Media Quotes of the Week: From anti-BBC rhetoric blamed for mob attack on journalist to if England win Euro 2020 will it be down to Rupert Murdoch?

BBC Newsnight editor Esme Wren on Twitter after film of Newsnight political editor Nick Watt being harassed at an anti-lockdown protest outside Downing Street was posted online: "Harassing and intimidating any journalist is completely unacceptable. All journalists should be able to do their work without impediment or risking their safety #newsnight"

Alan Rusbridger on Twitter: "A fine BBC journalist mobbed on the streets on London. The repeated dog whistle attacks on the BBC are not without consequences...."

The Times [£] in a leader on the Nick Watt attack: "These kinds of attacks on journalists are becoming more frequent and are the product of a political climate increasingly hostile towards the media. Though not exclusively, attacks on journalists in the West have largely been at the hands of a reinvigorated far right...While it may be extremists who are committing these acts, root culpability lies with the politicians who seek to undermine the work of the press."

BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher on Twitter after authorities in Belarus paraded the detained opposition journalist Roman Protasevich at a news conference in Minsk: "We have just walked out. Not taking part when he is clearly there under duress."

Government response to a Sunday Times [£] story about a billionaire property tycoon who gave £150,000 to the Conservative Party 48 hours after a government minister approved a controversial housing scheme for him: "Asked repeatedly whether [John] Bloor or his representatives had lobbied [Robert] Jenrick or other ministers ahead of these decisions, government officials said it would be 'too costly' to find out under Freedom of Information laws."

Alex Barker in the Financial Times: "Rupert Murdoch has written down the value of The Sun newspapers to zero, acknowledging the tabloid brand that helped build his global media empire has become a worthless asset. The Sun titles, whose accounts were published on Friday, suffered badly as the pandemic hit print advertising and circulation, with its turnover falling more than a fifth to £324m in the financial year to June 2020. The bleak year left News Group Newspapers, a subsidiary of Murdoch’s NewsCorp that operates The Sun and The Sun on Sunday, nursing a pre-tax loss of £201m, even after slashing its costs and marketing.  The grim medium-term outlook for the print revenues, which carried the business through its heyday, forced the company to write down the asset by £84m, an impairment that left The Sun brand with zero carrying value." 

Sam Tobin in the Evening Standard : "Former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes has said knowledge that his private information was unlawfully obtained 'went to the top in The Sun' after accepting 'substantial' damages from the newspaper’s publisher. Sir Simon sued News Group Newspapers (NGN), the publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News Of The World, for misuse of private information and breach of confidence in 2019.  The former MP, who represented Bermondsey and Old Southwark over a 32-year period until 2015, claimed 'he had been the victim of unlawful information-gathering by various journalists and executives at The Sun'." 

Chris Bennion in the Telegraph on the launch of GB News: "The sound was often out of sync, one presenter suffered a microphone failure, Sir Alan Sugar disappeared one word into his interview and the sets looked as if they had been hastily cobbled together (which, of course, they have been). However, at this early stage the glitches may well have boosted GB News’s cause, giving more credence to the idea that they are 'disruptors', outsiders taking on the slick establishment. The BBC doesn’t have glitches."

Stuart Jeffries on GB News in the Guardian: "GB News’s biggest problem is that the elephant isn’t in the room. Piers Morgan, the man for whom GB News could have been and perhaps was invented, has not yet been signed up. Nor has another anti-woke tabloid bruiser Nick Ferrari, whom GB News sought to lure from LBC, where the breakfast bulldog is renowned for eviscerating politicians, exposing for instance Diane Abbott’s innumeracy. These are the A-listers GB News needs if it is to produce reach as well as ratings. There’s a danger that it could have neither...My three words? 'A year tops'."

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, in a statement on the BBC’s review into the re-hiring of Martin Bashir as Religious Affairs Correspondent in 2016: “The NUJ was regularly demanding an end to so-called cappuccino interviews and stitched-up recruitment processes back in 2014 and 2015, ahead of Martin Bashir’s re-hiring in 2016. Our objections to his and many other appointments – made whilst the BBC was making sweeping cuts and spending vast sums on needless redundancies – were brushed aside and dodgy recruitment practices denied. Decisions on hiring Bashir were made over cosy coffees."

Jack Shafer on Politico: "The local news movement won’t make much progress until its proponents realize that its primary obstacle is a demand-side one, not a supply-side one. It’s not that nobody wants to read local news; it’s just that not enough people do to make it a viable business. Maybe the surfeit of local news of yesteryear was the product of an economic accident, a moment that cannot be reclaimed. But even if you were to underwrite local news with taxes and philanthropy, and distribute it to citizens via subsidies, you’d still have to find a way to get people to read it. Until some editorial genius cracks that puzzle, the local news quest will remain a charitable, niche project advanced by journalistic, academic and political elites."

David Yelland on Twitter: "If England win #EURO2020 kudos will be due - but not given (!) - to Rupert Murdoch whose vision created the modern @premierleague - and transformed clubs' balance sheets - & @ManCity's Pep Guardiola for perfecting our game and players."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From Trump is making US journalism great again to Sun's bright idea is to give the EU the old Kinnock lightbulb treatment

Jack Shafer on Politico: "In his own way, Trump has set us free. Reporters must treat Inauguration Day as a kind of Liberation Day to explore news outside the usual Washington circles. He has been explicit in his disdain for the press and his dislike for press conferences, prickly to the nth degree about being challenged and known for his vindictive way with those who cross him. So, forget about the White House press room. It’s time to circle behind enemy lines."

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian on Michael Gove's interview with Donald Trump in The Times: "Gove was in New York to serve as a cheerleader, to gloss over Trump’s inconsistencies and outright ignorance on assorted topics – “intelligence takes many forms”, Gove writes kindly – and to pose for a souvenir photograph in which both men give a thumbs up, a framed cover of Playboy just over Gove’s shoulder. In Trump’s world, this is how the press should always behave – and the ever-courteous Gove was only too happy to oblige."

Guido Fawkes on his blog: "Michael Gove is getting some stick for his Trump interview from journalists who could never break a window. By Guido’s count the scoop had at least ten separate news lines, on Brexit, Theresa May, Nato, Russia, Syria, Iran, Merkel, travel restrictions for Europeans, his Twitter, Jared Kushner and Camp David. It was on the front page not just of The Times and Bild, but also The Sun, Telegraph, Guardian, BBC News and MailOnline. Think his editor will be happy."

Richard Johnson in the New York Post: "One proposal on dealing with the media that was pitched to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team calls for drug testing the White House press corps...The pee-in-a-cup proposal (yellow journalism indeed) was one of 13 ideas one candidate for White House press secretary wrote in November in a confidential memo to members of the Presidential Transition Team’s Executive Committee."

Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev on what it's like to cover Putin and what it could be like to cover Trump: "Facts don’t matter. You can’t hurt this man with facts or reason. He’ll always outmaneuver you. He’ll always wriggle out of whatever carefully crafted verbal trap you lay for him. Whatever he says, you won’t be able to challenge him. He always comes with a bag of meaningless factoids (Putin likes to drown questions he doesn’t like in dull, unverifiable stats, figures and percentages), platitudes, false moral equivalences and straight, undiluted bullshit."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet in a statement after Trinity Mirror announced it was cutting 78 posts at its regional titles and creating 44 new roles, including 17 video journalists and producer roles: “News of yet more cuts is a massive blow to journalists working throughout the group who need to be convinced that this new strategy for chasing digital growth is one that will actually yield results and – critically – one that will preserve quality journalism across the group."

The Newsquest NUJ group chapel in a statement after it was revealed that the pay package of chief executive Henry Faure Walker in 2015 was basic pay £400,000; cash bonus of £297,000; shares bonus worth up to £607,000 if all performance targets are met; and £145,000 for pension, health and life insurance: "Our members will be livid to hear this news while being expected to pull in their belts yet another notch and endure yet another another pay freeze, when they are already on poverty pay and inflation looks set to rise... The fact that the boss’s remuneration could pay for 75 more journalists shows just how out of kilter a greedy management is with its journalists.”

The Times [£] in a leader on open justice: "The risk is that an ever-wider range of litigants and defendants seek anonymity in an ever-wider variety of cases, with a chilling effect on the media as the potential cost of defending its right to report on court cases rises. Children have a right to anonymity in most types of cases. Adults should remember that open justice exists not just to punish the guilty but to protect the innocent."

The News Media Association in a statement on its website: "The NMA’s application for judicial review of the Press Recognition Panel’s decision to recognise IMPRESS has moved to the next stage, with documents issued at Court and served on both the PRP [Press Recognition Panel] and IMPRESS yesterday. This challenges the legality of the Press Recognition Panel’s decision to recognise IMPRESS on the basis that it has made serious and fundamental legal errors in its recognition."

Sun editor Tony Gallagher ‏@tonygallagher on Twitter on the Sun's response to Die Welt's 'Little Britain' front page [below] by reworking an old splash: "Dear @welt - a snapshot of @TheSun tomorrow. Love From Little Britain."

Die Welt @weltkompakt responds to the Sun on Twitter: "@TheSun Sunny greetings from Berlin."

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Media Quotes of the Week: How print still beats the web to now nasty Rob Titchener abuses hacks

Jack Shafer on Politico: "Print—particularly the newspaper—is an amazingly sophisticated technology for showing you what’s important, and showing you a lot of it. The newspaper has refined its user interface for more than two centuries. Incorporated into your daily newspaper's architecture are the findings from field research conducted in thousands of newspapers over hundreds of millions of editions. Newspaper designers have created a universal grammar of headline size, typeface, place, letter spacing, white space, sections, photography, and illustration that gives readers subtle clues on what and how to read to satisfy their news needs. Web pages can't convey this metadata because there's not enough room on the screen to display it all."

Allison Pearson in the Telegraph: "It is scarcely credible at the start of the 21st century that the number of national newspaper columnists who went to Westminster, Eton or other private schools outnumber those of us who went to a comprehensive. How is it possible that the kind of school that serves 93 per cent of the population should be so pitifully under-represented among the ranks of those who pontificate on state education about which, to be perfectly fair, they know absolutely bugger all?"

Harold Evans‏ @sirharryevans on Twitter: "For sheer disgusting hyena journalism see -or rather don't- NY Post splash on Clinton sickness."

Donald Trump at a rally in New Hampshire, as reported by the Huffington Post: “I have really good news for you. I just heard that the press is stuck on their airplane. They can’t get here. I love it...They called us and said, ‘Could you wait? I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ Let’s get going, right? Let’s get going, New Hampshire.”

Trinity Mirror in a statement: "Trinity Mirror has confirmed that it will be handing back four of the eight regional Metro franchises it operates to DMGT. The Scotland, Cardiff, Bristol, and East Midlands Metro franchises will be handed back with effect from 1st January 2017 but (it is understood) are likely to be continued to be published by DMGT. Trinity Mirror will continue to operate its other Metro franchises in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham. Trinity Mirror has run the regional Metro franchises since each was launched over the last 15 years. However, as circulation and advertising revenue has declined, the profitability and sustainability of each franchise for the company has been reviewed."

Metro in a statement: "From 1 October 2016, Metro is set to increase its national print circulation by 10%, increasing the paper's daily print run to 1.477 million – its largest ever. Most extra copies of the newspaper will be distributed in the London area, upping the number available each weekday morning to almost 900,000 in the capital. Metro will be expanding the edition's existing presence on the bus network, with the paper available to even more commuters in London and the South East."

David Walsh in the Sunday Times [£]: "It has always been clear that those with most to hide are often quickest to sue. Putting it bluntly, they use their lawyers to discourage inquiry. This response is now exacerbated by changes in the way we receive our news and the difficulties that have arisen from our industry’s original sin: free content. [David] Simon’s point is undeniable. Proper journalism depends upon an online revenue stream. The irony is that journalism has never been as vital to a country’s overall health as it is now. A current example: there is a sporting body out there, funded by you and I, the taxpayer, who seem almost eager to pass on every difficult question to their lawyers. They employ PR staff but you wouldn’t know this if you emailed a serious question. Instead the lawyers write long letters for large fees. What lawyers love, though, is further correspondence. Most newspapers cannot afford to engage in lengthy legal actions and, of course, this is something the unscrupulous exploit."

Jeff Jarvis in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg after Facebook took down the famous Vietnam war picture of a girl victim of napalm: "Dear Mark Zuckerberg, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Facebook needs an editor — to stop Facebook from editing. It needs someone to save Facebook from itself by bringing principles to the discussion of rules. There is actually nothing new in this latest episode: Facebook sends another takedown notice over a picture with nudity. What is new is that Facebook wants to take down an iconic photo of great journalistic meaning and historic importance and that Facebook did this to a leading editor, Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of Aftenposten, who answered forcefully: 'The media have a responsibility to consider publication in every single case. This may be a heavy responsibility. Each editor must weigh the pros and cons. This right and duty, which all editors in the world have, should not be undermined by algorithms encoded in your office in California…. Editors cannot live with you, Mark, as a master editor'."

Peter Preston in The Observer: "Facebook, though now the biggest carrier of digital news on Planet Earth, says it isn’t an editor or publisher, merely a humble platform. But now watch it change algorithms like any publisher in a jam. Watch it take editorial decisions, switching idiocy for sense. And watch it drain advertising revenue pretty voraciously from the news sites it carries. Dear Mark is part of our news world now. And he needs to be fully, intelligently engaged in it."

Dylan Jones in The New European: "Van Morrison tends to think that most journalists are dumber than cardboard. As one said, he takes to interviews like a duck to tarmac."

Daily Mail@DailyMailUK on Twitter: "Police create crime map that looks like a giant pink penis"

Ben Fenton ‏@benfenton on Twitter: "Slow news day?"

Daily Mail U.K. ‏@DailyMail on Twitter @benfenton: "yes".

Rob Titchener in The Archers reviews the papers: "Here's another one. 'Serial Abuser Posed as Mr. Nice Guy'. My life reduced to a salacious headline. How can they live with themselves inventing this nonsense. These hacks have no idea."

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