Media Quotes of the Week: From the Cairncross Review under review to is this the best New York Post headline since Headless Body in Topless Bar?

Dame Frances Cairncross in her Review into the sustainability of high-quality UK journalism: “Ultimately, the biggest challenge facing the sustainability of high-quality journalism, and the press, may be the same as that which is affecting many areas of life: the digital revolution means that people have more claims on their attention than ever before. Moreover, the stories people want to read may not always be the ones that they ought to read in order to ensure that a democracy can hold its public servants properly to account.”

Cairncross Review on local press: "Most national and regional news publishers are generating good profits, with margins of 10% ormore. But for several publishers, a large proportion of those profits is being used to pay down debts or pension liabilities (as in the cases of Johnston Press and Reach/Trinity Mirror respectively).1 As a result, they have reduced staffing, closed local offices, and have less money available for investment in the substantial innovation that a successful digitalfuture requires."

Cairncross Review on digital giants: “The overall position online of Google and Facebook appears to be directly impeding the ability of news publishers to develop successful business strategies. Whether or not the current monetary exchange between platforms and publishers is fair, the platforms’ position allows them to take decisions with significant impact on publishers, but with little to no engagement with them. If the powerful position of Google and Facebook remains unchanged (or even grows), the Government must ensure these companies do not abuse their position, and just as critically that their position does not threaten the viability of other industries.”

Society of Editors executive director Ian Murray in a statement: "It is extremely gratifying that Dame Frances and her panel have underscored the need to protect and indeed reinvigorate the reporting of local democracy and open justice, areas which have suffered and continue to suffer as the industry contracts. An enlarging of the present Local Democracy Supporting Service, which sees funds from the BBC supporting around 150 local journalists covering councils, also makes sense, although again there is no indication where such funding would come from and on what scale. Crucial to all of the recommendations for what is really state support for the local media industry in particular, are the report’s insistence that bodies such as the proposed Institution are free from political and other interference in deciding what constitutes public interest news worth supporting.”

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet in a statement on the Cairncross Review: "It’s a nonsense to suggest that BBC online has destroyed local newspapers – as the report says, the newspaper groups went on costly acquisition sprees before the market collapsed in the late 2000s and then cut investment and sacked hundreds of journalists to maintain profit margins. BBC Online is a trusted and much-used source of news, it is not the problem here and its future must not be imperilled."

Guido Fawkes on the Cairncross Review's call for an Institute of Public Interest News: "Why do we need another public body? Isn’t the BBC actually part of the reason independent local journalism is dying? The expansion of the BBC into local radio and covering local affairs online is killing off independent private sector journalism. The billions in revenue that the BBC has supports 46 local radio stations and the most visited news website in Britain, how can local newspapers compete with that? That the BBC has started funding a “Local Democracy Reporting Service” is an admission that it is part of the problem."

Telegraph editor Chris Evans, quoted by BBC News, after Philip Green dropped his legal case against the paper: "In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein affair, we became aware that gagging orders called NDAs were being used to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct and racial abuse in the workplace. And that led to our investigation into Sir Philip Green and Arcadia. We maintain there is a clear public interest in telling people whether a prospective employer has been accused of sexual misconduct and racial abuse."

Green in an audio recording released by the Telegraph: "I will personally sue your editor for damages that will be long beyond what he'll be able to earn if he lives to 1,000 years old."

International Federation of Journalists  president Philippe Leruth, after an IFJ report revealed the  cases of 94 journalists and media professionals who lost their lives in targeted killings, bomb attacks or crossfire incidents in 2018: "Those tragic figures remind us of our duty to act and hold governments responsible for the lack of investigation for journalists' crimes. We need an international instrument to force all states to act to halt the killing of journalists and bring the killers to justice. Our draft Convention on the Safety and Independence of Journalists and other media professionals would achieve this."

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, quoted by the Sunday Times [£]: “I want there to be an international taboo for journalists to be killed or detained in the course of their work. I want countries considering doing that to feel it is going to make them the focus of huge international attention and therefore it is not a step they should take.”

Sir Harold Evans in the Sunday Times [£]: "The majority of journalists’ deaths are not bad luck on a battlefield. They are planned assassinations. Nine out of every 10 have been killed in their own countries at the instigation of government and military authorities, drug traffickers and criminal gangs. Since 1992, a total of 737 journalists have been murdered with impunity: not a single perpetrator identified.”

Mark Mazzetti in the New York Times:  "Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia told a top aide in a conversation in 2017 that he would use “a bullet” on Jamal Khashoggi, if Mr. Khashoggi did not return to the kingdom and end his criticism of the Saudi government, according to current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of intelligence reports. The conversation, intercepted by American intelligence agencies, is the most detailed evidence to date that the crown prince considered killing Mr. Khashoggi long before a team of Saudi operatives strangled him inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and dismembered his body using a bone saw."

LBC's James O'Brien, interviewed by the New York Times about the high profile his anti-Brexit stance has brought him: “Hand on heart, I’d swap it all to see my country go back to what it was like before the referendum. Achieving fame of sorts for chronicling and criticising an act of epic national self-harm is a mixed blessing to say the least.”

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos posts about communications with National Enquirer publisher America Media Inc, headed by David Pecker: "These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out."

• V.A. "Vinnie" Musetto became a newspaper legend after he was credited with the 1983 New York Post banner headline 'Headless Body In Topless Bar.'

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Media Quotes of the Week: From readers must pay for quality journalism as digital publishers cut jobs to a night out with Hugh McIlvanney remembered

The Times [£] in a leader on the job cuts by digital publishers: "The Times has long argued that quality journalism should not be given away for free. Trusted news is expensive to produce and it is only right that readers should pay for it. Other publishers are finally accepting this logic. Last week Condé Nast, the magazine publisher, said that it would put all of its content behind a paywall. A shift towards more rational business models should improve the environment for good journalism. It will allow publishers to compete on the quality of their content rather than simply on sensationalism and the number of eyeballs reached."

Mike Rosenberg @ByRosenberg on Twitter:"45% of [US] newspaper journalism jobs have disappeared since 2007. Digital news outlets had replaced only 18% of those jobs even before recent layoffs at BuzzFeed, HuffPo, Mic, etc. This isn't just a jobs thing, it's about people not getting basic information they used to."

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Indira Lakshmanan @Indira_L on Twitter: "Newspapers are still shedding on average 1,000 jobs per month - more than mining, steel, fishing and all the beleaguered industries politicians talk about. The news industry - in all formats - is in crisis. We need sustainable business models for journalism."

Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times: "It is the rare publication that can survive on subscriptions, and the rarer one that will be saved by billionaires. Digital media needs a way to profitably serve the masses. If even BuzzFeed couldn’t hack that, we are well and truly hosed."

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Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump  on Twitter: "'Ax falls quickly at BuzzFeed and Huffpost!' Headline, New York Post. Fake News and bad journalism have caused a big downturn. Sadly, many others will follow. The people want the Truth!"

Emily Bell @emilybell on Twitter: "Capitalism is the enemy of journalism in many ways: overpayment and greed among the executive and investors, corrupted incentives embedded in tech platforms, a complete absence of sensible alternative funding models , a widespread misunderstanding that profit does not equal value."

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Lionel Barber @lionelbarber on Twitter: "Hats off to the Telegraph newspaper for standing up to Philip Green, despite sky high legal costs. A victory against stifling confidentiality agreements and NDAs inhibiting legitimate journalism."

The Financial Times reports: "Evgeny Lebedev, the Russian owner of the London Evening Standard, sold a stake in the newspaper’s parent company in December to an investor whose identity is concealed behind a Cayman Islands company. The unnamed beneficial owner of the Cayman company poured nearly £14m into Lebedev Holdings, the corporate vehicle that in turn owns nearly 90 per cent of London’s free Evening Standard newspaper, which is edited by George Osborne, the former UK chancellor of the exchequer...The sale raises questions over the transparency of media ownership in the UK and also editorial control. It comes after a similar deal at The Independent newspaper group two years ago, which saw a little-known Saudi businessman take a 30 per cent stake in that publication, which is also controlled by Mr Lebedev."

Susie Beever, who works for the Huddersfiled Daily Examiner and Leeds Live quoted by HoldTheFrontPage after covering a far-right rally in Leeds: “I got into work this morning to be greeted by an email telling me I would ‘soon be paying the ultimate price’ for my live coverage of a far-right protest in Leeds yesterday. It’s interesting how the people who demand their right to freedom of speech in these protests are the same people who send threatening, aggressive and expletive emails to journalists because they don’t like the fact the free press have covered them."

Harlow resident Donna Redding on the closure of the local Harlow Star newspaper, quoted by the BBC: "It is awful news for our community that cannot access the internet and enjoy a read of local news. We have had a local paper ever since Harlow New Town was born."

Mark Di Stefano @MarkDiStef on Twitter: "Sky News reporters have just been told 32 cameras and microphones are being installed all around their newsrooms. Sky News is going to livestream everything that happens in the newsroom online and on a dedicated channel from 5:30am to 10:30pm, calling it “Sky News Raw”."

From the Guardian's obit on Hugh McIlvanney, who died aged 84 last week: "Sport and journalism in the UK could not have asked for a better champion than the man who insisted he was a reporter rather than a 'writer', a title he felt conveyed too much grandiloquence in the circles in which he moved easily, from ringside to the track and, when the mood took him, the bar. His searing intelligence and an old-fashioned regard for accuracy, embroidered by a gift for verbal musicality, lifted his work to sometimes operatic heights."

Hugh McIlvanney in his last column for the Sunday Times [£]: "Technology has delivered many a boon to the working reporter but in sport, especially, there are penalties. The demand for instant information and comment for the internet in addition to the copy transmitted to the newspaper must eat into the opportunities for the ferreting around that I always found productive in the immediate aftermath of an event...I envy the present generation of sportswriters their youth but not their operating conditions. I know how important favourable circumstances were to me."

McIlvanney also quoted Peter Dobereiner's definition of what columnists do: "A columnist is someone who hides up in the hills until the battle is over and then comes down and bayonets the wounded.”

The Sunday Times [£] in a leader: "Hugh started his career in journalism after sending some poems to the editor of the Kilmarnock Standard. Talk about starting as you mean to go on: he managed to discover poetry in even the most brutal of contests. Sport, and journalism, is suddenly a more prosaic occupation"

Norman Giller wrote about a night out with McIlvanney on the Sports Journalists' Association website: "In the dim and distant past Hughie and I have had some wild adventures...we were legless members of a press corps who disgraced ourselves by our raucous behaviour during a Geoff Hurst testimonial dinner at the London Hilton. That was the night a pissed-as-a-pudding Peter Batt insisted on singing My Way with the band, and fell head first off the stage after completing the line, 'And now the end is near …' Our unrehearsed and unwanted cabaret continued with wild fistfights (I floored Straw Dogs author Gordon Williams with an ABA-perfect left hook), and Hughie stripped down to the waist, prepared to take on all-comers. And we call the fans hooligans!"

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Media Quotes of the Week: From battling a bullying businessman to the journalist who (almost) always backed Leicester to be champions

Business correspondent Oliver Shah, who has led the way on uncovering the BHS story, on Sir Philip Green in the Sunday Times [£]: "Later that month, he tried — and failed — to get the editor to rein in the story. 'I’m gonna call Rupert Murdoch [ultimate owner of The Sunday Times] on Monday morning because this is unacceptable,' he ranted at me. 'This has got to stop.' It did not. As I continued to dig, rival journalists on other papers expressed amazement that I was being allowed to take on Green. One gave me a front-page story on BHS. 'There’s no way my editor will let me print it, so you may as well have it,' he shrugged."

Sir Philip Green quoted by Oliver Shah in the Sunday Times [£]: "“If you want to call me a liar, come round to my office on Monday, call me a liar to my face and face the consequences. How’s that, if you’re such a big f****** boy? Because you will get thrown through the f****** window.”

Reuters reports: "British retail tycoon Philip Green on Thursday hit out at UK lawmakers for leading what he called a 'trial by media' in relation to last week's fall into administration of department store BHS...The letter, which Green circulated to news media, marks his first public comments on BHS's administration. In the letter, he also criticised the media for writing 'much inaccurate and misleading' information."

Trinity Mirror in a statement: "Although The New Day has received many supportive reviews and built a strong following on Facebook, the circulation for the title is below our expectations. As a result, we have decided to close the title on 6 May 2016. Whilst disappointing, the launch and subsequent closure have provided new insights into enhancing our newspapers and a number of these opportunities will be considered over time.”

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday: "I was just leaving the BBC’s Westminster studios on Thursday when Mr Livingstone stepped into an over-excited knot of political reporters. They looked like what they are – simultaneously a pack of snapping wolves, buzzing with self-righteousness, and a flock of bleating, conformist sheep, all thinking and saying exactly the same thing...At one point this stumbling, squawking carnival was joined by a barking dog. If it had gone on much longer, crowds of tourists would have gathered, mistaking it for an ancient London tradition. This is how politics is reported in this country, almost completely without thought."

Will Gore in the Independent: "In response to articles about Livingstone’s outburst, Holocaust deniers suddenly appear with alacrity, just as Islamophobes pop their heads above the parapet any time we write about refugees fleeing Syria. It is enough to make you wonder about the state of humanity. But it also raises practical questions for outlets such as The Independent: do we need to hire dozens of moderators to stem the tide; should we have a longer list of prohibited terms so we can automatically filter out the worst comments; or ought we simply to close comment boards? The more steps we take, the more we will be accused of stifling debate; hold back and ever more bile will slip through. Whatever course we steer, one thing is plain: responsibility for combatting discrimination lies with every right thinking person – it isn’t a subject for buck-passing."

International Federation of Journalists' president Jim Boumelha on the IFJ annual survey showing press freedom violations around the world: “This survey exposes a shocking toll of violations of media freedom and a woeful lack of willingness on the part of too many governments and authorities to act to defend journalists. But as it also shows journalists’ unions are ensuring there can be no hiding place for those who attack journalists or undermine media freedom. Whether in print or on the airwaves, in courts or international bodies, on the streets and in the workplaces journalists unions are standing up against the threats to media freedom.”

Feedback editor Rose Wild in The Times [£] on the paper's not carrying any reference to the Hillsborough inquests' verdicts in its first edition: " As soon as the first edition of the paper went out on Tuesday night, our choice of front-page stories was called into question by, among others, members of The Times staff...Our coverage of the 'unlawful killing' verdict in the Hillsborough inquiry, extensive as it was, was not flagged on the front, suggesting that we had overlooked both its significance in legal terms and its importance to the many people who had campaigned for this result for so long. The paper immediately realised it had made a mistake. In the second edition the front page was changed...The initial decision not to put the story on the front was because it had been running as a news story all day. But it was an error not to have a visual signal to the coverage inside."

Sun editor Tony Gallagher doorstepped by Channel 4 News' Paraic O'Brien and asked why his paper did not lead on Hillsborough inquests' verdict: "I'm afraid I am not talking about it at all."

Stig Abell, former director of the Press Complaints Commission, interviewed in the Guardian: “We were a small group trying to help members of the public while upholding the principle of freedom of expression. But the PCC’s phone-hacking report was wrong. And we were widely criticised for being insufficiently interested in hacking, which has a certain amount of truth to it. We were overwhelmed, and I spent two years trying to keep the PCC relevant as the scandal grew worse. Let’s be honest: it was an issue that bamboozled institutions a lot more powerful than the PCC."

Chris Frost, the chair of the NUJ’s Ethics Council, on why the union is backing would be press regulator Impress, as reported by Press Gazette: “Our view is that Impress represents the best opportunity we have for independent press regulation and for providing an alternative to those national newspapers and their publishers who continue to fail to take their responsibilities seriously by hiding their failings behind another pointless so-called regulator. We have welcomed Impress as the alternative press regulator because we want to see regulation which is both Leveson complaint and independent of publishers, whilst involving journalists on its board and with its future development.”

George Osborne at the Westminster correspondents' dinner, as reported by The Times [£]: “It is the irreverence of journalism; the challenging, sometimes infuriating, occasionally wayward, always invigorating free journalistic spirit that makes a free society truly free. Show me a country that controls its press and I will show you a government that controls its people."

John Mickelwait on Bloombergview: "This column should begin with a financial disclosure -- of the writer’s own ineptitude. For around 20 years, every August I have bet £20 on Leicester City to win their league. The wall of my office at The Economist in London was festooned with the resulting betting stubs, to be mocked by my colleagues who followed more successful teams. True, Leicester did once finish second -- but that was back in the 1928-29 season; their main battle in my lifetime has been to avoid relegation, a struggle they have lost seven times. Last summer, having moved to New York to work for Bloomberg, I missed making my routine bet; the odds being offered on Leicester winning the title were 5,000-1, but, somewhere deep down, I assumed it was £20 pounds saved."

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