Quotes of the Week: Conservatives ramp up pressure for BBC 'reform' as John Simpson warns partisan broadcasting has hastened decline of US

Boris Johnson in the Commons after being asked by MP Andrew Lewer if the BBC licence fee was sustainable in a multi-media era, as reported by the Daily Express: "He makes an interesting point of view shared I'm sure by many people in this country. But my Right Honourable friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will be setting out a roadmap shortly for reform of the BBC and addressing the very issue that he mentions."

Tory MP Chris Loder in a letter to new BBC director-general Tim Davie signed by 14 MPs: "With regret, and given a multiplicity of examples, the BBC is now increasingly seen by licence payers as anti-British and politically biased; focused on the 'on demand metropolitan elite,' and being out of touch with its core audience who want an independent and impartial national broadcaster."

Mail on Sunday quoting a source close to GB News a proposed television news channel to rival the BBC: "The channel will be a truly impartial source of news, unlike the woke, wet BBC. It will deliver the facts, not opinion dressed up as news Everyone who works for GB News will have total commitment to quality journalism, to factual reporting and to impartiality."

John Simpson on Twitter: "From 1949 to 1987, the US Federal Communications Commission obliged broadcasters to be ‘honest, equitable & balanced’. Ronald Reagan abolished this. Ever since, American society has been riven by angry, dishonest, partisan broadcasting which has hastened the decline of the US."

Ray Snoddy on Twitter: "We have got to be very aware that a rightwing witch hunt by a tiny minority is building against the BBC - despite its many failures of judgement - destroy this important British institution at your peril."

Steve Rosenberg on Twitter: "This is a first for me. Had to write the script for my #BBCNews10 report on a cafe receipt while being detained at a Minsk police station...Tonight we were detained by police in the centre of Minsk, held at a police station for two hours for 'document checks'. Same thing happened to many other journalists. A clear attempt to interfere with coverage of events in #Belarus"

The Times [£] in a leader: "To be a journalist in an autocracy is to risk one’s life. The case of Hopewell Chin’ono, Zimbabwe’s foremost investigative reporter, is a sharp reminder of that truth. Arbitrarily imprisoned after exposing the corruption of Zimbabwe’s health minister last month, Mr Chin’ono, who has reported for this newspaper, has been incarcerated in a maximum-security prison and denied bail three times. Yesterday, he was dragged to court for a remand hearing despite suspected coronavirus. Yet still he remains in a packed cell, having surrendered his own freedoms in striving to uphold those the West takes for granted. Such is the grim reality of life in Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zimbabwe."

Chin’ono has been freed on bail but is facing a trial and a long jail term if convicted.

 Sarah Ditum on UnHerd: "People have always thought badly of hacks (I remember a secondary teacher who, when I told her I wanted to be a journalist, looked appalled and said: 'But you’ll have to do some awful things'), but today journalism occupies a strange niche of being low reward and low prestige, yet still high resentment. There’s an assumption that writers have reserves of wealth and power which means the public is entitled to a piece of them."

White House spokesman Judd Deere, in a statement to the Washington Post on a story detailing the lucrative business arrangements between the federal government and Trump Organization since the president took office, as reported by The Hill: “The Washington Post is blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization, and it must stop. Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people.”

Kelvin MacKenzie on Twitter: "Just when things couldn’t get worse for Harry Maguire, Wayne Rooney spoke up for him on Talksport. At one time NoW editor Andy Coulson asked me to do the same and he... got 18 months."

David Hepworth on Twitter: "New rule. Columns exhorting people to get back to work to be accompanied by photo of columnist in the act of writing it."

David Banks on Twitter: "One of the Liverpool Daily Post’s Wirral district reporters worked from home and had his garage set up as an office. The editor turned up unexpectedly one day to find him in his pyjamas, playing darts."

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