Media Quotes of the Week: From press hits back as Prince Harry sues tabloids to Yorkshire Post byline finally answers grandad's question after 18 years

Byline Investigates reports:  "PRINCE Harry is suing the UK tabloid papers of both Rupert Murdoch and their industry rivals Mirror Group Newspapers for allegedly hacking his phone, Byline Investigates can exclusively reveal...It raises for the first time the possibility of a serving member of the Royal family entering the witness box in trials against some of the most powerful media organisations in the world."

Piers Morgan @piersmorgan on Twitter: "It’s time the ‘terrible’ British press stopped covering any public engagement by the Duke & Duchess of Sussex. Let’s all give them the privacy they purport to crave, and spare them the ‘torment’ of having their myriad causes get huge beneficial publicity."

Camilla Long in the Sunday Times [£]: "Does the press print 'lie after lie' or does it provide a vital service — without the British press, after all, there simply wouldn’t be a royal family as we know it. And if it really has written 'lie after lie' about Meghan, then why are they suing The Mail on Sunday over a story that no one’s heard of or can even remember (sorry, Mail on Sunday), on a relatively minor issue of reprinting a private letter? Infringement of copyright — what a hill to die on. It’s not quite the same as being chased to death by paparazzi, as Harry claims it is."

Philip Collins in The Times [£]: "The relations between media and monarchy are a compact between three parties: the journalists, the reading public and the royal family itself. It is a game in which each party alters its course in accordance with one of the others. The journalists pursue the royals because it sells newspapers. The people buy the idea of celebrity monarchy at least in part because it is publicised and validated by respected news outlets. The royals court the media because it is free and uncritical marketing for a constitutional monarchy." 

Jennifer Arcuri asked on Good Morning Britain by Piers Morgan if she had had an affair with Boris Johnson: “Because the press have made me this objectified ex-model pole dancer I really am not going to answer that question. I’m sorry, I’m not going to be putting myself in a position for you to weaponise my answer."

Coleen Rooney @ColeenRoo on Twitter on how she put up fake news on Instagram to catch out someone allegedly selling stories about her to the Sun: "Over the past five months I have posted a series of false stories too see if they made there way into the Sun newspaper. And you know what they did! The story about gender selection in Mexico, the story about returning to TV and then the latest story about the basement flooding."

Graham Norton on why he quit as the Telegraph's agony aunt, as reported by the Guardian: “When I signed up to be their agony aunt, I was aware that it was a rightwing paper and that didn’t bother me, but about a year before I left, it took a turn and there were some things in that paper about which I thought, ‘I cannot be contained within the same pages as this.’ There was a piece defending Brett Kavanaugh and things president Trump had said about [Kavanaugh’s] accuser, and I just thought, ‘This is toxic.’ And I loved that job; I absolutely adored doing it, but ultimately I didn’t love it enough to be part of that stable. I just had to step away, which saddened me, but I was beginning to feel a bit nauseous."

Julian Mounter, former director-general, Television New Zealand, in a letter to The Times [£]: "A common mistake among BBC news presenters these days is to ask of a colleague in the “field” questions that amount to: “What do you think?” Seasoned journalists dodge the question and tell us what they know."

Former BBC TV Panorama journalist Tom Mangold in a letter to The Times [£]: "In 1968, while working for BBC TV News, I was in Vietnam and witnessed the complete destruction of a village by two Phantom A4 warplanes. After their attack we went through the rubble and discovered only the bodies of the very old or the very young. No fighters. In my on-camera report I concluded: 'Military historians may question the wisdom of these tactics.' It was never transmitted. When I returned to London the deputy editor of TV news told me that he had 'fought like a tiger' not to have me sacked for passing an opinion on air. He was absolutely right. The moment we show our personal attitudes on air we cease to be impartial, and when impartiality ends so will the BBC’s entire news and current affairs service."

Susie Beever @SusieMayJourno on Twitter: "My late grandfather to me, aged nine, as I handed him another hand-written magazine stapled together from my dad’s printer paper: 'So young lady, how long before we see your name on the front of the Yorkshire Post?' 18 years, Gramps."

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