Media Quotes of the Week: From Mac the knifed to no newsprint today, we're journalism students!

The Sun in a statement, reported by the Liverpool Echo : “The views expressed by Kelvin MacKenzie about the people of Liverpool were wrong, unfunny and are not the view of the paper. The Sun apologises for the offence caused. The paper was unaware of Ross Barkley’s heritage and there was never any slur intended. Mr MacKenzie is currently on holiday and the matter will be fully investigated on his return.”

Everton Football Club in a statement: "Yesterday Everton Football Club informed The Sun newspaper it was banned from Goodison Park, the USM Finch Farm training ground and all areas of the Club's operation. Whilst we will not dignify any journalist with a response to appalling and indefensible allegations, the newspaper has to know that any attack on this City, either against a much respected community or individual, is not acceptable."

Stephen Daisley on the Spectator's Coffee House blog: "If MacKenzie can get nicked for being a loudmouth, we will soon be treated to comical scenes of the nation’s polemicists lifted for excessive bile. Dawn raids on Melanie Phillips. A historic allegations inquiry into Julie Burchill. Simon Heffer barricading himself inside Buckingham Palace Road, firing off memos to the subbing desk to remind them it’s Telegraph style to refer to the female officers as ‘woman police constables’. First they came for Rod Liddle…"

Peter Preston in The Observer: "MacKenzie doesn’t have unlimited licence to write or say what he likes. He doesn’t rent a white sheet of blank paper from Rupert every columnar morning. On the contrary, he’s contracted to write his piece, turn it in on time, and watch it go through the editing process before appearing in print. MacKenzie was a long-term editor. He knows what editing means. He knows there’s an executive hierarchy – from subs to night lawyers to supreme authorities – there to watch his back. But did they? They commissioned a grisly cartoon to sit with the piece. But the racism and gorilla references that incensed the mayor of Liverpool don’t seem to have rung any alarms. MacKenzie is left to take this rap alone."

David Banks on Voice of the North: "At least THREE senior Sun executive journalists (the paper’s editor, features editor and chief subeditor) should have read and approved his comments before publication, will have created and approved the headline and inserted the ‘gorilla’ eyes illustration that accompanied the article as well as possibly hearing the misgivings of the subeditor who handled the inflammatory copy. Rupert Murdoch is a hard master. Newspapers may now be but a minor part of the multi-billionaire’s global portfolio but he has a sense of pride and demands professionalism of his lieutenants. Expect more than MacKenzie’s head to fall. . ."

Evening Standard editor George Osborne announcing he is standing down as an MP, Order Order: “I will go on fighting for that Britain I love from the editor’s chair of a great newspaper. It’s still too early to be writing my memoirs...I’m very excited about the opportunity to edit the Evening Standard. I’ve met the team there, and their energy and commitment to this great newspaper are positively infectious. [My editorship will offer] straight facts and informed opinion to help them to make the big decisions Britain now faces about the kind of country we want to be. That starts with the coverage of this general election.”

jane martinson‏@janemartinson on Twitter: "Good to see that new editor understands print deadlines. @George_Osborne delivered scoop too late for anything but slip edition."

Peter Houston on TheMediaBriefing: "There seems to be a sense that somehow Facebook and Google have seized their position in the market through some nefarious scheme to subvert the public good. The reality is, audiences and advertisers have migrated to their platforms because they work.
Whether that’s mashing up photos from a pal’s Portugal holiday with breaking news, or intricate audience profiling and ad targeting, Google and Facebook deliver in ways that most publishers can only dream of."

The Times [£] in a leader on its investigation into Aspen Pharmacare:"This is the latest in a series of scandalous abuses of a drug pricing loophole brought to the attention of the public not by regulators, the health service, police or civil servants, but by The Times. As a direct result of this newspaper’s public interest reporting, which is under sustained threat from both the government and the courts, a bill is now before parliament that will close the loophole in question and save the NHS and taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds a year."

Donald J. Trump‏@realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!"

Football chairman Peter Masters, who has saved the Plymouth-based Sunday Independent from closure, as quoted by HoldTheFrontPage: “I’ve read the Indy every Sunday all my life. There was no way I could stand aside and let such a loved and respected part of the West Country sporting scene pass into history."

Roy Greenslade, who teaches journalism at City University,  tells X-City magazine he was:  "Extremely down hearted to discover that not one of my undergraduate students reads a newsprint newspaper."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From Robert Redford backs US press against Trump to Gary Lineker supports sport reporters against angry managers

Robert Redford in the Washington Post: "This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Watergate scandal. Because of my role in the film, some have asked me about the similarities between our situations in 1972 and 2017. There are many. The biggest one is the importance of a free and independent media in defending our democracy. When President Trump speaks of being in a “running war” with the media, calls them “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth” and tweets that they’re the “enemy of the American people,” his language takes the Nixon administration’s false accusations of “shoddy” and “shabby” journalism to new and dangerous heights."

The Times [£]: "The Guardian is 'actively considering' moving back to Manchester in an attempt to save money. Senior executives at Guardian Media Group have held 'top secret' talks about moving the newspaper’s headquarters from north London back to its birthplace in Manchester, The Times has learnt. The newspaper, which began its move to the capital in 1964, has been suffering from falling advertising revenue as retailers turn to Google and Facebook. Last year it made 250 staff redundant and employees have been told that more job cuts are on the way, with the newspaper expecting to make heavy financial losses again this year."

The Daily Mail comments on the possible move North by the Guardian in a leader: "The move might even put its journalists in touch with real people, inspiring them to write articles of interest beyond the Islington echo-chamber of sociology lecturers and the public sector elite. It would certainly be worth paying money to see Polly in a Salford two-up two-down. One word of advice to the great people of Manchester. If the Guardian (which loses £95million a year) really ran the country – instead of telling everyone else how to manage our affairs – we’d all be living in mud huts."

Jeremy Corbyn after being asked by ITV News political correspondent Paul Brand if he would consider standing down as leader of the Labour Party:  “You’re obsessed with this question, utterly obsessed...We have a strong opposition in this country, if you bothered to report what we were doing. It’s your responsibility to make sure the opposition voice is heard as well as the government’s. It’s your failings.”

John Collings, editor of the Plymouth-based Sunday Independent, speaking to HoldTheFrontPage about the closure of the newspaper after more than 200 years: “Sadly, the decision has been made this morning to stop trading the Sunday Independent as of today – unless something totally unforeseen happens in the next day or so. The news has not totally sunk in yet with any of the 20 or so staff, and a host of contributors from Bristol, to Swindon, to Weymouth and all the way down to Land’s End, who we are in the process of contacting."

Brexit backer Aaron Banks interviewed in The Observer: “As businessmen, we sat down with a clean sheet of paper and said, ‘How do we beat these people?’ And then we figured out how the mainstream media works – how they operate – and we turned it back on them.We worked out how to take their outrage, how to take their pain – in your case – and feed it back into the system. You know we spent £12-14m on the campaign? And we calculated what our column inches and TV coverage was worth. It was over £150m .”

Nick Clegg interviewed in the Guardian: claimsBritain was being run by a "curious cabal of old men", namely the power brokers on Britain’s pro-Brexit newspapers – the Telegraph’s Barclay brothers, the Sun’s Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre. Describing them as puppet masters, he said they wanted to turn Britain into an offshore economy, calling them a "bunch of old men – not elected by anybody – [with] Theresa May as their hostage."

The Society of Editors in a statement: "The deterioration of media freedom and the use of emergency powers to jail journalists in Turkey is deeply worrying at a time when the country requires a free press more than ever. 180 news outlets have been shut down in the past eight months under laws passed by presidential decree and the Committee to Protect Journalists has stated that Turkey is now the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. This is an accolade unprecedented in Europe and the western world."

MPs in a letter backing BBC coverage of Brexit, as reported by the Guardian: “The BBC rightly guards its independence and should resist attempts at political interference or pressure. We expect the BBC to defend its independence and report impartially, robustly and fearlessly on all issues relating to Brexit and not succumb to any pressure to skew its coverage one way or another.”

Gary Lineker‏@GaryLineker  on Twitter on Sunderland manager David Moyes telling a BBC reporter she might get a slap: "Moyes incident highlights a tendency for some managers to treat interviewers with utter disdain. Pressured job. Well rewarded. Inexcusable."

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