Media Quotes of the Week: The best journalism held Trump to account but have the 70 million who voted for him shown contempt for mainstream news? plus the fake journalist who stole real news

Media columnist Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post: "The mainstream media, however flawed, has managed to tell us who Trump is. Even the worst of it — the way lie-filled briefings on the coronavirus, in which the president promoted untested cures and pure quackery, were broadcast live to the nation — had the benefit of showing people how unfit he was. And the best of the Trump-era journalism has been crucial, true to its democratic mission of holding the powerful accountable."

Donald Trump on Twitter: "Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be? We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks!"

Christiane Amanpour on Twitter: "A reflection on President Trump’s comments last night: The last President I covered who refused to accept the vote count in an election was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, 2009."

Matthew D'Ancona on Tortoise: "The true gatekeepers to Biden’s presidency were the networks, specifically at the moment on Thursday night when ABC, CBS and NBC cut off President Trump’s deranged rant about alleged voter fraud. He who lives by media, dies by media. The reality television host who made it to the White House by treating politics as a branch of the entertainment industry was, in the end, deposed because he had committed the cardinal sin of the entertainment world: he had become a bore, an embarrassment, old news."

 Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review on the US election: "Once again, opinion polls were overhyped and under-scrutinized. Some of them were also wildly off—and, though that’s different from 2016, when the polls were largely accurate but widely misunderstood, it doesn’t let media organizations off the hook for their treatment of the numbers. Newsrooms leaned too heavily on polls as a substitute for on-the-ground reporting, and they were led astray. Journalists spent too much time talking to each other on Twitter, inhabiting an alternate algorithmic reality that bore little resemblance to the life of the country."

Nick Robinson on Twitter: "Watching @FoxNews to see how they cover the election. Someone they call a correspondent has just said on air that pollsters are 'partisan pornographers who worked with Joe Biden to suppress the vote'. Extraordinarily there are people here who want our TV news to be more like Fox."

Jane Martinson in the Guardian: "BBC presenters who dare to express opinions – Emily Maitlis on Dominic Cummings, for example – are slapped down as executives fret about the impartiality of an organisation that believes it must be representative of all licence fee payers. But true impartiality allows reporters to say that politicians are lying if there are facts and evidence to prove it. Such calls are essential not just for democracy but the future of journalism, even if a combination of financial, political and technological pressure has made them harder."

Gerard Baker in The Times [£]: "Mr Trump defied the predictions of pollsters, the ravages of a pandemic, a big financial advantage for his Democratic opponent and the best efforts of a media that has simply disgraced itself with its complete abandonment of any last pretence of objectivity."

Ian Burrell in the i: "A Trump victory would have left the cream of the American Fourth Estate looking marginal and powerless. It nearly happened. The 70 million who voted for him have used the ballot box to declare their contempt for mainstream news, which must somehow find a way to regain their trust."

Alan Rusbridger on the reporting of COVID-19, in the preface to the Reuters Institute annual report:"Lives depended on the words journalists wrote; the numbers they crunched; how well they understood and could communicate the science. COVID-19 has, again at the time of writing, killed nearly a million people worldwide. But it has also accelerated the already menacing trends in media – closing titles, depressing revenues, speeding up the switch to digital, throwing thousands out of work."

Piers Morgan on Twitter on the departure of Downing Street director of communications Lee Cain: Great to see @BorisJohnson's communications chief Lee Cain - who once dressed up as a chicken to mock Tory ministers for refusing to take part in TV debates & then led this Govt's cowardly 196-day boycott of
@GMB - forced out of No10. He's a snivelling little worm. Bye Lee!"

Kelvin MacKenzie on his new book due out next year called 'Murdoch, Me and Other Madmen': "Honestly, it will be an absolute rip-roaring success."

The Northern Echo reports: "A 'FAKE journalist' has pleaded guilty to fraud after publishing articles copied from The Northern Echo. Aaron Michael Jack, 27, of Eldon Street, Darlington, was running a website called the North East News Agency, which was found to consist of news stories copied from the Northern Echo and passed off as his own work. On the site, each news story was followed by 'A note from the Editor. Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of North East Alternative News and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories'.”

• Jack pleaded guilty to fraud and to two charges of publishing images which he knew were infringing copies of copyright and was fined £50 for each of the three offences and ordered to pay costs.

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Media Quotes of the Week: Save local press by following Australia and make tech giants pay for news to the paper that's more fun than the Sun

Jawad Iqbal in The Times [£]: "The collapse of local journalism in the digital age is not inevitable but no one should underestimate the threat to democracy if steps are not taken to address the monopolistic practices of the tech behemoths. Ministers should follow the Australian government in requiring tech companies to reimburse news outlets for stories that appear on their sites. More broadly Google and Facebook have to be reined in through regulation and taxation to restore fairness in the digital advertising marketplace."

Key findings of the research into local news consumption and democracy conducted by Plum Consulting for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: 

Importance of journalism: "Local journalism has a key role to play in civil society. The decline of the local newspaper industry and resulting negative impacts on journalism reduce scrutiny of democratic functions. This situation is unlikely to change without intervention."

Correlations between news provision, news consumption and local democracy: "Local newspaper provision and consumption has a positive effect on local democratic participation over time. Further erosion of local newspaper consumption is likely to damage this effect."

Brad Bender, Google's vice president of product management for news, quoted by CNN Business on plans by the digital giant to pay publishers more than $1 billion over the next three years for licensing news: "It's clear that the newspaper industry has long faced economic challenges. I think a number of us in the ecosystem want to step up and enable a better future for news. This is a very big investment, our biggest investment today, but it really does build on our 20 years of efforts with the industry."

The Times [£] obit on former Sunday Telegraph editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne:  "As a commentator he could be salty, moralistic, reactionary, contrary and even, on occasion, self-contradictory, but he was rarely, if ever, boring or predictable. On Desert Island Discs in 1992 he chose as his luxury item a lifetime supply of LSD. "

The Queen in a message of support highlighting the vital role played by newspapers during the coronavirus pandemic to News Media Association members for the Journalism Matters campaign: "The Covid-19 pandemic has once again demonstrated what an important public service the established news media provides, both nationally and regionally. As our world has changed dramatically, having trusted, reliable sources of information, particularly at a time when there are so many sources competing for our attention, is vital."

Bill Grueskin in the Columbia Journalism Review on covering Trump: "The President of the United States is acting like a drunk driver, and the press needs to cover him that way. He demonstrated last week a callous disregard for those around him—most critically, those who work for him and those who are assigned to protect him—and there is no benefit of the doubt that can justify his actions. Anything that journalists write or broadcast needs to reflect that reality."

Andrew Marr interviewed in the Guardian: “The Murdoch empire and others are trying to push us towards a world in which the BBC is pretty marginal and people are getting most of their news and their views from privately funded television companies, as in America. There is a drive on to destroy the BBC. They’ve clearly got supporters in the government, and it’s a very difficult moment for the new director general Tim Davie.”

David Yelland on Twitter: "Oh Jenni Murray. When WILL BBC talent and former executives realise they play with fire if they do deals with the print press which wishes to destroy the corporation. Grow up! Wise up!"

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "The BBC has become, for the British right, what the tabloid press was for the socialists of the 20th century: the cause of all their frustrations and an explanation for all their failures. When Conservatives ask why the young won’t vote for them, why Christianity is in decline, why Israel is regarded as a pariah state, why Trump is feared, why anything and everything they hate is happening, the BBC is at the root of the evil."

The Independent's Middle East Correspondent Patrick Cockburn in a statement to the Julian Assange extradition hearing, as reported by the Evening Standard, said the deaths of two Reuters journalists and unarmed civilians in Iraq by US forces was only confirmed by a classified video given to Wikileaks: “It was known that a film of the killing had been taken by the gun camera of the US Apache helicopter, but the Pentagon refused to give this up even under a Freedom of Information Act request...The information that was disclosed by Wikileaks was no secret to Iraqis or Afghans or foreign journalists, who all know very well about who had been killed and by whom. But this could never be confirmed in the face of official US silence or denial...Making such information public, as Assange and Wikileaks had done, weaponised freedom of expression. If disclosures of this kind went unpunished and became the norm, it would radically shift the balance of power between government and society – and especially the media – in favour of the latter.”

Press Gazette reports: "Investigative reporter John Ware is seeking £50,000 in damages over reports attempting to discredit his Panorama programme into anti-Semitism in the Labour party in a rare case of one journalist suing another. Paddy French, who edits the Press Gang website, published a 16-page pamphlet in December describing the “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” Panorama that aired in July 2019 as 'a piece of rogue journalism'.”

Peter Jukes on Twitter: "I don’t care what the case is. I don’t care who’s doing it. Journalists should never sue journalists. Period. Reporting is hard enough (as Ware should know) under UK libel laws. Any journalist who then deploys them is effectively undermining the whole trade."

Daily Star editor Jon Clark, interviewed in the i, on making the Star more fun than the Sun: “I don’t want to get caught up in any hate; hate is not what we are about – we are about fun. I want us to make people joyous. I want to be the antidote to the really, really miserable news agenda that we are having to live with...I think we are more like they [the Sun] were 15-20 years ago in the glory days. They are the market leader and good for them but I think we have moved into the space that they vacated.”

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Media Quotes of the Week: From will the Boris Johnson press honeymoon last? to Dacre's damning view on the state of the British media

Owen Jones @OwenJones84 on Twitter: "I genuinely think that the official newspaper of a dictatorship would have been too embarrassed to print this."

Ex Sun editor David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "A piece of advice from an old hand. There is an inevitable sunlit upland Boris bounce in media. Give it two/three weeks. It will pass quickly."

Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 on Twitter: "The only bright note about having Vote Leave control the country is that it might bring an end to the dismally low standard of journalism of the last three years. Now they can be held to account for their promises."

Former colleague of Boris Johnson's new head of communications Lee Cain, an ex-reporter who used to dress up as the Mirror's Chicken, as reported by the Mirror: "Lee was actually a great Mirror Chicken. He attacked the role with real zeal and a great passion. The newsdesk were so impressed with his work he was used on a number of occasions. I vividly remember him coming in to the newsroom and prancing around still in his full outfit like a rooster. It’s hard to believe that a man with his past of taunting the cowardly Tories is now such a powerful figure inside No 10.”

Matt Chorley @MattChorley on Twitter on talkRADIO's Ross Kempsell moving to No 10 as a policy adviser: "Congrats to Ross, but every time a journalist crosses over it is a setback for those of us who think our role is to interrogate, expose and ridicule the powerful, not audition for a job with them."

ITV Wales political editor Adrian Masters @adrianmasters84 on Twitter: "For the record then: on the Prime Minister’s first visit to Wales the national news outlets of Wales @ITVWales @BBCWalesNews and @WalesOnline weren’t allowed interviews. We were offered chance to ask questions but not to film them. Also for the record, I refused this offer. I hate to have turned down the chance to challenge Boris Johnson but I wouldn’t have been able to broadcast any of it. I’d have had to read quotes to the audience...I do think it’s a strange way to begin for a new Prime Minister who says he wants to strengthen the union to treat the main national news outlets this way."

Emily Bell in the Guardian: In the end, perhaps the biggest lesson the British media can learn from the US experience of Trump is that their work matters to people beyond their readership or audience, and to that end it needs to become more rigorous and more serious. On both sides of the Atlantic there is a circular firing squad of the commentariat who wonder, on a daily basis, how did this happen? The boring truth is that we need to pay attention to the substance and not the glockenspiel. When the circus has left town, we will need a reliable record to remind us of what happened, and how, and why."

Kyle Pope, the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, quoted in the Guardian: “I’d encourage UK reporters to be brutally honest with themselves and their audience, about who Boris is and what his motivations are, then move on. Don’t let him be their editor, don’t let him dictate the news cycle.”

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, in a statement after the High Court ruled bulk surveillance powers do not breach freedom of expression rights: "The legal judgment is a blow to journalists and press freedom. The union has consistently challenged the UK’s investigatory powers and the authorities continue to use extensive secret surveillance techniques. The NUJ is concerned that the ability to access journalistic communications, in particular bulk interceptions and interference, without prior independent authority, places whistleblowers and sources at risk, and makes it more difficult to hold those in power to account. This risks jeopardising the role of the media as the public’s watchdog."

Paul Dacre in The Spectator: "The British media generally is in a dreadful state: Sky, a great British success story, now owned by the Americans; ITV’s shares on the floor amid rumours of a foreign merger; the ubiquitous Johnston Press bankrupt; the cadavers of the once mighty Mirror and Express being asset-stripped; Murdoch’s News UK setting aside around half a billion pounds for damages to phone-hacking victims; the Guardian, with its shrill feminism and hard-left juvenilia, dependent on charity; the Standard (what sublime hypocrisy is its editor George Osborne’s support for Boris) being investigated for its financial links to a Saudi regime that murders journalists; and the BBC, staffed by kids, run by an OAP, obsessed by filling every vacant post with women and dwarfed by the streaming giants."

Media Quotes of the Week: From Guardian praises Mail's attack on Brexiteers to the editor who defied a shooting and put out a 'damn paper' every day

Follow our leaders: A Guardian leader praises a Daily Mail leader: "Instead of firing up the Brexiters for yet another act of anti-European contempt and defiance, as it had done for so long, the Mail this week turned its fire on them instead. It denounced the 'arch-Brexiteers' for their 'self-promotion and peacocking' and their efforts to undermine Mrs May...The easy explanation for this shift would be to attribute it to the new editor, Geordie Greig, who replaced Paul Dacre last month after a 26-year reign. That is a big factor. But the deeper reason is that the national mood is changing. Brexit is becoming a burden on Britain."

Donald Trump, as reported by the Washington Post after home made bombs were sent to Democrat politicians and CNN, tells the media it has an obligation to set a civil tone and should: "Stop the endless hostility and constant negative — and oftentimes, false attacks and stories."

Trump last week praising Montana Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte for assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs during his campaign, as reported by msn: "Any guy that can do a body slam, he's my kind of guy."

• Guardian US editor, John Mulholland, in a statement: “The president of the United States tonight applauded the assault on an American journalist who works for the Guardian. To celebrate an attack on a journalist who was simply doing his job is an attack on the first amendment by someone who has taken an oath to defend it. In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it runs the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world where they often face far greater threats.”

Joint statement by Germany, France and the UK over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi: "The violent death of Jamal Khashoggi, within the premises of the Saudi Consulate General in Istanbul had been feared for many days but its confirmation still comes as a shock. Nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms. ‎Defending freedom of expression and a free press are key priorities for Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The threatening, attacking or killing of journalists, under any circumstances, is unacceptable and of utmost concern to our three nations."

Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review: "Trump doesn’t care about a dead journalist because he doesn’t care about journalism. The last two years of this presidency have shown that Trump sees a free press through a real estate developer’s smudgy lens: The truth, like an opening bid, is fungible and negotiable; the value of any single bit of information is entirely transactional, tied only to whether it helps or hurts him personally; rules and norms are for losers."

Tommy Robinson, speaking outside the Old Bailey, as reported by Press Gazette: “To the journalists… the British public do not trust you, they do not believe you. You are the enemy of the people."

The Daily Telegraph in a leader about the use by a businessman of Non Disclosure Agreements: "By stopping information about alleged deplorable behaviour becoming widely known, NDAs risk other potential targets for harassment or abuse unwittingly taking a job with an employer who they might otherwise have given a wide berth. There is, then, legitimate public interest in exposing the existence of NDAs where they point to a pattern of immoral or reprehensible behaviour by someone in a position of power and authority. This newspaper wishes to do just that. A businessman has used NDAs in at least five instances to pay employees substantial sums to stop them accusing him of sexual harassment and racial abuse. He has used considerable resources to fight disclosure, achieving an interim injunction preventing publication."

• Sir Philip Green was later named as the businessman in Parliament.

 The biggest shareholder in Johnston Press, Christen Ager-Hanssen, owner of the Custos Group, in a statement: "The behaviour of the Board of Johnstons Press Plc (“JP”) is symptomatic of today’s society in which greed, selfishness and unaccountability have become the norm. Custos is an activist Investor on a mission to fight against this type of board behaviour. When I first announced Custos' campaign to fight for shareholder rights in the autumn 2017, I said that the board is doing nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and that their only interest in JP was to protect their ability to continue with milking the company for cash. Regrettably I have now been proven right. The long and proud 250 year history of Johnston Press has now been replaced by a more recent and tragic history of rampant fee-sucking by its negligent board and incompetent advisers. And with the board’s new strategy to sell its crown-jewels, the fee-sucking will simply increase."

News UK chief David Dinsmore, speaking at the Press Gazette Digital Journalism Summit: "I am not criticising the BBC for the provision of high-quality, impartial news online. I am challenging whether it should now be for BBC News online to tell me if I should take up Tai Chi or Zumba and whether I may need to take a break from Netflix.”

Judges giving the National Press Foundation Benjamin C Bradlee editor of the year award to Rick Hutzell, editor of the Capital Gazette in Maryland, where a gunman opened fire on the newsroom killing five staff: “We saw courage in the face of unimaginable tragedy in the Capital Gazette editor and his staff. As pledged, they put out a ‘damn paper’ the next day, and every day since in service to their community. It underscores the importance of local newspapers and the unbreakable bond with their communities.”

Media Quotes of the Week: From Strictly snog blows climate change off front page to local council secrecy stops journalists being watchdog for public

Alan Rusbridger @arusbridger on Twitter: "Most UK papers think a drunken snog at Strictly is the most important story today. More important than a terrifying new #IPCC report saying we have 12 years to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming."

The Committee to Protect Journalists' European Union representative Tom Gibson in a statement on the murder of Bulgarian journalist Victoria Marinova: "CPJ is shocked by the barbaric murder of journalist Victoria Marinova. Bulgarian authorities must employ all efforts and resources to carry out an exhaustive inquiry and bring to justice those responsible."

The Committee to Protect Journalists' deputy executive director Robert Mahoney on the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi: "CPJ is alarmed by media reports that Jamal Khashoggi may have been killed inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi authorities must immediately give a full and credible accounting of what happened to Khashoggi inside its diplomatic mission. The country has stepped up its repression of critical journalists in the past year at home. We hope this has not now spread abroad."

The Guardian in a leader: "Without sustained pressure – including for independent or joint investigations, should domestic ones fall short – those responsible for journalists’ deaths will go unpunished, and more journalists will die."

Lionel Barber @lionelbarber on Twitter: "The murderous attacks on journalists are becoming ever more prevalent. When an American president regularly denounces the media as “enemies of the people” it is hardly a surprise when less savoury regimes regard reporters and broadcasters as fair game."

BBC director general Tony Hall, giving the inaugural Society of Editors Bob Satchwell lecture: “People who try to undermine the BBC’s reputation for their own political ends should be careful what they wish for. Nobody wants to end up in the highly polarised, almost separate, political and media cultures we see across the Atlantic. Nor the monocultural landscape of state-run media in some other countries."

Adam Barnett on politics.co.uk: "So far from improving on the media's factual errors and political bias, outlets like the Canary seem to be trying to outdo them on falsehood and partisanship, with a few sinister quirks added in...These sites are not a plucky alternative to the mainstream press. They are the aspirant state media for a future autocracy. If they will help governments defame journalists in other countries, and shrug when those journalists are arrested, imagine what they would do to people here who they actually know and dislike."

Verified account

Jane Bradley Retweeted Shaun Lintern

Jane Bradley @jane__bradley on Twitter: "Huge exclusive from the HSJ, followed up by almost every mainstream news org in the UK. Invest in good specialist journalists and give them time to burrow into their beat, it pays off."

Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review on the New York Times' 18-month investigation into the Trump family's financial affairs: "One of its great benefits, to my mind, is that it transcends the headlines of the day, focusing on an elemental, fundamental aspect of this man and this presidency that, it turns out, is even more divorced from our common understanding than we might have previously thought. It is an example of journalism as long game, a sport that more of us need to be playing."

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian on his father, the journalist Michael Freedland, who died last week: "As fate would have it, the day after his death this newspaper carried an article written by him a few months earlier: an obituary of Charles Aznavour, who, like him, died on Monday. So Michael Freedland went out the way he would have wanted – with a byline."

Cornwall Live editor Jacqui Merrington on the BBC 1 drama Press, via HoldTheFrontPage: “As a journalist, it’s impossible not to get a bit defensive about a programme painting a dark picture of an industry I know so well. And I’m not alone in feeling a bit hacked off by it...But journalism has changed beyond recognition. This programme fails to appreciate that, dragging up some of the worst elements of journalism in the 1980s and setting them in the here and now. It’s made journalists out to be arseholes, doing nothing to help restore the battered reputation of an industry I know and love. And for that, I hate it.”

The Times [£] in a leader on local government secrecy and the press: "It is not as if the problem is a recent change in the political climate. The Local Government Act of 2000 was a well-intentioned attempt to streamline decision-making at municipal level by moving from a committee-based system to an executive system. In practice it has tended to concentrate power and encourage secrecy. Nobody disputes that in granting contracts councils may have to keep some information confidential. However, our report today suggests that there is instead a culture of aggrandisement and avoidance of public accountability. The role of journalists is to be the eyes and the ears of the public and to tell voters of the decisions that are being made in their name. For that, they need access."

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