Media Quotes of the Week: From Ben Stokes blasts Sun for 'lowest form of journalism' to how the local press rattled Boris Johnson at press conference

Ben Stokes @benStokes38 on Twitter: "Today the Sun has seen fit to publish extremely painful, sensitive and personal details concerning events in the private lives of my family, going back more than 31 years. It is hard to find words that adequately describe such low and despicable behaviour, disguised as journalism. I cannot conceive of anything more immoral, heartless or contemptuous to the feelings and circumstances of my family...This is the lowest form of journalism, focussed only on chasing sales with absolutely no regard for the devastation caused to lives as a consequence. It is totally out of order. The article also contains serious inaccuracies which has compounded the damage caused. We need to take a serious look at how we allow our press to behave."

Yorkshire Post editor James Mitchinson @JayMitchinson on Twitter: "My profession - the profession I love - has purportedly cleaned up its act. I am afraid that today I see lurking among us the spirits of those heinous human beings who hacked into the phone of poor Milly Dowler."

Former Sun editor David Yelland @davidyelland on Twitter: "I’m afraid The Sun has become pointlessly cruel and callous in recent years. We all make mistakes but the Ben Stokes story is contemptuous. My sympathies to Ben’s family, particularly his parents."

The Sun in a statement, reported by BBC News: "The Sun has the utmost sympathy for Ben Stokes and his mother but it is only right to point out the story was told with the co-operation of a family member who supplied details, provided photographs and posed for pictures. The tragedy is also a matter of public record and was the subject of extensive front page publicity in New Zealand at the time. The Sun has huge admiration for Ben Stokes and we were delighted to celebrate his sporting heroics this summer. He was contacted prior to publication and at no stage did he or his representatives ask us not to publish the story."

Ian Birrell in The Sun on the Guardian's editorial which said David Cameron suffered only "privileged pain" over the death of his six-year-old boy: "Such a despicable diatribe was a betrayal of its stance as the leading voice of liberal values that showed how the holier-than-thou paper is snared in the Brexit-fuelled fury seen on all sides that is so devastating our nation. Yet its publication in such a prominent place, which as a former deputy editor I know would have gone through several more hands first, reveals a wider culture and arrogance that infects too many minds on the Left."

Guardian apology for the Cameron editorial, as reported by BBC News: "The original version of an editorial posted online yesterday fell far short of our standards. It was changed significantly within two hours, and we apologise completely."

David Cameron in the Sunday Times [£] on the EU referendum campaign: "Almost the biggest problem I had was with the BBC. I felt it had lost its way in understanding the difference between balance and impartiality. The result was the voices of thousands of businesses arguing for remain given equal treatment to just a few prominent businesses coming out for leave. There were thousands of remain economists and a tiny number of Brexiteers, yet the BBC gave the latter the same weight as Nobel laureates."

Meryl Streep, as reported by ET Canada: “We see enough examples of braggadocio and bravado strutting around on the public stage. True bravery is Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, blown up in her car for reporting on the Panama Papers. I applaud and revere our female journalists — I love them, and their equally undaunted brothers. We need to protect, defend and thank the current crop of journalists around the world because they, their scruples and their principles are the front-line defences of free and informed people. We need the brave ones out front picking through the field ahead of us for landmines so we don’t step on one, or elect one.”

Douglas McCabe, chief executive of Enders Analysis, on the magazine industry in the Guardian: “There is a crisis in the industry. Given how much circulation has fallen there really haven’t been as many outright closures as you’d think. Some publishers are just hanging on. We would expect to see more closures in the next five years than the previous five. There is social media, Instagram, Mail Online. So why go out and buy a magazine, even a strong brand, when you can get updates every second? And that’s without the wider fight for consumers’ attention from services such as YouTube and even Netflix.”

Factchecheckers Full Fact on Twitter on Conservative Party ads on spending on schools: "The ads make it appear that the BBC endorsed the £14bn figure, when in fact they criticised it. The BBC told us that the headline on the article has never changed and so has never referred to the £14 bn..it’s inappropriate for political parties, or any public body, to misrepresent the work of independent journalists in this way."

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian on the Impartial Reporter's investigation into historic child abuse: "There cannot be a better reason to celebrate the existence of a newspaper than its championing of journalism’s central tenets: to expose crime, to inform and to hold power to account."

Jennifer Williams @JenWilliamsMEN on Twitter at the Prime Minister's press conference on his visit to the North of England: "Mmm. Rattled by a q from the Rotherham Advertiser about an interview in which he apparently said police were ‘spaffing money up the wall’ on historic CSE investigations. Go local press."

• The Mirror reports: "The MEN's Jen Williams asked the PM about his Towns Fund "most of them are marginal seats that the Conservatives either need to win from Labour or need to defend from the Liberal Democrats including the most marginal seats in the country." She asked: "Are you trying to buy votes using that fund?" Boris Johnson accused the journalist of "pure cynicism" at which the audience erupted into laughter."

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Media Quotes of the Year 2017: Getting it wrong

My Media Quotes of the Year 2017 are up on InPublishing and you can read them here.

The quotes cover Trump vs the media and the media vs Trump. The General Election, how did the press get it so wrong? Where was the local media to speak up for the Grenfell Tower residents before the fire? Plus Brexit, local paper cuts and George Osborne being made editor of the Evening Standard.

Contributions from Jon Snow, Robert Peston, Gary Younge, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Roy Greenslade, Jeremy Corbyn, Aaron Banks, Andrea Leadsom, Ian McKewan, Matt Kelly, Mario Garcia and Prince William on the paparazzi.

Media Quotes of the Week: From Russia with tweets as troll army invades British media to journalists are the enemy of the 'bad' people

From the Guardian: "Members of a Russian “troll army” were quoted more than 80 times across British-read media outlets before Twitter revealed their identity and banned them, a Guardian investigation has shown. Some posts from the accounts were embedded in articles to provide apparently local reportage and pictures from the sites of disasters and crime scenes around the world. In fact, Twitter claims, all the accounts were run from the offices of the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, alleged to be the headquarters of Russia’s troll army."

David Aaronovitch in The Times [£]: "The innovative parts of the cyberworld are to me still wondrous and magical. I am of the generation that started journalism in the slow, inefficient era of the cuttings library, and today the Google algorithm is my gold. But as the Times’s revelations about Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum shows, the development of social media and even of search engines happened far more quickly than our capacity to understand how they might be abused."

Ben Bradshaw MP in Parliament: "When the news website BuzzFeed ran a series of articles recently about unexplained Russia-related deaths in Britain, its head of investigations, Heidi Blake, was inundated with American intelligence sources complaining that they did not think their British counterparts were taking these incidents seriously. If that is true, it is extremely worrying."

Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer about a video clip posted by Leave. EU: "The video was a clip from the film Airplane!, in which a “hysterical” woman is told to calm down and then hit, repeatedly, around the head. The woman – my face photoshopped in – was me. And, as the Russian national anthem played, a line of people queued up to take their turn. The last person in the line had a gun. So far, so weird. Here was a registered political organisation that had gained the support of millions of law-abiding, well-meaning people, promoting violence against women and threatening a journalist. It was a “joke”. A joke underpinned by violent menace."

Owen Jones in the Guardian on Paperchase stopping advertising in the Mail: "Paperchase bowing to pressure from campaigners and committing to no longer advertising in the Daily Mail has upset all the right people. It is a victory for basic decency. Britain’s tabloids are among the most hateful and vicious in the western world."

A Mail spokesman in Press Gazette: "It is it is deeply worrying that Paperchase should have allowed itself to be bullied into apologising – on the back of a derisory 250 facebook comments and 150 direct tweets – to internet trolls orchestrated by a small group of hard left Corbynist individuals seeking to suppress legitimate debate and impose their views on the media...It is one of the fundamental principles of free and fearless journalism that editorial decisions are not dictated by advertisers."

Kath Viner in the Guardian: "The transition from print to digital did not initially change the basic business model for many news organisations – that is, selling advertisements to fund the journalism delivered to readers. For a time, it seemed that the potentially vast scale of an online audience might compensate for the decline in print readers and advertisers. But this business model is currently collapsing, as Facebook and Google swallow digital advertising; as a result, the digital journalism produced by many news organisations has become less and less meaningful. Publishers that are funded by algorithmic ads are locked in a race to the bottom in pursuit of any audience they can find – desperately binge-publishing without checking facts, pushing out the most shrill and most extreme stories to boost clicks. But even this huge scale can no longer secure enough revenue."

Anna Soubry MP on BBC Radio 4 said she had 13 death threats after featuring on the Telegraph's 'Mutineers' front page: "If the Telegraph had not printed that headline those death threats would not have come through - that is a fact."

Telegraph editor Chris Evans in a tweet to the BBC: "I’d urge you to distinguish between the legitimate actions and language of a free press and the illegitimate actions and language of those who make threats of violence."

Peter Preston in the Observer: "There once was a time when the Telegraph gave readers a unique insight of the manners, preoccupations and mindset of the Conservative party. No more. Now, seemingly, it’s a bludgeon seeking to impose uniformity in the distant, disconnected name of the brothers Barclay."

Meryl Streep at the International Press Freedom Awards: "Thank you, you intrepid, underpaid, overextended, trolled and un-extolled, young and old, battered and bold, bought and sold, hyper alert, crack caffeine fiends...chocolate-comforted Twitter clickers. You’re the enemy of the people, yeah, just the bad people."

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Media Quotes of the Week: National press unite in battle to defeat Section 40, dumping on the National Enquirer and hooray for Hollywood

The Guardian in a leader: "A free press is a constitutional necessity, not an ornamental timepiece. There is no other option but to repeal section 40. The Guardian believes that the independence of the press is best served by self - not state - regulation." 

The Financial Times' response to consultation on Section 40: "The position of the FT is clear: Section 40 is not fit to be commenced. However, keeping it un-commenced on the statute book causes – in more acute form – the very problem to which the press have been most alert. In spite of all of the faults of the Royal Charter, the institution of the PRP, the approval of IMPRESS, and unexplained departures from the terms of the Leveson Report, all of those elements have at their core the common recognition that serving politicians, especially those in Government, must have no role in regulating the press. Keeping Section 40 in place, but un-commenced, appears to give this – and every subsequent – Secretary of State unacceptable leverage with regard to the newspaper industry. It is, for the press, a legislative Sword of Damocles."

Daily Mail in a leader: "Among Impress board members is one who has tweeted his wish to ban the Daily Mail, and others who have backed the campaign to drive centre-Right newspapers out of business by starving them of advertising. Even if Impress had impeccably fair-minded credentials, this paper would refuse to join it, on the principle that it is wrong for the Press to submit to state regulation. As it is, the very thought of surrender to such a creepy body is unthinkable. This is why no mainstream newspaper, of Right or Left, has signed up to Impress, which includes only a tiny number of the smallest local papers and online blogs on its books."

Sarah Baxter in the Sunday Times [£]: "To recap, Max Mosley is the son of Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford, who were married in 1936 at the home of Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist of the Third Reich, in the presence of Adolf Hitler. If you don’t consider this relevant, fine. Let’s put our press freedom in the hands of Impress. But it sends a chill up my spine."

The Times [£] in a leader: "Coercing a free press is, in the first place, a contradiction in terms. The conversation that Britain is having with itself about press regulation is being followed elsewhere in the free world with dismay because the very concept of newspapers being answerable to anyone other than their readers is rightly alien. Moreover, the regulator the government has in mind, Impress, is self-appointed, partisan and in no position to wield authority over an industry that it manifestly disdains....Section 40 turns natural justice on its head. It would be unthinkable in the US under the first amendment to the constitution, and probably illegal under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. "

Investigative journalist Andew Penman in the Mirror: "In all likelihood, the mere threat of litigation under Section 40, however unjustified, would mean that my stories would never run in the first place. After 20 years of fighting your corner, this column would be axed and the conmen and charlatans would be victorious."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet in a statement: “The NUJ believes that by partially implementing Section 40, it would potentially bring benefits to those regulators that have established proper systems of arbitration. Those who have not would continue to deal with the courts as they do today. The government should continue to encourage those regulators that do not have effective arbitration in place to establish such systems. While providing significant benefits for those with systems of arbitration, ministers should now rule out implementing Section 40 in a way that could lead to publishers facing potentially ruinous legal costs. Therefore the NUJ favours option (d), that the government should partially commence Section 40 and keep under review those elements that apply to publishers outside a recognised regulator."

Ex-Croydon Advertiser editor Glenn Ebrey ‏@glennebrey on Twitter: "Something odd about local paper groups that have turned their backs on 'proper' journalism fighting to now protect, er, proper journalism...They are right to oppose Section 40, of course, but should look a little closer to home when bemoaning the death of local papers"

Damian Collins, chairman of the culture, media and sport committee, in the Daily Telegraph on Section 40: “Some have said that the risk of heavy costs being awarded against the newspapers is not as great as some fear. But I believe it is wrong in principle, and once established could create a new industry of ambulance-chasing lawyers encouraging people to hire them on no-win, no-fee terms to take up complaints against the press. These lawyers could set high fees and know that there would be a good chance of getting paid even if they lost the case.”

Roy Greenslade on giving up his daily MediaGuardian blog at the end of this month, reported by Press Gazette: “I am sad to be giving up the blog, but I think the work of holding newspapers – their owners, controllers, editors and journalists – to account remains vital because they still set the daily agenda and therefore remain hugely influential."

Donald Trump to CNN's Jim Acosta over the Russian allegations, as reported by CBS: "Your organisation is terrible...I am not going to give you a question, you're fake news. Trump on BuzzFeed which published the Russian allegations in full: "Buzzfeed which is a failing pile of garbage... will suffer the consequences"

Burt Reynolds in the Observer Magazine: "Dumping a helicopter full of horse shit on the National Enquirer made me feel great. They’d been writing crap about me for years so I thought it was only fitting. One Christmas Eve my pilot and I loaded my helicopter with manure from my ranch, flew over the building and watched it cascade down their giant Christmas tree."

Meryl Streep in her Golden Globes speech, as reported by the Guardian: "We need a principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood foreign press, and all of us in our community, to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we’re going to need them going forward, and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth."

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