Media Quotes of the Week: From press freedom mission heads for UK to why being a newspaper reporter is ranked as the worst job in 2013

Vincent Peyrègne, CEO of WAN-IFRA, the global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers, which is sending a delegation to the UK in January: “A press freedom mission to the United Kingdom is unprecedented and we cannot underestimate our concern for what is happening. It is rather difficult for the United Kingdom to lecture Sri Lanka and others about their press freedom record, when its own actions result in such widespread international condemnation.” 

Kenan Malik  in the International New York Times: "What we have today in Britain is a tribal view of press freedom. Both sides want to defend freedom for the journalists they like while silencing the journalists they despise. Neither side seems to understand that the moment you invite politicians or the police to determine what is and is not acceptable journalism, freedom is eroded for all of us, whatever our political beliefs. Oh, for a British First Amendment."

Grey Cardigan on TheSpinAlley on the redesigned Independent: "I saw three old buffers, all former regional editors, discussing the relaunch of this national newspaper on Twitter this week. After a bit of back and forth, one of them suddenly said: 'Hang on. It’s only selling 70,000. We edited newspapers bigger than that'."

Theresa May at the Society of Editors' conference, as reported by HoldTheFrontPage: “Local newspapers are having a particularly hard time and I think that is at least partly down to the BBC’s dominance. I have had a number of dicussions with the editor of my local newspaper the Maidenhead Advertiser about the impact of the BBC locally. The Tzer plays a vital role in ensuring local democracy and it would be a sad day if the might of the BBC affected its future operations. The BBC should think carefully about its presence locally.”

Theresa May, as reported by Press Gazette: "Free speech doesn't mean you can go around saying anything about anybody for sake of it."

Lord Grade, speaking at the Society of Editors' conference, reported by Press Gazette: "The protection from exemplary damages supposedly offered by the Royal Charter may well turn out not to be a nice carrot but rather more a dead parrot."

BBC chairman Chris Patten in the New Statesman: "I was thinking the other day that in some newspapers the BBC gets bashed more than President Assad. It's extraordinary.”

John Humphrys on the BBC's former political editor John Cole (above), in the Guardian: "I reported back to my then-bosses that, although I thought he was an absolutely brilliant political journalist and the nicest person in the world, I didn't think we should employ him as the on-air political editor because people would simply find it too difficult to understand his accent. Mercifully they ignored my advice completely. Of all the massive errors of judgment I've made, that was probably my biggest. He turned out to be a great star."

Guardian editorial on John Cole: "The combination of his Northern Irish voice and his dazzling tweed overcoat made him instantly recognisable and entirely unforgettable. That, and his political contacts accrued over a lifetime, their complete confidence in him, and the great seriousness with which he treated the business of government, led to a compellingly watchable blend of showbiz and unimpeachable authority."

James Brewster, founder and owner of Strand News, the agency that covers the Royal Courts of Justice, quoted in the Guardian: "Over the last five years editorial budgets have been slaughtered," he says. "It has meant that, presented with the sort of cases that would once have been a shoo-in, even the front-page sort, news desks have been saying, 'we can't afford £70.' That's not a huge sum for what we provide. We should be considered as essential because you can't run a self-respecting newspaper unless you're covering people who win £8m personal injury claims or people who make successful appeals [against conviction or sentence] in cases papers covered at crown court."

Barry Fitzpatrick, NUJ deputy general secretary, in a statement on plans by Johnston Press to make staff photographers redundant: "This decision by the company represents a wanton disposal of the local knowledge and skills of staff photographers working in England and Scotland. The notion that these roles can be replaced by social media and multi-skilling reporters is a fallacy. Quality content is defined by the quality of pictures and captions of images used, which only professional photographers provide. This spells the death knell for the staff photographer."

Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com. which ranked newspaper reporter as worst job in 2013, as reported by the World Street Journal: “What probably pushed it [newspaper reporter] to the bottom is that several things got worse – job prospects decreased, the average salary continued to fall, and work hours continued to rise. Those factors also make the job more stressful.”

Media Quotes of the Week: Lord Grade the press regulation peacemaker, why we still need reporters and when did sub editors stop being journalists?

Lord Grade in The Times: “It’s very, very important that the future of press regulation is settled as quickly as possible and if anybody thinks I can help in that process obviously I would contribute.
I am presently a member of the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] so I am fairly up to date on everything. If anybody asks me to try and help of course I would help. It is very important for the public that we get to a settlement on this.”

Hacked Off supporters in a letter to the Guardian, after the paper backed the idea of Lord Grade trying to reach a compromise on press regulation: "It is baffling and disappointing to us, as people who have suffered some of the worst press abuses of recent years, that the Guardian suddenly appears ready to surrender to the manipulations of press corporations responsible for many of those abuses."

Robin Lustig accepting the Charles Wheeler award: "Without reporters, there is no journalism worthy of the name. So in this age of talking heads, of wall-to-wall pundits, of hastily rewritten press releases, I would like simply to say we still need reporters as much as we ever did, to be where the story is, to dig, to question, and to challenge."

George Brock on his blog on The Times' Prince William DNA splash: "I can see that The Times might well argue that the DNA of an heir to the throne is a matter of public interest: the accompanying editorial (£) simply takes that for granted before going on to argue for the benefits of DNA testing for medical and general knowledge. But to pretend that there is no ethical issue at all insults the intelligence of the paper’s readers." 

Kent Messenger Group chairman Geraldine Allinson in the Guardian: "New media, including the global giants, are competing with traditional media on the net. We view Google, Monster, Facebook and Gumtree as our major competitors. They may not have offices in Kent. They may not have journalists out in Kent talking to people in the community. But they're our competitors, and the competition regime should recognise that. There appears to be an overbearing desire to regulate and control traditional media when it would be more constructive for public policy and the regulatory agenda to focus on how local media can be unburdened and nurtured."

Grey Cardigan on The Spin Alley: "I really don’t like the Guardian, or the sinister organisation that runs it. Not content with wrecking the entire publishing industry by giving away all their content for free – easy to do when you’re protected from dirty words like profit – they’re now just taking the piss by playing with Lego, opening a coffee shop and running courses for people who want to be food bloggers. Of course, that’s just what the world needs – more fucking food bloggers. Though if you’re daft enough to give the Guardian £400 just to learn how to take pictures of your dinner, you probably sincerely believe that the world is waiting with bated breath for your clichéd culinary crap-spittle."

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGuardian blog: "A couple of weeks ago I asked whether there was any point to the continued publication of the Sunday People. Ever since – and I know it's not because of what I wrote – the paper has been coming up with must-read stories. But none was more spectacular than yesterday's old-fashioned Fleet Street scoop – the pictures of Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi. Talk about agenda-setting. The Twittersphere went crazy. News website hits went off the scale. Every newspaper followed it up. It went round the world because Nigella is a global brand."

Amol Rajan ‏@amolrajan  on Twitter on being made editor of the Independent: "Really don't care how trite this sounds: best thing about my new job is leading the most fantastic team of journalists in Fleet St."

London Evening Standard art critic Brian Sewell in Press Gazette: “My only problem with it [the Standard] is it is largely run by young and inexperienced people. And it doesn’t have any authority. There was a time when Members of Parliament were scared of the paper – what will the Evening Standard headline be if we do this? - but that's going back 20 years or so. No longer does it have that sort of clout.”

Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail on the Guardian's spying revelations: "Treachery is too strong a word, but it is impossible to find any decent motive for what The Guardian has done. These supposedly world-shattering revelations were intended to damage the British government at the beginning of a crucial summit. More and more, it looks like a paper driven by its own obsessions, convinced only of its own virtue, which has simply lost the plot."

Gameoldgirl on the Sub Scribe blog: "When did subs stop being journalists? And why do executives everywhere now refer to them as the production department? The production department used to be where the type was made and put into pages, whether in hot metal or bits of sticky paper. Then it was the area where a clutch of people would chase for pages and send them via computer to the printers. Now it refers to the subs. They are no longer thinking, talented journalists, masters of language, mistresses of design,  but 'producers', conveyor-belt handlers of copy, fit only to write a Google-friendly heading and to do the bidding of whoever happens to be sitting on the newsdesk. Never mind how experienced the sub or how green the news editor."