Media Quotes of the Week: From if you want Royal scoops pay Palace footmen to BBC urged to appoint a pro-Brexit political editor to replace Kuenssberg

Kelvin MacKenzie on Twitter: "John Inman sound alike Nicholas Witchell is moaning on BBC that The Queen's people tipped off @theSundaily rather than him when she overnighted in hospital. Why would she tell a pinch-faced tosser like him anything. The answer is for the BBC to bung footmen like Murdoch does."

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries expressing her fury at the BBC’s Nick Robinson after he told the prime minister to “stop talking” during a tense interview, according to The Sunday Times [£]: “Nick Robinson has cost the BBC a lot of money.”

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Opposition to censorship should not be based on sympathy for the censored but fear of the censors. To loud applause, the UK government says it wants to implement the most far-reaching web regulation of any western democracy. Too few are noticing that the Conservatives’ answer to the question of how to curb online hate is to give its politicians excessive powers and make Paul Dacre the country’s internet censor-in-chief."

Matt Hancock in a letter to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, as reported by Guido Fawkes: "I am writing to ask your help to protect my children, following widespread media coverage of my personal life in the last few months. Now, more than three months after my resignation as Secretary of State, there is no longer any public interest whatsoever in any publication about my private life, or the private life of my partner Gina Coladangelo or either of our families. While a perfectly reasonable case could have been made while I was in Government, there is clearly now no public interest case for invasion of our privacy."

The Times [£] reports: "Paris Match announced a change of editor amid a row over compromising photographs of Éric Zemmour, the far-right pundit who is expected to run for the French presidency.
Hervé Gattegno lost his job as editor a month after putting on the magazine’s front cover a photograph of Zemmour, 63, embracing Sarah Knafo, his 28-year-old assistant, on the French Riviera. The scoop angered Zemmour, who announced that he was taking legal action for breach of privacy."

Jake Kanter in The Times [£] reporting  the departure of Emily Sheffield as editor of the London Evening Standard: "There have been persistent rumours that [Evgeny] Lebedev is seeking to close the newspaper down and turn it into an online-only publication, as he did with The Independent in 2016...'There is a lot of sentimentality attached to the Standard, but keeping the brand alive in a digital capacity seems a sensible strategy,' a well-placed source said. 'Evgeny has got what he wanted from being a press baron, not least his peerage'.”

Kent Chief Constable Alan Pughsley in a letter to photographer Andy Aitchison, who was arrested after taking pictures of a protest outside Napier Barracks, as reported by the NUJ: "Further to the damages received by Mr Aitchison in compensation, I apologise unreservedly to him for his unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and breach of his human rights. I expressly acknowledge there was no culpability on the part of Mr Aitchison who was performing an important function publicising the protest in the public interest. I recognise the fundamental importance of free speech and the independent of journalists; I accept they should not be at risk of arrest and of having their equipment seized when acting lawfully in reporting matters of public interest.” 

Mail photographer Gary Trotter, who has died aged 65 , on his ideal assignment: "A small war, a beach and a bar that serves Jack Daniels."

Iliffe editorial director Ian Carter, quoted on HoldtheFrontPage, about the departure of Cornwall Live chief reporter Lee Trewhela who said abuse on social media was one of the reasons he was leaving: “This is happening at one end of the spectrum, while at the other we are seeing far fewer people enter the industry. I’ve no doubt that is, in part, due to a reluctance to open themselves up to abuse from morons. The anti-press sentiment is exacerbated by lazy politicians shouting ‘fake news’ every time something they don’t like is published, police officers warning victims of crime not to speak to local journalists etc etc.”

Julian Knight MP, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee, on who should succeed Laura Kuenssberg as BBC political editor, as reported by the Telegraph: "This would be an opportunity for the BBC, maybe, to look at journalists who had a much more pro-Brexit [approach]. In front of our committee [BBC director general], Tim Davie could not name any senior person he had employed during his watch who supported Brexit. Maybe this is a chance to correct that."

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