Media Quotes of the Week: From UK criticised by press freedom group over detention of Assange to US Capitol riot accused say they were journalists

Reporters Without Borders in its World Press Freedom Index 2021 Report: "Europe continues to be the most favourable continent for press freedom but violence against journalists has increased, and the mechanisms the European Union established to protect fundamental freedoms have yet to loosen Viktor Orbán’s grip on Hungary’s media or halt the draconian measures being taken in other central European countries...There was a different kind of setback for journalism in the United Kingdom (up 2 at 33rd), where a judge based her decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States on the potential threats to his mental health rather than the need to protect public interest journalism and free speech."

Jim Bilton on InPublishing on the best film and TV shows about the media business, according to a poll of media insiders: "All the President’s Men (1976) received the most votes by far. It clearly remains the definitive account of what investigative journalism is all about. In the current world of fake news, the misuse of political power and the ability of politicians to manipulate and deceive, the need for independent journalism and the reality of there still being “facts” to find out there, rings true with so many working now in the media business, both editorial and commercial. It also harks back to a “golden age” when management seemed to take big bets and committed real resource to major editorial missions. And of course, every male journalist of a certain age still harbours the secret longing to be."

• Drop the Dead Donkey was voted best TV show

The Times [£] reports: "Boris Johnson has scrapped plans for televised White House-style briefings amid concerns about the 'political risk' involved despite spending £2.6 million on a new room to host them. The Times has been told that the briefings have been axed because they risk giving 'oxygen' to difficult stories for ministers."

HuffPost UK editor-in-chief Jess Brammar on Twitter: "Ok, deep breath. My time at HuffPost UK is coming to an end. As part of cuts BuzzFeed announced weeks after buying us in February, the UK news desk is being closed down and many of our team are being made redundant - including the entire brilliant, trailblazing news team. My role is going along with about half the team. I was offered a new reduced editor role, running a HuffPost UK without a newsdesk, as part of BuzzFeed’s plan to 'fast track its path to profitability'. But news is at the heart of what HuffPost was for me. So I am bowing out."

James Ball in the New Statesman on the cuts at BuzzFeed and HuffPost: "Journalists have proven they can create online newsrooms that generate social value and can reach huge audiences. Other outlets have proven there are multiple ways to raise money off that. And the talent is there. What’s missing is the right owner: someone who wants to make decent, but not venture capital-scale profits and who can be more responsive than distant US corporate overlords. The latest news for digital media might be grim. But that shouldn’t stop people trying."

Former Northern Echo editor Peter Barron on the trials and tribulations of dealing with local safe cracker, businessman and one time Darlington F.C. chairman George Reynolds, who has died: "IN one call to me, George declared: 'If you’re going to write headlines about me, I’ll write headlines about you.' The next day, he erected a huge billboard outside the stadium, and posted weekly 'headlines' in enormous letters. They included SACK BARRON, BARRON IS A LIAR (complete with a picture of Pinnochio), and his carefully considered coup de grace, BARRON IS GAY."

Chris Blackhurst on Press Gazette on the newsroom under threat after Covid and the growth of working from home: "The newsroom is much more than covering the occurrence of a terrorist outrage or disaster or some political storm. It’s about a buzz, an intangible chemistry, an intoxicating smell, of people, young and old, sparking off each other, sharing ideas and leads, bits of information and yes, having a gossip and a laugh."

Séamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary in a statement on the second anniversary of the killing of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry: "We hope that the second anniversary will prompt witnesses to come forward with new information. I know that in the immediate aftermath of the killing there was a climate of fear and intimidation in Derry, but it is vital that those responsible for the killing of a brave, talented and courageous journalist are brought to justice...the greatest tribute to Lyra would be the arrest and prosecution of all those responsible for her killing. That would send a clear signal to the community that violence, harassment and intimidation have no place in Northern Ireland and will not be tolerated.”

Committee to Protect Journalists Asia program coordinator Steven Butler in a statement: “Forcing a prominent pro-democracy media entrepreneur like Jimmy Lai to spend more than a year in prison and hitting him with additional national security charges that could jail him for life can only be seen as an act of retaliation against an outspoken critic. The Chinese government, which now tightly controls Hong Kong, should reverse course immediately to preserve the tattered remains of the territory’s tradition of press freedom.”

Richard Sambrook on Twitter: "We now have women running Reuters News, BBC News, BBC Content, ITN, ITV, Editing The Guardian, Sunday Times, Sun, Mirror and more. And about time too."

AP reports: "The Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January created a trove of self-incriminating evidence, thoroughly documenting their actions and words in videos and social media posts. Now some of the camera-toting people in the crowd are claiming they were only there to record history as journalists, not to join a deadly insurrection. It’s unlikely that any of the self-proclaimed journalists can mount a viable defense on the First Amendment’s free speech grounds, experts say. They face long odds if video captured them acting more like rioters than impartial observers. But as the internet has broadened and blurred the definition of a journalist, some appear intent on trying."

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Media Quotes of the Week: Is PR a better career move than churnalism? to US press hits back at leaks crackdown and a new paper is launched

Agency Provocateur on Press Gazette: "As a career, PR offers young journalists stability, a chance to move up the ladder and a decent wage – at least eventually. Why the hell wouldn’t a trainee graduate with half a brain move over to a profession where they get a chance to be creative rather than one where they sit at a desk rewriting copy from other journalists who did the hard work in the first place?"

Catherine Mayer in the Observer: “I literally know not one single female journalist who has not been in some way discriminated against in the work place, or harassed, whether by interviewees or colleagues or both.”

Ray Snoddy quoted the Observer: “What we’ve seen this year is that ‘mainstream media’ has changed from a general description into a term of abuse. We’ve seen trust in media ebb and flow over many years but there’s been nothing like this before. There is now a completely different way of self-manufacturing and distributing news outside of the mainstream. These new outlets can be very diverse and exciting, but they exist outside any conventional sense of journalistic principles – of fact-checking and at least trying to get it objectively right.”

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Russian nobles decided that Grigori Rasputin was such a threat to the empire they poisoned him, shot him and dumped his body in a tributary of the Neva. They didn’t stop the reckoning of the Russian Revolution. Nick Timothy, by contrast, has received jobs as columnists on the Telegraph and Sun. The Tory press is his natural home, where his ability to strike radical right postures without a thought for the consequences will be appreciated."

Chris Deerin in The Herald on Nick Timothy becoming a newspaper columnist: "When it emerged recently that he had been asked to write a weekly newspaper column, the response – an outrageous reward for failure – was as hysterical as it was bizarre. Shouldn’t the man be able to earn a living? Must he live in a remote cave, surviving on roots and berries, until the mob decides his penance is served? Aren’t his thoughts, now that he has popped out of the other side of the pipeline of power, of interest?"

The Sunday Times [£] in a leader: "Last weekend we published a column about BBC presenters’ pay in the Irish edition of this newspaper and online which included unacceptable comments that caused offence to many, in particular to the Jewish community. We removed the article and apologised promptly to Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, who had been named in the column. Now we apologise to our readers.Newspapers publish controversial articles that often cause upset. It is important to generate forthright debate about issues affecting our lives. It is also important, however, not to publish comments that overstep the mark. Where this column did so, we are deeply sorry."

Donald J. Trump‏ on Twitter: "Hard to believe that with 24/7 #Fake News on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTIMES & WAPO, the Trump base is getting stronger!"

US attorney general Jeff Sessions, as reported by Politico: “We respect the important role that the press plays and we will give them respect, but it is not unlimited. They cannot place lives at risk with impunity. We must balance the press’ role with protecting national security and the lives of those who serve in the intelligence community and all law-abiding Americans.”

The Chicago Tribune in a leader: "The job of preventing leaks belongs to the federal government, which has plenty of existing tools to do so. If the Trump administration can't keep its own secrets, it shouldn't expect the news media to do that job."

The San Francisco Chronicle in a leader: "The value of whistle-blowers and an unencumbered media to a democracy is not hypothetical. The history of government lies — throughout the Vietnam War, the malfeasance of Watergate and, more recently, the government’s use of torture and illegal surveillance of Americans — all came to light only through anonymous sources. The embattled Sessions, channeling the president who belittles him, is going down a dangerous path."

Tyler Brûlé, editor in chief and chairman of MONOCLE, on the launch of his new newspaper: “Monocle – The Summer Weekly is our latest adventure in ink and paper. Everyone is very down about newspapers but there is some- thing very exciting about this form. You don’t mind if it gets a bit of suncream on it, or if it gets waterlogged. It can follow you around for the day – or for the week. We thought that August was the perfect time to let people dive into this again.”

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Media Quotes of the Week: From editors unite to fight RIPA to did media boob over page 3 cover up?

Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford: “It is unprecedented in my experience for every national newspaper editor to agree on anything. So it is highly significant that here [in a joint letter to the PM] they have said with once voice that RIPA needs tougher controls to protect journalists' sources. Giving police the ability to secretly view the phone records of law-abiding journalists is not compatible with an open democratic society.”

Edward Snowden

James Ball in the Guardian: "GCHQ’s bulk surveillance of electronic communications has scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the US and UK’s largest media organisations, analysis of documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals. Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency....New evidence from other UK intelligence documents revealed by Snowden also shows that a GCHQ information security assessment listed 'investigative journalists' as a threat in a hierarchy alongside terrorists or hackers."

Statement by Professionals for Information Privacy Coalition, which includes the NUJ, Law Society, Bar Council and The British Association of Social Workers: "Privacy and trust is crucially important to the British public and our professions. We need to be assured that certain data will always remain confidential in all but exceptional and extreme circumstances. Insufficient regard for professional confidentiality undermines the public’s trust in our individual members, organisations and our public institutions. We are united in our belief that the current system needs to be changed. We have seen a growing number of instances where data and surveillance powers have been seriously and repeatedly overused. This has included police using secret methods to expose journalistic sources and to monitor journalists' activities and it has also been revealed that the intelligence agencies have been spying on conversations between lawyers and their clients."

Guardian readers' editor Chis Elliott on the paper publishing the front cover of Charlie Hebdo:"I am aware that many Muslims, some of them friends and colleagues, will have been offended by the Guardian’s use of that image, and I am sorry for that. However, I believe the countervailing argument is that on this occasion the image of the cover had an important and legitimate news value. Showing the magazine’s response in the wake of the deaths was an important part of telling the story, and the Guardian did so in a measured, restrained fashion. It has to feel free to tell it in its own way."

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday: "Using the excuse of terrorism – whose main victim is considered thought – Theresa May’s Home Office is making a law which attacks free expression in this country as it has never been attacked before. We already have some dangerous laws on the books. The Civil Contingencies Act can be used to turn Britain into a dictatorship overnight, if politicians can find an excuse to activate it. But the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, now slipping quietly and quickly through Parliament, is in a way even worse. It tells us what opinions we should have, or should not have."

George Monbiot in the Guardian: "The BBC’s business reporting breaks its editorial guidelines every day by failing to provide alternative viewpoints. Every weekday morning, the Today programme grovels to business leaders for 10 minutes. It might occasionally challenge them on the value or viability of their companies, but hardly ever on their ethics. Corporate critics are shut out of its business coverage – and almost all the rest."

Grey Cardigan on TheSpinAlley: "AT LAST, a confession – and confirmation – of what I have been banging on about for what seems years. A senior suit – in this case Tom Thomson of the Herald & Times group in Glasgow – finally comes clean on the financial reality of the modern media business by admitting that 90% of his company’s revenue still comes from its flagship print title. In that case, I’m bound to ask once again why newspaper managers have butchered their titles by binning editions, closing district offices and massacring staff numbers while pumping out yesterday’s news tomorrow, just to piss millions of pounds up a profitless paywall. I await an answer with interest."

The Times  [£]: "The Sun will no longer feature topless models on page 3 after quietly dropping one of the most controversial traditions in British journalism. The Times understands that Friday’s edition of the paper was the last that will carry an image of a glamour model with bare breasts on that page, ending a convention that began in 1970, shortly after Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper."

The Sun on Thursday: "Further to recent reports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is Page 3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth. We would like to apologise on behalf of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writing about us."

Janice Turner in The Times: "The truth is that The Sun hung on to page 3 long after its sell-by date out of a cussed bunker mentality, a determination not to capitulate to leftie campaigners. Rebekah Brooks told me she didn’t abolish it just to defy those who assumed that, as the paper’s first woman editor, she would."

David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "Alleged 'dropping of P3 at The Sun' must not divert us from fact many fine Sun staff were 'dropped in it' by past leadership at company...."

• Remember when The Sun made Page 3 an election issue? Vote Tory or the Page 3 girls get it