Media Quotes of the Week: Sleaze-busting scoops shame Government to Prince Harry says support honest journalists not 'pirates with press cards'

Dominic Ponsford on Press Gazette: "As Boris Johnson’s government, and Parliament itself, are engulfed in yet more sleaze scandals it is worth noting how many entries in this year’s British Journalism Awards involved exposing allegations of corruption and incompetence...No fewer than four of the eight nominations for the prestigious Scoop of the Year prize this year focused on allegations of UK government corruption, sleaze and incompetence. They were:

• Financial Times – Cameron lobbied for Greensill access to Covid-19 loan schemes
• Daily Mail – Raab was ‘too busy’ on holiday to help brave translators
• The Sun – Hancock’s affair with aide
• Daily Mail – PM’s secret fund for Carrie’s No10 décor

Alan Rusbridger on Twitter: "Great reporting by @thesundaytimes & @openDemocracy shows beyond doubt that the going rate for a peerage - ie to make laws for the rest of us - is £3m. Is Johnson really going to press on and handpick who regulates our media as well? Looks like it. Sleazy does it."

David Yelland on Twitter: "It was the Daily Mail wot did it for Paterson, not the PM...Geordie Greig take a bow, Daily Mail’s six pages on Owen Paterson corruption scandal is superb, two spreads, two columns, a leader; skewers Whittingdale too, a man who attacks BBC to please press backers."

Adam Boulton, who is leaving Sky News after 33 years, on the rise of opinion-led news in television, in The Times [£]: “I have no reason to think that’s the direction we [at Sky] want to go. However, it irritates me. To me the hard work, where we expend blood and tears — and there really is blood sometimes: Mick Deane [the cameraman and journalist] was killed [in Egypt in 2015] — is news-gathering in the field. It’s much easier to sit in the studio, let other people gather the news and then bloviate about it.”

BBC News reports: "A report by the Survivors Against Terror group suggested new rules for journalists reporting attacks. They include an agreement not to contact the bereaved and seriously injured directly for at least the first 48 hours after an incident. It is also suggested that the use of pictures of those killed or injured without permission stops and journalists gathering outside victims' homes is prohibited."

Matthew Parris in The Times [£]: "In politics and journalism, friendship is more corrupting than money."

Jamie Nimmo in the Sunday Times [£]: "A decision to privatise Channel 4 is facing delays after the new culture secretary Nadine Dorries was overwhelmed by opposition to a sale of The Great British Bake Off broadcaster. Dorries was due to respond this month to submissions made in relation to plans to offload Channel 4, which is state-owned but self-funded through advertising. However, after a flood of opposition, her response is now not expected until next month or January, delaying any sale. The government is understood to have received 60,000 submissions."

Elaine McCarthyin a letter to the Observer: "As a long-term resident of Harlow, I think a big barrier to cohesion in this sprawling town (“Revealed: the towns at risk from far-right extremism”, News) is the absence of a proper local newspaper, the sort of newspaper that includes obituaries, club news and civil announcements. The online offering of local news lacks the opportunity of lucky finds. So if a resident in one part of the town has no knowledge of the happenings in another, apathy, it seems, is all too easy."

Prince Harry in a virtual discussion on “The Internet Lie Machine” organised by Wired magazine: “I really feel we have to invest in and support professional, honest journalists who respect and uphold the values of journalism, not the pirates with press cards who have hijacked the most powerful industry in the world. I would love to see a movement to expose the unethical, the immoral and dishonest amongst them.”

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Media Quotes of the Week: From Wikileaks confidential email to journalists leaks to how a sports reporter scored an own goal for Man City

John Simpson in The Times [£]: "The words “private” and “confidential” have had little deterrent effect on Julian Assange during his long career leaking other people’s secrets. It was no small irony, then, that the terminology sat atop a 5,000-word email from his Wikileaks site ordering journalists not to report 140 “false and defamatory” allegations about its founder. It was perhaps then doubly ironic that the instruction was so widely ignored by the email’s recipients that Wikileaks put the entire thing on the internet for all to see."

Anna Soubry MP  @Anna_Soubry on Twitter: "First for many a year - a #DailyMail front page to be proud of."

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian on media coverage of refugees crossing the channel in boats: "Looking at the totality of the news coverage brings one to the undeniably sad conclusion that Britain’s media is out of step with our modern multicultural society. Despite the demographic changes wrought over the last 60 years or so, its output is informed, albeit unconsciously, by an old-fashioned notion of white, Anglo-Saxon supremacy. The reporting of the migrants “surge” is but an extension of the pro-Brexit propaganda."

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times [£]: "I’ve reduced my wine intake to just three-quarters of a bottle a day. This will have an effect upon my work, my writing. Two or three glasses and the prose is full of life and there are jokes. More than that and the Independent Press Standards Organisation tends to get involved."

Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "With all of the success that our Country is having, including the just released jobs numbers which are off the charts, the Fake News & totally dishonest Media concerning me and my presidency has never been worse. Many have become crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!..."

HoldTheFrontPage reports: "The Northern Echo’s 102-year-old Priestgate home could be turned into 52 apartments under new plans submitted to Darlington Borough Council"

David Coates, regional managing director of Echo publisher Newsquest Yorkshire and North-East, quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: Hopefully this time we will see it through to completion and we’ll be able to move into accommodation that’s more befitting a modern digital marketing services business.”

Chris Morley, the NUJ’s regional organiser for the North of England, quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: “Clearly it is very sad that a once great newspaper building – with such a tremendous history – is faced with this but the reality of the situation after a decade of relentless cuts makes it perhaps understandable. However, what my members cannot understand is that the managing director talks about his business only as a ‘modern digital marketing services business’. I think this perhaps sums up where Newsquest and the major media companies have gone wrong – senior managers wish they were in a different industry and have little affinity for journalism as their business’s bedrock.”

Tim Crook Retweeted Press Gazette

Tim Crook @libertarianspir on Twitter: "When I was working as a journalist in the North East of England 40 years ago I would never have believed something so iconic being turned into something so banal."

Katie Clark @Katie_Messer_on Twitter: "Yesterday was my last day @Bournemouthecho after 11 yrs. I'll miss everyone so much. A team of talented journalists who work incredibly hard in an era of 'fake news'. A local press is vital and without it a vacuum created, leaving decisions which affect residents unchallenged..."

Daniel Taylor in the Observer: "I must confess, to my eternal shame, that in the mild panic of a last-minute, potentially deadline-busting goal during my early years of covering Manchester City I managed to type in the wrong name for the scorer, Gareth Taylor, and credit his heroics to, well, this is awkward ... myself instead. The readers of the newspaper I was working for at the time – and Gareth himself, I imagine – must have been bemused to find this rather fanciful version of events slipped past the subeditors and made it into the opening line of the subsequent match report. The only consolation being that it was, thank heavens, before the years when Twitter’s pitchfork mob could be found scouring the internet for fresh prey."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From Russia with tweets as troll army invades British media to journalists are the enemy of the 'bad' people

From the Guardian: "Members of a Russian “troll army” were quoted more than 80 times across British-read media outlets before Twitter revealed their identity and banned them, a Guardian investigation has shown. Some posts from the accounts were embedded in articles to provide apparently local reportage and pictures from the sites of disasters and crime scenes around the world. In fact, Twitter claims, all the accounts were run from the offices of the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, alleged to be the headquarters of Russia’s troll army."

David Aaronovitch in The Times [£]: "The innovative parts of the cyberworld are to me still wondrous and magical. I am of the generation that started journalism in the slow, inefficient era of the cuttings library, and today the Google algorithm is my gold. But as the Times’s revelations about Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum shows, the development of social media and even of search engines happened far more quickly than our capacity to understand how they might be abused."

Ben Bradshaw MP in Parliament: "When the news website BuzzFeed ran a series of articles recently about unexplained Russia-related deaths in Britain, its head of investigations, Heidi Blake, was inundated with American intelligence sources complaining that they did not think their British counterparts were taking these incidents seriously. If that is true, it is extremely worrying."

Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer about a video clip posted by Leave. EU: "The video was a clip from the film Airplane!, in which a “hysterical” woman is told to calm down and then hit, repeatedly, around the head. The woman – my face photoshopped in – was me. And, as the Russian national anthem played, a line of people queued up to take their turn. The last person in the line had a gun. So far, so weird. Here was a registered political organisation that had gained the support of millions of law-abiding, well-meaning people, promoting violence against women and threatening a journalist. It was a “joke”. A joke underpinned by violent menace."

Owen Jones in the Guardian on Paperchase stopping advertising in the Mail: "Paperchase bowing to pressure from campaigners and committing to no longer advertising in the Daily Mail has upset all the right people. It is a victory for basic decency. Britain’s tabloids are among the most hateful and vicious in the western world."

A Mail spokesman in Press Gazette: "It is it is deeply worrying that Paperchase should have allowed itself to be bullied into apologising – on the back of a derisory 250 facebook comments and 150 direct tweets – to internet trolls orchestrated by a small group of hard left Corbynist individuals seeking to suppress legitimate debate and impose their views on the media...It is one of the fundamental principles of free and fearless journalism that editorial decisions are not dictated by advertisers."

Kath Viner in the Guardian: "The transition from print to digital did not initially change the basic business model for many news organisations – that is, selling advertisements to fund the journalism delivered to readers. For a time, it seemed that the potentially vast scale of an online audience might compensate for the decline in print readers and advertisers. But this business model is currently collapsing, as Facebook and Google swallow digital advertising; as a result, the digital journalism produced by many news organisations has become less and less meaningful. Publishers that are funded by algorithmic ads are locked in a race to the bottom in pursuit of any audience they can find – desperately binge-publishing without checking facts, pushing out the most shrill and most extreme stories to boost clicks. But even this huge scale can no longer secure enough revenue."

Anna Soubry MP on BBC Radio 4 said she had 13 death threats after featuring on the Telegraph's 'Mutineers' front page: "If the Telegraph had not printed that headline those death threats would not have come through - that is a fact."

Telegraph editor Chris Evans in a tweet to the BBC: "I’d urge you to distinguish between the legitimate actions and language of a free press and the illegitimate actions and language of those who make threats of violence."

Peter Preston in the Observer: "There once was a time when the Telegraph gave readers a unique insight of the manners, preoccupations and mindset of the Conservative party. No more. Now, seemingly, it’s a bludgeon seeking to impose uniformity in the distant, disconnected name of the brothers Barclay."

Meryl Streep at the International Press Freedom Awards: "Thank you, you intrepid, underpaid, overextended, trolled and un-extolled, young and old, battered and bold, bought and sold, hyper alert, crack caffeine fiends...chocolate-comforted Twitter clickers. You’re the enemy of the people, yeah, just the bad people."

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Media Quotes of the Week: Prince Harry vs press, newspapers vs judges, Mail vs Guardian and how did the media get Trump's triumph so wrong?

Kensington Palace in a statement on behalf of Prince Harry: "The past week has seen a line crossed. His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public - the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments. Some of it has been hidden from the public - the nightly legal battles to keep defamatory stories out of papers; her mother having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door; the attempts of reporters and photographers to gain illegal entry to her home and the calls to police that followed; the substantial bribes offered by papers to her ex-boyfriend; the bombardment of nearly every friend, co-worker, and loved one in her life. Prince Harry is worried about Ms Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her."

Jane Moore in the Sun: "MEGHAN MARKLE is an uber glamorous and talented actor who stars in one of the biggest shows on US TV and has 1.2million followers on Instagram. It’s fair to say that she’s probably used to press and public ­attention. Indeed, you could argue that it’s essential to her job.After all, an actor ­without an audience is merely rehearsing and, equally, without its legion of loyal viewers, her smash-hit series Suits would have been cancelled five seasons ago.  o when she and the media-savvy Prince Harry decided to start a relationship, one can only assume that they had an inkling of what to expect once it became public. Which is why his unprecedented statement that ­condemns the 'wave of abuse and harassment aimed at Ms Markle seems ill-advised, particularly as it’s being interpreted by some as an attack on the British press that, for the most part, treats him well."

The Guardian in a leader: "It is the misfortune of Prince Harry and Ms Markle that news of their relationship has broken just as the tabloids are relishing their renewed sense of impunity."

The Times [£] in a leader: "The prince is entitled to fight for his privacy and to seek to defend his girlfriend from coverage he regards as nasty and intrusive. In this country the public is likely to sympathise with his predicament, while being simultaneously keen to devour as much coverage as possible."

David Yelland ‏@davidyelland on Twitter: "I've just seen tomorrow's front pages. Blimey. The angriest splashes in entire Brexit era. They ain't happy..."

Gary Lineker ‏@GaryLineker on Twitter: "The front page attacks on the 3 judges for basically just doing their job is scary. This is fast becoming a dystopian land."

Michael Gove@michaelgove on Twitter: "A raucous, vigorous, press is just as much a guarantor of freedom as our independent judiciary - we are the land of Wilkes and Edward Coke."

Anna Soubry MP‏@Anna_Soubry on Twitter: "Lies verging on racism & bully boy tactics shame Britain's journalists & media #Leavers #Remainers unite to condemn."

Paul Mason in the Guardian: "In Britain, since the high-court decision, and with the tabloids ramping up their attack on the judiciary, people have been asking: what do Jonathan Harmsworth, owner of the Daily Mail, and Rupert Murdoch want? What would make them stop? The answer is: they want Britain ruled by a xenophobic mob, controlled by them. The policies are secondary – as long as their legal offshore tax-dodging facilities are maintained. They also want a Labour party they can control and a Tory party they can intimidate."

The Observer in a leader: "Castigating the judges and by extension, anybody who has the effrontery to agree with them, is exactly what the hard Tory Brexiters and their accomplices in the lie factories of Fleet Street have resorted to with a venom, vindictiveness and vituperation remarkable even by their standards. The will of the people has been thwarted by an 'activist' judiciary. These bewigged, closet Remainers, members of the fabled 'well-heeled liberal metropolitan elite', are 'enemies of the people', they shriek. Some of these sleaze-peddlers even dipped into homophobia, highlighting the sexual orientation of one of the judges. Inexcusable."

The Times [£] in a leader: "It is intellectually incoherent to uphold parliamentary sovereignty by leaving the EU, and then to seek to deny it. Those who question the judgment in such intemperate terms might calm down and read it."

The Telegraph in a leader: "In a free society and a healthy democracy, robust differences should be aired. Judges are surely able to withstand personal criticism without whingeing about their independence being under threat. It isn’t; and no one, least of all this newspaper, is suggesting that it should be."

Theresa May speaking to reporters, as quoted by The Independent: "I believe in and value the independence of our judiciary. I also value the freedom of our press. I think these both underpin our democracy and they are important."

Alex Bannister managing editor of the Daily Mail in a letter to the Guardian: "Your editorial (9 November) accepted without question the claims made in the statement by Prince Harry’s communications secretary, then used them as a vehicle to attack the tabloids, including the Mail, which, of course, is a middle-market paper with more than three times as many ABC1 readers as the Guardian...This was disingenuous to say the least: the statement was clearly addressed to the media in general, and in particular social media. No section of the British press was singled out for criticism. May I humbly suggest that if the Guardian spent as much time examining its own deficiencies as it does obsessing about the Mail, it would be a much more readable paper. Why, it might even make a profit."

Michael Wolff on the Hollywood Reporter: "The media turned itself into the opposition and, accordingly, was voted down as the new political reality emerged: Ads don’t work, polls don’t work, celebrities don’t work, media endorsements don’t work, ground games don’t work. Not only did the media get almost everything about this presidential election wrong, but the media became the central issue, or the stand-in for all those issues, that the great new American Trump Party voted against... And it was a failure of modern journalist technique too. It was the day the data died. All of the money poured by a financially challenged media industry into polls and polling analysis was for naught. It profoundly misinformed. It created a compelling and powerful narrative that was the opposite of what was actually happening."

Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post: "One thing is certain in the presumptive era of President Trump. Journalists are going to have to be better — stronger, more courageous, stiffer-spined — than they’ve ever been. Donald Trump made hatred of the media the centerpiece of his campaign. Journalists were just cogs in a corporate machine, part of the rigged system. If many Americans distrusted us in the past, now they came to actively hate us."

Piers Morgan on MailOnline: " ‘The new President-elect of the United States of America is Donald J. Trump.’ Those, I can say with some certainty, were the words that only Donald himself and me ever thought he might eventually be saying when he first announced he was running last year to global mockery and scorn."

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "I might have to run for British Prime Minister now so we can properly restore the Special Relationship. #PresidentTrump"

Nick Cohen ‏@NickCohen4 on Twitter: "After Trump, there needs to be a serious discussion about whether journalists should use opinion polls when we have no idea if they are false."

Archant content chief content officer Matt Kelly, quoted by Press Gazette: “What I am proposing for Archant is not a digital-first strategy. Nor is it a mobile first or a social first or whatever the next buzzword-strategy-du-jour may be. Our strategy to be more relevant than ever before is not dependent on platform. Our strategy begins and ends with our audience. That’s why we describe our approach, quite simply, as audience-first.”

Andy Smith, NUJ national executive member, in a statement: “We are extremely concerned by the news of the proposed job losses at Archant. The union has yet to meet Archant management formally to discuss the proposals, but the there is little in the reported statements from Jeff Henry, chief executive, or Matt Kelly, chief content officer,to indicate how moving to an ‘audience first’ approach can justify the loss of at least 17 jobs."

The Sun in a leader: "WE don’t envy Theresa May having to sort out the dog’s dinner on press regulation her predecessor left. David Cameron’s foolish inquiry cost taxpayers almost £50 million and barely touched on news provided by internet giants Facebook and Google. Worst of all it created a condition under which a publication that rejects state intrusion would be forced to pay the entire legal costs of anyone who sues them, whether they win or lose. This perversion of justice would spell doom for struggling local newspapers and kill investigative journalism."

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