Friday 30 December 2011

Media Quotes of the Week: From Rod Liddle on Morgan and Mills to Quentin Letts on Coogan


Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times:
"The most difficult question for me right now is this: whose side should one take in the spat between Piers Morgan and Heather Mills? A hard one to call. It’s like a war between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: you sort of half hope that both countries annihilate the other and nothing remains but a slightly toxic dust. Or you do if, like me, you are a singularly unpleasant individual with no notion of moral responsibility."

Roy Greenslade on his blog on Sun managing editor Richard Caseby's note to Alan Rusbridger accompanied by a toilet roll : "Caseby's squalid, scatological note plumbs new depths. It was a wholly disproportionate and disgusting response by a senior editorial executive to a single error. If people were to adopt a similar tactic when complaining about The Sun's catalogue of factual errors on any given week its office would be overflowing with toilet rolls."

Dan Sabbagh in the Guardian: "A million iPads and Kindles may have been unwrapped on Sunday – according to tentative analyst estimates – an influx of portable technology that is expected to hasten a decline in the already faltering sales of printed newspapers, adding pressure on traditional business models that have traditionally supported so many titles around the country."

Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace on columnist Sue Carroll, who died on Christmas Day: "Although we knew this moment would come, it is still a great shock. Sue had faced her long and painful illness with enviable fortitude. Until the final few days she was still doing what she loved the most: reading the papers and giving her inimitable thoughts on the world around us - with, of course, the odd no-nonsense rant thrown in. Sue was part of the heart and soul of the Daily Mirror - and had a direct line to our readers. But she was also very close to some of us personally. So first and foremost we grieve a great friend."

JakeReesMogg on Twitter: "The longer one lingers on the pages of twitter the more one becomes aware of the number of frankly bonkers people on this delightful planet."

The Guardian in a leader on its Milly Dowler story:
"We should have qualified our original reporting with an additional four words: "Reliable sources claim that." This would have been an accurate statement of the unchallenged position at the time, as opposed to the assertion of a fact that has, five months later, been questioned, if not actually disproved or denied. We doubt whether the inclusion of those words would have changed much. But not to have qualified the statement in this way was an error that we regret."

Fleetstreetfox on Twitter:"BREAKING NEWS: There isn't any. Go back to bed."

The Daily Mail's Quentin Letts suggests a New Year resolution for Steve Coogan: "Drop the self-pitying, victim-of-the-Press routine and stick to Alan Partridge."

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