Media Quotes of the Week: From battling a bullying businessman to the journalist who (almost) always backed Leicester to be champions

Business correspondent Oliver Shah, who has led the way on uncovering the BHS story, on Sir Philip Green in the Sunday Times [£]: "Later that month, he tried — and failed — to get the editor to rein in the story. 'I’m gonna call Rupert Murdoch [ultimate owner of The Sunday Times] on Monday morning because this is unacceptable,' he ranted at me. 'This has got to stop.' It did not. As I continued to dig, rival journalists on other papers expressed amazement that I was being allowed to take on Green. One gave me a front-page story on BHS. 'There’s no way my editor will let me print it, so you may as well have it,' he shrugged."

Sir Philip Green quoted by Oliver Shah in the Sunday Times [£]: "“If you want to call me a liar, come round to my office on Monday, call me a liar to my face and face the consequences. How’s that, if you’re such a big f****** boy? Because you will get thrown through the f****** window.”

Reuters reports: "British retail tycoon Philip Green on Thursday hit out at UK lawmakers for leading what he called a 'trial by media' in relation to last week's fall into administration of department store BHS...The letter, which Green circulated to news media, marks his first public comments on BHS's administration. In the letter, he also criticised the media for writing 'much inaccurate and misleading' information."

Trinity Mirror in a statement: "Although The New Day has received many supportive reviews and built a strong following on Facebook, the circulation for the title is below our expectations. As a result, we have decided to close the title on 6 May 2016. Whilst disappointing, the launch and subsequent closure have provided new insights into enhancing our newspapers and a number of these opportunities will be considered over time.”

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday: "I was just leaving the BBC’s Westminster studios on Thursday when Mr Livingstone stepped into an over-excited knot of political reporters. They looked like what they are – simultaneously a pack of snapping wolves, buzzing with self-righteousness, and a flock of bleating, conformist sheep, all thinking and saying exactly the same thing...At one point this stumbling, squawking carnival was joined by a barking dog. If it had gone on much longer, crowds of tourists would have gathered, mistaking it for an ancient London tradition. This is how politics is reported in this country, almost completely without thought."

Will Gore in the Independent: "In response to articles about Livingstone’s outburst, Holocaust deniers suddenly appear with alacrity, just as Islamophobes pop their heads above the parapet any time we write about refugees fleeing Syria. It is enough to make you wonder about the state of humanity. But it also raises practical questions for outlets such as The Independent: do we need to hire dozens of moderators to stem the tide; should we have a longer list of prohibited terms so we can automatically filter out the worst comments; or ought we simply to close comment boards? The more steps we take, the more we will be accused of stifling debate; hold back and ever more bile will slip through. Whatever course we steer, one thing is plain: responsibility for combatting discrimination lies with every right thinking person – it isn’t a subject for buck-passing."

International Federation of Journalists' president Jim Boumelha on the IFJ annual survey showing press freedom violations around the world: “This survey exposes a shocking toll of violations of media freedom and a woeful lack of willingness on the part of too many governments and authorities to act to defend journalists. But as it also shows journalists’ unions are ensuring there can be no hiding place for those who attack journalists or undermine media freedom. Whether in print or on the airwaves, in courts or international bodies, on the streets and in the workplaces journalists unions are standing up against the threats to media freedom.”

Feedback editor Rose Wild in The Times [£] on the paper's not carrying any reference to the Hillsborough inquests' verdicts in its first edition: " As soon as the first edition of the paper went out on Tuesday night, our choice of front-page stories was called into question by, among others, members of The Times staff...Our coverage of the 'unlawful killing' verdict in the Hillsborough inquiry, extensive as it was, was not flagged on the front, suggesting that we had overlooked both its significance in legal terms and its importance to the many people who had campaigned for this result for so long. The paper immediately realised it had made a mistake. In the second edition the front page was changed...The initial decision not to put the story on the front was because it had been running as a news story all day. But it was an error not to have a visual signal to the coverage inside."

Sun editor Tony Gallagher doorstepped by Channel 4 News' Paraic O'Brien and asked why his paper did not lead on Hillsborough inquests' verdict: "I'm afraid I am not talking about it at all."

Stig Abell, former director of the Press Complaints Commission, interviewed in the Guardian: “We were a small group trying to help members of the public while upholding the principle of freedom of expression. But the PCC’s phone-hacking report was wrong. And we were widely criticised for being insufficiently interested in hacking, which has a certain amount of truth to it. We were overwhelmed, and I spent two years trying to keep the PCC relevant as the scandal grew worse. Let’s be honest: it was an issue that bamboozled institutions a lot more powerful than the PCC."

Chris Frost, the chair of the NUJ’s Ethics Council, on why the union is backing would be press regulator Impress, as reported by Press Gazette: “Our view is that Impress represents the best opportunity we have for independent press regulation and for providing an alternative to those national newspapers and their publishers who continue to fail to take their responsibilities seriously by hiding their failings behind another pointless so-called regulator. We have welcomed Impress as the alternative press regulator because we want to see regulation which is both Leveson complaint and independent of publishers, whilst involving journalists on its board and with its future development.”

George Osborne at the Westminster correspondents' dinner, as reported by The Times [£]: “It is the irreverence of journalism; the challenging, sometimes infuriating, occasionally wayward, always invigorating free journalistic spirit that makes a free society truly free. Show me a country that controls its press and I will show you a government that controls its people."

John Mickelwait on Bloombergview: "This column should begin with a financial disclosure -- of the writer’s own ineptitude. For around 20 years, every August I have bet £20 on Leicester City to win their league. The wall of my office at The Economist in London was festooned with the resulting betting stubs, to be mocked by my colleagues who followed more successful teams. True, Leicester did once finish second -- but that was back in the 1928-29 season; their main battle in my lifetime has been to avoid relegation, a struggle they have lost seven times. Last summer, having moved to New York to work for Bloomberg, I missed making my routine bet; the odds being offered on Leicester winning the title were 5,000-1, but, somewhere deep down, I assumed it was £20 pounds saved."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From pride and shame of Hillsborough press coverage to 80 per cent of local journalists' jobs have gone in a decade

The Liverpool Echo on the Hillsborough inquests' verdicts: The Liverpool Echo has covered these inquests from outset to conclusion. In that two-year period we have had a reporter in court for every single day of evidence or process. We have been privileged over 27 years to witness the strength and perseverance of The Families and it was our duty to respond in this way. There have been many villains in this story and many heroes. Above all heroes, sit the Families themselves. The inquest verdicts, we hope, will help bring to an end a 27-year story of institutionalised cover-up and shameful disregard, both for truth and for the ‘ordinary person’. What the institutions failed to recognise is that they were not dealing with ordinary people and that Liverpool is not an ordinary city."

Isabella Stone in a letter to the Guardian: "I was living in Sheffield in 1989, and bought a copy of the Sheffield Star’s special edition on the tragedy, published the following day, on Sunday 16 April, which I still have. Reading it again, in the context of the inquest verdicts, it is striking to note that the paper’s account of the disaster, written by local reporters in the hours following it, and based on eyewitness accounts, is virtually identical in its conclusions to that of the jury’s verdicts 27 years later. The front page explicitly states that 'Liverpool fans were not to blame, but the victims'.”

Andy Burnham in the House of Commons, as reported by the Mirror: "Let me turn to collusion between police and the media. The malicious briefings given in the immediate aftermath were devastatingly efficient. They created a false version of events which lingered until yesterday. No-one in the police or media has ever been held to account for the incalculable harm they caused in smearing a whole city in its moment of greatest grief."

The Sun in a leader: "The supporters were not to blame. But the police smeared them with a pack of lies which in 1989 The Sun and others in the media swallowed whole. We apologised prominently 12 years ago, again four years ago on the front page, and do so unreservedly again now. Further, we pay tribute to the admirable tenacity of the friends and relatives over so many years on behalf of the 96 who died."

Kelvin MacKenzie in a statement, reported by the Independent: “As I have said before, the headline I published was wrong and I am profoundly sorry for the hurt caused. Clearly, I was wrong to take the police’s version of events at face value and it is a mistake I deeply regret.”

The Times in a statement via Twitter: “The Times led with Hillsborough coverage on all our digital editions throughout the day. This morning we have covered it extensively in the paper with two spreads, the back page, a top leader and an interactive on the victims. We made a mistake with the front page of our third edition, and we fixed it for the second edition.”

Freelance journalist Martin Fletcher in a letter to MailOnline journalist Euan McLelland, as reported by the SubScribe blog: "Good morning, Euan. I'd like to know whether you are intending to pay me for the use/theft of my exclusive story on British cemeteries in Iraq by Mail online yesterday? I am a freelance journalist. I paid my way to Iraq. I did the research. I put in the time and energy. I took the risks of visiting that unstable country. How dare you steal my work and pass it off as your own? How can you possibly describe yourself on your website as a 'driven, proactive and reliable young media reporter'. Are you completely without shame or pride?"

Guardian editor Kath Viner on  abusive online comments: "As editor, I think we need to act more decisively on what kind of material appears on the Guardian. Those who argue that this is an affront to freedom of speech miss the point. That freedom counts for little if it is used to silence others. When women and minorities don’t feel able to speak their mind for fear of insult, threat or humiliation, no such freedom exists."

Nick Cohen on the Spectator blog blasts Boris Johnson for his attack on President Obama: "Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages. I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career."

Society of Editors' executive director Bob Satchwell after the 2016 World Press Freedom Index shows the UK ranked 38th - down four places since 2014: “The UK’s position on the world press freedom list is a disgrace. This is the country that is supposed to be the mother of democracy and claims to have a free, unfettered media. No wonder journalists across the Commonwealth and the wider world express their dismay. Their governments cite the British example as an excuse for introducing and enhancing their own draconian restrictions on the media. This should be a worry for our politicians who so often proclaim their belief in a free press and the public who need it.”

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times [£]: "To read The Guardian last week, you’d have thought the undoubtedly talented Prince was a hybrid of Mozart and Martin Luther King. He was not. And David Bowie was a very good writer of pop songs, not a political icon who ushered in a new era of freedom for the world’s LGBT communities. None of this stuff used to happen, but the baby-boomers — who have not really grown up and yet run the media — revere their pop stars. And the pop stars are dying, either because they are quite old or because they have not lived lives of which the late Jesus Christ would have approved."

The Mirror's Peter Willis on jamming with Prince: "'Stop! Stop! Stop!' he shouted and slammed his hand down on the piano. Laughing, he added: 'Have you ever seen The Apprentice on TV? Cos You're fired!' I protested. Let's take it from the top again, I suggested. But it was too late. I'd blown it. Still, there can't be many people who've been hired and fired by Prince, all in the space of two minutes."

Keith Perch speaking at a meeting in the  House of Lords about the rapid decline in the number of regional journalists in the last decade, as reported by Press Gazette: "The scale of the problem is always under stated. I think as much as 80 per cent of the jobs have disappeared. People look at newspaper closures, but the biggest change is that daily newspapers used to have loads of editions which were geographically based. They were effectively producing lots of daily newspapers for smaller towns. The Derby Telegraph used to have six editions all with journalists based in their own offices."

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