Media Quotes of the Week: From Huhne hammered over Guardian column to BBC execs have 'betrayed fearless and brilliant reporters'

 Matt in the Telegraph

Chris Huhne in the Guardian: "The News of the World sparked the end of my marriage, but another Murdoch title, the Sunday Times, then groomed my ex-wife until she told them about the speeding points."

The Telegraph in a leader on Chris Huhne's Guardian column: "A more self-delusional and morally contemptible article would be hard to imagine. Many people have swapped speeding points, he wrote, as if this made any difference to his breaking the law. Moreover, he claimed that a newspaper investigation into his affair with another woman “sparked the end of my marriage”. It seems not to have occurred to him that his adultery was responsible for that."

Janice Turner in The Times [£]: "And no coincidence Huhne wrote his mea non-culpa for The Guardian. Randomly drop in the phrase “phone-hacking”, note you were exposed by The Sunday Times, invoke the name Rupert “Beelzebub” Murdoch himself and hope a liberal conspiracy will swirl up like marsh gas to obfuscate your crime."

Neville Thurlbeck ‏@nthurlbeck on Twitter: "Not a "Murdoch press target". A Neville Thurlbeck target. My source, my story. & it took a year to persuade the ed to run it." 

John Gapper in the Financial Times: "Exerting pressure on the BBC is a political pastime. When Ian Katz, editor of the Newsnight television show, mistakenly tweeted what was intended to be a private message this week which (correctly) described an interview with Rachel Reeves, a Labour shadow minister, as 'boring snoring', Labour complained that he was not being impartial. That is laughable."

David Cameron to the Commons liaison committee, as reported by the Guardian: "To be clear I am committed to the cross-party charter. We all signed it, we agreed it. We should progress it but it would be good if we could find some way for everyone to see that it would be better if you ended up with a cross-party charter that the press seek recognition with. But it is a cross-party issue so this is something all party leaders have to address."

Peter Preston ‏@PJPrest on Twitter: "Telegraph hires supreme digital editor from Washpost, AoL and PBS. Rather like Man U buying £85 million striker from Yeovil and Fulham?"

Charles Moore in the Telegraph: "Tony Blair is right. I realise that this is not the most persuasive way to start an article in a modern national newspaper, but it is the columnist’s task to shock, as well as to please."

Henry Porter in the Observer:  "What the Guardian-New York Times stories of last week tell us is that we are much less free than we supposed and that unrestricted surveillance will become a menace to us all. That should be a vital concern for journalists, even at the BBC."

Libby Purves in The Times [£] on the BBC executives involved in the payoff row: "They have betrayed fearless and brilliant reporters: whenever I hear the clear-sighted and humane Hugh Sykes bringing Middle Eastern tragedies to light and understanding, or see a patient weary correspondent, sleepless in a hot foreign night, explaining a specialism for the tenth time that day to yet another news anchor, I wince at the way decent and dedicated people were traduced and laid open to contumely for being part of a 'bloated' and 'scandal-hit' BBC. They have been shafted by those whose job was respectfully, humbly and wisely to enable their endeavours."

[£] = paywall