Media Quotes of the Week: From it's up to editors to decide what leaks to publish not the police to newsroom jobs in US down a quarter in 10 years

Met Police assistant Commissioner Neil Basu in a statement: “The publication of leaked communications, knowing the damage they have caused or are likely to cause may also be a criminal matter. I would advise all owners, editors and publishers of social and mainstream media not to publish leaked government documents that may already be in their possession, or which may be offered to them, and to turn them over to the police or give them back to their rightful owner, Her Majesty’s Government.”

The Mail on Sunday in a leader: "There can be no serious argument, in a free democracy, that the act of helping the people to be better informed should be a matter for the police, who after all keep telling us that they already have too much to do and too few staff with which to do it. It is absurd, if not actually ridiculous, that a truthful and accurate leak of significant material, enabling the voters of this country to be better informed and to make better choices, should be met in Whitehall and in Scotland Yard by threats of arrest and prosecution."

David Davis in a letter to The Times [£]: "Any competent senior police officer should have been aware that only a matter of weeks ago the lord chief justice of Northern Ireland struck down the search warrants and, implicitly, the case against two journalists arrested for receiving stolen property and breaching the Official Secrets Act. Their “crime” was broadcasting a leaked document detailing the scandalous failure by police to solve a UVF murder in Loughinisland 25 years ago. Had the lord chief justice not struck down the case, investigative journalism in the UK would have been crippled. The action should have telegraphed to senior police officers like Mr Basu that prosecuting journalists for embarrassing the state is not what we do in the UK."

Jeremy Hunt @Jeremy_Hunt on Twitter: "These leaks damaged UK/US relations & cost a loyal ambassador his job so the person responsible MUST be held fully to account. But I defend to the hilt the right of the press to publish those leaks if they receive them & judge them to be in the public interest: that is their job."

The Times [£] in a leader: "Fortunately, both the candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party have stressed that freedom of the press is paramount. It would have been even more reassuring had the leader of the opposition come out in defence of the media’s duty to speak truth to power. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn has been focusing his energies on denouncing a BBC investigation into antisemitism within the Labour Party, aiming his fire as usual at the messenger and not the message."

The Sunday Times [£] in a leader on Neil Basu: "The decision on what to publish, as he must surely know, is a matter for editors, not for the police. We have not fought the cause of press freedom for centuries to plod our way into a police state."

Mark Di Stefano on BuzzzFeedNews: "A US sports website that wants to dominate the British football market has made a series of high-profile new signings, including an award-winning Guardian football writer and a BBC reporter with a massive following among London football fans.The incredible hiring spree has been described as "setting off a bomb" in the industry. BuzzFeed News has learned that the Athletic's latest hires are the Guardian’s chief football writer Daniel Taylor and the BBC’s top football correspondent David Ornstein."

Lionel Barber @lionelbarber on Twitter about Arron Banks suing Carole Cadwalladr: "Suing an individual - rather than an organisation -for libel is indeed a very important distinction. Clearly intended to muzzle @carolecadwalla who bust open the Cambridge Analytica scandal and is fearlessly pursuing questions about foreign money influence in Brexit referendum."

Alan Rusbridger @arusbridger on Twitter: "Stout defences on Twitter etc of attacks on journalism in relation to BBC Panorama and Mail on Sunday. I hope people will be equally watchful of the use of money & libel laws to silence the reporting of @carolecadwalla"

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times [£]: "While British Jews are understandably concerned about the prospects of a Corbyn-led government, the BBC should also feel a chill. The Labour leader has already indicated that there will be a reckoning for those in the media he perceives as enemies. When the press ran with a story suggesting he had been a Czech intelligence service asset in the Cold War, he put out a video in which he warned the “media barons” that “change is coming”. I presume he meant some form of statutory control."

John Ware in the Observer on the Labour party's complaints about his Panorama programme about anti-semitism: “The Labour Party reaction last week did not terribly surprise me. But this is not the straight-talking party that Corbyn promised. This is an Arthur Daley version of Alastair Campbell’s spin.”

Matthew Parris in The Times [£] on fellow newspaper columnist Boris Johnson: "Brexit has become columnist-Johnson’s new and biggest idea: his easily grasped, all-singing, all-dancing and shrewdly voter-motivating grand project. Detail be damned: he will stick to it — until he doesn’t. He will pursue this pet project with all the clarity and force that a maestro of Fleet Street commentary can command. And if it falls, he will desert it with all the caprice that courses through a columnist’s veins. Boris never forgets that today’s column lines the bottom of tomorrow’s budgie cage."

Elizabeth Grieco at Pew Research Centre: "From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment in the U.S. dropped by 25%. In 2008, about 114,000 newsroom employees – reporters, editors, photographers and videographers – worked in five industries that produce news: newspaper, radio, broadcast television, cable and “other information services” (the best match for digital-native news publishers). By 2018, that number had declined to about 86,000, a loss of about 28,000 jobs."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From is Paul Dacre Donald Trump in disguise? to if you want to be rude about vegans write for a real newspaper

Pic: Society of Editors

Paul Dacre on the liberal media in his Society of Editors lecture, as reported by HoldTheFrontPage: "One of the greatest problems we have in restoring trust is that when it comes to the mainstream press, the liberal Brexit- hating media – and, let’s be frank, in their eyes, the Referendum result was further proof of the malignancy of euro-sceptic newspapers – only ever see the bottom of the lamp post and remain determinedly, and I would say self-interestedly, oblivious to the good newspapers do."

Alan Rusbridger @arusbridger on Dacre on Twitter: "After 27 years of editing Paul Dacre spends much of his valedictory speech.... attacking the liberal media. Only Donald Trump is more obsessed."

Dacre on Alan Rusbridger's book Breaking News: “A somewhat chilling lack of self-awareness fuses with a hyper-sensitivity to the flaws of others. Indeed, its sine qua non is that only Alan and the Guardian are capable of producing what he calls ‘worthwhile’ journalism.”

Rusbridger on the post-Dacre Daily Mail in the New Statesman: "If [Geordie ] Greig can detoxify the Mail brand and prove that a tabloid can be ethical, successful and reasonably nice, what would that say about the “nasty” Dacre model? The very thought must make him very unhappy. Dacre was a big beast of a Fleet Street that no longer exists."

Donald Trump to CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta, as reported by NBC: "CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN."

• Acosta's White House pass was later suspended.  CNN said: 'This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better. Jim Acosta has our full support."

Donald Trump after being asked by Karen Travers of ABC News about how half of Americans claim he is encouraging politically motivated violence by the way he speaks, as reported by the Washington Post: “No, no. You know what? You’re creating violence by your questions...and also a lot of the reporters are creating violence by not writing the truth."

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "History will record that when states murdered journalists or used the conspiracy theories of terrorists to fool their subject populations, they could expect reprisals from something called “the west”, an alliance that lasted from 1945 to 2016. The west’s great weakness was that it depended on American power. It died when Donald Trump became the US president, freeing illiberal democracies and actual dictatorships to follow their worst instincts to a grim destination."

Joel Simon executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists on the Columbia Journalism Review: "One way the Turkish government could legitimately use the attention from the Khashoggi murder investigation to enhance its international standing would be take its foot off the neck of the Turkish media, easing the crackdown and releasing the dozens of Turkish journalists who are unjustly jailed. But for the time being only one thing is certain: an investigation of one the world’s worst press freedom violators—Saudi Arabia—carried out by another—Turkey—is unlikely to produce justice."

Marius Dragomir in The Times [£]; "The risk to those who strive to expose corruption and hold power to account exists not only in authoritarian regimes. It has become unprecedentedly grave right in the heart of Europe, often in countries where liberty flowered after the fall of the Soviet Union but is now in alarming retreat."

Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound on Twitter on the Arron Banks interview by Andrew Marr: "The Banks issue has highlighted a tension between leavers and remainers and between journalists and lawyers. Most hacks don't want to leave the process of investigation to a secretive legal process which conceals as much as it reveals."

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times [£] on William Sitwell, who resigned from Waitrose Food magazine after his email to a vegan freelance: "He’s clearly a talented fellow and will not be out of work for long. My recommendation is that he leaves the world of corporate marketing and gets a job with a real newspaper — perhaps even this one. Then he can be as satirically rude as he wishes about veganism or any other fad that enrages him."

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Media Quotes of the Week: Charlie Hebdo to FOI

Pic: BBC

Nick Cohen in the Observer: "Most journalists have lived a lie for years, as have many in the arts, academia and comedy. We take on the powerful – and ask you to admire our bravery – if, and only if, the powerful are not a paramilitary force that may kill us."

Charles Moore in the Telegraph: "The media deplored the death threats that followed the (genuinely un-nasty) Danish cartoons, but did not publish them. We say 'Nous sommes Charlie', but fight shy of reprinting the magazine’s Mohammed gags, so readers never quite know what the story is about. Employers worry about their staff’s safety. Some even fear upsetting Muslim newsagents. Terrorism is working."

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian: "It is not only violent jihadists who resent representations of the prophet: such pictures trouble many millions of peaceful Muslims too. To print one now would be to take a stand against the former by offending the latter."

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times [£]: "The point about the Muhammad cartoons, however, is that almost none of those expressing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo are willing to put their own lives (or those of their colleagues) on the line in the cause of religious satire. Not that I blame them. As an editor I once overruled the decision of a page designer to illustrate a review of a book on Islam with a picture of the prophet. I told my colleague I had no doubt about its appropriateness on journalistic or historical grounds, but 'if we publish that, we’ll have nutters with hooks for hands storming the building'.  The public explanation of such a decision would have been that the paper did not want to cause offence. That is mere cant: newspapers are always offending people — it’s one of the joys of journalism."

David Cameron and Barack Obama writing in The Times [£]: "When the freedoms that we treasure came under a brutal attack in Paris, the world responded with one voice. Along with our French allies, we have made clear to those who think they can muzzle freedom of speech and expression with violence that our voices will only grow louder."

Nick Clegg, at the Journalists' Charity reception at the Irish Embassy: "Among those linking arms in paris were leaders of other less liberal countries where people are still locked up or worse for speaking their mind, or journalists for doing their job."

Matthew Parris in The Times [£]: "This is no high noon and none is coming. Our culture and governments are infinitely superior, more competent and more powerful; if there is a war it is a war in which our own casualties are light and 99 per cent of the dead seem to be unlucky Muslims in the Middle East. On our own soil sporadic atrocities will always be possible and to their victims bring unfathomable grief; but there is not the remotest chance that fundamentalist Islam will sweep the globe or hobble our free media. We should have more confidence in ourselves than that. I understand — I share — the angry defiance of the world of authors and journalists, but I’m finding it a little self-referential and a little shrill."

Jane Martinson in the Guardian: "But whatever lessons were learned, the most striking image from this awful week at the start of 2015 were those of international protest by people holding pens and pencils aloft, a universal show of support for an industry where such things are today so rare."

Max Hastings in the Daily Mail: "Such people as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Edward Snowden (the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor turned treacherous fugitive), who have broadcast American and British secrets wholesale, are celebrated as heroes by some people who should know better, many of them writing for the Guardian or broadcasting for the BBC. In truth, Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping."

Campaign for Freedom of Information director Maurice Frankel on 10 years of FOI in the UK, in new book FOI 10 years on: freedom fighting or lazy journalism? : "The media have played an absolutely critical role. They have not only opened up streams of important news stories but demonstrated to the wider public that FOI works and is worth using."

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Lord Lucan and the lessons for the Sun on Sunday

Former Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson writes in the Independent today how running a a story about Lord Lucan which turned out to be rubbish gave him an insight into red-top tabloid journalism - and shows why the Sun on Sunday could succeed while a new quality Sunday would be commercial suicide.

Lawson tells how he he bought the serial rights to a book, Dead Lucky, by a retired Scotland Yard detective that claimed Lord Lucan had emerged in Goa hippy commune under the assumed name Barry Halpin and had died in 1996. The story was knocked down in hours by Halpin's friends - but added tens of thousands of sales to the Sunday Telegraph.

Lawson writes: "Although a broadsheet journalist for my entire newspaper career, the episode did give me a brief insight into the wild and wacky world of the red-top press for whom murder, celebrity and cops with some hot information to sell are meat and drink.

"I suddenly appreciated just how much more gripped are the public with such material than with the most important stories about splits in the Cabinet. Sad to say, those don't increase the sales figures of even the most serious of our national newspapers, which goes some of the way to explaining why such titles as The Times (and The Independent) now give much more coverage than ever they did before of the doings of pop stars and actors.

"Thus, while it would now be thought commercial suicide to launch a new upmarket Sunday newspaper, no one seems to be questioning Rupert Murdoch's business sense in launching the Sun on Sunday.

"I must declare my interest as a columnist for his Sunday Times, but I don't think you can fault the man's insight that in the end all newspapers, from the top of the market to the bottom, are about telling stories – and that the more vivid and compelling the tales, the more copies of the paper will be sold. Obviously, it would be better still if the stories were also true."

The article reminded me of a fantastic quote from the former Mirror journalist Garth Gibbs, who died last year. "I regard not finding Lord Lucan as my most spectacular success in journalism. Of course, many of my colleagues have also been fairly successful in not finding Lord Lucan. But I have successfully not found him in more exotic spots than anybody else.

“I spent three glorious weeks not finding him in Cape Town, magical days and nights not finding him in the Black Mountains of Wales, and wonderful and successful short breaks not finding him in Macau either, or in Hong Kong or even in Green Turtle Bay in the Bahamas where you can find anyone."

• The Sun confirmed today it will be switching its award-winning Fabulous magazine from Saturday to the Sun on Sunday.
• The Guardian says in a leader today: "The Sun on Sunday means that once again Murdoch is publishing four national newspapers – and surely aspires to regain his former dominance, which saw him owning nearly 40% of the national newspaper market. Last July we saw all too clearly the malign effect that dominance had on the cultural, political and regulatory life of this country, not to mention policing. So one can wish that the new Sun shines brightly while still keeping very focused on learning the lessons of the past. But to learn from them, they must first be confronted."

Lawson: 'Journalists dehumanise public figures'

The torrent of invective unleashed by pundits on Nick Clegg, following his New Statesman interview, shows the way journalists "dehumanise" public figures, Dominic Lawson argues in the Independent today.

The deputy Prime Minister was accused of self-pity after telling Jemima Khan in the New Statesman interview: "I'm a human being, I'm not a punch bag - I've of course got feelings."

Lawson claims Clegg's treatment shows the way journalists are guilty of dehumanising public figures. He adds: "The saga of the News of the World's hacking into the telephone messages of politicians and film stars is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

"I'm sure that one reason – if only subconsciously – why those reporters thought they could get away with it, is that they imagined that the public would not feel strongly about the loss of privacy endured by the "celebrities", even though the readers of the News of the World would have been scandalised if they or their neighbours had been snooped on in the same way."

Clegg said in his interview: "The more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the more you're examined under a microscope, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayal that people impose on you."

Lawson says: "It is in fact an essential part of remaining sane as a figure in the public eye to do what Clegg appears to be saying, and decide that this portrayal is not really about you. My sister, Nigella, copes with her occasionally grotesque coverage in the press ("Getting much fatter!" "Going bald!" "High Calorie Killer!") by deciding that the person being written about, though sharing her name, is nothing to do with her, at all.

"That acquired imperviousness is clearly a much better approach than to cry out: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" These days, any politician who attempts such an appeal to a common humanity will muster as much sympathy as the demonised Jew could expect from a nation of anti-Semites."