockdown rules by having an office affair with an aide. My first thought was – bloody hell, what a story, it can’t be true. The source told us they had footage of Matt Hancock kissing his glamorous ­adviser Gina Coladangelo on 6 May in his ­Westminster office. A quick check of the government rules that Hancock himself had devised and demanded that the nation follow showed that kissing someone from another household was most definitely not allowed. This was an open and shut case of ­public interest – and a contender for story of the year."

David Banks on Twitter: "On the Daily Telegraph they called them marmalade droppers, stories so amazing the marmalade slides of the reader’s toast while they read. On The Sun they were less genteel and called them FMD stories, where the reader says Fuck Me Doris, have you seen this in The Sun?"

David Yelland on Twitter: "It's The Sun Wot Won It! Take a bow Victoria Newton, editor of my old paper, who has seen off Matt Hancock - and surely scuppered Dido Harding's bid to run the NHS into the bargain...."

Mike Lowe on Twitter: "Delighted to see our old friend 'steamy clinch' making a comeback in today's Sun."

Anne Robinson in the Observer on working in Fleet Street: "Looking back, though, it was very sexist. The chief sub would deliberately drop your typed copy on the floor so you’d bend down to pick it up and the men could see your knickers. I never thought: 'How dare they?'; I thought: 'It won’t be long until I’m in charge of this lot'.”

Gulnoza Said of the Committee to Protect Journalists has interviewed Dmitry and Nataliya Pratasevich, whose journalist son, Raman Pratasevich, was arrested after Belarusian authorities diverted his flight from Greece to Lithuania to Minsk on May 23. 

Dmitry: "Horror is the main feeling we have these days. As soon as we learned [about Raman’s arrest], we started trying to find out where he was and how he was. We knew the nature of the regime in Belarus, we knew what can happen to someone they catch, we knew what torture and abuse our son could be subjected to."

Nataliya: "I can’t tell, nobody knows what will happen next. Laws don’t work in Belarus. The decisions are made arbitrarily. I haven’t slept since his arrest. In the first [confession] video, I saw very clear signs that he was beaten. I am his mother, I can tell. But I think it was obvious for everyone that he was beaten.
At the press conference, his face looked better but who knows what’s under his clothes. Raman is under a lot of psychological pressure, I have no doubts about it. He is probably being threatened. I can only hope that if they are forcing him to say what they want, maybe they will stop beating him."

The Financial Times on how London lawyers investigated reporter Dan McCrum, who exposed the Wirecard scandal:"After McCrum’s 'House of Wirecard' series was published on FT Alphaville, UK-based law firm Schillings compiled a 19-page 'investigative report' about McCrum for Wirecard...The report offered a series of recommendations: Wirecard could do nothing, Schillings could dig deeper, or together the law firm and Wirecard could take 'proactive defence steps.' It also said that depending on circumstances, there may be other options for dissuading McCrum or the FT from publishing further articles of a similar type. Schillings has said it acted entirely properly throughout, in compliance with its legal and regulatory obligations."

Jim Waterson in the Guardian: "Rupert Murdoch has asked the government to abolish the legal restraints on him interfering in the editorial independence of the Times and the Sunday Times that were put in place when he first bought the newspapers. At the moment the two newspapers are required to have largely separate editorial teams, while Murdoch nominally has to answer to a group of independent directors on key editorial matters. News UK has now asked the government to abolish the independent directors, arguing that they are no longer required and were designed in a pre-internet era."

Kathleen Carroll, chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists board on why it is honouring Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned founder of Hong Kong’s Next Digital media company and Apple Daily newspaper, with the 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award: “Jimmy Lai is not just a champion of a free press, he is a press freedom warrior. He fights for the right of his Apple News organization to publish freely, even as China and its backers in Hong Kong use every tool to quash them. The CPJ board is pleased to honor Jimmy Lai with the 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. And we look forward to the day when we can present that award to him in person.”

Reporters Without Borders in Paris staged a mock funeral procession outside the Chinese embassy to mark the closure of Apple Daily and said in a statement: "Democracies cannot continue to stand idly by whilst the Chinese regime systematically erodes what’s left of the country’s independent media, as it has already done in the rest of the country. Today’s funeral is for Apple Daily, but tomorrow’s may be for press freedom in China. It’s time for the international community to act in line with their own values and obligations and defend what’s left of the free press in Hong Kong, before China’s model of information control claims another victim."

Alison Gow on Twitter: "Online abuse and harassment of journalists is an enormous and growing issue. I'm pleased Reach is creating in a dedicated role to work with journalists and platforms to tackle the problem... and I am desperately sad that we need to."

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