Thursday 24 October 2019

Media Quotes of the Week: From celebs tell press we are hypocrites over climate change but do your job to Prince Harry haunted by clicking cameras









Celebrities, including Steve Coogan, Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch, backing extinction rebellion in an open letter to the press: "Dear journalists who have called us hypocrites, You’re right...The stories that you write calling us climate hypocrites will not silence us. The media exists to tell the public the truth. Right now there has never been a more urgent need for you to educate yourselves on the CEE (Climate and Ecological Emergency) and to use your voices to reach new audiences with the truth."


Peter Oborne on Open Democracy:  "Of course political journalists have always entered into behind-the-scenes deals with politicians, but this kind of arrangement has gained a new dimension since Boris Johnson entered Downing Street with the support of a client press and media. As a former lobby correspondent (on the Evening Standard, the Sunday Express and The Spectator) I understand the need for access. The job of lobby journalists is to produce information. But there is now clear evidence that the prime minister has debauched Downing Street by using the power of his office to spread propaganda and fake news. British political journalists have got chillingly close to providing the same service to Boris Johnson that Fox News delivers for Donald Trump."


Robert Harris @Robert_Harris on Twitter: "The quality of Brexit coverage would be vastly improved if Dominic Cummings was named as the source each time he briefs a journalist. In 40 years I've never seen so much hyperbolic garbage treated as serious news."


BBC News reports"Australia's biggest newspaper rivals have made a rare showing of unity by publishing redacted front pages in a protest against press restrictions. The News Corp Australia and Nine mastheads on Monday showed blacked-out text beside red stamps marked "secret".  The protest is aimed at national security laws which journalists say have stifled reporting and created a "culture of secrecy" in Australia."


David Charter in The Times [£] on the demise of the Newseum in Washington: "Just before “national newspaper week” last week it announced that it would be closing at the end of the year. The decision felt like another sign of the collapse of traditional media. One in five local American newspapers has closed since 2004. In the same week as the Newseum announced its demise, the Biddeford Journal Tribune, a daily in Maine founded in 1884, stopped the presses."
  • The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, wrote of the Newseum closure: “A self-congratulatory monument to the media in our nation’s capital will close . . . proving once again that President Trump cannot stop winning and will never stop owning the libs”.

Leona O'Neill @LeonaONeill1 on Twitter:"Those close to Lyra McKee wrote a tribute to her on Free #Derry Wall early this morning to remember her six months to the day when she died. Hours later it was painted over with a message of solidarity to #Catalunya."


Timothy Snyder in the New York Times on the use of propaganda by Adolf Hitler: "As the voices of journalists were weakened, the propagandists delivered the coup de grace. By then Hitler and the Nazis had found the simple slogan they related again and again to discredit reporters: 'Lügenpresse'. 'Today the extreme right in Germany has revived this term, which in English is 'fake news'."


Prince Harry on his mother in an interview in Africa by Tom Bradbury for ITV News: "Everything I do reminds me of her...I think being part of this family, in this role, in this job, every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash it takes me straight back so in that respect it’s the worst reminder of her life as opposed to the best. Being here now 22 years later trying to finish what she started will be incredibly emotional but everything that I do reminds me of her. But as I said with the role, with the job and the sort of pressures that come with that, I get reminded of the bad stuff, unfortunately.”

Duchess of Sussex told Tom Bradbury in an interview her friends warned her agianst marrying Prince Harry saying: "You shouldn't do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life".

Former BBC TV News court correspondent Michael Cole in a letter to The Times [£]: "The prince should call off his fight with the press. Sandhurst must have taught him not start a fight you cannot win. And when you wrestle with a chimney sweep, you cannot help but get dirty."

[£]=paywall

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