Media Quotes of the Week: From perverse to leave journalists idling at home during Coronavirus crisis to the Government should help fund quality news

The Times [£] in a leader: "There is no good time to lose local papers but a pandemic makes them particularly essential. They are at heart a fourth emergency service. They can provide vital information on sudden changes to local services, neighbourhood schemes to help the vulnerable, or outbreaks near by. They can also help to highlight problems with local authority responses, thereby ensuring that resources go to where they are needed...The government’s offer to pay 80 per cent of the salaries of furloughed workers will help many businesses to weather the storm. But this is no solution for struggling newspapers. Journalists have been rightly identified as “key workers” during the pandemic. It would be perverse if many were instead to spend it idling at home, having been laid off or placed on paid leave."

Matt Lawton on Twitter: "Why do we need newspapers? At the weekend our newspapers revealed that the owners of the ExCel were charging the NHS and Scotland’s chief medical officer was visiting her second home. So, please, keep buying papers. #buyapaper."

Lucy Ashton, local democracy reporter for the Sheffield Star and BBC, on Twitter: "If you're wondering why we still need the local media, here's a little example. I met a nurse today who told me NHS staff were being fined hundreds of pounds in parking charges and asked if I would do a story. I did - and all the fees have been immediately cancelled."

Medium's Behind Local News reports: "More than 97,000 articles have been shared, liked or commented on from the regional press about Coronavirus in the last six weeks, new data has shown. Looking at 82 of the largest regional news websites in the UK, data from Newswhip shows how people are turning to local news for information — and then sharing it on. Overall, local news articles on social rose 18% month on month, with Facebook engagements to those articles rising 43%. EdinburghLive saw the biggest lift in engagements/interactions, followed the Evening Standard, KentOnline and the News and Star in Carlisle."

The Guardian reports: "The publisher of the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers is to furlough almost 1,000 employees, and its management, including the senior editorial team, will have pay slashed by a fifth. Reach, formerly known as Trinity Mirror, also owns hundreds of regional titles.  The company has said it intends to furlough 20% of 4,700 staff – 940 – during the Coronavirus crisis. Reach’s top management including the “most senior editorial team”, headed by the group editor-in-chief, Lloyd Embley, will take a 20% pay cut and all other employees will have their pay cut by 10%."

Dominic Ponsford on Press Gazette: "If we don’t want large swathes of the country to become news deserts for the first time since the Enlightenment then the UK Government must act now to support the on-the-ground newsgatherers whose work the rest of the industry is largely based on. As a cross-party group of MPs has already told Chanceller of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak: this means investing now in a public information campaign via local media and extending the 100 per cent business rates holiday from retail, hospitality and leisure businesses to news publishers. The alternative could be to lead us into a very dark place. Without local journalists gathering news and verifying information rumour and gossip shared on social media becomes the only show in town. Councils and local businesses are no longer held to account. And when there is an injustice to be righted local people will find they no longer have a voice."

The Jewish Chronicle in a statement: "With great sadness, the Board of the Jewish Chronicle has taken the decision to seek a creditors voluntary liquidation of Jewish Chronicle Newspapers Ltd. Despite the heroic efforts of the editorial and production team at the newspaper, it has become clear that the Jewish Chronicle will not be able to survive the impact of the current Coronavirus epidemic in its current form."

Donald Trump on Twitter: "Advertising in the Failing New York Times is WAY down. Washington Post is not much better. I can’t say whether this is because they are Fake News sources of information, to a level that few can understand, or the Virus is just plain beating them up. Fake News is bad for America!"

Former Labour MP for Sedgefield Phil Wilson in the New Statesman on Corbynism: "Any criticism of the leadership was the fault of the mainstream media. The print media has always held an anti-Labour bent, but has never stopped the election of Labour governments in the past. The lesson is: if you believe the press is not your natural ally, don’t make it easy for them. If you don’t want the press to write you are a terrorist sympathiser, don’t lay a wreath at the grave of a terrorist. If you don’t want the press to write you are a friend of Hamas or Hezbollah, don’t call them your friends. If you don’t want the press to write you associate with the IRA, don’t associate with the IRA. If you don’t want the press to doubt your patriotism, don’t give Russia the benefit of the doubt over the Salisbury poisonings or take money from Iranian state media. If you want the press to highlight your aversion to antisemitism, don’t share a platform with known anti-Semites and defend antisemitic murals."

Enders Analysis: "COVID-19 has given new urgency to protect the supply of local and national news. News media, perhaps particularly local news media, is a critical information service for a vulnerable population, many of whom are confined at home. In the context of the findings of the Cairncross Review, the pandemic is intensifying rather than abating the sector's decade-long commercial crisis due to a clutch of inter-related structural changes. Many recent initiatives – including the Cairncross Review itself, the Nesta Future News fund and the Public Interest News Foundation – rightly focused on a framework for developing long-term sustainable models for news media. Government needs to shift the focus to managing an emergency; not just for our country’s health, but our citizen’s provision of quality news and information. Right now, we need to mobilise Government funding to make quality news a public service."

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Fears over new media restrictions in Iraq

An Iraqi government plan to impose restrictive rules on  news media represents an alarming return to authoritarianism, the Committee to Protect Journalists has warned.

CPJ denounced the rules - which call for news organisations to disclose staff lists and identify sources if complaints are made about stories -  and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government to abandon their repressive plan.
CPJ’s review of the plan found rules that fall well short of international standards for freedom of expression and that appear to contravene the Iraqi constitution, which provides for a free press. The new rules would effectively impose government licensing of journalists and media outlets, a tool that authoritarian governments worldwide have long used to censor the news.
“The regulations suggest either a lack of understanding of the news media’s role in a democratic society, or a deliberate attempt to suppress information and stifle opposing views,” said CPJ‎ executive director Joel Simon. “Either way, the rules should be rescinded immediately so that the media can do its job free of government intimidation.”
BBC World News editor Jon Williams writing on the BBC's  The Editors' Blog says: "the international media, including the BBC, are concerned that new plans outlined by the Iraqi authorities owe more to a desire to control and censor the news media rather than to enshrine Iraq's constitutional right to free speech and a free press.
"The Iraqi authorities want the BBC and other news organisations to disclose full lists of staff, an act we believe might endanger those who work for us. The Iraqi authorities are demanding journalists reveal their sources in response to complaints, in violation of the journalist's age-old responsibility to protect those who come to us with stories. And they want to prevent the international media from reporting stories that might incite violence or sectarianism, but have failed to clarify what constitutes "incitement" or "sectarianism".
"Iraq remains a difficult place in which to operate. The political environment is tense, with a general election in Iraq just a month away, where even reporting death-tolls is viewed as controversial, and could lay the international media open to censorship."
"Journalists have a responsibility to be accurate and fair - we don't want, and don't ask, for special treatment. However, we do want the ability to operate freely, without fear or favour. Our audiences deserve nothing less."

IFJ backs Guardian over Iraq defamation case

The International Federation of Journalists, ARTICLE 19  and the Iraqi Union of Journalists have called on the Iraqi authorities to drop charges of defamation against the Guardian and its journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
The IFJ and ARTICLE 19 have filed a joint amicus brief to the Iraqi Appeal Court in advance of its hearing tomorrow (27 January).
In November 2009, an Iraqi court ordered the Guardian to pay a 100m dinar (£52,000) fine to the Prime Minister over a story published in April last year under the title "Six years after Saddam Hussein, Nouri al-Maliki tightens his grip on Iraq".
The article quoted three anonymous members of the Iraqi Intelligence Services who alleged that the Prime Minister was running Iraqi affairs with a totalitarian hand, that the Iraqi government was close to the United States and that officials attached to the Iraqi national intelligence service were monitoring intelligence and military activities within the government itself.
The prosecution was under the Saddam-era Publications Law for reportedly defaming the Prime Minister and the Iraqi Intelligence Services. The court had also asked the journalist to disclose the names and contact details of the three officers. They refused.
‘‘At the heart of this case is the fight for independent journalism and for protection of sources in Iraq," said Aidan White, IFJ general secretary. "We urge the Iraqi authorities to drop the charges and to put media law reform on their agenda."